Sleep Training Tips for 15MO
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Anonymous
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My friend recommended Christine:
https://www.sleepsolutionsbychristine.com/ |
Anonymous
| I used Juliet at https://www.babysleepscience.com/solutions for a few phone sessions, things have always improved after I've spoken to her and implemented her plan, and we have a terrible sleeper. |
Anonymous
| Extinction. You have to deal with the crying to get a result. Unfortunately because you have so many sleep issues and he is so old for sleep training that’s where you’re at. Just commit to it and do it. The gift of healthy sleep habits is 100 times more important than how hard it may be to listen to him cry. Remember that. |
Anonymous
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I used to do professional sleep training before I had my kids. Here is how I explain it to clients:
Above a certain age, for the vast majority of kids, being in the same bed with another person is going to cause fragmented sleep. That means they aren’t getting the full, healthy, restorative night of sleep they need. If they are in bed with you then they will also struggle to nap (unless you are laying down with them). The result is a chronically overtired baby/toddler. Does extinction and crying cause stress? Yes. But the human body is built to deal with short-term stress. What is truly harmful is long-term stress, and lack of sleep causes a LOT of long-term stress and therefore harm to the body and mind. So you are putting your child through a stressful experience (sleep training) in the short term to correct and teduce the overall amount of stress your child experiences. |
Anonymous
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You’ll get lots of different opinions here, and it sounds like you’ve tried a few things. But, and I’m not trying to belittle what you have done in anyway, it doesn’t seem like you have firmly committed to anything. You’ve tried different method but haven’t really done the work needed to make them work. I agree with many of the other posters who said that the extinction method is probably going to be your best bet at this point.
I would hate for you to end up in the same situation my sister and brother-in-law are in: they have a 5 year old who has slept in their bed every single night since he was born; wakes up multiple times during the night; and refuses to sleep, nap, rest or lie on his bed in his room. My sister has to lie down with him until he falls asleep every night, which takes about half an hour, and then when he wakes again a few hours later and he runs out into the living room crying, she has to stop what she is doing and go back to the bedroom to lay with him until he falls asleep. This happens every night. His sleep is very fragmented and he is very tired and cranky almost every morning. He has a lot of behavioral issues, which my sister and her husband, and others like me completely believe are tied to his poor sleep habits. They can’t leave him with a babysitter to go out because he refuses to go to sleep for anybody else. They have absolutely no sex life or intimacy. They can’t even read or watch TV before bed in their room so they don’t disturb him. They even change their clothes and get ready for bed using the bathroom down the hall rather than the master bathroom so the light doesn’t wake him up. They hate the situation they are in because nobody gets good sleep, but my sister has always been the type that can’t listen to her child cry or complain. She kicks herself that she is in the situation yet she can’t figure out how to change it. She tried sleep training and gave up too soon multiple times, including when he was eight months old, 10 months old, 12 months old and 15 months old. He turned two and she just gave up trying and they’ve been stuck in this horrible loop ever since. Please learn from her missteps! |
Anonymous
If you (not OP, but anyone) want to sleep train, go ahead, but oh my lord with the “gift of healthy sleep habits” business. OP’s child doesn’t have unhealthy sleep habits. The child has habits that aren’t working for the parents, but they aren’t unhealthy for the child. |
Anonymous
You are so so wrong. Waking up multiple times a night is incredibly unhealthy and proven to lead to all sorts of issues. |
Anonymous
Did you not read the original post? Her child is waking up multiple times throughout the night. She said he sleeps part of the night in a toddler bed and part of the night in their bed, and is waking to nurse several times throughout the night. Nothing about that nightly pattern is providing normal, restful, healthy sleep for the toddler or for the parents. It’s a bad situation for everyone. Glad OP is asking for help and but she will really take it seriously this time around and stick to a plan that works. |
Anonymous
Exactly. OP, I feel badly for you but you will need to commit 1 week to cyo. It sounds like he's a strong willed child and so your will needs to be stronger. |
Anonymous
Yes, completely agree. We co-slept with my daughter, who breastfeed throughout the night, until we sleep trained her at 13 weeks (on our pediatrician's recommendation). It was a difficult (agonizing) first night (she cried for an hour and I sat outside her door and cried too) and then a little less the second night and then not at all the third night. She was 13 pounds at the time and we were able to drop the night feed and she just ate more during the day. She has slept 12 hours (8:30 pm- 8:30 am) ever since (we have blackout curtains) and her naps during the day stabilized and lengthened. Sleep training allowed us all to get more and better quality sleep. She is almost 14 months now and bed time is really nice and stress-free. Occasionally she'll have a bad dream and start crying and we'll go into her bedroom and change her diaper and cuddle her for a few minutes before retreating, but after leaving the crying doesn't continue. I would recommend the "cry it out" method. It's painful initially, but we knew from our daughter's personality at 13 weeks that Ferber wouldn't work for her or us. It just seems aggravating for everyone. Don't make it a power struggle! |
Anonymous
| In the context of my baby ( I only have one so know it may be different for others) Ferber and Sleep Lady Shuffle seem pointless and confusing for the baby. If you are trying to teach the baby to sleep independently, why stay/ keep going in? |
Anonymous
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My experience with a sleep consultant was actually not helpful. We interviewed several and went with a consultant recommended by a friend of a friend. The options laid out for sleep training were ones that I already knew (and some had tried). The daily check-ins to tweak things were also not that helpful. If you need motivation to do one of the methods or don’t have time to research it yourself, then it’s probably useful. I would be very specific in your initial consultation questions - do you have methods other than x, y, z? They understandably likely won’t tell you their methods up front, but if you can rule out the methods you know/have tried that would be wise. We felt like we wasted $500 on our consultant. In addition, if you’re into the science aspect, while she laid out some science basis for certain things, she didn’t have good answers to some of the science based questions.
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Anonymous
I also disagree. Before I sleep trained my dd, she was always unhappy—during the day and at night. We thought she had silent reflux, but no—she just wasn’t getting quality sleep. Once we did Ferber and she started sleeping longer stretches (I still nursed her sometimes, just didn’t nurse/rock her to sleep anymore) she was a much happier baby! I believe that some babies and (fewer) toddlers need milk in the middle of the night, but multiple wakings have everything to do with sleep associations and not with sustenance. |
Anonymous
Also disagree. Not only did sleep training absolutely make my DD happier, it also made me a better parent. Toddlers often cry when they don't get what they want. It's often not the best choice to give it to them to avoid the crying - giving in is for the parent, not the child. |
Anonymous
Yep. It's akin to a car seat. My kid HATES the car seat and cries most of the time they're in it. Does it mean I'm not going to use a car seat? It's your job as a parent to set limits |