If you had a bad sleeper but didn’t sleep train…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never sleep trained my 11 year old…he coslept until he was 9/10, and has always struggled with sleep. He takes melatonin every night to sleep. I feel so bad he struggles so much.

I have a 3 month old daughter now who I have been lightly sleep training (just good sleep habits really), and she sleeps 11-12 hours a night with just 2 wakes to eat then goes right back to sleep in her crib. She also gets an appropriate amount of naps during the day (totaling 4-5 hours) and is such a happy baby.

My biggest regret was that I didn’t help my son learn good habits and it’s still impacting him . Trying to avoid the same with my daughter.

OP here. I did all that when she was a newborn, and she slept 10.5 hours a night with only one wake up until one morning at 2.5 months she just decided she was never going to sleep independently again. Trust me, not all these things are parents’ fault or controllable.

Another way to think of it is that she woke up at 2.5 months fully trained to need/expect bouncing/rocking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 to the posters saying sleep train at night, not for naps. One of our kids was a disaster to get down for naps. He stopped napping when he was two years old, which was great for us but terrible for his daycare.

And we never let him cry for hours. We kept a routine for bedtime, then progressively lengthened the amount of time between checks-ins. And when we went in, we didn't pick him up - we just rubbed his back for a while in the crib.

For our other son, we would sometimes lay down on the floor next to the crib if he was having a really rough night.

OP: she screams harder if we pat/rub/hold hand and don’t pick up. She’s not crying for our presence. She wants us to boob/rock her back to sleep, that’s it. That’s why cosleeping didn’t work. It’s not comfort she’s after.

DP we tried the gentle method of sleep training. I would try just holding her without bouncing and planned to slowly phase things out. But like you say she just screamed when we did that. My experience with my own child is that we could either go all in on full extinction CIO, or do nothing at all. The in between "gentle" methods were just confusing for her, and therefore, cruel.

You've said several times you don't want to sleep train. So stop trying to sleep train! She wants you to bounce her to sleep, so that is what you need to do if you don't want to teach her another way to fall asleep. Honestly if you are not all in, it's really not fair to your child.

Fair. Thanks. The sleep deprivation has made me stupid: “Maybe THIS time/way it will work…”

Full extinction will work.

No, not necessarily. You don’t know it, and I don’t know it. And at what cost?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never sleep trained my 11 year old…he coslept until he was 9/10, and has always struggled with sleep. He takes melatonin every night to sleep. I feel so bad he struggles so much.

I have a 3 month old daughter now who I have been lightly sleep training (just good sleep habits really), and she sleeps 11-12 hours a night with just 2 wakes to eat then goes right back to sleep in her crib. She also gets an appropriate amount of naps during the day (totaling 4-5 hours) and is such a happy baby.

My biggest regret was that I didn’t help my son learn good habits and it’s still impacting him . Trying to avoid the same with my daughter.

OP here. I did all that when she was a newborn, and she slept 10.5 hours a night with only one wake up until one morning at 2.5 months she just decided she was never going to sleep independently again. Trust me, not all these things are parents’ fault or controllable.

Another way to think of it is that she woke up at 2.5 months fully trained to need/expect bouncing/rocking.

No you don’t get it: we weren’t doing those things before that. We started doing them when she suddenly started refusing to sleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 to the posters saying sleep train at night, not for naps. One of our kids was a disaster to get down for naps. He stopped napping when he was two years old, which was great for us but terrible for his daycare.

And we never let him cry for hours. We kept a routine for bedtime, then progressively lengthened the amount of time between checks-ins. And when we went in, we didn't pick him up - we just rubbed his back for a while in the crib.

For our other son, we would sometimes lay down on the floor next to the crib if he was having a really rough night.

OP: she screams harder if we pat/rub/hold hand and don’t pick up. She’s not crying for our presence. She wants us to boob/rock her back to sleep, that’s it. That’s why cosleeping didn’t work. It’s not comfort she’s after.

DP we tried the gentle method of sleep training. I would try just holding her without bouncing and planned to slowly phase things out. But like you say she just screamed when we did that. My experience with my own child is that we could either go all in on full extinction CIO, or do nothing at all. The in between "gentle" methods were just confusing for her, and therefore, cruel.

You've said several times you don't want to sleep train. So stop trying to sleep train! She wants you to bounce her to sleep, so that is what you need to do if you don't want to teach her another way to fall asleep. Honestly if you are not all in, it's really not fair to your child.

Fair. Thanks. The sleep deprivation has made me stupid: “Maybe THIS time/way it will work…”

Full extinction will work.

No, not necessarily. You don’t know it, and I don’t know it. And at what cost?

There is nothing to lose. The kid isn’t sleeping now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never sleep trained my 11 year old…he coslept until he was 9/10, and has always struggled with sleep. He takes melatonin every night to sleep. I feel so bad he struggles so much.

I have a 3 month old daughter now who I have been lightly sleep training (just good sleep habits really), and she sleeps 11-12 hours a night with just 2 wakes to eat then goes right back to sleep in her crib. She also gets an appropriate amount of naps during the day (totaling 4-5 hours) and is such a happy baby.

My biggest regret was that I didn’t help my son learn good habits and it’s still impacting him . Trying to avoid the same with my daughter.

OP here. I did all that when she was a newborn, and she slept 10.5 hours a night with only one wake up until one morning at 2.5 months she just decided she was never going to sleep independently again. Trust me, not all these things are parents’ fault or controllable.

Another way to think of it is that she woke up at 2.5 months fully trained to need/expect bouncing/rocking.

No you don’t get it: we weren’t doing those things before that. We started doing them when she suddenly started refusing to sleep.

DP who has one good sleeper and one bad. I get it, OP. My bad sleeper was actually an amazing sleeper til about 2 months - he was doing 9 hours! Once he broke out of the swaddle, he didn’t sleep again until 20 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never sleep trained my 11 year old…he coslept until he was 9/10, and has always struggled with sleep. He takes melatonin every night to sleep. I feel so bad he struggles so much.

I have a 3 month old daughter now who I have been lightly sleep training (just good sleep habits really), and she sleeps 11-12 hours a night with just 2 wakes to eat then goes right back to sleep in her crib. She also gets an appropriate amount of naps during the day (totaling 4-5 hours) and is such a happy baby.

My biggest regret was that I didn’t help my son learn good habits and it’s still impacting him . Trying to avoid the same with my daughter.

OP here. I did all that when she was a newborn, and she slept 10.5 hours a night with only one wake up until one morning at 2.5 months she just decided she was never going to sleep independently again. Trust me, not all these things are parents’ fault or controllable.

Another way to think of it is that she woke up at 2.5 months fully trained to need/expect bouncing/rocking.

No you don’t get it: we weren’t doing those things before that. We started doing them when she suddenly started refusing to sleep.

Yeah it’s pretty normal, those good habits all the sleep trainers sell you don’t really mean much before the 4 month regression when their sleep cycles mature. Mine was a great newborn sleeper and didn’t need much motion or cuddling but after the 4 month regression hit, we had to perform a 3 ring circus to get him to sleep/nap. We sleep trained with Ferber at first and it worked but it didn’t stick (still slept through but began needing a 3 ring circus to go down for sleep again and was so heavy and killing my back). We did full extinction at around 8 months and it took about 15 minutes and that was it. In retrospect the Ferber check ins were really awful for his temperament.

[Anonymous]

I didn't sleep train my kids. Honestly, my 7 year old really really hated sleeping on his own. As a preschooler he would fall asleep in the doorway of his room some nights so he could see us 10 feet away, and would sometimes crawl into our bed at 5 AM. As soon as his baby brother was old enough that we moved his crib into a shared kids' bedroom, all his sleep problems just vanished. I feel in retrospect ok about not trying harder to "train" him out of it. He just didn't want to be alone.

Said baby brother is still not sleeping through the night. We survive by cosleeping. I think it will get better when he wears. I'm sorry cosleeping isn't viable for you, that's really hard.