Sleep Train At 4 Months Old?

[Anonymous]

If the head(s) of the household are not good, no one is good. And no one should be expected to work FT and be up all night every night either... that isn't a plan; its a recipe for disaster. Your mental health, your work, your happiness - all of this and more will inevitably suffer.

I did sleep training at 4 months and by night 3, my kid was sleeping through the night. I was very proud of myself for doing it and I will absolutely do it for #2.

There will still be times your kid will wake up and need you - teething, sickness, etc. Save your energy for those times.

[Anonymous]

Wondering if the OP is still out there for this - what did you end up doing and did it work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are going to get a lot of passionate answers here but I am always on the side of science, which says that sleep training at four months is safe and beneficial.

+1 OP in your case it's really clear - your baby is capable of sleeping through the night because you were getting 8-hour stretches before the regression. It's developmentally appropriate. Brace yourself for a tough 3-4 days and get back into a good place.

[Anonymous]

I'm not OP but the OP of another thread about sleep training at 4 months. We did the Sleep Easy Sleep Solution method this weekend and I'm happy to report that DS is now sleeping 12 hours straight with a dream feed and cried for a total of maybe 25 minutes across three nights. Highly recommend!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sleep train. We used the Ferber method before 4 months old and it worked well.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wondering if the OP is still out there for this - what did you end up doing and did it work?

OP here. We slept trained. We used the Ferber method with time checks. Took about 4 and had been sleeping 11 hours since. No wake ups. We also sleep trained for naps and he takes solid naps and self-soothes.

[Anonymous]

Here's a question.

Do we imagine that there were fewer or more sleep disorders in older children and adults before the advent of widespread "sleep training", which was less of a thing before the 1940s and much less of a thing before the late 1800s?

I know other changes happened during the same historical period that complicate things, but it's interesting to consider.

Also an interesting idea that people whose kids don't sleep train (which would be most of the world, and the vast majority of the world 100+ years ago) are largely destined to become needy, entitled-- and utterly exhausted-- brats.

[Anonymous]

A lot of people who say they successfully sleep-trained use "okay to wake" clocks and deal with loaded overnight diapers as well. Which may be fine, but it's not all black and white.

And there's ZERO science that shows kids who are not sleep trained grow up to be needy and entitled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a question.

Do we imagine that there were fewer or more sleep disorders in older children and adults before the advent of widespread "sleep training", which was less of a thing before the 1940s and much less of a thing before the late 1800s?

I know other changes happened during the same historical period that complicate things, but it's interesting to consider.

Also an interesting idea that people whose kids don't sleep train (which would be most of the world, and the vast majority of the world 100+ years ago) are largely destined to become needy, entitled-- and utterly exhausted-- brats.

Do you think mill workers in the Victorian period got up with their children all night? Russian peasants? Babies just cried. That was the end of it. Life was hard from the minute you were born. Call it what you want but humans have always sleep trained. There's this dumb fantasy that until the baby boom women just nurtured and co-slept and everything was oh so natural and loving, one big family bed where everyone got enough sleep. That's just not the case.