Most Effective Sleep Training Method for Older Infant/Toddler?

[Anonymous]

I have an 11 month old that is still waking 3x a night to nurse.
This is absolutely my fault, I've been lazy and it has just been "easiest" to pop her on for a 3-5 minute nursing session and put her back down. She goes back to sleep immediately, but wakes again to nurse 3ish hours later.

I don't know if I was expecting her to just figure it out at some point, but she hasn't, and now my eye is twitching from what I assume is a year of interrupted sleep. I'm exhausted and would really love to quickly sleep train her...we did sleep train previously at 6 months and it stuck for about a month... then she was sleeping 7pm-4am, quick feed, back to sleep until 7/7:30am. At some point these wakings just crept earlier and more frequent. But she still puts herself back to sleep very easily without protest, after she's had the feed.

Is the quickest way to go cold turkey on all night feedings (she's old!!) with extinction? I have never sleep trained an older baby.

[Anonymous]

Extinction (checking at progressively longer intervals) usually means more crying overall. More nights of crying and more crying each night. I will say that as my DD gets older and more aware I feel worse about ignoring her. Still do it but I feel worse.

As a motivation, keep in mind that her sleep should be uninterrupted too. She's waking up as often as you are because her hunger cues are waking her up. 11 month olds need the deep REM sleep you only get from long uninterrupted stretches.

[Anonymous]

We sleep trained younger, but the book we used (and loved) The Sleep Easy Solution I know has lots of info on sleep training older babies/kids, so I'd start there.

[Anonymous]

Big dinner. Evening nursing session. Me with earplugs, dh does all checkins. First couple nights we did Ferber checks. Then waited 15 min then 20. Slept by end of the week. I could not go in since it would rile her up as she smelled me. Dd was 15 months. Older kid sleep trained herself before 12 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Extinction (checking at progressively longer intervals) usually means more crying overall. More nights of crying and more crying each night. I will say that as my DD gets older and more aware I feel worse about ignoring her. Still do it but I feel worse.

As a motivation, keep in mind that her sleep should be uninterrupted too. She's waking up as often as you are because her hunger cues are waking her up. 11 month olds need the deep REM sleep you only get from long uninterrupted stretches.

Extinction is where you don’t check at all. Do you mean Ferber?

[Anonymous]

Did it at 6 months, but highly recommend Taking Cara Babies.

[Anonymous]

You could try camping out/sleep lady shuffle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Extinction (checking at progressively longer intervals) usually means more crying overall. More nights of crying and more crying each night. I will say that as my DD gets older and more aware I feel worse about ignoring her. Still do it but I feel worse.

As a motivation, keep in mind that her sleep should be uninterrupted too. She's waking up as often as you are because her hunger cues are waking her up. 11 month olds need the deep REM sleep you only get from long uninterrupted stretches.

Extinction is where you don’t check at all. Do you mean Ferber?

+1 At 13 months we did full extinction, no checks. DD cried for 25 minutes, then slept through the night, barely cried at all the second night. Went from waking every 1-2 hours to sleeping through the night immediately.

You have to just do a bedtime routine, put baby in the crib, close the door, leave and don't come back unless baby is in danger. Also don't go in at all during night wakings. Read Precious Little Sleep - very helpful.

DD is 23 months now and has had a couple of regressions, mainly because we fell into comforting her anytime she cried at night and she got used to it, then we had to let her cry and she went back to STTN. Just got over one of these regressions. We still go in if it sounds like she is scared an had a nightmare but if she is just whining while lying down we don't go in.

[Anonymous]

I recently went through the same scenario. We did CIO for the night wake ups. She already went to bed ok with nursing. Just left her to cry and put herself back to sleep. Took a couple nights. They need sleep. You need sleep. Just remember it’s that simple. You aren’t abandoning your baby, you are letting her go back to sleep in her safe and loving home. Now she’s 16 months and sleeps 7-6:30, it’s amazing!