We used “The No Cry Sleep Solution” and it worked amazingly well for both my kids.

I think a lot of time “bad sleepers” just have parents who miss their sleepiness cues, don’t notice their rhythm, and accidentally reinforce waking up. We have an infant right now and her cues are very subtle, but if I catch them at the right time I can lay her down, she’ll fall asleep immediately, and sleep for 2-3 hour naps (she’s 6 weeks and just had her first 7 hour stretch at night).

Or, most babies make noises in their sleep, and most parents rush to pick them up. But they’re just normal noises and don’t mean the baby is upset. If you wait a couple minutes they stop, but if you pick them up you’re just training your baby to make more noises.

People think CIO is the only method but it’s not. The No Cry Solution is very gentle and more about learning your baby’s needs, rather than forcing them to CIO. Like we know our baby sleeps much longer at night if we go for a walk in the evening, so we go for walks most evenings.

There are babies who are natural good sleepers and natural bad sleepers. There are also babies who could be good sleepers if they were nurtured in the right way and could be bad sleepers if they were nurtured towards that. And there are babies who would be the way they are regardless.

One of the challenges is that you don't really know your kid's personality and needs yet because they are so new to the world. In retrospect, I understand what my one son would have needed to be a better sleeper, and I could have given it to him if I had known. However, I also recognize that nothing I could have done would have made my other a good sleeper. I would have felt terrible if I had forced sleep training on him, and he had been miserable. It's really hard to know.

If you are comfortable with what you're doing, keep doing it. Your kid will never be scarred for life because you held them for naps. Also, just because you do that or co-sleep now doesn't mean you always will. We did all that and then sleep trained as toddlers, and our kids never, ever came into our beds after age 3. They are NOT those kids who are climbing into bed with parents every night. It's a myth that they will be just because you do it as babies.

No. I have older kids and my first was a terrible sleeper, we had to cosleep and held him for naps and he's an amazing sleeper now as an adult. I slept in my parents' bed until 7 and I can fall asleep in 5 minutes, can sleep anywhere and I've never had insomnia in my entire life. My H and my DC2 wake up too early and have trouble falling sleeping. I truly believe it's genetic. My H has terrible sleep problems and his sister sleeps just fine. My MIL sleep trained them both.

There is some small but real percentage of babies who are just naturally good sleepers. Maybe 10%? You don’t have to do much, they just naturally learn how to self soothe and start sleeping through the night somewhere between 6-14 weeks.

There is some VERY tiny percentage of babies who are bad sleepers and there’s nothing you can do. Less than 0.5%, I’d wager. They laugh in the face of sleep training. Parents have tried everything, read every book, tried every method, they’re just screwed, and god do I feel for them.

The vast majority of babies can be sleep trained with some level of effort. Some less, like my daughter, who responded very well to some gentle sleep training and one very short (less than 30 min) bit of CIO. Some more, like my son, who cried for 87 minutes his first night of CIO, and was still crying a full hour through his nap occasionally 6 WEEKS into sleep training.

Bottom line - if you refuse to do any sleep training, you’ve got a 10% chance of a good sleeper. If you aggressively use schedules and sleep train early (we start right at 4 months) you’ve got a 99.5% chance of a good sleeper. You pick.

I held my DS for the start of every nap until 3 yo and then I would out him down in the crib right after falling asleep or really drowsy and then walk out of the room. It worked fine for me. I say do what feels right/works for you and let others make up their systems and rules and anxiety about it all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some kids are born bad sleepers and some babies are born good little baby unicorn sleepers. I've had both and had 3 kids. One of my kids was such an amazing sleeper that he fell asleep anywhere and you could set your watch to it. One baby we had to pull out all the stops. We sleep trained her like it was our job and she still isn't a fab sleeper. And by sleep trained I mean we set alarms for when she needed to nap and sleep. We focused on wake windows. And when she needed to sleep we rocked and rocked, patted her back forever while she lay there. And yeah, we let her fuss some. I wouldn't say she CIO. Now though if she wakes in the middle of the night, she does CIO, but she's over 1. We're super deep sleepers and wouldn't wake up for that.

Anyways, OP, you've def made a bad sleeper. You have CREATED a bad sleeper regardless of what you started with. If you're fine with cosleeping and waking up nonstop forever, my hat is off to you. You clearly are a bigger martyr than me. My kids behaviors would be bad if they didn't sleep continuously for 11-12 hours straight with no waking. I personally think a parent's job is to help their kids develop good sleep habits.

This. You’ll be one of those moms who shares with everyone how she is up every 90 minutes. Sorry but no one cares. You didn’t sleep train and you created a bad sleeper. No one is impressed your child wakes every 90 minutes. It’s simply bad parenting.

90 minutes... omg kill me. With my baby, she was waking every 2 hours for the first 6 weeks. I wasn't able to drive a car and I stopped having coherent conversations. Nothing really made sense and I felt like I was in a fog. Once she started to sleep 3-4 hour stretches I felt better, but nothing felt good until I got 8 hours straight for a month.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you should read your post to yourself. Yes some babies are naturally easier than others. Some children are easier than others, some teens are easier than others. In general a baby who is held for all naps and doesn't learn to fall asleep on their own will be a harder baby than a baby who is put down, is on a schedule and learns to fall asleep on their own.

+1. Yup. Reread your post back to yourself, OP.

My first kid was a terrible sleeper, and I know that I was a major contributing factor to her sleep and nap aversions. My 2nd and 3rd were fan-freaking-tastic because I knew the drill, implemented the routines, and all that I had learned from sleep consultant with baby #1.

This. It’s always hard for me to hold back when friends with bad sleepers tell me how lucky I am that I have good sleepers. Except I put a lot of effort into getting my babies on a schedule and having strict nap times. One friend didn’t even have set nap times for her kids. When I asked her when we needed to leave lunch for a nap, she told me she just puts the baby down when he is tired. Of course he would rarely nap. Wait, what???

One of my kids was amazing like that. She was well behaved too. We could move her naps easily and she'd roll with it. I always worked around my friends' schedules because mine didn't matter.

But yeah if your kid is cranky and misbehaving, you're doing naps wrong.

Anonymous wrote:Some kids are born bad sleepers and some babies are born good little baby unicorn sleepers. I've had both and had 3 kids. One of my kids was such an amazing sleeper that he fell asleep anywhere and you could set your watch to it. One baby we had to pull out all the stops. We sleep trained her like it was our job and she still isn't a fab sleeper. And by sleep trained I mean we set alarms for when she needed to nap and sleep. We focused on wake windows. And when she needed to sleep we rocked and rocked, patted her back forever while she lay there. And yeah, we let her fuss some. I wouldn't say she CIO. Now though if she wakes in the middle of the night, she does CIO, but she's over 1. We're super deep sleepers and wouldn't wake up for that.

Anyways, OP, you've def made a bad sleeper. You have CREATED a bad sleeper regardless of what you started with. If you're fine with cosleeping and waking up nonstop forever, my hat is off to you. You clearly are a bigger martyr than me. My kids behaviors would be bad if they didn't sleep continuously for 11-12 hours straight with no waking. I personally think a parent's job is to help their kids develop good sleep habits.

This. You’ll be one of those moms who shares with everyone how she is up every 90 minutes. Sorry but no one cares. You didn’t sleep train and you created a bad sleeper. No one is impressed your child wakes every 90 minutes. It’s simply bad parenting.

Some kids are born bad sleepers and some babies are born good little baby unicorn sleepers. I've had both and had 3 kids. One of my kids was such an amazing sleeper that he fell asleep anywhere and you could set your watch to it. One baby we had to pull out all the stops. We sleep trained her like it was our job and she still isn't a fab sleeper. And by sleep trained I mean we set alarms for when she needed to nap and sleep. We focused on wake windows. And when she needed to sleep we rocked and rocked, patted her back forever while she lay there. And yeah, we let her fuss some. I wouldn't say she CIO. Now though if she wakes in the middle of the night, she does CIO, but she's over 1. We're super deep sleepers and wouldn't wake up for that.

Anyways, OP, you've def made a bad sleeper. You have CREATED a bad sleeper regardless of what you started with. If you're fine with cosleeping and waking up nonstop forever, my hat is off to you. You clearly are a bigger martyr than me. My kids behaviors would be bad if they didn't sleep continuously for 11-12 hours straight with no waking. I personally think a parent's job is to help their kids develop good sleep habits.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t believe in training of any kind so you reap what you sow

+1

+100000000

Anonymous wrote:You don’t believe in training of any kind so you reap what you sow

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you should read your post to yourself. Yes some babies are naturally easier than others. Some children are easier than others, some teens are easier than others. In general a baby who is held for all naps and doesn't learn to fall asleep on their own will be a harder baby than a baby who is put down, is on a schedule and learns to fall asleep on their own.

+1. Yup. Reread your post back to yourself, OP.

My first kid was a terrible sleeper, and I know that I was a major contributing factor to her sleep and nap aversions. My 2nd and 3rd were fan-freaking-tastic because I knew the drill, implemented the routines, and all that I had learned from sleep consultant with baby #1.

This. It’s always hard for me to hold back when friends with bad sleepers tell me how lucky I am that I have good sleepers. Except I put a lot of effort into getting my babies on a schedule and having strict nap times. One friend didn’t even have set nap times for her kids. When I asked her when we needed to leave lunch for a nap, she told me she just puts the baby down when he is tired. Of course he would rarely nap. Wait, what???

Every kid has strengths and weaknesses but you can compensate for weaknesses or you can magnify them. If you have a kid who is a bad sleeper, it typically means they are highly sensitive to stimuli and often very active and alert. If you provide them with consistent sleep cues tied to independent sleep, those traits will help them to strongly associate their darkened room, white noise machine, sleep sack, smell and feel of their crib, etc. with sleep.

If you hold them for all naps, that is what they will associate with sleep. As they get more attuned to the world around them, it will be much harder for you to be physically present without being overstimulating so you will have to change what you are doing. Also, at some point you presumably want to do other things than hold them for all sleep. In either case, you have trained them to need a) and you will need or want them to accept b), so you can’t be surprised that they are confused and bad at sleeping in their bed.

I think you can improve your situation with sleep tools. Some babies are awful and they move into just kinda-sorta-bad territory with some help. Some babies are ok sleepers and turn into terrific sleepers with some help.

All the advice are different tools people have found useful. Pick what works best for you and try it. But the more tools you use, the better your result will be.

Anonymous wrote:I think you should read your post to yourself. Yes some babies are naturally easier than others. Some children are easier than others, some teens are easier than others. In general a baby who is held for all naps and doesn't learn to fall asleep on their own will be a harder baby than a baby who is put down, is on a schedule and learns to fall asleep on their own.

+1. Yup. Reread your post back to yourself, OP.

My first kid was a terrible sleeper, and I know that I was a major contributing factor to her sleep and nap aversions. My 2nd and 3rd were fan-freaking-tastic because I knew the drill, implemented the routines, and all that I had learned from sleep consultant with baby #1.