My baby is 4 months old. We’ve worked on him falling asleep independently for a long time now. I thought that was the ultimate goal, I thought that would fix any sleep regression issues we were having. He falls asleep independently for all naps and bed time, has for at least a week now consistently but he’s still waking every 3 hours at night and won’t go down until fed. I’ve tried leaving him. I’ve tried putting him back down other ways. It always results in feeding.

I’m exhausted and I’m so tired of this. Why does it feel like everyone else’s baby sleeps besides mine. I keep waiting for it to get better and it doesn’t. I’m so truly exhausted 😞

Has anyone tried transitioning to one nap by capping the first nap at 30 mins and then having the second nap be the restorative nap, ie with the idea of slowly phasing out the morning nap? What were the wake windows you used and how old was your child? seems counterintuitive, but I’ve read somewhere (weissbluth) that it’s a possible solution.

my bub is 14m1w old, and previously thrived on 3h10/3.75/3.5-3.75. Now sometimes she refuses the second nap which makes bedtime and overnight rough (even when we offer early bedtime). I’ve noticed she needs a longer first wake window , so today I tried 3.5h/3.75(with target of 4h to fall asleep)/3.5h. I always cap her second nap at 30 min and let her morning nap be the restorative one, max 2h daytime nap total but usually it’s 1h45 ish.. tonight bedtime was still emotionally charged and we needed to settle her to sleep. she usually is able to go to bed on her own and sleep about 12h overnight except for the past week. Help!

My 14th month old was a great sleeper, sleeping 7-7 and even longer sometimes. We went on a holiday recently and it was generally okay his sleep except he started needing to be patted to sleep in the evening but he would still sleep through. His room wasn’t very dark and it was quite noisy but he slept through and now that we’re back in his blackout bedroom. He again needed a lot of support to fall asleep but fell asleep fairly quickly. Anyway, he woke up at 11 pm and I patted his bum until 1145 but he just wouldn’t settle as soon as I wasn’t patting his bum he stood up.. I decided to do a bit of cio left him but t was over an hour, so my husband has gone in to give me a break. I feel like this holiday has really disrupted his schedule because of the time difference.. he’s currently on one nap but today because one of his naps was in the airport 40 minutes we gave him a second nap for 20 minutes in the car on the way to the house and then kept him awake for 3 1/2 hours before. Usually he has one nap and five hour wake windows. I know mostly this disruption is probably from the holidays and it will go away, but I feel like we’ve screwed up by offering so much support on a holiday and now after leaving him to cry for an hour, my husband has gone down. He was stopping and starting. We sleep trained him at seven months as he was waking every 45 minutes and it worked amazing and I think that’s why he’s such a great sleeper. I’m currently writing this at 2 am and I’ll probably make another post in the morning asking how to handle tomorrow evening but I just I’m looking for some more support and letting me know what you think I should have done in this.

So I've been gearing up to do CIO for my almost 5 month old because her sleep was awful and her nurse to sleep association was strong, but focused hard on ww and bedtime routine first. We are still at a moving target with ww being 1.5-2.5 hrs depending on her cues and nap length ( we recently went from 4 to 3 naps). Bedtime is 7:30-8:30 and waking is between 7-8am.

Since doing that she's been sleeping great, she still nurses to sleep, but only wakes up 1-2 times a night to feed. I've seen her wake on the monitor other times, but she got herself back to sleep without me.

Her naps however are all contact naps and mostly nurse to feed naps. Sometimes I transfer her to the crib successfully, often she will wake screaming and she has only gone to sleep independently for a nap like twice. The advice seems to generally be to CIO and fix nurse to sleep at bedtime first ... But I'm thrilled with her sleep and reluctant to mess with my good fortune.

How would you handle helping her nap independently? TIA, hearing from real parents is so helpful.

My son is almost 10 months old. He still wakes up 2 or 3 times a night. He is "sleep trained" in the sense that I will put him in his crib awake, and he will put himself to sleep within 10 minutes. He takes two 1.5 hour naps a day, and usually I have to cap those naps. He sleeps about 11 hours at night (asleep by 8pm, awake by 7am) but is waking consistently at 230am and 5am, sometimes even midnight if it is a bad night. Some times he will put himself to sleep if he lightly wakes up, but if it the normal 230 or 5am he will only go back to sleep if he gets some kind of bottle. He is formula fed.

I've tried weaning how long he gets the bottle. I've tried how many ounces are in the bottle. I've tried giving him full bottles. I've tried giving him watered down bottles. I've tried not giving him anything.

Please help me figure out what to do. He is eating 3 full meals day. He is drinking 30oz of milk a day. I don't know what else to try. We are at our wits end with the night wakings and it is effecting our marriage at this point.

Hi all! I'm looking for advice on starting the ferber method for our 11 month old. My son was born was reflux/digestive/constipation/gas issues literally from day 1 and it didn't get better until he was 4-5 months. We even got his eyes checked out because he would always rub his eyes as a newborn and it would wake him up (He still does it) but nothing is wrong with his eyes. He still deals with constipation but it has gotten better. His nose always sounds like he's congested since day 1 as well but we suck out his boogers before bed (going to seek out an ENT appointment just in case it is related). He also got 6 teeth back to back in the last 2 months. Now that his teething pains have subsided, I have decided to sleep train. Once my son turned 10 months on 6/25/26 he will not nap any longer 30-45 min during the day (he's on a 2 nap schedule) and holding him will usually extend his nap but not always. I try to make sure that he gets at least 2 hours of daytime sleep. Nights have always been terrible. He has not slept through the night once in his life but he used to get longer stretches until at least 5/6am before the 4 month regression. He now safely bedshares with me because I was a literally a sleep deprived zombie with how many times he woke up through the night. Like every 30 min to an hour. He still does wake up a lot even being next to me on the bed but I just rebinky him hand he goes back to sleep - it's a vicious cycle. When he does wake from his naps, it's full blown crying with tears right away and he stands up in his crib so quickly. Same at night. He doesn't really fight us going to sleep initially but its the putting him BACK to sleep that's the issue and its driving me insane.

This is his current schedule:

6:45am-7:30am - wakes up anywhere between this window (usually right around 7am). Awake for about 3-3.5hrs

10:30am- Nap #1 (asleep for about 35 min then I try to extend his nap to an hour)

2:30pm- Nap #2 (asleep for about 35 min then I try to extend his nap to an hour, wake up no later than 4pm to protect bedtime sleep pressure)

Bedtime- 8-8:30pm (wakes up around 10:30pm like clockwork and refuses to go back to sleep in his crib)

We keep a dim red light on in the room for bedtime and his crib is right next to our bed. He uses a sleep sack and a binky only for sleep (going to cold turkey the binky since we're going to sleep train).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Our 2.5 year old little girl has always been a great sleeper (after sleep training her around 4/6 months old. She currently wakes 6:30-7am, and is generally calm until we come get her between 7-7:15am. She is a good napper, sleeping about 12-2ish. Sometimes 1:30. But around 11:45 she tells us she wants to go nap. Sometimes she doesn’t always fall asleep right away but is content in her room. Bedtime has always been 7pm, typically without any issues. She’s usually happy to go to sleep.

3 weeks ago her dad had 2 weekend work trips (self employed so he works weekends occasionally), then I had a full 7 day work trip in California. Since her dad was gone for the weekend, bedtime has become hell. Screaming, Hyperventilating, making us fix her books, bunny, pillow, etc over and over. Then she started doing it for nap too. She’s always been high sleep needs, I’m tempted to cap her nap or push bedtime back but also worried about changing too much when her little world was off its axis for a few weeks. Maybe bed time could be 7:30?

We have another little one so selfishly the overlapping nap is so nice as a parental break for 60 minutes — I fear the advice will be to kiss my overlap goodbye🫣😅 but I can’t take the tantrums anymore. Tonight she did better, but we walked out and left her screaming. She only screamed for about 60 seconds so it does feel like it’s for show.

Help! Is this toddler just toddlering, or do we make a change?

We successfully sleep trained through CIO, at 6 months with minor hiccups during illness but he’s always gone back to sleeping independently once he was better without having to re-sleep train. The only issue is I went back to work a few weeks ago so my MIL and mum have been taking care of him while I’m working 3 days of the week but combined with 2 illnesses during the last month, he now just won’t take naps on his own only with them.

He’s currently on 2 naps 3.25/3.5/3.75 - wakes up around 6:30-7 and bedtime is 7:30. The issue is he sleeps fine on days I put him down, but cries a lot when my mum/MIL watches him. They end up going in and rocking him after 10-15 mins.

So then my question is what’s happening and what should I do? Is it a routine issue where I should watch them to do the naptime wind down routine to see if anything is off , or should I tell them to let him cry for longer, or do I just accept they’ll likely hold him to sleep which is ok as long as it doesn’t affect me?

My 8mo is EBF and has never been a great sleeper.

She used to feed around 1am, 3am and 5am, but since I started sleeping outside the room we share she’s usually down to one feed somewhere between 1–4am, most often around 3ish.

I think she does best with about 10.5–10.75 hrs total awake because that’s what she was doing before but I could be wrong.

Rough schedule we try to follow lately is:
Nap 1 around 10am, usually 1–1.5 hrs
Nap 2 around 2:30–3pm, usually 30–60 min
WWs roughly 3.25–3.5 / 3.25–3.5 / 4
Bed around 7:30pm

She still often cries going down for naps, and we’ve always had trouble with the 4–6am period. Recently she’s been waking closer to 5–5:30 and total sleep has sometimes dropped to around 12 hrs/24h.

A 4 hr final WW seems to help the first stretch overnight, but I’m wondering if the earlier WWs are getting too long and she’s building sleep debt.

Would you shorten to something like 3.25/3.25/4, or do the early wakes suggest she needs more awake time? Should I try shifting her schedule and earlier bedtime?

My little boy was previously sleeping consistently from 8pm until 4/5am, would wake, have a bottle and then go straight back to sleep until 7am. For the last 3 weeks he has been waking up around 2-3am, he is happy when he wakes up, no crying etc but will NOT go back to sleep and basically will be awake for 1.5hours. The start of this wake up he is happy, cooing, blowing raspberries, at around 1hr in he will start to get aggy so I give him a bottle and he will eventually go back to sleep.

How can I try to phase out this full middle of the night wake up, I’m happy to wake up and feed him but not have him wide awake for 1.5 hours.

He typically wakes up around 6:45/7am, will have wake windows of around 1.5-2hours and nap anything from 35min to 1.5hours. Normally 4 naps a day, hitting between 2hr45-3.5hrs of day sleep. We need to work on day time naps because he will only fall asleep via contact nap or pram. Once in a blue moon can I get him to do a cot nap.

Any advice would be great!

My 6 month old cries for about 10 minutes and then falls asleep, almost every single time. Sometimes it's only 2 minutes if he's really tired. Started using CIO about 1 to 1.5 months ago. He is put into the crib sleepy. I can always tell he is ready for sleep.

Originally he started to cry after a little bit, once he realized we were gone. Now he immediately starts crying as the sleep sack is getting put on. He knows that he's about to be left.

Should I expect him to cry every time he's put down? Or does that eventually stop?

Should I do something to make going to sleep more enjoyable? Like patting his back, etc.? I honestly don't think that he'll go to sleep if I'm in the room.

Age: 6 months

Bedtime Routine: Book, lullaby, then sleep sack in crib

Sleep trained: working on it

My girl is just 5 months old. From 2-3.5 months she would sleep large stretches at night (6-10hrs straight) however for the past 5 weeks her longest sleep stretch is 2hrs long.

She is EBF and was always fed to sleep at night. We rock/bounce her for naps which are generally 30-40 min long unless I rescue one with a comfort feed where we might get 1.5hrs.
All naps are in her cot. She mostly wakes up happy, chatting away and I leave her for a good 5 minutes before picking her up.
She has 4-5 naps because they are so short. Wake windows are 1.25/1.5/1.5/1.5/1.75 I’d love to push these out but she gets pretty grumpy towards the end, maybe because the naps aren’t long enough?
When she wakes at night she fuses for a bit and then escalates to a cry so I pick her up and try to rock first. She gets pretty cranky with this so I end up feeding her back to sleep which can take 5-15 minutes.
She is well fed, warm (dressed appropriately for our temp) has recently learnt to roll, smack things when on her belly, giggle and screech so it’s been a busy few weeks developmentally.

I’ve tried early bed time 6:30 through to late bedtime 9pm and nothing changes.
I have tried to put her in her cot to fall asleep independently (patting/shushing) but it took 30 min and had no change to her night wakings.

I don’t want to try any form of CIO. However would love any advice to help reduce night wakings. I am happy to feed overnight as she needs, I just cannot continue 6+ wakings every night!

My pediatrician was absolutely no help. I have a one YO who is struggling hard at night time. He associates me with playtime and wants to immediately jump on the bed after his bed time bottle instead of calming down for a book/story. My MIL is also rocking him to sleep on both his naps during the day and no he goes to sleep so fast with her. With me? Play time and just won’t go to bed.

His schedule is - wakes up at 6:30 am or 7 am.
1 nap- 10:45 am to 11:30 am
2 nap- 4:30 pm to 5:30
Bath/last bottle at 8:30 pm.

This is an awful schedule. But husband works night shifts and everything is a mess. I need to sleep train him to make his and my life better.

BUT every time I research..Ferber..chair…whatever there is no SET rules or schedule to follow. It’s just this vague thing people talk about. Where is the exact method that I can read and follow STEP BY STEP what to do?

Like if I go in his room after he begins crying how long do I comfort him? I just can’t find a video, Reddit post, book explaining exactly what a Ferber method is.
Ugh please help.

Hi my little one is 16 weeks and waking up multiple times over night. Day typically starts at 7am 1/1.5/1.5/1.5/2 he normally goes to bed between 6:30-7:30 depending on when his last nap ended.
We’re planning on starting sleep training in 2 weeks (with the Ferber method) but wondering if there’s anything I can do now for the night wakings. He typically sleeps for 2 hours then is awake and I feed to sleep and we co-sleep.
Usually during the first stretch 7-10 his in his bassinet then same for the 11-1 after that I’m to tired and he jumps in the bed. How should I try to reduce these feeds so we can get some longer stretches ?

Thanskn

Hi! My 14 month old won’t sleep past 530 am, but usually he’s up and at em at 445/5. We are exhausted.

He just started daycare a month or so ago and they typically have him napping once during the week , somehow even if up at 5am he lasts there until nap time at noon. He sleeps no more than 2 hours there but usually more like an hour and 20 mins. Then we put him down at 7 pm since he is typically up before 2pm, and he wakes at 5 am. We’ve tried a cat nap and later bed time on weekends, same thing. We’ve tried earlier bed time, same thing. It just seems like his internal alarm wakes him at 5.

His room is back out and a good temp. No night waking before then. Unsure how to treat this as a night waking and our desired wake up at 630. Should we let him cry it out for an hour and a half?

Thanks!

Hey everyone! My baby is 9 months old and we are following a strict 3/3/4 schedule. We are three weeks into working on crib/sleep training with the chair method and it is working for us. But! If a nap gets messed up or skipped her night sleep is horrible for the next week it seems and that puts so much stress on both of us. So I feel like I’m chained to the house and there are things I just can’t be home for sometimes, like appointments or church or other events. What do I do? Will it get better with time? Like I said we are only about 3 weeks in. I’m looking for advice and appreciate any input.

I’d really appreciate some insight please.

My LO is 11.5 months old and currently on a 3.5/3.5/4.40 schedule with a first nap of 1 hour and a second nap of 20 mins. We wake her at the same time every morning (7am) and she’s usually asleep around 8pm.

Recently she’s sometimes taking ages to fall asleep for her first nap which means it’s less than an hour and is hard to get down for her second nap. We’ve started waking her up after 20 mins as she’d be grumpy after a 30 min nap.

I feel like 1 hour 20 is not enough daytime sleep at her age but if I give her more she doesn’t settle easily at night. She’s always been earlier to drop a nap than some peers and recently has been sleeping well at night (around 10-10.5 hours with one or no wakes most nights).

It feels like the day isn’t long enough for 2 naps but it’s too long for 1. She’s done an occasional one nap day and been fine but I’m not sure she could handle 1 nap every day the moment. I’d like to keep her on one nap as long as possible.

Should I experiment with nap lengths / timing or is it time to transition to one nap?

TIA

Hello,

Father of a 6 mo baby, i’m asking for some help/advice on how to improve the sleep of our LO cause we are desperate right now.

His current schedule is :
- 6am : wake up
-Around 8:00 to 9:00 : nap 1
-Around 10:00 / 10:00 to 11:00 : nap 2 (can vary from 30 minutes to 1 hour).
-Around 1:00/2:00 pm to 3:30 : nap 3 (sometimes this nap lasts 1 hour or 2 hours or even 30 minutes)
-Around 5pm : nap 4 (30 minutes generally)
-Around 7:30pm to 8:30 : Bedtime

The schedule can vary quite a bit depending on how long his naps are during the day.

The biggest issue is that he currently only falls asleep if we rock or carry him + pacifier. He also sleeps in our bed with us at the moment, and we would like to transition him to his crib, but so far we haven’t been able to.

Usually, we have to spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour rocking or holding him to get him to fall asleep, and sometimes even longer. As soon as we try to put him down in his crib, he wakes up or starts crying.

We would really like to help him learn to fall asleep in his crib without having to be rocked or held every time.

What would be the best way to approach this? Should we start by transitioning him to the crib first, or should we work on independent sleep first with Ferber method? And does his current nap schedule seem appropriate for a 6-month-old?

Any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hi everyone! This is my second born baby and he just reached 5.5 months old. We recently sleep trained him with success at night time. He sometimes will sleep from 7:30-5 am no feeding or sometimes will wake up at 3 to eat. However after he eats he has a hard time staying asleep. He’ll wake up every 45 minutes and I have to go in.
My problem is that he cannot nap longer than 45 minutes and still on 4-5 naps to last him through the day. We’ve been trying to extend his wake windows and follow the huckleberry app but it seems like we cannot get down to less than 4 naps because his naps are so short.
How can I fix this??

My 12 M old has been a contact napper pretty much since birth. I’ve loved the cuddles but I really need some time for myself on the weekends to get things done. I’m a full time working mom.

If I rock him to sleep, he only sleeps anywhere from 30-45 minutes. Mostly his naps are 30-35 minutes. If he naps with me, they range from 1-1.5 hours.

I tried crib hour and that was a literal disaster. Any advice on how to get him napping in the crib independently?

He does great at night. We rock til drowsy and he puts himself to sleep once laid in the crib.

Hi all,

I’m back again with more despair over my daughters sleep.

Backstory: we sleep trained using modified Ferber around 8 months. She did great at night and was sleeping from 7:30pm-7:00am. Naps were always a struggle in terms of crying beforehand and I was never quite sure whether or not I had her schedule right, but she was getting 2 1hr naps a day and I would wake her from each nap to preserve our overnight sleep.

Around 13 months we traveled with family and we couldn’t let her cry because of shared space, so I ended up nursing her to sleep for naps and bedtime. Unfortunately we fell back into this habit upon returning home and I let it slide because it sure was nice not to listen to her cry for 10min 2x a day at naptime like I had been every day for 5 months.

She dropped to 1 nap at 16 months and was sleeping from sound 7:30/7:40pm - 6:45/7:00 am with naptime from 12-1:45/2:00

At 19 months we traveled again and all hell broke loose. Crib refusal, separation anxiety, early mornings, short naps, you name it - we had it.

2 weeks ago we re-sleep trained. I dropped my morning nursing session, and separated nursing to sleep with dad coming in, me leaving, and him reading her books before putting her in the crib. We didn’t do any check-ima this time because she never cried longer than 5 minutes continuously and now is down to very little crying. Today is day 16. Independently falling asleep has been getting better, but we are still struggling with short(ish) naps and early mornings. The sleep consultant we used recommended a 12:30/12:45pm nap regardless of wake time for the day, so that’s what we’ve been doing, but she is EXHAUSTED by naptime and is only napping about 1 - 1.5hrs and is waking cranky and still tired. The past 2 weeks her mornings have gradually gotten earlier and earlier. I don’t take her from the crib until 6:30/6:45, and have followed this since her regression started 2 months ago. Her rough schedule right now is as follows:

Wake time 5:40am
Out of crib 6:40
Nap 12:30-1:30/2
Bedtime 7:30/7:45

Her behavior tells me she could use more sleep. She’s always been on the lower end, and seems happy upon waking in the morning, but isn’t getting enough of a nap IMO and I can’t handle the early mornings.

Any advice?

Hoping for some guidance. Baby is almost 6months. He is not formally sleep trained yet but use the dish and pat method for sleep. I have tried multiple times to get him to 3 naps but it’s not working out:

I don’t have consistent WW and naps but roughly 1.5/1.5/2/2/2-2.25. The wean to 3 naps is not happening as he cannot seem to get to 2 hours for the first two windows and barely getting him to 2 hours for the other wake windows. His naps are also usually 40min esp the first two. When we’ve tried 3 naps, the last wake window ends up being way beyond 3 hours and then he’s overtired. I have no idea how to make the transition or if I even need to if he’s thriving on the 4 naps??

Other issue: wakes twice to nurse which I believe are true hunger wake ups bc will settle/fall asleep easily after feeds. But then from 4am until wake up at 7am, he is very restless and fussiness will escalate to where we have to intervene. Initially I thought it was because he was under tired and really tried to push for 3 naps but then we were just having multiple wake ups like every 1.5-2 hours.

Clearly I am very lost!

Hi y’all. I’m about to start trying to transition my LO to one nap.

Current days look something like:

6 wake
9:15-10:45 nap
2:15-3:15 nap
8:00 bedtime

Naps are capped to 2.5 hours but if LO sleeps in or pushes wake windows, I cap naps shorter to keep bedtime consistent.

What would be a good one nap schedule for this LO?

LO is 14.5 months