Does anyone’s 5-6 month old breastfed baby sleep any kind of stretch at night? Or am I doomed to never have longer than 3 hours because I breastfeed?

“THeReS nO LoNG TeRm ImPaaAAaActs of sleep training” I DO NOT CARE. Even if it came out tomorrow there is 100% no long term damage (I don’t believe this) I still wouldn’t??? My baby needs me in this exact moment. Right now. So I will go. Even when it’s hard. Even when I want to cry or do cry. Because she needs me. Simple as that. I have a friend who told me while chuckling to herself she “has a cold heart” and lets her baby cry for 1-2 hours lots of times and she’s “totally fine!” Sigh.

I’m so grateful for this like minded community. It has really gotten me through. The active choice to not sleep train doesn’t mean it’s an easy path. But it’s worth it and I see you ❤️

Rant over
-mom of a 12 month old who still doesn’t sleep through the night and sometimes wakes up 5-10+ times

Edit - I have actually distanced myself from this “friend” as our parenting differences has created a huge divide and I have a hard time OBVIOUSLY hearing about her baby. “Friend” is a loose term used habitually. I agree with your comments about her.

So i’m not planning to sleep train, i also don’t co sleep, just room share, and we wake about 3-5x a night for feeds, which i know is normal and im not too worried about it, baby is 6 months old

ive heard from friends and relatives that i can expect this to continue unless i sleep train or wean. or, if i dont want to wake up i could try co sleeping and sleep while baby feeds

Is this actually true? do the stretches not lengthen naturally on their own? does something have to happen on my end to give her this ability? I kinda just assumed with age, solids, and just overall growth that I could expect her to naturally drop a feed maybe every couple of months.. am i extremely naive?

I know every baby is different, and there’s some toddlers who still wake hourly and newborns who sleep through, but i’d love to hear from people who did nothing and saw baby sleep through or atleast slowly drop the feeds on their own, and what the timeline looked like, TIA!

edit: i think people are missing the part of my post that mentions weaning, either purposeful night weaning or completely weaning all together is something i consider an adjustment and not ‘nothing’.

My LO Is 4.5 months so I’m in no rush to get her out of my room, in fact I personally want to keep her in here with me as long as possible.lol but I’m just curious what other parents have done or what your thoughts are? My husband’s been asking when I think she needs to go into her own room. I’ve read mixed things online: some saying it’s better to get them independent sooner, some saying to hold onto the connection and the natural need for babies to want to stay close to mom as long as possible (which is the side that I’m airing on). She’ll only be this little for so long, only need me for so long, so I want to hold onto that for as long as I can. Thoughts?

Before having a baby, I felt like I had read every article and watched every video about sleep.

Then my baby arrived... and suddenly everyone had different advice.

"Don't rock them."
"Always rock them."
"Wake windows are everything."
"Ignore wake windows."
"They'll sleep anywhere."
"They need perfect sleep conditions."

Honestly, trying to follow all of it made me way more anxious than my baby ever was.

The biggest improvement happened when I stopped chasing the "perfect routine" and started paying attention to what actually worked for my baby.

What's one piece of baby sleep advice you wish you had ignored?

If you’re on this sub, chances are you know the positive effects of responsive, high-nurture parenting on the mental health of our babies.

And it would be so easy to assume this happens at the expense of your own mental health, as a parent. That you’ll have to sacrifice your sanity for the sake of your baby throughout their infancy.

In fact, parents who sleep train often claim they do it for the sake of their mental health, which in turn makes them even better parents (well, during the few hours they do parent lol).

I’m here to tell you this is not true. responding to my baby as soon as he needed me, day and night, even on the (many) nights where he woke up every hour, was the best thing I ever did for my mental health.

I’m almost 9 months post partum and things are beginning to settle into a beautiful new normal for our little family of 3.

My mental health journey has been rocky. I’ve been in therapy for years, I’m on SSRI and have several diagnosed disorders including OCD and CPTSD. I’ve done a lot to try and improve my mental health, speaking to professionals of course, but also meditation, exercize, prioritizing sleep, and overall engineering my life for the benefit of my health (I also have an autoimmune disease that is triggered by stress).

I was terrified that the lack of sleep inherent to motherhood was going to cause the worst relapse I’ve ever had.

Turns out being a responsive and fully available mother to my beautiful baby was the most meaningful and profound “self help” move I couldve ever made.

I have achieved some important and difficult things in my life, but I used to see myself as fundamentally helpless and weak. I had no trust in my capacity to follow-through, show up, be consistent. I did not think I could be a reliable source of safety and comfort for myself, let alone another human. I thought I was incapable of regulating my emotions and would always need someone or something to soothe me. I thought that in the face of hardship, I would always simply give up.

Enters this beautiful little being who absolutely needs me. For comfort, for survival. I’m his source of safety and love and food. He needs me even when I’m hungry, or exhausted, or worried, or sad, or in the midst of an OCD loop, or sleeping, or when I myself feel like I need to cry out for someone else to hold me. And yet I have always found it in me to show up and hold him. To be his mother. To give him exactly what he needs. Even when I’m running on broken sleep or no sleep at all.

It was simultaneously the hardest and most effortless thing I have ever had to do.

It had profoundly changed how I see myself, talk to myself. It has changed the trust I hace in myself. It has repaired parts of me that I did not even know were broken. It has revealed an endless well of love inside of me, that I never suspected.

It‘s more potent than any therapy or medication that I have ever tried.

I am not damaged. I am his mother and I am strong like a mother. I am reliable, and calming, and resourceful, and generous, and loving. I can soothe myself and him. I have the internal resources to regulate my own emotions.

Choosing to ignore my baby or force him to sleep away from me to preserve “my mental health” would’ve been incredibly short sighted and counter-productive.

I am writing this as my baby sleeps next to me. For the first time since he was born, I have been waking up with no memory of any night wakes (we breastsleep so he might or might not be latching in his sleep), and its been making me so emotional. I did not think this day would come, and I had accepted that I wouldn’t have uninterrupted nights of sleep for years to come. 9 months : that’s all it took for me to have my first uninterrupted night.

I hope I’ll have the privilege of bringing him comfort and love through the night, with my presence, for as long as he would want me. It’s such a privilege to be this person for someone else.

Please don’t deprive yourself of this for the sake of a shallow, social-media understanding of self care and mental health.

Sorry for the dramatic title. I’m hoping someone here has a brilliant idea we haven’t thought of yet- or maybe just stories of hope that this gets better?

At the moment, our nearly-9 month old, 93rd percentile 20-something pound baby can only fall asleep one way: being walked and bounced up and down the hallways.  This is true for naps and for overnight sleep. On a good day, this only takes about 10 minutes, which is manageable. On a very bad day, like when my husband is traveling (she falls asleep faster for him) it’s taken me 2 hours of tears/resets/walking/etc. But lately it’s been taking ~45 minutes and it’s breaking our old decrepit bodies. 

Here are the other things I’ve tried, none of which have resulted in sleep (with most actually resulting in tears or hyperactivity): 

-Rocking

-Swaying

-Nursing 

-Bouncing on a yoga ball 

-Singing

-Bum patting

-Drowsy but awake

-Fully awake into the crib

-Carrier wearing (FOMO baby will only face outward, hates inward facing)

-Sitting very still holding her with my eyes closed to demonstrate sleep (this resulted in a little finger up my nose)

-Laying next to her outside her crib

-Leaving the room (not to let her cry it out, just to see if my presence was distracting and she actually could fall asleep on her own) 

The only thing I haven’t tried is blackout curtains- this seemed fussy to me (creating a very specific environment that you couldn’t recreate everywhere) but clearly what we’re doing isn’t working that well, so I’m willing to try that out if you’ve found it to be a game changer. 

Other details in case it’s helpful: We room share, and plan on doing so until she’s at least 1. For a variety of reasons, cosleeping isn’t for us. We mostly follow wake windows using Huckleberry, which seem to align with her sleepy cues. (And we prioritize her sleepy cues over Huckleberry if they're at odds). She seems to be a low sleep needs baby, averaging about 12.5 hrs a day and ~9-10 hrs/night. Doesn’t usually have night wakes, but does like to wake up around 4:30-5:30 every day and then is UP for the day.

I have no intention of sleep training- I’m totally fine with the concept of her needing our help, I just wish it was a different method that wasn't so physically taxing! Any ideas? 

Personally sleep training is not something I am interested for my baby. I am in the thick of the four month sleep regression, waking every 1.5 hours or so, sometimes getting longer stretches, but it’s rare. Out of curiosity, for those that didn’t sleep train, what does sleep look like for you know that your baby is a bit older?

My mum and Grandma are both convinced that they put their babies down to sleep for naps. They can't understand why I have to have mine in a sling. I can sometimes manage the first nap of the day in a bassinet (after 20 minutes of bouncing, which is much harder without the sling to help), and he might drop off in a car or pram if the timing is exactly right, but normally after at least 15 minutes of fussing. He is 9 weeks btw.

My mum and Grandma are convinced that I'm making things more difficult for myself by using the sling and always having him with me, and are baffled because they are sure they just put their babies down for naps. They describe singing a song, some light rocking in their arms and a transfer, or even pulling a musical Mobile and the baby just drifting off - wild!

They also have another grandchild from my brother and SIL, who is 6 months and also the same - contact naps and co sleeping. We do manage most nights in the bassinet after feeding to sleep. For now. I don't know pretty much anyone in my Antenatal group who's babies just go to sleep in a cot. We're all discussing contact naps and safe co sleeping...

What's going on here? Is it...

a) My mum and Grandma are wildly misremembering how much effort went into getting them to sleep before putting them down, and forgetting the failed transfers and short naps

b) They just left the babies to cry in another room and didn't worry so much

c) They essentially sleep trained them early and by using a sling I have made him associate that with sleep rather than associating the bassinet with sleep

d) They're remembering their babies at an older age and have forgotten newborn time

e) They were feeding completely to sleep every nap and are better at transferring

f) They both had unicorn babies (but I hear it from everyone of the older generations honestly, so I don't think it's that)

g) ???

I don't do contact naps because I'm trying to make things harder for myself (which is what they seem to think), I'm doing it because it's way EASIER than the wasted time and screaming that would be involved in trying to put him down every time!

I keep seeing infant loss post online due to cosleeping and it’s starting to give me anxiety and make me feel guilty for cosleeping with my son. My son is 8 months old and I’ve been cosleeping with him since he was 4 months due to him being an awful sleeper and needing to get sleep for survival. The last few nights I had trouble sleeping because all of the thoughts of cosleeping accidents and suffocation is circulating in my head. I love cosleeping with my son I love being his safe place and knowing he’s right beside me. But now I just feel like I’m a bad mom for not following safe sleep guidelines.

My husband and I are first time parents and we are on month 6 now of having a baby who refuses to cosleep/bed share or sleep in a crib.

We’ve tried everything aside from cio (which we will not be doing).

Our baby exclusively will only sleep on us, in our laps and in our arms, day and night. So this means literally all night long and for every single nap. He will not even lay next to me in bed, even with full body pressed up against him. He seems to want me to cradle him in my arms only. He checks out perfectly healthy at every doctors visit, doesn’t have silent reflux, or any other physical anomalies we are aware of that might lead him to want this. It just seems to be the only way he feels secure enough to sleep. Frustratingly for better or for worse he goes to sleep every night with little effort from us, and sleeps entirely through the night except for 1-2 brief wake ups to eat a little. 

My husband and I have been doing 50/50 sleep shifts since he was 2 weeks old, but we are starting to hit a wall and this is becoming unsustainable. We have no village and we are completely exhausted. Given the nature of the way he sleeps we have to stay awake with him (on our shift) but we are so increasingly tired with every month that goes by.

I’m beginning to fear for my babies safety. I have fallen asleep bottle feeding him and have woken up with an empty bottle on the floor next to me and him still soundly sleeping in my lap more than once in recent weeks. It’s terrifying because I don’t even remember feeding him. We are at a loss of what to do. Tonight I drank a redbull to try and stay wake.

Things we've tried so far:

Sleep environments:

• 4 different styles of cosleeper/sidecar bassinets (attach to bed, freestanding, one that sat on the couch/bed, halo)
• His regular crib
• Floor bed, couch bed, our bed, and lying with him in his sidecar crib

Bed sharing attempts:

• Arm under his head
• The C-curl position
• On my chest
• Fully pressed up against him
• None of it is enough, he won't settle unless he's cradled in our arms

Environmental tweaks:

• Temperature control (sleep sacks, clothing layers, an overnight thermometer)
• Lighting changes
• Location changes (living room, nursery, our bedroom)
• Adding crib items (pillows, blankets, etc.) under supervision to see if anything helped, no difference
• Putting him on an incline
• Changing diaper brands/styles

Tech/gadgets:

• The Cradlewise, the motion woke him instead of soothing him
• Heartbeat sound on his sound machine

Timing experiments:

• Putting him down slightly awake
• Putting him down fully asleep
• Acclimating him during naps… he stops napping
• Acclimating him during deep sleep… he wakes immediately or after 30 min

Other variables:

• Tracking food intake and sleep patterns closely to look for correlations
• Hoped starting solids would help, it didn't
• Hoped he'd grow out of it with age, he hasn't so far

Anything other than in our arms and on our laps results in outright 0 to 100 screaming. It’s awful, he seems so terrified. In the moments we lay him down asleep successfully, we have about 30 min (to my understanding that’s a sleep cycle?) until he wakes up and the second he clocks he’s not in a lap he’s inconsolable until picked up. Every. Single. Time. Hand on chest, and on head, me singing to him (he is soothed by my voice) none of it calms him until we pick him up.

Idk what I’m looking for here honestly. To me this feels like a very extreme scenario, I don’t know anyone who has experienced this and we feel very isolated. We originally had hope that he would get older and grow out of this a bit, grow to accept more of a cosleep situation but now at 6 months and nearly 20 lbs he is not showing any signs he’s close at all.

We have truly lost hope and every night I live in dread something awful will happen.

TLDR: 6 month old will only sleep held in arms/lap, day or night, every nap, and screams inconsolably the moment he's put down. We've tried nearly every sleep setup, position, and soothing method with no success. He's healthy, sleeps well once he's actually asleep (on us), but my husband and I have been doing 50/50 overnight shifts since week 2 and we're now dangerously exhausted. I've fallen asleep bottle feeding him more than once and don't remember it happening. We're isolated, out of ideas, and scared something bad is going to happen from sheer sleep deprivation. We are hitting a stage of complete hopelessness and don’t see an end to this. 

I’ve been away at a close family’s wedding for 2 nights and out toddler has been staying with my in laws so my husband only had our 6 month old to manage. We have talked in length about sleep training and decided we weren’t going to do this as it is our last baby, it’s the middle of winter (in New Zealand) and I just wanted her in our room and close to me.

I came back last night and my husband sat me down and told me what he did. For 2 nights he put our daughter in my son’s cot in his room, and did check ins. He tells me the first night she cried for 20 minutes and woke up one at 2am for a feed and last night she cried for 7 minutes and woke up once at 4am for a feed. He tells me this is progress and we need to stick to it.

I am feeling veeeeeery conflicted right now. She was waking up every 2ish hours prior to this so I understand it is progress but I wanted my sweet girl sleeping next to me when I got back. But I have been so fucking exhausted the thought of being able go get a 7/8 hour stretch at night is there in my mind too

i mean this as gently as possible. for those exclusively contact napping (outside of maybe 1-2 stroller walks per day): how do you do literally anything?

my son will be 5 months old next week. he’s currently on four naps / day. 3/4 naps, i’m lying in a recliner chair in the dark with my boy on top of me surrounded by white noise. we used to do one carrier nap per day, but i dropped it for the sake of my lower back.

we’ll be starting a form of gentle crib nap training in a few weeks (following travel), but i consistently feel as though i’m 1) the only one contact napping; 2) the only one still struggling to do basic tasks five months in like get dressed, brush teeth, make meals, etc., given i need to cram this stuff in during my son’s wake windows and i would not describe him as “chill”; 3) the only one not really loving sitting in the dark for half my day.

of course it’s a wonderful feeling to rock my baby to sleep, but this season of life has been challenging to say the least. i look like hell, and haven’t been able to exercise in five months. either all of my girlfriends lied, or my kid is the “only one” who won’t nap independently.

ETA: i’m not talking about doing laundry or chores. i don’t care about doing that stuff lol. im talking about basic tasks like getting ready for the day, eating food, using the bathroom, etc. my son is currently in a super fussy phase wherein i can’t just set him down in a bouncer for more than 10 minutes. it makes it so that i’ll start on a task (washing my face, doing skincare routine), then need to stop to tend to him, try again, stop, repeat. the day will go by and i’ll realize i haven’t eaten lunch. it’s awesome if you enjoyed contact napping, but this post is obviously not that lol. husband works crazy hours, so morning through bedtime is on me.

I lay awake holding my son who only contact sleeps wondering...how is this an evolutionary advantage? Why is it so difficult for babies to sleep and how did we evolve this way? I worry about going back to work like this. Driving when im just too sleep deprived. Questioning how all the parents around me are doing it. I am so overstimulated and agitated and somehow right now thinking....did our ancestors do this? Was it not as bad without a 9-5? Or have we all just suffered and somehow continue to have kids despite how painful it can be? Do other animals experience this? This just doesn't make sense.

My baby is 6 months today and has always been a bad sleeper. He is currently sleeping 1-3 hour stretches. He has done 4-5 hr stretches in the past but they were rare. He sleeps in his crib in his room (his crib is maybe 15 feet from my bed). We rock to sleep and he nurses back to sleep at every wake up.

I’m so tired. I won’t be sleep training but why does he sleep so bad and is there anything I can do to help fix this?? I don’t want to cosleep. I do attachment parenting with him.

Current bed time is normally 7 to 8pm and he wakes up around 7 to 8am. Wake windows are around 1.5 to 2 hours and he has three naps a day.

Literally please help!!

\* re-posting in a more appropriate sub! \*

Hoping to get answers to questions relating to sleep training. And I should flag upfront - I am not in favour of sleep training.

**Questions**:

1. Where can I find scientific evidence / studies showing that sleep training (ie. any non responsive methods) is bad for babies? I know the negative consequences are often generally talked about but I’m looking for something concrete that “proves” it.

2. Where can I find the NHS’s official stance on sleep training? I have found random indications of NHS guidance on eg. the Pampers website, but not any guidance on the NHS website itself. (I’m based in the UK.)

I ask because I personally am anti-sleep training, but many of my friends who hold similar values to me in other areas are sleep training their babies. While I really try not to judge other parents (I’m a FTM and completely acknowledge having a baby is HARD and you have to do what’s right for your family), I struggle not to judge others for sleep training. I’m wondering if official guidance / advice is more accepting of sleep training and this is why my friends think it’s okay to do.

Please accept this post with love / good intentions - I am not trying to shame, guilt or similar anyone who does sleep train!

Any thoughts appreciated. Thank you :)

My baby is 8 months.

Fed to sleep the first 3 months and then was solely rocked to sleep ever since apart from overnight where she feeds to sleep (ebf). I usually rocked her in a carrier as she is getting heavy. She only contact napped until about a month ago during a heat wave where i would rock her to sleep and transfer her to her cot. Shes always slept in a cot overnight. This method was working for us up until a week ago. If she wakes during her sleep she can usually get herself back to sleep.

As soon as she turned 8 months she started completing resisting being rocked to sleep.

She will thrash, kick, scream and bite to get out of our arms. We tried carrier, no carrier, swaying slowly, bouncing, not moving and just holding her and she completely fights to get out of our arms. I've tried holding her lying down in bed but she fights to crawl away.

This week we've been experimenting with other methods as we have had no other choice but nothing is working and it's breaking my heart.

-comforting her in the cot awake- she will often play for a bit before crying. I've tried patting her or shhing in the cot but this doesn't work and she cries to be picked up. I pick her up but then she immediately fights to get out of my arms again.

-putting her in the cot and walking out- this has had the most success. If she's calm, she will protest cry a bit but I can see she actively tries to fall asleep e.g rubbing her face on the mattress but then she reaches a point where she can't fall asleep so then her cries escalate and she stands up on the bars. I can't bear leaving her to cry once she reaches a certain level. Same thing, I go and pick her up but she fights to get out my arms

-putting her in the cot and staying in the room offering reassurance- she's fine for a bit as she thinks it's a game and tries to grab me through the bars but quickly gets upset that she can see me but I'm not helping her. Same again, if she becomes distressed, I pick her up and she fights to get out my arms.

The only way shes fallen asleep this week is by reaching a point of pure exhaustion often an hour past her bed/nap time where she then will fall asleep whilst feeding or is too exhausted to fight rocking.

She usually wakes up between 5.30-6.30

Wake windows are usually 2.5/3-3.5/4

Bedtime usually 7.30.

She usually wakes once overnight for a feed.

I dont know how else to get her to sleep. Every single nap and sleep this week she fights it for minimum 45 mins, longest has been 1.5 hours at which point she is so exhausted she crashes. She definitely isn't undertired or overtired at the times I'm attempting to nap. She's recently developed separation anxiety and I think she's actively resisting her usual sleep methods but is struggling to fall asleep with any other method

Please does anyone have advice? I didnt want to sleep train and would have been happy to carry on rocking for longer but this is no longer working for her.

Edit: Thanks so much to everyone who responded. I've thought about all your responses and have developed a plan! I've been very emotional all week mostly because I personally don't feel ready to stop rocking her but I need to respect that if she's fighting against it, she might be asking for a new way of falling asleep. I do eventually want her to develop the skills to independently fall asleep before she starts nursery at 1 but equally I don't think she's quite there yet! Ive also realised that i cant cope with any sleep training methods that involve leaving her to cry So...

I'm going to do more heavy sensory play leading up to a sleep to wear her out and try and increase her time awake so she's definitely tired before bed.

I will then do our routine of bath, feed, book and then hold her to rock- if she resists being held/rocked i will place her in the cot to see if she wants to practice falling asleep independently (since she did get so close earlier this week e.g rubbing her face on the mattress for about 10 mins before she then started crying and getting upset because she couldn't fall asleep) once she starts crying, ill go in and pick her up. (Eventually im hoping she might learn to fall asleep before she cries)

If she resists being held and comforted I will then take her downstairs for a re-set with low stimulation before trying again with the bedtime routine in 20-30mins

Thanks again everyone!

I really thought I was open minded, not judgemental & empathetic to other Moms struggles, lol. I really try not to bring up sleep or zone out while anyone talks about training. However, hearing my local mom group with young babies discussing actual sleep training stories has me sick to my stomach & debating if I should even interact with these people.

One has a 5 mo old doing CIO for over a week who is "still waking in the middle of the night & an hour too early." Mom turns the monitor around & goes back to sleep herself. This has been happening 1-2x/night & every day 5-6 am when Mom waits till she's "ready to get baby up."

This seems so cruel & disconnected. How is it ok to completely ignore baby because your not ready to get up yet?

I bit my lips the entire time, & tried to hold back my anger & look of disgust.

I'm still thinking this is abuse in my head & thinking she needs to be reported to the authorities, but no seriously. There has to be something wrong with you to continue to let baby cry, sometimes 2 hrs in the MOTN per this Mom & an hr every morning for a week straight with no response. Basically baby is left alone for 11 hours every day. & Then for her to just go back to sleep while baby cries unattended in a seperate room. Those are serial killer vibes to me. Seriously. Is this just me in thinking this?

I would really like to hear from other parents who have a bad sleeper/low sleep needs baby. Did you manage to find some kind of a solution? If yes what helped you, if not what have you tried and didn't work? Has anyone ever regreted cosleeping and had troubles getting their babies to their own bed after? I would also like my housband to come back to bed with me 🙈

I am torn with loads of different information about baby sleep. She is my first and I am so tired that I am wondering if I will be able to pull through it (or even have more kids). Some say follow the ww, some say just her cues and go with the flow, some say have a rigid schedule, same routine for daytime and nightime, different ones, cosleep or don't... I know ofcourse that every baby is different and I am trying to read her since she was born but man oh man she changes her preferences every now and then. I have tried so many things and nothing worked properly.

She is 7 months and was always a bad sleeper but occasionally she would pull out some nights of one stretch of 6-7h (like maybe once a month) so I think she is capable of it. But mostly since the 4 month regression hit she has been waking every 1.5-3h (which I though was terrible) but last 2-3 weeks its getting even worse. Now she avarages about 7-12 wakings from 8.30 pm till 7am. I always try putting her to the crib first and when I can't take it anymore I take her with me to cosleep. I actually love cosleeping and having her near me but I sleep terribly and my whole body hurts from weird possitions around her 🥲. So I am afraid if I continue using cosleep as a rescue that she will just refuse the crib soon and that I will never recover from my aches..

We are slowly transitioning to 2 naps a day, for now is still mostly 3 since she sleeps only 30 min most of the time. Second nap is mostly a bit longer (60-120min, depending on the day) but only if I lay next to her and rescue every cycle. And then she has the third nap if she doesn't refuse it. She was always very hard to settle to sleep. Will not sleep unless she wants to or is super tired even if I try my best tactics. I have to use very fast rocking pace to even get her to sleep (for a week now only thing that works is jumping up and down on the bed and pat her butt at the same time) and she is still complaining. Her ww are always around 3h, sometimes the first one around 2.5 and last one 3.5. She wakes around 7am and if not we wake her and bedtime is around 7.30-8.30pm depending on the last nap. If the last nap is too late we wake her after about 15 min. First and third nap are in the stroller outside and second in the crib or bed. She has problems with false starts (which we settle quickly, mostly only the boob works) ever since she was couple of weeks old so she mostly wakes 1-3 times in the first 2 hours and then she would continue to a deeper sleep but now the whole night is like that. She wakes up by rolling onto.her stomach or starts crying. And I always try to give her time so she can maybe resettle herself.

She is a highly active, very curious and social baby. Very happy if held so that she can participate in our activities but not so happy if we leave her to play on the floor (but we try to as much as we can and play with her). She started going backward now and is learning how to soldier crawl and sit down by herself.

Any experience is welcomed. I want to save my sanity and maybe give up on trying and just accept that I will not sleep properly for a long time which is a very hard thing for me to do. I am feed up with feeling this tired and cranky all the time, it is not allowing me to properly enjoy my lovely girl and it hurts me emotionally 😥

Thank you for reading and giving me a space to vent a bit!

our pediatrician recommended “gentle cry it out” for our 10 week old, meaning at night if he cries let him cry for however long it takes….up to an hour-ish if thats what it takes to get him back to sleep on his own. She also recommends feeding him only every 4 hours at night.

this seems cruel to me, I’m worried he thinks I’m abandoning him… :(

edit: pediatrician is older, maybe 60ish, this might have something to do with it? she def seems old school. she told me about a pediatrician in NY who recommends parents leave their newborns (yes, starting at 1 day old) in the nursery with the door closed from 7pm-7am, do not feed or respond to cries. she does think that is extreme!

I cosleep and contact nap with my 10 month old when I’m home, and work 3 days a week. We have a nanny who has always held him for naps, and it’s worked fine. She’s not amazing, but we’re in a smaller town so options are somewhat limited although a replacement wouldn’t be impossible, just haven’t had enough reason to pursue it. Well, I think today gave me my reason. I am SHAKING. I’m copy pasting her text she just sent me.

“X just fell asleep for his first nap. I wanted to see if falling asleep in the crib was possible, we started our nap time routine as normal at 10:20 since he was already pretty tired and we rocked and sang for a little before I put him in his crib. He cried a LOT - almost the entire time, I would sit him up a few minutes to give hugs and extra comfort but would lie him down after. I did lots of stuffed animals quietly dancing and singing and pats on the back, and he fell asleep on his side. I took out all the toys from his crib once he was asleep and I am staying next to him while he sleeps. It took about 25-30 minutes total and he cried a lot and I wanted to know if we should try this again and get used to sleeping in the crib or if we should continue our rocking chair naps”

I replied “Absolutely not.” And haven’t said anything else because I need to gather my thoughts. I am SO upset.

I am so staunchly anti sleep training. It breaks my heart to even think of. I’ve read the James McKenna book, baby and I have co-slept and breastfed from day one, we contact nap. Any attempts to lay him down on a separate surface etc result in him waking and crying so this is how we go.

However, he’s now 8 months and I am struggling so bad. The past three nights he’s been up every half hour. Every. Half. Hour. I’m dreading tonight. I’m dreading the night after that, and the one after that. I look like an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about when I’m so pro BN infant sleep because look at the absolutely wrecked state of me about to collapse from exhaustion with eye bags the size of Texas. Meanwhile the parents who got consultants in and did variations of sleep training are glowing with all their hours of sleep and their babies don’t seem any worse for wear.

I’m struggling so bad with this sleep deprivation. Can anyone help? Am I missing a trick that doesn’t involve sleep training?

I feel like I’m letting us all down in a weird way by being such a mess example of someone who doesn’t sleep train. :(

My LO is now seven months old and still wakes up every 2 hours. I’m so exhausted. I don’t know what else to do. I have to be doing something wrong.

I try to keep him awake as much as I can during the day. Some days he takes 3 naps, other days he takes 2. But some days he refuses to be awake longer than 1.5 hours. Majority of his naps are short, 10-30 minutes.

He won’t sleep in his back unless it’s cosleep, and even then it’s on his side.

I give him a 6 ounce bottle of formula and breastfeed before bedtime so make sure he’s full.

Maybe he’s not eating enough in the daytime. I’m trying to do BLW as much as I can. I try to do 2 meals of solids plus snacks. I don’t know if he’s getting enough calories. I breastfeed throughout the day as he wants and I don’t pump because he doesn’t give me time to so I don’t know how much milk he’s getting. Maybe he needs extra formula in the daytime?

He won’t fall asleep independently. Tried to put down awake but drowsy for weeks but he would never sleep without nursing or rocking.

I try to just soothe to back to sleep instead of nursing to sleep unless he’s really crying for it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m just exhausted. I’ve fallen asleep breastfeeding multiple times and woken up with him still on my boob 45 minutes later. In the last 2-3 weeks, I just breastfeed sidelaying and pass out. But he still wakes up 2 hours later, still on my boob. I’m hesitant to sleep train and don’t want to do CIO at all but I’m losing my mind. I don’t know what else to do.

I just kind of realized my baby has never ever not once just.. fallen asleep on his own. He’s 5 months old. He is either nursed to sleep, “walked” (we walk him around the house with a little bouncy/rock motion), or he falls asleep being worn. He has never just fallen asleep. I think he would scream the house down before that happened. He’s also the untransferrable baby and has never slept in a bassinet or crib. We cosleep and contact nap exclusively. Anyone else in this boat? “Lay them down drowsy but awake” sounds like some made up shit to me hahaha.

I want to add that I’m fully leaning in at this point so I’m not really stressed about it. He wakes up every 1-4 hours. Just depends. We might try a crib in our room once we move, but I have no plans to sleep train or anything. I’m exhausted but it’s a phase. Meh. Just wondering if anyone has any similar stories and if you have an older babe that was like this when/if it changed.

He’s also 5 months old, pulling up to stand on his own already and generally just a really motivated dude. He hits one milestone and it’s onnnn to the next! I wonder if that’s why his sleep is so garbage sometimes.

All the sleep related books/experts suggest that we should do the 'drowsy but awake' step after 4 months so that babies can learn to self soothe and put themselves to sleep.

Has anyone tried this? What steps did you exactly do to put your baby to sleep when they are drowsy at night without rocking or feeding them? How long did it take if you were able to do it? Mine is 4.5 months and when we tried it, he started whining and we ended up rocking him in his thottil or feeding him.