Archive for the ‘Sleep Training’ Category

I was recently on my vacation (stay-cation, actually) and we decided to potty train my youngest son. During the summer is a good time to potty train, since they can easily run around with very little clothing. As we were potty training, I started seeing comparisons to sleep training and probably many other things we need to teach our children, so I thought I’d write about it.

With both our boys, we used The 3-Day Potty Training Method by Lora Jensen (no affiliation). Truth be told, neither boy was potty trained in just three days (though my first was done with pee within 3 days), but I can see how some might. Compared to a lot of struggling parents I have read about, it was a very quick method both times, so I do recommend the method and she has a lot of good strategies for common pitfalls.

Below are the 6 ways potty training is like sleep training (and probably MILLIONS of other things we need to teach our children):

Sleep Training and Potty Training take initiative and bravery

The first step is often the hardest to take. The fear of the unknown and how your baby will respond to sleep training or your toddler to potty training is scary and paralyzes us from moving forward. Truth be told, I loved the idea of being diaper-free, but was not looking forward to potty training. It takes awhile until they are truly independent and it was awhile until we felt “free” when our older son was potty trained. This is similar to how it feels never-ending if your baby doesn’t sleep 11-12 hours at night, consistently, right after you sleep train.

There were many days I remember thinking diapers were a bit easier in those early days. But, it’s a step you know you have to take one day and I knew waiting too long only gets them more set in their ways. This is one reason I recommend sleep training sooner rather than later, when you feel your baby is ready, and before they are pulling up, crawling, etc. We potty trained around 2 1/2 years old with both boys and it was a perfect age for them, maybe a little old for my first, actually.

Sleep Training and Potty Training takes confidence

With The 3-Day Potty Training Method you essentially go to underwear, day and night, and not look back. With our first, he was at least waking up dry in the morning, but not our younger. He would even leak his diaper, some days. With our first we were lucky and never had a bed-wetting accident, even at night, but we knew this would probably not be the case this time. And, we were right.

That first night potty training, he wet the bed, but the worst part was he was so awakened and intrigued by us changing the sheets that he was up for 1 1/2 to 2 hours that first night. It was so brutal that the next day we broke one of the method’s “rules” and bought Pull-Ups, the kind that gets cold, to save us from another rough night, but hoped we weren’t undoing the potty training. With the “cold pull-up” he did wake up when he peed in the pull-up, but only did so enough to get out of bed and lay on the floor outside his room (don’t ask me why). We didn’t even know until we went upstairs awhile later and we put underwear on him (my plan was only to use one pull-up a night) and he woke up dry that morning. That was the last day he fully peed the bed since. There was only one other day he started to poop at the end of his nap and that was it. We didn’t have the utmost confidence that he COULD hold it all night, but he really could do it! It really reminded me that you need to have confidence in your baby or toddler’s ability, even though it’s scary and might disrupt your own sleep, temporarily. With sleep training, it’s the same. I can’t tell you how many parents are afraid to take the first step, but then see that just a few days later they have a baby who can sleep!

Sleep Training and Potty Training take being realistic and expecting setbacks

Most people expect accidents during potty training, so it surprises me when they don’t always expect setbacks with sleep. Whenever you learn a new skill, there will be days you do it well and days you seem to be re-learning for the first time. Practice makes perfect and you need to be realistic that your baby might not sleep well every night, no matter what those books say!

Sleep Training and Potty Training take consistency

People preach and preach that “consistency is key” and it’s 100% true. Consistency can come in different forms. For example, since day and night sleep are handled by two different parts of the brain, you can focus on nights first and then worry about days (or vice versa) and still be “consistent”. I find other ways, in a personalized sleep consultation, to remain consistent.

With both potty training and sleep training, consistency is very important. When sleep training, we had to make sure we put our son down before he was asleep or we’d end up back to where we started. When we were potty training him, he pooped in his underwear ONE time and that turned into a habit that lasted a month. With our younger son, this time, we were much better at consistency and he “got it” a lot faster.

Sleep Training and Potty Training take patience

Patience is an important aspect of both sleep training and potty training, too. It’s very often that a baby will have an off-night or struggle with learning a new skill. With potty training, it’s very common for a toddler to have accident after accident while he learns the sensation to look for before he actually goes. It’s a lot messier, but going straight to underwear helps them learn this sensation faster just like actually falling asleep without a pacifier, breastfeeding, bottle, etc. will help your baby learn to sleep faster than having them try and then you put them to sleep.

Sleep Training and Potty Training take encouragement

When your baby or toddler is learning something new, it’s a great idea to give them positive reinforcement and cheer through their successes and be understanding during their failures. It’s the same for both sleep training and potty training. Even though you might not believe your baby can understand everything you say, she can very much understand tone of voice and their level of understanding happens sooner than you think. Talk often to your baby and encourage them, so they can gain confidence in themselves. If she is old enough, consider a sticker chart.

Digression: I find it interesting that it is “okay” to say you are potty training a child, but if you say you are sleep training, people say “they aren’t a dog you train.” In reality, both instances are really teaching your child a skill that takes time, patience, and work to learn. And, just like sleep training, how long it takes to potty train varies by child, where some will get it in a day and others might take months, I’m sure. Digression over.

So, what happened?

My 2 1/2 year old son had numerous accidents that first week, but within just a few days we were down to about one a day. By two weeks he was accident-free both day and night, pee and poop, and sleeping through the night, again! Sure, he has an “oops I thought that was gas and now I have poop in my underwear” moment, but for the most part, we are now done with diapers and loving it!

Comment below on your potty training or sleep training experiences. Did I miss anything?

A lot of times parents don’t understand how crying can ever lead to their baby sleeping. They think that they will certainly exhaust themselves and fall asleep that way, eventually, but what are they really learning? This article is very much NOT about cry it out. There is a LOT in between helping your baby back to sleep every two hours at night and letting them cry it out. This article is discussing how crying can lead to sleep and why crying might be a necessary step in your baby learning how to sleep, even if you are right next to your baby.

Imagine, you are learning to ride a bike. Your parents have put training wheels on your bike to stop you from falling. But, now it’s time for you to learn how to ride your bike on your own. Your parents tell you it’s time to take the training wheels off, but they’re still holding your shoulders as you pedal down the street. All of a sudden they ask you “Are you ready for me to let go?” and you say “I think so.” and they let go and you are off riding your bike all on your own. You look back and seeing your parent has let go of the bike, you freak out, and you fall down, scraping your knee.

It scared you to think that your parent was no longer holding on to you as you rode your bike. You fell down because you lost your focus and confidence. You are scared and you never want them to let go again. Maybe you’ll just never know how to ride a bike by yourself.

At this point, your parent has three choices: a) Put the training wheels back on, b) Keep holding on to your bike while you ride up and down the street, or c) Let go again and hope this time you learn to ride on your own. Having the age and wisdom, your parents know that you CAN ride a bike and all you need is practice and confidence. If they choose the third option, they can find a gentler way to teach you how to ride a bike. But, one thing remains the same: It is very difficult to learn to ride a bike without some falling and we parents want to cushion your fall as much as possible.

When it comes to helping your baby sleep, you might use “training wheels” in the form of a pacifier or rocking your baby to sleep or feeding your baby to sleep or some other sleep crutch, but one day you will realize that it’s your fault your baby won’t sleep and it’s time to take the training wheels off. You have decided that what your baby once NEEDED to sleep, now it’s simply a crutch, hindering him from actually learning how to sleep well on his own.

There are endless sleep training or coaching strategies (are you sleep training a tortoise or a hare?), but one thing that remains the same with all of them: it is difficult to convince your baby that she can sleep on her own without some crying just like it’s difficult to learn to ride a bike without falling. Does that mean you send your child outside to ride a bike on her own or let her cry it out all alone in her crib in her room? Not necessarily. Some people abruptly “let go” of the bike without telling their child “ripping off the band-aid” and others hold on for years and know that, eventually, she will learn to ride a bike. Everybody parents differently and you should have confidence in that your way is the right way for YOUR family.

Did you know there are many children and adults who don’t know how to ride a bike? Did you know that some adult sleep problems have been linked back to childhood? Did you know that sleep problems in children are now being linked to young adult drug and alcohol problems? I only just learned that because the study just came out this year. Here is a significant finding of that study:

“We found that ‘having trouble sleeping’ in early childhood, ages three to five, predicted a higher probability of ‘having trouble sleeping’ in adolescence, ages 11 to 17, which in turn predicted the presence of drug-related problems in young adulthood ages 18 to 21,” said Wong. “Overtiredness in early childhood predicted lower response inhibition — that is, having problems inhibiting impulses and behavior — in adolescence, which predicted higher numbers of illicit drugs used. Overtiredness in childhood also directly predicted the presence of binge drinking, blackouts, driving after drinking alcohol, and the number of lifetime alcohol problems in young adulthood.”

Now, I know that the parents who read this site won’t necessarily have children in this high-risk group because I know that you are working on your sleep issues. This article is mostly to encourage you to work on it sooner rather than later and to resist the temptation to avoid all tears at all costs.

Crying is part of the way babies communicate. She may have trouble finding that confidence that she CAN do this without you getting out of her way a little bit and “letting go”. Stay with her to encourage and support her through the transition, if you wish, but don’t keep “holding on” to avoid her disappointment and crying. We all need to fall down sometimes to learn how to get back up and it’s part of growing up. Only you can decide the “right” time for her to learn to sleep on her own. I promise you that most of the time the first few nights are the worst and things can get ten times better after that.

If you need help developing a personalized sleep plan for your unique situation, when you are ready, make sure you check out our baby sleep consulting services, where we work with you on a plan YOU can feel good about.

What is your view on crying and baby’s sleep?

Sometimes it can feel like you’re in a race. Your friends have babies sleeping through the night and you want one, too. The pressure mounts as your baby gets older while well-meaning friends and family ask the same question every time they see you: “Is she sleeping through the night yet?” You know that if you don’t answer “yes”, you will hear it again: “Just let her cry. Worked for me.” or, in my case, it was: “It’s because you’re breastfeeding.” You might be tempted to say “yes”, even if she isn’t sleeping through the night, just to spare yourself the torment. You feel like all your friends got a hare and you got a tortoise.

As a parent, it’s sometimes hard to have that confidence to know that there is nothing wrong with your baby AND there is nothing wrong with your parenting. All babies are different and just because your neighbor’s baby was sleeping all night at 3 months old doesn’t mean yours can too. And, just because my son can count to 20 (mostly) at two years old doesn’t mean all two year olds can. Just like my four year old can’t really draw a picture of a person, some of his friends can. Where my older son excels in reading and math, he needs to work on his fine motor skills. And, just like your 10 month old might still need a night feeding, some of your 4 month olds don’t.

What makes your baby a tortoise or a hare when it comes to sleep?

In my experience with my clients, there are four main family types:
• Slow to Adapt baby (tortoise) with hares as parents
• Highly adaptable babies (hares) with tortoises as parents
• Slow to Adapt baby (tortoise) with tortoises as parents
• Highly adaptable babies (hares) with hares as parents

What do I mean by this?

First, let me say, there is no judgment here. You are what you are and there is no right or wrong. Second, there is a lot in between a tortoise and a hare. There are fast tortoises and slow hares. Sometimes a baby’s temperament meshes with a parenting style and sometimes it doesn’t. This is to help you see if there is a mismatch or not.

A slow-to-adapt baby is generally going to take longer to learn to self-soothe and sleep well. That is going to be generally be true regardless of chosen sleep training method. Why? Because they get used to a certain routine and they don’t give it up easily. If they are persistent, they will really fight hard to keep status quo.

A highly adaptable baby who can self-soothe, but just hasn’t had the opportunity will generally learn very quickly, regardless of method, too. They go to sleep one time without a bottle or breastfeeding or a pacifier and voila, they figure out how to do it between sleep cycles (that we ALL have) and start sleeping in longer stretches.

A parent who is a hare is usually one who doesn’t have hours upon hours to spend with a baby to help him learn to self-soothe. They might be working parents trying to fit in the various chores that need to be done, get dinner on the table, etc. They might have older kids and just can’t ignore their other kids to spend three hours putting the baby to sleep at night. Or, they might be people who just recognize they just aren’t that patient to spend hours or that their baby missing three hours of sleep is not good for them. Whatever the reason, these are parents who decide that faster is better in the big picture.

A parent who is a tortoise is usually one who feels a slower approach is better for everyone’s sakes. They are okay with taking weeks (or sometimes months) rather than days. They figure it’s been this long, what’s a few more weeks? They have the time and patience to spend with their baby and feel it’s the best way to approach it.

I have been told I have the patience of Job, but one of my current clients has really shown me what patience is. She has a two year old who was nursing all night and we have come a loooong way, using a very slow approach. Her patience has been tremendous and I really admire her. Her son is slow-to-adapt and her patience is paying off with as few tears as possible. Their personalities are really meshing, but this is not always the case, unfortunately.

When you are a tortoise and your baby is a hare, you might spend weeks and months, unnecessarily, working on his sleep because you’re taking the slow approach when your baby might just need the nudge and be left alone. I don’t mean cry it out, necessarily. I have parents literally wait five minutes during night-wakings and their baby just goes back to sleep! They are shocked! They’ve been getting up at night for months, but their baby simply needed to be left alone for a few minutes. By going in, they were only perpetuating the very wake-ups they were trying to get rid of. Their baby is highly adaptable and actually a good self-soother, they just didn’t know it.

When you are a hare and your baby is a tortoise, you might be more apt to take a faster approach, like cry it out, and your baby will likely respond fairly quickly, but have backslides where you need to “redo” it over and over, especially after illness or vacation or just because you start slipping back into old habits (very easy to do with a tortoise). You and your baby will be getting more sleep than ever, but it might be frustrating to have those off nights where you feel like you’re starting all over. Consistency is very important for tortoises, especially.

When you are a tortoise and your baby is a tortoise, you, my friend, are going to work extremely hard, I’m afraid. Slow approaches will be even slower. Remember the mom I mentioned above? She’s been working on her two year old’s sleep for a couple of months, at least. Her patience is definitely paying off, but she’s working REALLY hard. She should get a medal! The beautiful part about her is that she knows this is a slower approach and knows what her expectations should be. She is not expecting to take this slower approach and expecting changes in days. She’s expecting them in weeks and months and that’s okay for her. I nudge her when she needs a nudge to move on to the next step and she checks in to make sure she isn’t stalling out of fear of the next step, but that it’s a good idea.

How do I know if you have a tortoise or a hare?

I typically look for clues in e-mail. You might mention something that seems irrelevant, but it gives me a clue about your baby’s personality. Clues about your personality are in there, too. That’s when I develop a plan that suits both your personalities and sometimes that takes time to figure out when your personalities aren’t meshing (when it comes to sleep! not your relationship with your baby).

I say it all over the site, but make sure you make a sleep training plan that meshes with both your personality and your baby’s temperament. Just like the picture above, you might be able to speed your tortoise to the finish line, but if not, as long as you have appropriate expectations, we will all get there, eventually, just like my son will eventually learn to write his name.

What do you think? Do you have a tortoise or a hare?

It is 11:42 p.m. as I start to write this. I’ve been working some pretty late nights, lately (some of you know this because you have received some late e-mail from me in the Sleep Helpdesk), and over the weekend I started thinking about this article. I started thinking about how my late nights and 7-day work weeks (weekends limited) might be affecting my abilities to be a good great mom. Am I doing my kids a disservice pushing so hard? The mere fact I consciously thought about it actually made me persevere and be a better mom this past weekend than I probably have over the few weeks prior.

I am one of the lucky few that can function on less sleep than most, but still, it does affect me. Most of the time, I start out great on a Monday (Sunday is my day to sleep in, so that might be why. Ha!), but then here I am up late and by Friday, I’m exhausted again. It’s all worth it because although this is tiring, I can’t tell you how rewarding it is to help others with sleep after the rough road I had with my son (and NOTHING has been harder than waking every 1-2 hours with him way back when). I LOVE helping all of you and wouldn’t change it for the world. Not to mention, that I’m also working on Babble Soft and helping parents transition easier to parenthood.

We all know why sleep is important for your baby, let’s look at how being tired makes me (and maybe you) a worse parent:

Fun, patience, and Energy

Besides the obvious, that sleep deprivation makes us CRANKY, being tired simply makes me less fun of a mom, sometimes. Even when I’m not cranky (I can fight through it much of the time, with a smile on my face), I’m definitely not as fun and I definitely don’t have as much energy. When my son wants me to play tackle or basketball, I just don’t feel like it all the time.

I might lack the energy to cook a really good dinner and opt for take-out. I sometimes don’t have the energy to talk in Toddlerease and use timeout when I might have avoided the meltdown had I had the patience to work through the issue (not to mention that sensitive kids will pick up on your energy level, too). My patience level drops, sometimes. It takes a lot of energy to parent my spirited son!

When my son wants to play cars for the second hour, I have to admit, there has been at least one time I started falling asleep on the floor! This past weekend, I did make sure I played cars over an hour nurturing their imagination (without falling asleep), played hokey pokey with lots of energy, and refrained from turning on the TV to give myself a break (Dora or Diego are shows that let me take a little nap on the couch, sometimes, and at least the kids are “learning Spanish”, right? ).

Focus and Concentration

My absolute favorite part of the day is cuddling with my sons in bed before they go to sleep. My older son LOVES to snuggle (Daddy won’t do) and we chit chat about our day and talk about what our favorite part of the day was (I like to end the day thinking about the positive). It is a wonderful time of night.

HOWEVER, one of the main things my son loves about this time is that I tell him bedtime stories (that I make up). This, by far, is very important to him and some nights I am soooo tired. One night (I think it was 6 months ago) I kept falling asleep in the middle of the story! I pause, say “ummm”, can’t think of what comes next. He keeps saying “Tell the story, mommy!” and I stutter and take 20 minutes to tell a 10 minute story and I feel horrible. Of course, there have been nights I start dozing in bed with him, too, after I’ve said “Okay time to sleep.” and put an end to the chit-chat (because if I don’t, he won’t stop ). It is very hard for me to focus when I’m too tired (don’t worry, I will edit this article one more time in the morning before I publish it).

Safety

Luckily, I work at home and don’t need to drive too much, but I do know of parents who run stop signs (with baby in the car) or need to pull over by the side of the road because they just can’t go on (if you need to choose one, choose the latter, and know your limits). I’ve had my husband come in and tell the boys not to do something that I was dazed and allowing them to do right in front of my eyes. I just hadn’t considered the “down side” of jumping off that big pile of pillows or whatever. Some days, I’m definitely happy to have another set of eyes helping me watch over the boys when I just can’t seem to snap out of it.

Teaching

My boys are smart and I’m very happy about that (I won’t bore you but one was reading at 4 and the other could count by 2 and knew his colors, too). I attribute some of this to the fact that I’ve kept them getting enough sleep, even when I don’t. But, I know that I can do more, at times. Sometimes it’s my focus and concentration that doesn’t think about how I might add to a conversation about caterpillars and their transformation to butterflies, for example. Other times, I might not have the energy to do artwork because I know then I’ll need to clean it up and I’m being lazy. Whatever the reason, I don’t feel like I’m as good a teacher when I’m too tired.

All of us will have a different definition of what a “great parent” is, but I think we can all agree that being tired doesn’t always bring out the greatness. I had a mom e-mail me once that both her kids outgrew their sleep problems around two and she said that, to her, it is just a “season of sleep deprivation” that will go away, eventually. She implied there wasn’t much of a reason to “work” on it, if it will end on its own, anyway (even if it’s years later). My challenge to her is that yes, SOME will have kids that outgrow these issues, but tell that to the parents with a five year old in their bed. Yes, eventually, perhaps even that five year old will outgrow it. But, whether it’s 3 months, 12 months, 2 years, 5 years or 8 years, how many missed opportunities will you have to be a great mom or dad? Sometimes I look so forward to bedtime and I kick myself because I know they won’t be this little forever. One day they will be too busy with their friends to bother with mom (sniff sniff). I want to cherish it. Don’t you?

How does being tired make YOU a worse parent?

This topic “How long to cry it out?” has come up a few times in the last few weeks in one way or another, so I thought I’d talk about it this week. I always preface any discussion about cry it out by making sure that everyone understands that I’m not a “Cry It Out Pusher” and I’m very much NOT an extremist or a hard-core “sleep trainer”. I try to be realistic and just know that all babies are different and all family structures are different and what works for one won’t work for everyone. I even debated Pantley about this very topic, because while I think she has some good ideas, they simply will NOT work for all challenging baby types…at least in time before you go crazy from sleep exhaustion. I also don’t recommend cry it out for long-term co-sleepers, either.

If you are adamantly against cry it out, please do NOT do it! It probably won’t work and you’ll just feel bad about it. At all times in my sleep consultations, I work with parents on helping their baby sleep with as few tears as possible. Why? Because who wants their baby to cry? We all do what we can to limit our baby’s tears and as your sleep consultant, I understand that. My son’s sleep struggles are still very near and dear to my heart and I pretty much relive them every day in every consultation, so I very much remember where you probably are right now.

So, how long do you cry it out if you do choose that path?

First, make sure your baby is at an appropriate age for cry it out, he is no longer swaddled, and if you are feeding baby on a schedule that you have set a realistic schedule. One thing that I can’t emphasize enough is that my philosophy is that some parents might use cry it out to fix sleep problems, but please don’t make your baby go hungry if she still needs night feedings. One thing that really does make my skin crawl is hearing about letting a two month old cry throughout the night to avoid two feedings, which is hardly a “sleep problem.”

Another reason I recommend exhausting all other methods before trying cry it out is that you must be 100% committed to cry it out for it to really work. So, typically, I recommend that you feel like you’ve “tried everything” first. If you let your baby cry for a set length of time and then you “give in”, you have basically set a precedent and he will cry that long (or longer) next time (if there is a next time). Many babies respond well to non-crying methods (highly depends on your baby’s temperament) and only a small percentage of my clients really have to go full blown cry it out, so make sure you’ve truly given it your all on the other methods.

Once you 100% commit to cry it out, there really isn’t a length of time that you really stop, when you’re working on nights (though you want to limit nap time crying). The goal is for your baby to fall asleep without said sleep association and every parent will need to decide what is “too long.” I recommend deciding that before you start, if possible. Having a plan (do you visit or not, how long between visits, do you stay in the room, etc.) is of utmost importance so everyone is on the same page and will stick to it. Once you decide to stop said crutch, it can’t really be an option to change your mind, otherwise, you go backwards and might even make things worse.

Many people against cry it out will paint a picture that cry it out is cruel because a baby can’t communicate what she needs. This is true, to an extent, in that you can’t ignore all your baby’s cries and I would never recommend that. That’s irresponsible parenting. My argument is that if you give your baby a pacifier ten times per night and that’s all she “needs” then you know why she’s crying. Does that mean you give your baby everything just because she cries? Not to me. If it had, my son would not have sat in a car seat for his first year of life. Your baby only thinks she needs a pacifier to sleep because that’s all she’s known. It doesn’t mean she can’t learn a new way to sleep. Enter…the parent.

Down the line, after initial “sleep training” is over, does this mean you never go in to your baby at night? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! We all do pretty crazy things to get our baby to sleep, but when you’re ready to make a change, it’s important to commit to your plan of action. Whether you succeed in finding a no crying sleep method or try cry-it-out, babies are destined to change. Cry it out is NOT a cure-all and it doesn’t mean your baby won’t need you during an illness, when she’s getting new teeth, growth spurt, etc., so it doesn’t mean never go to your baby or use your instincts. It also doesn’t mean that cry it out “didn’t work.” because your baby needs you at night for something.

In my opinion, there is a right and wrong way to approach “sleep training”. If you’re doing cry-it-out, it might take you a few nights or a couple of weeks, but please expect things to pop up and change on you, because they will. Just remember, that cry it out won’t change your baby’s personality, there is no proof that cry it out is harmful, not even by Harvard, it’s not always clear when you’re done sleep training, and being a mom is an every day challenge.

How many days did cry it out take for you and your family?

All of us are looking for ways to help our babies sleep with as little crying as possible. No crying would be ideal and surprisingly (when I look back at our long and difficult journey), the first few nights I actually helped my challenging sleeper of a son learn to fall asleep with virtually NO tears. It took TWO LONG HOURS for TWO LONG NIGHTS, but by the third night he did it in just 20 minutes and then on the 4th night with no tears into his crib (we were trying to stop cosleeping because it wasn’t working for us). It was a test of my patience when I knew nursing him to sleep would have made him fall asleep in less than two minutes. It was frustrating for both of us, but I was able to keep him from crying by using many of my mommy “tools” and doing anything but nursing him (I had already nursed him for a feeding before we started, so he was not hungry) but not until he was all the way asleep.

Learning about sleep associations was the single-most important thing that helped me start getting better sleep for my son (which was and still is very important for his happiness and behavior) and therefore for the rest of the family. It seems so obvious now, but back then I surely did not “get it” why he would wake up the minute I put him down. Didn’t he “need” to nurse to fall asleep because of the sucking reflexes of a baby being so strong that I read so much about and because he never used a pacifier? Once I understood that nursing to sleep and rocking to sleep became the things he thought he needed to fall asleep and the thing he needed recreated all night, the next step was to figure out a way to help him learn to do that without feeling like I was taking away an emotional attachment that nursing was and feeling like I was damaging him, without replacing the nursing or rocking with something else I’d have to recreate and with no tears, if possible.

Keeping your eye on the long-term goal is the #1 key to successfully helping your baby from no crying to sleep. It will always be easier right this minute to go ahead and nurse, give her a bottle, give her the pacifier, rock her to sleep, bounce on a ball, put her in a carseat on the dryer, put her in the car and drive around, walk her around, dance and sing than to take the time to teach her a new skill. Just like it’s easier to feed your baby than to let her learn to feed herself or put on your toddler’s shoes rather than let him try by himself, it will be easier to do it for them. But, for long-term progress and to let her learn how to do something herself, you have to let her try and you have to avoid doing it for her. Take it as slow as you want, but it is a learning process that you need to get out of the way of for it to work. Sure, you can wait to see when she might learn it on her own, after all no one goes to college not knowing how to put on their shoes, but is a month, six months, 16 months, 2 1/2 years, or 4 years of sleep deprivation worth it to wait?

Who knew when you were pregnant that you’d have to TEACH your baby to sleep? Teach your baby to read, teach your baby sign language, or teach your baby to write, but teach them to sleep? Such a foreign concept, but it’s true. To teach a baby how to sleep without much YOU need to recreate all day and night is a challenge and depending on the baby’s temperament and tendency to “fight sleep” or not will be the deciding factor on how difficult it is to teach your baby. Some don’t have much learning to do while others will struggle on and off for so long that you don’t know even know when you’re done teaching them.

Unfortunately, my no cry sleep results were short-lived in our house and we struggled a lot around sleep, but it has made me so happy that the things I’ve learned since then has helped me help other parents with no cry sleep methods. I’ve helped a mom stop sleeping in a glider with her 8 month old baby and a 16 month old transition to the crib, just to name two, with no cry sleep methods. Those were a couple of really tough cases, too!

Cry it out is certainly not easy and certainly not the first thing we try as parents, but it makes me wonder if I had someone like ME when I was in need of sleep support whether I would have avoided our tears or not. I never regret it, I know it did not change my baby’s personality, and I guess we will never know, but I’m fortunate to be able to use my knowledge in my quest to help others.

No cry sleep methods are not for the faint of heart if you have a challenging sleeper and they take more time, but with a strong support system, they are possible to put into practice.

A very common question I get is when a baby can go all night without a feeding. This article will outline general guidelines about how many night-feedings you can expect at each age.

Pediatricians all seem to disagree to the answer to the question when a baby can go all night without a feeding. There is Ferber who claims babies don’t need to eat at night after 3 months old and then there is Weissbluth who says that babies need 1-2 feedings up through 9 months old. Who’s right? They are both pediatricians with a lot of experience. Talk to your pediatrician and the answer will likely be even something different.

Although I do really like Ferber’s book and have learned A LOT from it, I can not, in good conscience, ever recommend night-weaning at 3 months old. I think that is extreme to think that all babies can do that, particularly breastfed babies. Some parents are lucky enough that their baby does it on his own that young or younger, but many parents simply aren’t that lucky.

I am not, in general, an extremist and when it comes to hunger at night, I err on the side of caution. I know that it would be sooo much easier, for US, to not feed at night, but there are adults who can’t go 12 hours without eating, so I am not sure why we expect our babies to. I am all for breaking sleep associations and promoting healthy sleep for our babies, but I don’t recommend night-weaning until your baby is showing signs she is ready and that age varies by child.

Below are the number of feedings at night, at various ages, that are within “normal” range (in my experience) and don’t throw up a red flag that there is more going on than just a feeding:

•   Newborns to 3 months old: Feedings every 2-3 hours, on demand
•   3-4 Months: 2-3 feedings per night or every 3-6 hours, on demand
•   5-6 Months: 1-2 feedings
•   7-9 Months: 1, maybe 2, feedings
•   10-12 Months: Sometimes 1 feeding
•   12+ Months: Generally no feedings

Obviously, growth spurts are an exception and you should feed as needed during those. Growth spurts are generally over within a week.

I typically recommend at least an attempt at night-weaning by 8-9 months old, because at some point, sometimes it is a chicken and egg problem. A baby needs a certain amount of sustenance during the day and if he gets some at night, he won’t eat more during the day and if he doesn’t eat more during the day, he needs it at night. So, sometimes, a baby really does feel hungry at night, but it doesn’t mean he can’t go all night without a feeding, it simply means he needs to adjust how much he’s eating during the day. The idea is to gently help him do this.

I personally tried to night-wean around 9 months, but with both my boys, they did continue to eat at night up through a year and I weaned to cow’s milk (not sure if it was age or the weaning, though). They did, however, sleep better after I at least nudged them in the right direction, so I was glad I at least tried.

When did you night-wean?

Is it always clear when you are done sleep training? Not for everyone, unfortunately. Success in sleep training, like so many things in our lives, is on a continuum and what is success for you might not be for someone else. It also depends on your expectations and what your goal is from sleep training.

For some parents, sleep training is allowing their baby to fuss a few minutes and voila, they sleep 10-12 hours a night ad nauseum luckily for those parents. For other parents, it won’t be quite as smooth. They might take 2-3 weeks using a no-cry sleep training method and then have a baby who pleasantly sleeps 10-12 hours per night or parents might use cry it out and in 2-3 nights, they are also sleeping through the night.

Still, there are the few of us who don’t fall into either camp. We struggle on and off for the better part of a year 2 years however much time it takes. We get on a path that starts to work and then baby gets sick. We start seeing some improvement and baby gets teeth. Our toddler has a language explosion, starts to walk, or begins to use his imagination and starts to have nightmares, and we fall back once again. We have a new baby and our 2 year old stops napping, but is a mess before bedtime. The setbacks can be numerous.

How do you know when you’re done?

For many, it will be obvious when you are done because you will be well-rested and, most importantly, so will your baby. You may have temporary setbacks, but your baby bounces back to normal quickly. But, what if you’ve done cry-it-out and your baby is still crying every night? What do you do? Does that mean it didn’t work?

As a general rule, if your baby fusses or cries lightly for 5-10 minutes, drifts off to sleep and you don’t hear a peep for 10-12 hours (or just for feedings and they go right back to sleep), you most likely just have a baby who unwinds a little before sleep. When my baby was in a good place, he would often unwind, not so much by crying, but almost moaning or humming himself to sleep. I think it’s possible that a stranger might think he was crying or fussing, but I knew him best and I know he wasn’t crying (we had plenty of experience to know the difference, unfortunately). He would sleep well at night (possibly with a feeding or two, depending on age) and there was a time that I’d go in too early in the morning where he’d be “talking” and would fuss at me for coming in too soon (I would have bet you a million dollars that wouldn’t happen!). Most importantly, he was very happy in the morning with a good night’s rest.

If your baby is crying hard for 10 minutes, then settles down, it’s still possible you are at a point that it’s going to be as good as it gets for the time being. We have been at this stage, too, unfortunately. We went through a time my son would cry hard for 5-10 minutes, we’d go in and re-settle him and he’d go right to sleep. It was a little frustrating, but fairly easy to deal with. Knowing him today, no doubt it was the same reason as now that he just didn’t want the day to end, even though he was exhausted.

If your baby is crying hard for over 10 minutes (I am generalizing — you know your baby best) and it’s been longer than a week of sleep training, most likely you have a lingering problem. In babies, this problem is probably over-tiredness and you need to bump bedtime EARLIER. Even after sleep training, my son would get over-tired and over-stimulated and cry and cry at bedtime some nights “for no reason”. He was fed, dry, etc. and was just T-I-R-E-D! It was very very frustrating. We couldn’t really soothe him all the way to sleep every time (though we’d go down that road, too) because that led to our 3 hour rocking marathons every. single. time. or worse, waking every so many hours for re-rocking / re-soothing. We were still basically at the best place we could be at the present time. We tried with everything we had to keep bedtime early enough. Even now, he will get cranky when he’s tired, but insists “I’m not tired!” and then promptly falls asleep 5 minutes later, literally.

For toddlers, crying at bedtime or resisting a bedtime could be over or under-tired, depending on the toddler’s schedule and temperament. Unfortunately, without knowing the specific details, it’s difficult to know which one it is. In general, if your toddler was going to bed fine and all of a sudden started fighting the routine, you might consider she needs longer wake-time before bedtime. If she recently transitioned naps, you might need to consider less.

There are many times you might have setbacks, but in general, if things haven’t improved in 2-3 weeks, regardless of the method (closer to 2 for crying methods and 3-4 for no-cry), you might want to re-evaluate your chosen method to get your baby or toddler to sleep.

How did you know when you were done?

Since some babies won’t sleep through the night without a feeding until some time after 9 months or longer, some parents swear by something called a “dream feed”, where you feed your baby while he or she is still asleep, before you go off to bed. Some parents breastfeed and others can give a bottle without even picking up the baby. The theory is that you will get a longer stretch of sleep, yourself. The question is, will this work and should you do it?

For some people, a dream feed will be a Godsend. This is how it works: Baby goes to sleep around 7 p.m., you dream feed (feed the baby when he is asleep) around 10 p.m. before you go to bed, and baby might sleep until 4 or 6 a.m. or later, giving you a glorious 6 to 8 hours of sleep straight. Go to bed early and have your partner/spouse give the dream feed and you can get even more sleep! When it works, a dream feed is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, they don’t always work.

As I explained how we sleep at 4 months old, the first part of the night is the deepest sleep of the night for all babies and children over 4 months (approximately). Therefore, it might be very difficult to rouse your baby enough to feed any old time you want to. Some babies will awaken just enough to eat and stay asleep, but others might not wake up enough and others will wake up too much and be somewhat cranky that you woke them up (especially if they aren’t hungry!). Another way sometimes a dream feed doesn’t work is that even if you can successfully feed your baby, even when she didn’t ask for a feeding, is that she might also wake up at 2 a.m. (or whenever) anyway. Some babies also tend to wake up more frequently after waking up the first time of the night.

I generally don’t recommend dream feeds as a solution. Of course, I personally am not against dream feeding, philosophically (some people believe it goes against the idea of demand-feeding and is not respecting the baby to force a meal on him), and I don’t think it hurts to try it (though it might take a week or two to get back to where you were if things go crazy), but, in general, I think they can be problematic. Dream feeds can make a night-waking habit that otherwise might not be there and it is difficult to know just when to stop dream feeding and your baby is fully capable of sleeping all night without that feed. After all, some babies start sleeping all the way through the night as early as 3 or 4 months. Given how hard it was to get my son to sleep, I generally would not risk waking him up just for my sake. I did try it exactly one time, he was too sleepy to eat, and I felt guilty for even trying, so I didn’t try it again. LOL

Of course, I know all too well how difficult it is to wake up to feed a baby once or twice a night for months on-end, so I certainly know why people do it. Even waking just once when you reach the 7th, 8th, or 9th month, is downright brutal. That, to me, is just part of having a new baby and something I just had to live with (even beyond 9 months for my boys). Their tummies are small and as I always say, there are many adults that can’t go 11-12 hours without a feeding, so I am not sure why we expect our babies to. Instead, I typically recommend, night-weaning down to just 1 feeding around 6 months old and attempt a full night-weaning by 9 months old, if baby hasn’t done it on their own by then.

Have you dream fed? Did it work for you? If so, share your tips

…think again. Whenever I felt frustrated and sad that I had such a challenging sleeper, I would tell myself “It could be worse.” I wasn’t really sure how much worse it could get, but I knew it could. After all, he was 10 times a better sleeper at 4 months old, but far from perfect and we went through many months of up and down sleep. Of the countless parents I’ve helped, there have been very few that seem to have a more challenging baby than mine was…a few close contenders, unfortunately for those parents. I’m sure there are many out there, but NOW, here is a story of a far more challenging sleeper that proves it.

Imagine for a moment that your baby doesn’t sleep at all. No, I don’t mean wakes up ever 2 hours like mine did or yours might. I mean, for 3 years, your baby, then toddler, is up for nearly 24 hours per day.

The extremely rare condition called chiari malformation, is a condition that causes compression on the brain stem where the brain is literally squeezed into the spinal column. One of the symptoms of this condition is sleeplessness. Last year, The Lamb Family went on the news with their 3 year old who didn’t sleep and thankfully, doctors have now solved the problem and their son who wouldn’t sleep is now sleeping through the night! It’s an amazing story. Imagine. This mother barely could even hug her son and now 3 years later, he is now able to sleep all night, has caught up to his peers developmentally and runs in the door for a hug from mom. A very happy ending!

So, when you feel down about your family’s situation, always know that it can be worse. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to improve your situation, but you might feel some comfort that you aren’t alone and there are probably even other parents worse off than you.

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