Knowing When You’re Done Sleep Training
Posted by Nicole on March 26th, 2009
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?
Tags: baby sleep, cry-it-out, no cry method, Sleep Training
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March 26th, 2009
This was encouraging to read this morning. We have been battling sleep training with our 4 1/2 month old for almost 2 weeks. I feel we were forced into sleep training through the 3 hour “marathons” you mentioned only they wern’t rocking marathons because she didn’t like to be rocked. It was deep knee bends, bouncing on the exercise ball or sway/dancing with her in our arms. Although i’m thankful I lost the remaining pregnancy weight during these marathons, they were emotionally exhausting as well especially when we have two other children to care for. So opposite of what we did with our other 2 children we felt we had no other choice then to do a modified type CIO.
It went well for a couple days but Phoebe loves her pacifier and soon the pacifier was causing as much upset as the 3 hour marathons did. We found ourselves replacing it often 10 times a night. Finally after one night where we replaced it for 3 hours every 10 minutes and then she was overtired and coudn’t go back to sleep we knew we had to yank it. So here we are almost one week paci free and still experiencing crying (often alot) before bedtime. Naps are great i’m happy to say but again with 2 other kids I sometimes have to wake her which was the case yesterday and thus resulted in overtiredness in the late afternoon which led to no late afternoon nap. I put her to bed at 6:15 and she fussed for 20 minutes and was asleep. We were overjoyed but it was premature as 45 minutes later she was awake and crying. It went on for 2 HOURS, she was so overtired. We went in first after 10 min. then 15 then 20 and so on but she was so exhausted it seemed to be worse with us going in. Finally she fell asleep. Woke at 1:50 and I fed her and she went right back to sleep. Woke at 4:00 and we had to let her cry again. Needless to say we aern’t done and I fear we never will be, this just feels like it will go on forever.
March 26th, 2009
Great article!
March 27th, 2009
@Rebecca ((HUGS)) I can only imagine having the tough sleeper as the 3rd baby. I often say I was lucky my first was my first because now that I have two, it’s no joke! Thankfully, my 2nd has been better (*sigh* not perfect). It will get better! I hope it gets better sooner rather than later. Good luck!
@Lainie Thanks!
March 30th, 2009
We started sleep training Jane at 7 months and I never really felt like we were done until she didn’t cry before sleeping anymore… around 18 months! Then at 25 months she gave up her nap and things were crazy for a while but now (at 2 1/2) she’s actually more predictable than ever. So I think we are done with her.
I don’t feel like we’re done with Malcolm yet (6 months). We started 2 1/2 months ago but he still needs us to come in and give him his pacifier, sometimes many times. I think once we ditch it and he can sleep on his own, we’ll be done. But he may cry until 18 months like Jane did… in fact I expect it.
April 15th, 2009
Nicole,
Thanks for the great article. My husband and I were just talking about “when will we know when Kiyoshi is done with sleep training.” And then here was an article on just that. He’s still sleeping pretty well through the night now but his naps are getting shorter. He’s also got another cold again so I hope that’s what it is! If it ’s not one thing it’s another, right? I’m just grateful I have you as a wonderful resource!!!!!
April 16th, 2009
@Sarah I’m glad you’re done with at least one, now!
Good luck with Malcolm!
April 16th, 2009
@Emily I’m glad things are still going fairly well and I hope when he is over his cold his naps lengthen again. I remember last time that happened, too. Good luck!
June 5th, 2009
I’m so glad I found your website; what a terrific resource! I read both Ferber’s book and Weissbluth’s book to sleep train my 8 month old, who fought and resisted sleep for many months. Ferber’s routine checks and quick soothing of the baby at regularly scheduled intervals seemed to make matters worse, so I opted for Weissbluth’s ideas and everything went well for many months. She’s 21 months now and fighting naps and fighting bedtime all over again, but your website has given me some ideas and has jogged my memory on what needs to be done. I’m also re-reading Ferber’s book, because I feel like Weissbluth’s book glosses over sleep training for older children (the process is the same; I just wanted to read about reasons for setbacks, his patient scenarios involving toddlers, and getting back on track), but your website has filled in the gaps. Thanks so much!
June 10th, 2009
@Shirlie I completely agree that Weissbluth’s book is best for younger babies and Ferber for older. At this age fighting naps or bedtime most likely is a schedule problem. We went through that, too. I hope you find a solution. Good luck!