Is this possible? I've read so many things online, but I'm still kinda blurry about the MOTN feeding, so I'd love to hear about your experiences! Did you do timed checks, or extinction for falling asleep? How many nights did it take? How did you handle the MOTN feeding, and get LO back to sleep after feeding?
I'm hoping to start sleep training in 3 - 4 weeks when LO is about 19 weeks/14 weeks adjusted. But I think he'll still need to have one bottle in the middle of the night.
pomelo / 5258 posts
Yes, we sleep trained at 4 months and kept a MOTN feed for months after that. The MOTN feed did not pose a problem for us since LO went right back to sleep from that feed. It took 2 hours to get her to go to fall asleep initially at night so that was the part we wanted to fix.
pear / 1531 posts
Absolutely. We sleep trained to fall asleep at 4 months since he would no longer fall asleep by rocking, feeding, etc. We then trained him to lose his last night feed at 9 months, which is when my doctor said it was okay to do so.
blogger / grapefruit / 4836 posts
Sleep training means teaching your baby to fall asleep on their own. You can absolutely keep feeding your baby whenever hungry.
pear / 1586 posts
Definitely! We did Ferber (so timed checks) a few days shy of 4 months. He was no longer falling asleep with the help of rocking, feeding, etc., and would wake up between 5 minutes and an hour after we put him down for the night and had just been fed. The first night he cried for maybe 15-20 minutes (not even "hard crying") and that was the worst of it. We also gave him a lovey (our ped okayed it in the crib, but you should check with yours) and that seems to help him settle. We now put him down awake for bed and all naps! He still has one MOTN feeding, generally between 2 and 3am (he's almost 5 months old).
grapefruit / 4988 posts
Yes, definitely. We used Ferber (extinction with checks) around 5 months. She had been waking up as many as 10x per night (and often she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for an hour after some of these wakeups) and after training, she was down to 2-3x per night for night nursing only. A big difference was that she'd fall asleep on her own, then sleep a long chunk (5+ hrs), and then whenever she'd wake up, I'd nurse her, put her back in her crib, and she'd immediately go back to sleep. It took her about 5 more months to drop all the night feeds on her own.
persimmon / 1431 posts
I used extinction for falling asleep around 3 months. She is now 4 months and still wakes up for MOTN feeding. Last night she only nursed for a few minutes so I'm really hoping she can start STTN soon!
kiwi / 728 posts
We did ferber around 5 months to fall asleep and in hopes that she would be able to put herself back to sleep in the MOTN. She's a few days shy of 9 months and still wakes to eat 2 times MOTN, so yes, haha, you can definitely still keep a MOTN feeding, if you want to. It also helped us to sleep train because prior she was waking up every 45 min-1.5 hours and now she can put herself back to sleep besides the 2 times she wakes to eat. Occasionally she will struggle with going back to sleep after eating, but she usually settles pretty quickly (10 minutes or less).
grapefruit / 4418 posts
Night weaning and sleep training are two very different things. Sleep training is meant to get baby to sleep on their own, not to eliminate MoTN feedings. 4 months is much too young to start night weaning for most babies.
olive / 65 posts
Totally - it's what we did! We sleep trained (Ferber) to get down to just one MOTN feed at about 4.5 months, then night weaned at about 12 months. By the time she was 4 months, I had gone back to work and needed to be getting more than 90 consecutive minutes of sleep, but I didn't mind hanging on to that last feeding for a while. As she neared 12 months, it was clear she didn't really need that last feeding, so it was pretty easy to eliminate it. Plus, she already knew how to put herself back to sleep at that point!
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
Yes, we sleep trained to teach them to fall asleep on their own for the first stretch of night sleep (not to have them STTN), so we kept the MOTN feeding(s) until they dropped it on their own.
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