Hellobee Boards Topic: 3 month old sleep training

Hellobee Boards Topic: 3 month old sleep training https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:49:21 +0000 Kemma on "3 month old sleep training" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/3-month-old-sleep-training#post-1979092 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 15:24:59 +0000 Kemma 1979092@https://boards.hellobee.com/ @Karie: have you thought about sidecarring your crib to the bed? Some babies just need to be close and you might find that your LO will be happy to sleep longer when in closer proximity to you. And hey, bedsharing and co sleeping works for a tonne of families so if it works for you and your comfortable with it then maybe just go with it? Modern Daisy on "3 month old sleep training" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/3-month-old-sleep-training#post-1978755 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 13:26:31 +0000 Modern Daisy 1978755@https://boards.hellobee.com/ I was not blessed with a great sleeper either. We had to work really hard at it and it took time, but now DS sleeps great so here is what worked for me. First of all, we established a bedtime routine early on and stuck to it, no matter what. Same time, same sequence, etc. even if DS refused to fall asleep. Second, once our Dr. said it was okay we did CIO - and still do it to this day when needed and DS is now 15 months. We never just leave him cold turkey, we only CIO after the usual routine is over and we go in at least once to calm him. If he is still screaming at that point and we are 100% sure nothing is wrong, he gets left in there until he falls alseep on his own. Back when he was around your son's age, in order to get him to drop nighttime feedings we stopped going in for certain wakeups if we felt that he was starting to drop them on his own. So for exampe, the first one to go was the 11/12am wakeup. One night when he dropped this on his own, we kept it going the next night by not going in to feed him. It literally only took 3-4 nights before it was gone completely, and this happened with all of the other wakeups one at a time, making his sleep stretch longer and longer until we finally got it to be 6pm - 6am. The thing I still struggle with is getting him to go back to sleep when he wakes up too early in the morning. Sometimes he will wake at around 4-5am and even if we leave him in there as our pediatrician recommended, we've found that he never falls back asleep. The best we will get is for him to take an early nap that day making it a 2 nap day instead of 1. Anyway, good luck! I think you are totally fine to start CIO at this point and right to think that something needs to change. By 12 weeks DS was down to one night wakeup - I remember it clearly since that is when I went back to work. Skadi on "3 month old sleep training" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/3-month-old-sleep-training#post-1978672 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 12:58:24 +0000 Skadi 1978672@https://boards.hellobee.com/ I know you're hesitant to sleep train, but I'd like to point out that you've already been doing a form of sleep training without realizing it. I think at 12 weeks, he is definitely capable of sleeping for longer stretches, but he has been inadvertently trained to sleep for very short stretches and not put himself back to sleep between cycles. So some new form of training has to happen, CIO or otherwise, in order to replace this old routine with a new one that is better for him and for you. We sleep trained at 11 weeks. No regrets! We got to a point where we looked at each other and said, "This is ridiculous. She's not happy, we're not happy, something has to change." We did extinction CIO (no checks). We began by doing some checks but quickly found that it just made things worse! Here's how she did over a period of 3 nights: First Night: She cried off and on for 2 hours. Second Night: She cried off and on for 1.5 hours. Third Night: She cried for 10 minutes. Ever since then, she usually only fusses for five minutes or so, naps or at night. There are times when she has a "disaster nap" and according to what we've read, if she doesn't sleep after 20 minutes of fussing, we should just pick her up and either try to rock her to sleep or entertain her until the next nap. But that doesn't happen very often. I am really glad that we sleep trained before the four month sleep regression, because I think teaching her to put herself to sleep really helped us get through it without much regression. I've read that babies can make a surprising amount of noise between sleep cycles and not be truly awake, until or unless a concerned parent comes over to check on them and wakes them up fully. What happens if you don't go to him when he wakes after 20 minutes? Even if you don't do full on CIO, could you set a timer for just, say, ten minutes and see what happens? His crying might escalate...or the angels might sing and he might settle back down. edelweiss on "3 month old sleep training" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/3-month-old-sleep-training#post-1978643 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 12:47:45 +0000 edelweiss 1978643@https://boards.hellobee.com/ don't be hard on yourself. baby sleep can be extremely confusing! i'm taking it that you don't want to cosleep anymore, which is fine. one thing you could start doing is putting your baby in his crib when he is drowsy but still awake, so he can learn to fall asleep on his own. that is something easier said than done for a lot of babies. if he cries but you don't want to do full on CIO, you could do timed checks at 5, 10 and 15 minutes to let him know you are around (but not picking him up) to reassure him. or you could sit by the crib until he falls asleep, and each night move a little further away from the crib. there are lots of folks with sleep training experience here so i'm sure you will get great ideas. we did extinction CIO with our baby, which i know not everyone is comfortable with. Karie on "3 month old sleep training" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/3-month-old-sleep-training#post-1978536 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 11:59:20 +0000 Karie 1978536@https://boards.hellobee.com/ My son is 12 weeks old today. His sleeping habits are driving me crazy, and in many ways I have myself to blame. We started out with him sleeping in a Moses basket in our bedroom. After 4 weeks, my husband was exhausted and had to function at work so I agreed to transition the baby into his bedroom. When he was in our room, he would sleep anywhere from 2-3 hours, sometimes 4 in a row, wake up, eat (I EBF) and then go back to sleep. Putting him back in his own bed was not usually a big deal. He’d keep sleeping. Then, we moved him into his room. He started waking more frequently. Every 1.5-3 hours. I was getting up with him, feeding him and putting him back to bed, but it was taking longer for him to go back to sleep, and getting up and out of bed was exhasuting me. By the time he was 6 weeks old, I couldn’t stay awake with him. We have a single bed in his nursery, and so I started nursing him and then falling asleep with him – safely though, so please don’t give me a hard time about bed sharing. But the more he got used to joining me for sleep in the night, the more he got used to it. We had a phase around 8-9 weeks where as soon as I would lay him (sleeping) in his bed, he would wake up crying. I have been better at sleeping with him less, only maybe taking him into bed with me around 4 am on the weekends, and the odd night drifting off with him for an hour or two, but he is not sleeping long periods at a time and at 3 months I think he should be. Now he only sleeps 45 min to 2 hours at a time, 3 hours if I’m lucky. Last night, I insisted to my husband that we let him back in our bedroom because his nights wee better then. Well, he went to sleep for about half an hour in his own bed and then woke up. I decided to feed him just so he’d doze off again, but I ended up falling asleep with him until 3 am. So again, he slept with me most of the night. I blame myself for the lack of consistency. Poor baby, no wonder he’s upset, sometimes I take him into bed with me and sometimes I don’t. So it is partly my fault. But I am desperate. I want him to sleep through the night, whether in his room or ours. And by sleep through the night, I just mean 5-6 hours in a row most nights. That would be great. My pediatrician says he is old enough to just cry it out, but I just don’t know if that is what I want to do. I don’t feel right about it, but I am open to trying things. What has worked for you and your baby? Any stories about transitioning a bed sharing baby to their own bed around this age? Any success stories about CIO or other sleep training strategies that worked at 3 months? I recently started a routine of bath, pajamas, sleep sack, nurse and put to bed sleeping. But sometimes he wakes up after only 20 min!