Most recommendations on reducing the risk of SIDS say that you should have LO sleep in your room, separately, the first 6 months. I imagine if you wanted to sleep train at around 4 months, it would be really hard with LO crying in the same room, and knowing you are right there! Most CIO methods include some sort of soothing without picking up, or picking up and putting back down without feeding, and then leaving the room. So I guess you could sleep train and spend much of the night in another room until LO is a good sleeper? Or is it impossible?
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Everyone I know who sleep trained with LO sharing a room left the room while the kid was crying. They did the soothing at intervals etc, and the kid was usually asleep after an hour at most, so it kind of wasn't an issue. I guess it depends on what time you are trying to put the kid down. I assume if you do it early enough before you plan to go to bed yourself, it won't be an issue.
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We haven't sleep trained our kids, but I know families that do this in the same room and they leave the room like the PP mentioned or they put up a room divider so the baby can't see them.
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I sleep-trained LO and it didn't even occur to me as an option to do this with her still in our room. We put her in her own room and crib.
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Glad to know it's been done before. I guess I was thinking the nighttime wakeups would be harder because Mom and Dad are right there?
@NYCaliMama: A divider is a good idea!
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There was no way we could have sleep trained our son in our bedroom. Too much tiptoeing around after he's asleep and it would have been too tempting to intervene in case he had a nightwaking.
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We've done it a bit. Not full on CIO but she was super anti crib when we switched her from the bassinet and after trial and error with a few nights and switching sleep positions in the crib we finally got to a point where her cries weren't shrieks but just kinda whines. So we let her fuss for a bit at that point and she goes to sleep in the crib now. I do tend to get her out in the middle of the night when she wakes up though since she is close by and I like to cuddle, but she also goes back in the crib some nights, and some nights she goes back fine and some nights she protests a little and then goes back to sleep.
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Second on the room divider--my best friend did that with her son.
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My 2 month old goes to sleep very easily by himself, wakes up to feed 6,5 hours later; but the second half of the night is a bit more difficult. He wakes up too early and it's not because he's hungry; and since he had a lot of sleep, it's hard for him to go back.
So I've started sleep training for that part of the night (around 4:30-5am). I say "I" because DH is a very light sleeper and he is not sleeping in our room - sad but necessary if he wants to survive work and have the energy and patience for our son.
Anyway DS is in my room when I sleep train, but I do not leave the room. I stay in the room and sit on my bed where he can't see me. I go to him at 15 seconds; then 30 seconds, then 45... 15 seconds increments; where I either put my hand on his belly or, if it doesn't help, I pick him up (in a standing position) until he stops crying and then put him back down.
The longest he cried until soothing himself and going back to sleep is 75 seconds.
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We sleep trained while sharing a room.
When it was bed time, we did the standard leave the room and return at intervals. That wasn't really the tough part as my daughter did a pretty good job of getting to sleep- it was staying asleep that was the problem.
When she woke in the night, we'd go to her crib, shush and pat her (make sure she didn't need a diaper change, etc). The get back in bed. Periodically if we had to, we'd go back over and lay her back down and shush her. Otherwise we just laid in bed, staring at the clock, willing her to go back to sleep.
She knew we were there, so she wasn't alone or afraid (unlike how opponents of CIO like to characterize it as 'abandonment'), we'd shush her or reassure her from our bed, we just wouldn't pick her up.
I'd say it took a couple of weeks for her to reliably sleep through the night, and it was hard/annoying to be right in the same room, but it worked.
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