Hellobee Boards

What sleep method worked best for you? We did a modified Ferber, with extended periods between checks. So we checked at something like 3, 5, 10, 15 minutes.

How did you implement? see above.

How did you stop baby from falling asleep on bottle to actually fall asleep on own. I would definitely move the bottle up in your bedtime routine. So I'd do bottle, bath, books/songs, etc. This will also help when you start brushing LO's teeth before bedtime (no point in brushing before if he's going to fall asleep on the bottle later).

Did you tackle nap and nighttime at the same time? We did nighttime, then naps about two weeks later.

Trying to condense a novel from previous posts here --

What sleep method worked best for you? We did Ferber basically by the book, right at 4 months.

How did you implement? We also noticed (on a long overnight car trip) that he was starting to use a lovey to self-soothe, so it seemed like a good time to try. Basically, he was crying even through our attempts to soothe, so we figured we might as well try Ferber. For us, it worked in about 3 nights - the first night there was about 10-15 minutes of crying during the first hour of the night, but otherwise he never got past the first "interval" for checks. DH was really strict about it - if he calmed down, we restarted the timer. I have to say that DS is generally pretty easy-going and not much of a crier, so it wasn't too challenging. The first three nights I went out and walked the dog while DH manned the checks and monitor. If you have any anxiety I definitely recommend having your DH take over for a bit while you get out of the house or take a bath or something.

How did you stop baby from falling asleep on bottle to actually fall asleep on own? The key for us was moving the feeding portion of the bedtime routine just slightly earlier - so, I would nurse him, then we'd put him in his sleep sack (enough to wake him up even if he'd dozed off), then sing a song (same song every night to create routine), turn on white noise and put in crib. We also gave him a lovey which really worked for soothing. The technical way we did it is we started pairing a song (we picked Sweet Baby James by James Taylor - definitely doesn't have to be a lullaby) with the bedtime feeding - just singing the same song over and over while I nursed him, toward the end of the session when he was getting drowsy. Over time, he started associating the song with sleep, and we were able to shift the song back so that our routine ended up being: change diaper, feed, sleep sack, down in crib, give him his lovey, sing song, go to sleep. We sing it before naps, too, and also have played it in the car on long car rides to get him to fall asleep. The key is to pair the cue you want to associate with sleep (e.g., a song) with the existing sleep cue (i.e., feeding) and then gradually separate them. It's basically classical conditioning if you remember that from intro psych! (I have a phd in psychology so this was the way that made the most sense to me...)

Did you tackle nap and nighttime at the same time? We never trained for naps, but as soon as he was able to fall asleep on his own for nighttime, he was able to fall asleep on his own for naps. (Like, within the same week.) His naps didn't lengthen out until he was solidly on two naps around 8-9 months.