I read somewhere (I thought on HB), that sometimes putting LO down earlier, will help them sleep better/longer at night. LO currently starts her night time routine at 6:30, which includes a bath, lullabies and nursing. She is in her crib at exactly 7:00pm. I feel like if she goes to bed any earlier she would be up more at night, or wake up earlier, but maybe this is not true? She is almost 5 months old and she wakes up 4-8 times a night. She goes down great for naps, and those don't even include a routine. Could this be a possibility, or is this crazy talk?
-
My LO used to go to sleep around 8:30ish and I kept trying to get her to bed earlier but she wouldn't go to sleep any earlier. She was waking up around 7 every day. We sleep trained her a few weeks ago and now she goes to bed around 6:15 every night and gets up for the day usually around 7:45. She usually has one night wake up to get her diaper changed and nurse a little.
Before we sleep trained, my LO was waking up around 6-8 times a night on average and it was awful. She's doing so much better now and sometimes even sleeps until 8-8:30 in the morning.
-
It's advice from the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby and is generally true. We pushed bedtime routine up slowly but surely as he showed sleepy signs earlier. We start bath at 5:30 and he's asleep by 6 and sleeps for 13.5ish hours (been this way since 8m and he's 13m now).
Waking up 4-8 times a night a 5m old seems like a lot to me. Is she in her 4 month sleep regression right now?
-
@Mrs. Stroller: She has been waking up this much for over 6 weeks now, it's been rough. I'm not sure how long the sleep regression is supposed to last.
-
I meant to mention that we also start our bedtime routine around 5:30, sometimes 5:45.
@Bao: I thought ours was the sleep regression too but I don't think it was after a couple of weeks. We ended up sleep training her around 5.5 months because she was waking up so much and we figured out that it was because she wasn't putting herself back to sleep. She was needing me to rub her back, replace her pacifier, or nurse her in order to get back to sleep.
-
@Bao: I'm right there with you. Before the 4-month sleep regression we were down to 2-3 night wakings per night (my LO is almost 5 months). Now we are back to 4-6. I am really at a loss. And LO is a spotty, crappy napper.
-
@MsLipGloss: We nap trained after sleep training because our LO was always a HORRIBLE napper. Nap training took a lot longer than nights did but she's doing really well now. I've had no tears today as far as naps go and she apparently needed a lot more sleep than she was getting before (she's been napping on average three times a day for a total of like four hours).
-
@BelugaBean: This is what LO does. She wakes up with her eyes still shut but will whine or cry for her paci or to be nursed to sleep. I have tried NUMEROUS times to just leave her, but by the end she is full blown crying and has tears streaming her face. She just can't put herself back to sleep. She doesn't have an issue going to sleep initially at night, or for naps so that is why I am so confused as to why she wakes up so much at night. There is no way she is hungry every 1-2 hours.
-
@Bao: How do you put her to sleep when you first lay her down?
-
@Bao: Ours lasted until one week shy of 6m, but it was only for naps - he never napped for more than 15-20mins from 3.5m til then no matter how much sleep training I tried to do. It was maddening.
I second the other posters about sleep training. Definitely worth a shot, if you're not opposed to it.
-
@BelugaBean: After I nurse her I just lay her in bed and leave. Sometimes she is mostly asleep, but other times she is wide eyed but will still fall asleep on her own. For naps, I do the same thing, I just lay her in bed and leave. She sleeps with a fan on and I think that helps signal "sleep"...
-
@Bao: The problems you explained about the night sleep is *exactly* what we are experiencing. It took my LO 2 minutes (I timed her on my phone) to go from fussing to full on screaming last night. She can't put herself back to sleep.
@BelugaBean: Since my MIL is with her during the day, I am trying to conquer night sleep first (I don't think my MIL really tries to put her down for naps . . . she instead tries to let them happen organically--with an active baby--*sigh* I digress . . . ). The earlier bedtime really helps with the initial put down (that she totally doesn't fight), but I still have frequent wakings all through the night.
-
@Mrs. Stroller: I'm not opposed to sleep training I just have no idea how to go about it the right way...there seems to be a few different methods of this.
-
@Bao: My issue was that I was nursing her completely to sleep so she didn't know how to sleep at all without my help. I wouldn't nurse her unless you think there's any way she could be hungry though. Also, I will say that it took some awful crying for LO to get used to falling asleep on her own. A lot of times she was just short of being full blown hysterical but there were tears and runny noses.
-
@Bao: We're having similar issues as you right now with my 5 month old. We had 4 wakeups on each hour. There was no way that he's hungry in those times. I'm thinking that it's teething going on based off of his gums. We start the night routine about 8-8:30pm. It still takes him until 10pm to get to sleep some nights with multiple wakeups usually around 1am. It's like he has radar of when it's my time to deal with him at night.
-
@Bao: There are a few different ways to sleep train. I had a CIO thread a couple of weeks ago where a lot of people gave their input and different people did different things. Some LOs seem to respond okay to checks at regular intervals, others need to be left alone because checks just make them upset.
There are also non-CIO methods. I bought the book "The No Cry Sleep Solution" but it just didn't work for my LO.
-
@BelugaBean: That's part of the problem, if she wakes up at say 1am how do I know if she is hungry or not? I'd feel horrible if she was and she thought I was "ignoring her"....
-
@Bao: True. I always tried the pacifier first and kind of got used to what times she normally wanted to eat. If she wasn't hungry, the pacifier would help her. Now that she's sleep trained, I give her ten minutes or I go in if she sounds absolutely hysterical (she's gotten scared a couple of times of different things).
-
@BelugaBean: Would the checks include giving a pacifier back? I feel like if I did that, she would keep waking up, knowing I am going to come back and give it to her.
-
@Bao: I stopped doing that. I also stopped turning her over back onto her back. She figured it all out when I left her alone and now she can replace her pacifier on her own.
-
I think it just depends on the kid. For my LO.... it doesn't seem to matter what time we put her down. She's naturally a good night time sleeper and will sleep good. We got lucky
But I think different things work for different babies and it never hurts to try.
-
@BAO-- you should read the book Mrs. Stroller references Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby. When we sleep trained my son at 4 1/2 months, I chose to wake him at certain times for night feedings. So waking him to feed before he cries is the key. First I did twice, then down to once a night. At 9 months, I weaned him from night feeding.
The key to sleep training is consistancy, so you should never reinforce crying with feeding. Made sense to me and it really worked for us.
It's hard, but keep a journal to chart your progress and now its fun to look back on.
Good luck! -
You've gotten tons of great advice so far!! I think an earlier bedtime would only help if:
1) she is falling asleep on her own
2) you are making sure she isn't awake between her last nap and bedtime for more than 2-2.5 hoursIn regards to feeding her at night, you could always use a cutoff. So, at 5 months, it's generally believed that she can go 6 hours without eating (age + 1). If she wakes up before then, use your sleep training strategy. If she wakes after your cutoff, nurse her but do your best to put her back down awake.
-
@Sammyfab: I forgot that that helped us too. We make sure she's in her bed by 2 hours past her last nap, sometimes she wants to be in bed 1.5 hours after her last nap! It definitely helps though. One night when we went a bit past that, she cried a lot longer during sleep training!
-
@Sammyfab: great tips! Sometimes she is up 3 hours before she goes to bed. So if she wakes up at 4pm from a nap then 6-6:30pm is an ideal bedtime? I feel like she will be up at 4am for good if I do that lol. Maybe not! I like the 6 hour time frame for eating, that really helps. So when she wakes up at 10:45pm and 12:15am there is no way she can be THAT hungry to where she needs to eat.
-
@Bao: Sometimes my LO wakes up at 5pm from her last nap and she still falls asleep around 6:30, 7 at the latest. She's had a couple of days where she woke up at 6 but usually she's not up until 7:45-8:30! I was so scared she was going to start getting up at like 5am!
-
@BelugaBean: I wouldn't even care if she were up at say 6:30am for good, IF she slept most of the night. I'm not doing well with this broken up sleep.
-
@Bao: I totally understand! When LO was waking up that much at night, I kept telling DH I just wanted like 3 hours to sleep without interruption. The night before last I was able to get 6 hours straight and it felt amazing. I think if you followed some of the advice and found a sleep training system that works for you and your LO, then it'll help a lot.
Just remember, don't do anything you aren't comfortable with and follow your instincts on if she needs you or not.
-
@BelugaBean: Thanks
I think I am going to try doing CIO tonight. DH is on board and can help me. Hopefully in the long run, it ends up helping her too and we will all be happier.
-
@Bao: yep. At that age, my LO was regularly going to bed at 5:30-6 because he would refuse a nap if we tried to put him down after 4pm. Try the feeding cutoffs (I think it's 6 hours, then 3 and 3). I would set a do-not-get-out-of-bed time of 12 hours after you put her down for the night. If she wakes at 4, just treat it as a nightwaking and don't get her up for the day. She's at an age when an early bedtime = more sleep. A few months later it may mean an earlier wake up, but for now I would definitely give it a shot!
-
@Sammyfab: I will try anything! I'm desperate. Lol thanks!
-
My LO has a 7 p.m. bedtime (8 months old). During the work week that is the absolute earliest we can get him to bed since we don't get home from work til 6. On weekends we tend to put him down a little earlier, sometimes 6:30 and he doesn't seem to wake up earlier. Though, he is an early riser (5 am) anyways. I wish we could do an early bedtime more consistently.
-
Absolutely! It was the best sleep advice we ever got.
For a few weeks, we were trying to put C down around 8. We were having a terrible time. Then, we started really watching her and noticed that she wanted to go to sleep much earlier. For several months, she went to bed at 5:45. I know that's really early, but thats when she wanted to sleep. Almost immediately, she started waking 1-2 a night and going back down easily. She's nearly 10 months old and still goes to bed at 6:30 every night and sleeps until 8am. Putting her down later only makes her wake up earlier.
Sleep begets sleep. It couldn't hurt to try it.
But I think different things work for different babies and it never hurts to try.
Reply
Subscribe to our newsletter
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite0
32 comments