I found these type of posts really helpful when I was making the decision to sleep train so I wanted to share my notes on our sleep training process.

We decided to sleep train our little guy just shy of 4 months. He had been a poor sleeper since day one. As time went on we found that it was becoming harder and harder to get him asleep. We swaddled, bounced, rocked, swung, gave a paci, and had white noise but each time we put him down to sleep it was taking at least 30 minutes. And there was a lot of crying (from both of us). Once he was asleep he only slept 45 minutes so we had to do this multiple times per day. Everyone was exhausted including our little guy!

We did the Weissbluth extinction method. I mostly based this off reading the blog “troublesome tots.” She likes both methods but thinks there is potentially less crying with this method than the Ferber checks and the parents have less chance at screwing it up. It was so tough doing this method and honestly for my own sanity I think if I could redo I would go with Ferber checks.

We did naps and night sleep at the same time. However I didn’t do any sleep training for middle of the night wakings. He typically has 2-3 wakings and I just nursed him back to sleep as I always did.

Our sleep training didn’t really follow the typical “worse to better” pattern so my biggest piece of advice would be to stick it out for a full two weeks because it really got so much better after that.

Night 1
12 minutes of crying
10 minutes quiet and falling asleep

Night 2
55 minutes of crying (what? I thought it was supposed to get better?!)

Night 3
10 minutes crying

Night 4
15 minutes crying

Night 5-8
5-15 minutes crying

Naps:
Days 1-6: Anywhere from 2-30 minutes of crying. Seemed random as to which naps had more crying and did not really seem to be getting better as time went on.
Day 7,8: Two naps had 30 minutes of crying (!?!? almost quit at this point)
After Day 8: Max 2 mins of crying at naps (Woo hoo!)
Day 21: Got sick, naps went out the window! Essentially had to retrain for a day which was a huge disappointment for me. Luckily his night sleep remained good.

Currently (Day 28):
No crying at all at bedtime
Looks forward to bedtime routine
Happily “talks” in his crib until he falls asleep which can take up to 30 mins
Wakes up 1-2 times per night and falls back asleep easily

Naps:

Generally protests during the nap routine (which is a song). Cries probably 50% of naps for about 30s-2min.

For the first two weeks we stayed at home and didn’t go out at all. Now we usually have one nap per day “on-the-go”. I’ve actually found that he falls asleep much easier in his stroller and car seat since the sleep training.

Overall I’m happy we made the decision to sleep train but it definitely was even harder than I expected. I hope this helps anyone in our same position!