Need Ideas on Getting My 6Month Old to Bed

Consistancy is the key. You also have to be willing to let her cry cause she will.........she knows you're in the room w/ her even if she's not in your bed. I have read that you should start changes w/ the naps. So, first master getting her to sleep in her room at nap time before you tackle the night time battle. On the subjects of naps; I had a terrible time getting my daughter to nap more than 30 min. for the longest time. I started getting serious about some nap training when she was 6 months old. It took several weeks but my consistancy finally paid off. I would suggest having a nap time ritual similiar to a night time ritual. So, for us at that time it was bottle, book & a little rocking and then nap time. The only difference at night was a bath. Good luck!

I can't really give you any ideas cause i am in the same boat with my 2.5 year old. He has been sleeping in OUR room in his OWN bed since he was born. We now have a toddler bed for him in the corner of our room. We have tried several times to get him to sleep in his room and he will but he doesn't sleep as well as if he were in our room. He will sleep through the night when he is in our room. If we put him in his room he will wake 2 or 3 times sometimes. SOOO...we picked our battle and we let him sleep in our room, but NOT in our bed unless he is sick. We don't even know he is there, he sleeps so well.
Our daughter is 7 months and she sleeps in her bed in HER ROOM and has since she was 5 weeks old. So i think its just different for different kids.
Good Luck!

Hi C.
My son just turned 6 months and I went through the same thing as you. He co slept with me for the 1st 6 months. At the beginning I loved but soon realized that neither one of us was getting a good sleep and tried a modified version of crying it out and I am glad I did. It only took 2 days. Now he goes to sleep in his crib without any problems and can easily sleep from 7:30-5am and then just wakes up for a feeding and goes back to sleep until 7am.

I moved him to his crib for naps also so he knew that his crib was for sleeping. The key is consistency and also to watch for signs when they are tired. I put my son down to sleep every 2-2 1/2 hours from the time he wakes up and 80% of the time he falls asleep quite quickly.

I am glad I waited until 6 months becaused I think mentally his was ready to be on his own as well.

About a week before I moved him to crib for sleeping I would put him in the crib 2-3X a day for about 10 minutes and played with him so he could get used to the crib and realize it was not a bad thing.

Good luck!

I have three kids that I have sleep trained at the exact age your daughter is. We let our kids sleep with us/in our room for 6 months, and then put them in their own room/crib at 6 months. I think the keys are putting them down awake and making sure you get their window. If you watch her, you can see when she is sleepy and read her a book and put her down then. I like the book Sleeping through the Night by Jodi Mindell. For my first two, it took three nights of them crying it out for them to sleep all night for the 2 years before they had to get up for potty training, and after they learned how to get up and pee/hold it, they went back to sleeping all night. To this day (they are 5 and 6) they are some of the best sleepers I know. With my 3rd, it wasn't even three days, she never really cried it out. I don't know if that is personality or we just got better and finding the sleep window.
You say she won't stop until you go get her, but of course she will. She needs to learn that you are no longer available at night, and the only way she will learn that is if you don't go to her anymore. It sounds harsh, but the longest any of mine cried was 45 minutes before they drifted off to sleep. It was very hard at the time, but I looked at as 3 nights of crying is a good trade off for being a good sleeper for the rest of your life. Good luck.

I agree with Kate-Jodi mindell has a good book, but I also liked twelve hours of sleep by twelve weeks by Judy Giordano. Don't go by the name you can do it at any age. If you are looking and willing to do a schedule and stick to it-look into these books. The second book is short and can be read in a day or two. Very helpful and very easy to follow. Both my kids slept 12 hrs a night a took two naps since 3-4 months old. Even now at 2yrs and the other at a little over one still are on the same schedule.Good Luck! L.:)

Well, this is totally normal because you have trained her to react this way- if she has always slept with you then she has been taught to fall asleep next to you, and which would you choose, snuggled up next to mom or in your own bed? So, you have to retrain her, basically. You have a few choices- you can let her cry for short periods and check on her periodically (I'm guessing that's a no- I don't like that either), or you can try the baby whisperer, which I credit as one of the two books that saved my life when Izzy was a baby. The book is called The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg. While I don't agree with everything she says, her methods for getting kids to sleep are great and worked for me. They require a little more work than cry it out, though. And by a little more work, I mean don't plan on sleeping much the first few nights- not because your baby will be screaming the whole night, but because you'll be up and down a lot. However, the sooner you get her out of your bed the easier it will be- at around 8 or 9 months they begin to form emotional attachments to things and situations (after a year this becomes really strong) and it becomes way WAY harder to change things for them- for me and my child (and upcoming second child) I have a pretty solid progression of how things happen- out of my bed (because it is just soooo helpful to have them in bed at first) by 4 months, then out of the swaddler by 5mo, off the bottle by 1 year... etc. I haven't had to deal with the binky because she got sick of it at 4 months and we just stopped using it without much issue. Anyway, hope that helps!

This could be me writing this question, except mine is a boy!! We are going through the same thing with our almost 7 month old boy. He sleeps in his crib during the day now, but he is still with us most of the night. I know how you feel! This is my second boy so you would think I would have learned from my first. I told myself with my second I wouldn't co-sleep because of how hard it was to get my first out of our bed, when baby #2 came along I just needed to sleep...so baby ended up in our bed. Now he squirms and is way bigger and my husband and I just don't sleep well. I'm sure this all sounds familiar to you too! What we did with our first is just planned for a really horrible sleep deprived week and we had to re-train him how to go to sleep. We eventually had to do a mellow version of "cry it out" by putting him down awake when you know he's tired, swaddled. We bought a little musical light thing for his crib too. I lay him down and when he starts to cry, I let him cry for 5 min. After 5 torturous minutes I go back in. You calm them in whatever way you can and try not to pick them up. As soon as they stop crying, walk away...You repeat that until they fall asleep. I liked this method because although it is hard hearing them cry, I knew that I could go in there and reassure him if he wasn't asleep after the first five minutes. You have most likely heard about this already but sometimes it helps to hear how someone else does it. This is just what worked for us. We recently started with our second son and so far it's working. Still a work in progress! Alot of people don't agree with this method because they just don't like to hear their baby cry like that. I don't like it either, but I try to think of it as your doing them something good by teaching them how to self-sooth themselves to sleep.I think this is best after 5-6 months for me, because the first few months you really want to build trust. At the end of the day, all that matters is what works for you guys. Good luck!!! Sorry I wrote a novel!

just keep up trying even if it means letting her cry it out (if you allow that). what i did with my daughter was while she still slept in the bassinette at night i had her nap in her room. is she teething? that could be why she doesnt want to sleep. try giving her teething tablets or drops. does she take a paci? try offering her that when you lay her down or maybe a couple ounces of formula/breast milk may work to soothe her. have you just tried laying her in her crib with a few toys while you put her clothes and things away? if so and she is content exit the room while she is playing to see what happens if she is content try staying out for 5-10mins. if she fusses let her fuss for a few minutes to see if she re-occupies herself if she continues to cry obviously go get her. just give it time ok she will be sleeping in her own room soon enough

Hitting different milestones such as sleeping in their own room is different for each child. It was a different process for each of my three children. However, I found that if I broke down the process into five minute increments I could slowly bring about change. Try bringing her back into your room, cradled in your arms for five minutes - if you dont' want to watch the clock just count slowly to 300. After five minutes take her back to her room. I would stand for five minutes and rub the kid's backs. Then leave. If more tears, sit on the floor for five minutes holding a hand. Then leave. I have been known to lay on the floor by the crib out of reach for five minutes as well. The books are great as is the pediatrician, but they don't live with your child. Trust your instincts - it will happen.

My husband and I swear by the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." It explains how much sleep babies and children need, and then gives step-by-step plans for how to get them to nap and sleep well at night, according to their age. If you find the book, make sure it is the most recent addition, because there is a lot of new material in the most recent edition.

I have a 7 month year old boy. He slept with us in our bed until 6 months. Now he is in his own room in his own bed. He still wakes up a couple times at night to eat. Our trick is the vacuum. We have a vacuum cleaner cd that we put on all night (Repeat) that just sooths him so much!!! I put him down for a nap or at night when he is almost asleep and then tap his bottom and he is out!
It is just so hard for me to let him cry it out. He is not a fussy baby so when he cries it's for a reason. My husband and I take turns at night. He has slept for a block of 8 hours before so that's nice.

We got the vacuum cd off the internet...its just white noise. I was told its similar to the womb.