Seeking Advice on Getting Baby to Sleep Through Night

Hey A.,

I have an almost 5 month old and I'm still sleep training her, she's sleeping through the night though, sleeps about 10 hours straight! However, she still has a difficult time getting to bed (especially for her naps). I'm with you on how it's so hard to "Ferberize" her (more h*** o* me than on her I'm sure) so I read somewhere that you can do the "parent friendly" Ferber method...just go in every 5 minutes, instead of every minute, or instead of what you're doing with letting her cry it out. 5 minutes seems to be a happy medium, and in my experience, my daughter's worst time took her 45 minutes to finally give up and go to sleep.

Also, I don't want to say anything really bad about co-sleeping, but I have known people who have co-slept with their kids until "they're ready" and I have never heard of it being an easy transition. Once they're in your bed for that long...I think it's REALLY hard to get them out! I co-slept my baby when she was an infant, but once she was about 6 weeks old, she was in her room...and in her room she shall stay! I think co-sleeping past a few months old is just asking for trouble, both with your baby AND with your husband!

Good luck! I know it's hard, but it'll all come to an end one day!!!

S.

First, and I say this with all love and respect... erase the "ferber" method from memory. I let my oldest "cry it out" but she never cried for more than 10 minutes. I tried to let my second cry it out but in my opinion (not expert so for whatever it is worth) more than 10 minutes is tooooooooo long for a baby to cry.

My oldest was an easy sleeper so I won't even go into what worked with her.

My second would fall asleep in minutes if I rocked her. But of course I didn't want to keep that up too long so I started rocking her in her room for a few minutes until she was almost closing her eyes, then I put her in the crib (Oh, and I know what the experts say but she wouldn't sleep for long unless she was on her tummy, and she had to be swaddled tightly until she was 18 monhts old). At first she would cry when I put her down but I stayed and patted her back until she fell asleep (this went on for a few days). Gradually I started backing away from the crib before she would go to sleep but I still had to sing to her so she knew I was there. After about 2 weeks I was able to go from play time to swaddling to crib with no crying AT ALL. Okay that was getting to sleep.

Now staying asleep was more of a challenge for her she would wake up 1-2 times at night. Someone finally convinced me to try and let her "cry it out". No thank you. Instead when she would wake up I would reswaddle her, sing to her, sometimes rock her, and pat her back.... but.... I stopped nursing her at night. She started sleeping through the night within a week.

She may be teething which is waking her up - perhaps a little Baby Tylenol? Or something a little more filling for night feeding.

Hi A.,
Have you tried co-sleeping? I did with my girls and it's been awesome. My 8 year old headed for her bed at 3. My 2 is still with us. Everyone's different. Just figure out something that works well for you. Good luck. :-)