To me, sleep training, like many other things related to parenting, is a personal choice. There’s no right or wrong, and it’s directly connected to your family lifestyle. You will do your research to choose what might be best for you and in the end, you might do some tweaking to find what best suits you.
So I am not here to tell you whether you should do it or not, but I am here to talk about my experience and what worked with my baby and suited her personality.
I started realizing that we need to go down the sleep training path once my baby was about six months old. The reason why we decided to do this was the not-so-great habits that we had mistakenly built up in her. She was relying on her bottle or getting breastfed every time she wanted to go to sleep, didn’t matter if it was a daytime nap or nighttime sleep. She would wake up every two hours unable to fall back to sleep unless she was getting fed for a few minutes until she would fall back to sleep.
So one of the main purposes of this for our family was to wean her off of the nightly feeds, and coaching her so that she’ll be able to fall back to sleep when she would wake up during the night.
After reading and searching about different styles, and get a bit of confusion along the way, a friend of mine introduced me to a book called “The Sleep Sense Program,” written by Dana Obleman, which is focused on sleep training babies from age three month to toddlerhood. It’s been divided into sections according to each age category so that you only focus on the section related to your child’s age.
In this book, unlike other methods that I went through, she has tried to give parents answers for the most asked questions.
According to her and many other experts, the first step to becoming successful is to set up a routine.
The routine can contain as many steps as you’d like but do not be longer than 45 minutes. The optimal routine time is somewhere between 20-30 minutes. You want the routine to include enjoyable, and relaxing steps for your child. So, if your child is not a fan of bath time, do not include it in the bedtime routine.
The positive side of this method for me is you are allowed to attend to your baby if they are feeling uncomfortable during the process as many times as needed. It will draw you some preferred guidelines, but it also tells you that you should always read your baby’s cues. I knew from day one, because of how strong-willed my baby is, I could not use any method promoting “crying out” or anything related to that. I had to reassure her that we don’t want to do anything forcefully; instead, all I want to do is to help her improve her sleep quality.
The method will take you through 10 nights time frame which by the end, on the tenth night, your baby will be able to fall asleep without you being in the room once you put them down in their crib.
Once you decide to do this, come up with a reassuring line to repeat throughout the time that your baby is trying to fall asleep. This can be something like “it’s okay baby, mommy and daddy are here. It’s time to sleep now.” Using this line every time they fuss will give them some assurance, and in most cases will calm them down.
I know for most parents seeing and leaving your baby to cry sounds cruel and might be the most difficult thing to do, that’s why this book was appealing to me.
There’s no doubt that once you go through sleep training your baby will cry since it’s a new thing and they are not expecting you to put them down in their crib awake.
Before this, you were either feeding them to sleep or rocking them, and again, none of these are wrong if you are comfortable and find it working for you and your baby. But we all know that consistency is the key in the early years, and by doing this you are deliberately breaking this for your baby, and that’s what may cause them to cry in the beginning. Thus, if you choose to go through this pass, no matter what method you choose, expect some crying. Typically, most babies during their first few nights of sleep training might be crying for around 45 minutes.
The most important thing is to make sure that all their essential needs are being met once you are going through this process, meaning that they are fully fed, changed, and not physically hurt.
Once I read this book, I also realized that relying on any type of props for sleeping can make the process longer or in some situations not fully successful. What do I mean by sleeping props is a soother, white noise machine, etc. Using these can make the sleeping conditional. You’ve probably have seen that if your baby is using a pacifier (soother) to fall asleep; once the soother falls out of their mouth, they usually wake up within a few minutes trying to look for it. So, the book recommends that you don’t use any of these if you decide to go through this process.
I’d like to finish this by saying that it’s never too late if you decide to sleep train. I was getting the impression that I should have done this sooner to get the best result by listening to parents around me, but this book assures you, depending on your baby’s age, there are ways to become successful and get the result that you are hoping. All you need is consistency, teamwork, and predictability.
Implementing changes can be difficult no matter what age you are at.
If you find this useful or if you know someone that can find value in this, please help me in spreading the words.
Thanks for giving my work a slice of your attention!
I really cannot understand using CIO methods. There are alternatives. Good ones. I've been using Susan Urban's toddler tips (here: https://www.parental-love.com/shop/toddler-sleep-training) but there are many more gentle techniques that I've been choosing from. Crying for 45 minutes doesn't have to be a part of the process.