More questions from me about this ...
We have chosen to let my 6 month old son nurse at 10:30pm and 4:30am. He typically cries for an hour around 1am or 2am and my husband soothes him. We are trying to teach him it's okay and good to sleep from 10:30-4:30am, or for that length of time.
Any tips? If he wakes at 10pm and cries (like right now) should I just nurse him and adjust the schedule, keeping the 6 hour time chunk (so nurse again at 4am)? Or Stick to the "schedule" of 10:30 and 4:30?
Have anyone approached sleep training like this?
Not interested in opinions on crying vs not crying. We've made our decision, based on research and our pediatricians approval. Thanks!
My answer is to NOT let a baby cry. It does more harm than good. It stresses everyone out - including your son! - and he doesn't need to learn to self soothe that early. He NEEDS to know you will be there no matter what. This will lead to a more confident, less clingy older child (and adult).
I believe you are giving him mixed messages by not nursing him at 1 AM but then nursing him at 4:30 AM. It's just my opinion, but I think you should decide if you are going to continue nursing him in the night or not and stick with it. He probably doesn't understand why he has to go without and cry for an hour at 1 AM yet you feed him at 4:30. I also recommend the Sleep Lady's book, she has some good tips.
Good luck!
I think that you should have a range. I do babywise, and so since her current schedule is every 3.30 hours, it is really anywhere from 3-4 hours. If it is just 30 minutes, I would just feed and continue on. He may wake up a little early, but might be okay too. As for the 1-2 am, are you having your husband wake a little bit before soothing? It may help him to realize that nothing is going to happen at that time and go back to sleep on his own....but that is a personal choice.
Also, are you waking him up at 4:30 to eat, or is he? For our sleep training, we had our last feeding, and then let her tell us if she needed to eat. If I knew that she could go 6-7 hours, I would try to let her go back to sleep on her own during those random middle time wake ups, but I never woke her up to eat at night, unless she slept too late in the morning. Good luck.
I did something similar with my oldest. At about 5 1/2 to 6 months, I stopped nursing him at midnight, so he would go from about 9:00 to 3:00. He cried for the first couple of nights. After that he would still wake up often, but he stopped trying to nurse so I would go and soothe him some way. I guess would see if he is always waking up at the same time, maybe adjust the schedule. If it's only occasionally try to keep the schedule the same. Good luck. I just had my 3rd and each one is different. I'm hoping this one will just start sleeping longer like my daughter without "training" like I had to do with my first.
I have a book that really helped me a lot with feeding and sleep training it help me get more sleep too. It's called "Good Night Sleep Tight" by Kim West (the sleep lady). I hope it helps you too. I wish you well.
I used to wait 5 minutes anytime my sons woke to see if they really needed something. Doing this I had them both sleeping from 8 until around 530 by 3 months. They almost always self soothed before 5 minutes was up and went back to sleep on their own.
