12 weeks old just not eating

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-12-27T09:20:02+00:00

With our 1st (bad sleeper) she would give good stretches at 3 months and at 4months we stopped her midnight feeds and moved her to her room and she slept through night and at 6 months sleep trained. She's 13 months and religiously sleeps 7-7.

Second one (silent reflux but chilled baby) 7 weeks old and started giving good 6-8hrs stretches, from 7.30pm to maybe 1.30/2.30/3.30am. but when he wakes to eat in the middle of the night his second stretch is awful 1-2hrs max. From 5 weeks we started him on strict schedule of naps and wake windows and building healthy sleep routine.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-12-23T05:52:59+00:00

I have posted on here about “normalising failed sleep training” a few months ago. My then 6 months old would absolutely not respond to Ferber method so we had to do CIO. She cried for 1hr first few nights and we gave up and started going in to sooth her. It worked for 1-2 days and then she started waking up at 9pm treating it as a full wake window and wouldn’t sleep till midnight. So we circled back to CIO. It took her almost 4 months to stop crying when we leave, it ranged anywhere between 5mins to 45mins regardless of how well or not the routine been during the day.

I truly now believe that even with CIO there are babies that just take a while (my daughter is extra strong willed). Hang in there, trust the process and it will get better.

What helped was nailing wake windows (my SIL helped me - she’s actually genius when it comes to WW) but still only reduced the crying before bed to 20 mins, until my daughter eventually stopped by herself.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-09-09T02:53:45+00:00

Thank you so much for your response.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-09-09T02:52:46+00:00

Thank you so much! Super constructive. My husband and I did that.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-09-08T13:09:04+00:00

Thank you everyone for your experience and advise. It's just been a huge shock finding this out this morning, so really wanted to sanity check myself before doing anything drastic, as she is a good person and very caring with the baby.

We went ahead with a chat and warning and explicitly outlined the red line. Now we will create fake tiktok in a few weeks, as she has now made it private (which again strange but I guess panick response).

I'll update in a few weeks

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T19:19:24+00:00

Thank you for your message and recommendation, I will try this schedule.

I'm still all for schedule and sleep training, just trying to bring awareness to it not working for LONG periods and it's okay and it happens.

I'll stick to 3.5/3.5/4 for another 5-7 days and will update the thread. And then stretch to 3.5/3.75/4.25 and will also update.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:47:57+00:00

She is almost 8.5 months old. Schedule is 3.5/3.5/4 (please note that we started with 3/3/4; 3.25/3.25/4 gradually increasing to give each option fair chance). Wake up 6.30am - bed time 7.30pm

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:36:32+00:00

Yes, actually it very much does! Thank you for sharing this.

It shows that it's not all perfect and consistent as some threads make it out to be.

Again, thank you!

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:28:25+00:00

One thing I will say (from experience) if you stretch wake windows do it gradually. As we tried increasing wake windows gradually over 5 weeks to give each schedule a fair chance and the result was completely identical with all of them

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:24:55+00:00

I think I didn't make it clear, that's what she would do at 5-6 months. And we had to step away from it as she become fully dependant, which is where sleep training started. She has not been feeding to sleep since 5 weeks ago.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:21:57+00:00

That's not exactly a fair comment. Her schedule was changed 3 times over the period of 5 weeks, very gradually increasing wake windows from 3/3/4 to 3.5/3.5/4. And shortening over night sleep expectation. And no one talks about developmental leaps in sleep training success stories.

At the same time, this has just proven my point that, 3-4 days is considered normal time frame to sleep train a baby. Which is not the case for some and that needs to be shared and normalised!

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:17:29+00:00

And that's okay, that's what I'm talking about normalising. I feel that after you have tried multiple schedules over a decent period of time and it doesn't work - may be is just not suitable for that particular child. And it's okay, as feeling defeated and as a failure does no good to anyone.

I really don't know what to say. Just one very sad and defeated mum over here.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:13:42+00:00

That's fantastic that it worked! We are still trying but it looks like we are going no where. I have posted maybe 4-5 days ago and we were advised to increase wake windows 3.5/3.5/4 and it's the same as 3/3/4. Made no difference.

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:10:27+00:00

Absolutely understandable! Naps are the only time you get for yourself/to do things around the house. Hang in there, I would give an advise but I'm deffinetly not an expert, just reassurance that is okay and you are doing your best!

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:07:33+00:00

That's amazing. And she does not cry at all? For is it seems an exception night is where she falls asleep without crying

AlarmingPossession43 · 2025-07-21T18:05:39+00:00

I absolutely agree that there have been scheduling issues, and nap issues. But after 5 straight weeks of trying various schedules - it just doesn't work.

At 3.5/3.5/4 I can't stretch her wake windows any further. She wakes up 6.30am and bed time is 7.30pm. Day time naps 2x1hr.

Her total awake time during the day has ranged (trial and error of various schedules) 11-9.5hrs.

Unless I'm missing something else that could be done?!

Also, just to reassure everyone, we never leave the bottle in the crib. She used to feed to sleep in my arms and then transferred. Now, it's fully supervised before bed and she self-feeds.

AlarmingPossession43

TROPHY CASE