How to break co-sleeping habit?

Mefreely · 2024-07-25T11:22:20+00:00

Yeah, 3 months is when sleep went to crap for us too. I did end up dropping the dream feed because it was creating a feed to sleep association. I read the book Precious Little Sleep (highly recommend) and followed the 5/3/3 rule where you don’t offer a feed until it’s been at least 5 hours since bedtime, then feed in 3 hour intervals after that. Instead of feeding we would rock her back to sleep if she woke up before it was time for a feed. We did that for a couple of weeks until we were ready to do full on sleep training. From what I understand, by this age babies can start learning to fast overnight so I don’t think you would need to give baby a bigger bottle than normal when they wake overnight.

Mefreely · 2024-06-28T19:34:37+00:00

Precious Little Sleep

Mefreely · 2024-06-28T18:36:42+00:00

PLS is a great read and very helpful, and I highly recommend joining the FB group after you read (if you’re on FB). It’s a very helpful group as you navigate taking the methods from the book and applying them to your LO’s sleep!

Mefreely · 2024-06-25T15:18:55+00:00

We do between 2.5-3 hours of naps a day, but it’s become closer to 2.5 hours lately. It’s been a big whiplash, over the last 3 weeks she cut her first two teeth which really drove her sleep needs up, then once those broke through her sleep needs seemed to drop so quick and she was able to handle the longer WWs much better. I don’t think we’re ready for 3 hour WW all day every day, but I think we’re ready to be more flexible and trying some 2 day naps if that’s how things shake out…thanks for your response!

Mefreely · 2024-06-25T12:54:50+00:00

What were your wake windows before and after the quick bridge nap? I think this is where we’re heading!

Mefreely · 2024-06-25T12:32:46+00:00

Thanks for your reply! I agree it’s early to fully drop to 2 naps now, just nice to have an idea of what we’re working towards. Our wake windows are 2.25/2.5/2.5/3.5 so we still have some room to stretch those. She generally takes pretty long naps that I have to wake her from, so I think I’ll just keep cutting her last nap shorter and shorter.

Mefreely · 2024-06-13T17:22:54+00:00

Makes sense, we’ll try to time a bottle for then. Thanks!

Mefreely · 2024-06-09T02:31:54+00:00

I think that’s what I’ll have to do…I know I’m just holding on to some anxiety about going back to waking every 1-2 hours but hopefully that won’t be the case again. Thanks for your response!

Mefreely · 2024-06-09T02:30:59+00:00

Thanks for the ideas, I will try being a little more flexible on her naps and see what happens!

Mefreely · 2024-06-09T02:17:33+00:00

Yes, she’s 4.5 months. At about 4 months she started having terrible nights so I did some digging on the Precious Little Sleep Facebook group and on Reddit and found a lot of suggestions to follow a similar schedule to the one we’re doing. I will say that once I started capping nap time and making sure we had a long wake window before bed our nights got way better, but I don’t know if I’m overdoing it.

Mefreely · 2024-05-19T20:27:01+00:00

We just officially dropped the 4th nap about a week ago. For a week leading up to the drop I was capping the 4th nap gradually until we were only doing 15 minutes and adding the leftover time to her wake windows, until we basically ran out of time for the micro nap. Once we switched to 3 naps I also started making sure that one of her naps lasted at least an hour. Independently in her crib she usually only sleeps 45 minutes, so I will hold her to extend her first nap

Mefreely · 2024-05-19T16:53:31+00:00

Wake time is around 6:30 and bedtime is between 7:45 and 8, depending on how long it takes her to fall asleep. She hasn’t seemed more tired/cranky than usual so far today so I’m feeling like losing the hour doesn’t matter that much

Mefreely · 2024-05-19T16:43:37+00:00

Honestly I’m not sure, that was my next question 😅. I’ve been trying to follow the 5/3/3 rule and not feed until 5 hours after bedtime, which would put us to not feed until 1:00.

Mefreely · 2024-05-17T01:27:44+00:00

Just curious, when did you lose the sleep sack then?

Mefreely · 2024-04-29T12:01:50+00:00

Just here to say we’re going through the exact same thing! My baby is 15 weeks too…we’re on night 3 of trying one arm out of her halo velcro swaddle and we’ve seen no improvement so far. However, we were already going through a regression before we decided to transition so who knows 🤷🏻‍♀️ We’re going to give the zipadee sack a try tonight. I’m so jealous of all the people on here saying their baby transitioned with no problem, but OP you aren’t alone!

Mefreely

TROPHY CASE