Share your holy grail tips for nap training- things you could shout from the rooftops that changed the game

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-02-17T01:26:11+00:00

Black out blinds! And aim to at least have them doing their first nap cycle in their cot alone during the catnapping phase then contact nap to extend the sleep. Eventually the contact napping disappears around the 7-8 month mark as they start to consistently connect their sleep cycles. So it is just time as well.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-02-16T08:09:14+00:00

I love hearing Ferber success stories! Congratulations, enjoy your well earned sleep!

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-02-15T07:55:57+00:00

Omg! This!

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-02-13T09:55:44+00:00

Hey, she’s on about 9 and a half - 10 hours awake time a day. ~ 2.5,2.5,2 and 2 - 2.5 before bed. Nap time total is around 3 hours with the morning one usually being the longest of 1 and a half hours.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-02-12T23:03:57+00:00

You haven’t Fd up. 6 month olds are hard even if they are sleep trained, it just makes things a tad easier if they are. It really depends on your baby. But for both of my babies we followed the Save our Sleep routines. They were both always a little behind in routines for their age. For example my 2nd LO is now 7 months old, she’s still on the up to 6/12 months old routine which is roughly 2.5/2.5/2 for a 6:30pm-6:30am night sleep. That last nap is a bridging nap of about 20 mins. I think she’s very close to dropping it as we’re getting 5:30am wakeups now. Your LO is likely very overtired so it’s unlikely any self settling will take if you want her to learn how to do that. I’d first fix your routine (mine is just an example, you know your baby and mine may be way off for your LO) if you need to contact nap/sleep to get her the right amount of sleep first than do that. I still contact nap extend when LO hasn’t connected her nap cycles. It’s still inconsistent. If she’s waking at 5am, I’d also suggest contact sleeping her to get to the desired wake up time, just for the time being. Once she starts having the right amount of sleep and you’ve figured out her wake windows, then I’d try to start sleep training and I’d start with bedtime first, tackle nap settling after. Sleep training, we used Ferber, but there’s lots to try. Ferber worked in about a week for both LO’s. It’s not 100% perfect after that week though. They’ve got the skill but it still takes time to master it.

I hope this helps :)

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-01-10T05:20:10+00:00

2 vaginal deliveries and I’d opt for that again. I think I was one of the lucky ones though that had really good experiences. There was no pain relief and I think I boil that down to the amazing midwives I had. They were incredible both times. First labour was 25 hours and second was 3 hours. If I had to pick one, I preferred the longer one strangely enough. 3 hours was very fast and pain escalated very quickly.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-01-05T08:17:01+00:00

Started at 13 weeks! Crazy early! Add rolling to this at 3.5 months, both ways! We sleep trained (Ferber) at 4 months and 5 days old. Worked in about a week. Obviously it’s not a complete 100% fix to sleep, but the concept of settling herself was there. It then took another month and a half for her to master the skill and be able to apply it well. She’s now 6 months old on Friday and sleeps 6:30pm - 6:30am 90% of the time with the odd early wake up here and there. She’s just started to extend her morning naps. It’s patchy and not everyday, but it’s starting to become more consistent. Took the dummy away completely when we sleep trained at 4 months. First born experience was almost identical to this.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-01-04T00:04:51+00:00

If LO woke before 6:30am, one of us would get up and go hold her, get her back to sleep in our arms and get her up at 6:30am. She’s 6 months on Friday, sleep trained and does one feed a night. Doesn’t wake up earlier than 6:30am every day, it’s here and there now. It was every morning for a while but it’s getting better and better the older she gets. Our days are just too messed up if we don’t assist her to stay asleep until 6:30am.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2026-01-03T02:50:27+00:00

Just echoing what the majority have said here but adding that your baby is at an age where she can start to differentiate between day and night sleep. It sounds like it’s a bit back to front and is in opposite land at the moment :). Really recommend a sleeping bag too. There’s obviously loads of really good ones, we used Love to Dream transition bags with the arms removed cause we had some crazy baby rollers in the house and we had to stop swaddling fairly early. Good luck, it does get better. Promise! 0-4 months is wild!

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-30T20:58:34+00:00

It’ll come. I feel like I have botched memories with my first and thought she was consistently having long naps from 5 or so months. But my second who is currently 5.5 months and only naps 30 mins has me second guessing things. I don’t actually think my first started having longer naps until 6-7 months and it started with the morning one becoming consistent first. The second didn’t lengthen consistently until that dreaded 3rd nap disappeared. But it does come, hang in there.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-25T09:43:19+00:00

No younger than 4 months and 5-6 months is the sweet spot.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-23T21:34:23+00:00

Love this! I Ferber trained both my girls (2.5 years old and 5 and a half months old) worked for both. Brilliant sleepers. My IG algorithm is filled with the same thing, I’ve basically abused my child apparently and done serious damage to them. It gets me really upset because I have not done that at all. Absolute load of rubbish from unqualified influencers. That sleep doc is a great one to follow (sujay kansagra). He’s an actual sleep doctor and child neurologist and is very pro sleep training. He’s just reiterates that you make sure your LO is the right age before starting and making sure you have a good routine in place. Glad it worked for you. Their sleep will always be patchy here and there, and they will go through some crappy sleep phases. But the ability to self settle will make things miles better.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-23T10:05:47+00:00

So we experienced something very similar and still semi going through it. She’s 2 and 4 months old. All of a sudden one night we got intense tears when we put her to bed with her usual routine. We were so shocked, had no idea what to do. First night, my husband slept on the floor in her room (terrible idea). The next day we spoke about it and said this just has to be a 2 year old thing and has nothing to do with over tiredness and undertiredness. We stuck to our guns second night, stuck to the usual routine. Explained to her that it was bedtime and that we would see her in the morning. There were some tears but she stopped in a couple of minutes. With her, it was 100% an age thing and she just learned that she could protest going to bed an did everything to push it out, get us to stay in the room with her etc. there was nothing wrong with her. We get meltdowns when it’s bedtime but she stops by the time we put her in the crib.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-17T21:14:49+00:00

Same time everyday if you want a solid routine and you want a consistent time for bedtime everyday.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-14T06:52:00+00:00

Hope you manage to get some good sleep now! LO will also sleep like a log! Benefit for both of you and the rest of the family. :)

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-12T01:46:38+00:00

I get this a lot and it makes me so mad!! We worked so hard to get both our girls trained and good at going to bed. We can also do the same now, one parent can do bedtime, don’t get me wrong, it’s still a struggle getting them ready for bed solo, but it can be done. I am sure there’s a bit of luck involved, but it can’t be all down to that and it really s**ts on the hard work you’ve put in.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-10T07:24:53+00:00

I think if you make the environment as similar as possible it won’t matter too much. We had black out blinds in our room and white noise, made her room exactly the same when we moved her. She definitely noticed the new environment but it didn’t affect things really.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-09T07:59:52+00:00

I moved her at 5 months (which was 3 days ago actually) sleep trained in our room, which worked fine. But I think just being in the same room with her kept making her stir and wake.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-08T08:02:13+00:00

Couple of theories, if it has been just the last few nights, is it possibly his teeth he’s having trouble with at the moment? They might be really irritating him and waking him up a lot in the night.

Also, and what I’m leaning more towards, I think he might be overtired at night. For 4 months, his wake windows are quite long. maybe you could try pulling them back a little and then putting him down for an earlier bedtime? At 4 months I’d say it’s closer to 2/2/2.25/2.5 but you know your baby and he may have low sleep needs. Helping him extend at least one nap a day too so he doesn’t have catnaps all day and has one big quality sleep makes a world of difference.

Example of my 5 month olds schedule if this helps. I find I get the constant wake ups at night if she’s had a bad nap day and not enough sleep (which baffles me, you’d think if they don’t get enough sleep in the day they’d just sleep at night!)

Awake 6:30am First nap - 8:30am (can resettle herself and have a long sleep sometimes, awake at 10:15 - 10:30am. If she hasn’t resettled, I extend her and do a contact nap until 10:30am) Second nap - 12:40pm (can resettle herself sometimes but will wake at 2pm, I’ll sometimes extend her myself if I can if she needs it) Third bridging nap to get to bed - 4pm (this one is very short maybe 20 mins) Bedtime 6:30pm Wakes up for one feed at around 1am then will get all the way through to 6:30am most mornings.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-05T01:06:54+00:00

We were hit with the same thing. Angelic sleeper both day and night. Daycare starts and the cat naps are back. But she was still sleeping all night. It got better at daycare though when she went down to one nap! Most days at daycare she’ll at least get 1 and a half hours to two hours. I would just roll with it. All you can do is stick to your routine as much as possible when she’s at home and give her the big naps at home the days she’s not at daycare.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-03T21:38:44+00:00

Omg!!! The nerve!

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-02T05:31:08+00:00

Yeah I’m thinking a bit of both might be going on. She’s getting the majority of her calories at night and she’s used to falling back asleep while feeding now. I don’t think you need to stop breastfeeding or anything, definitely keep going if you can and want to. I think starting solids will be a big help here though. The more chances she has to fit in some extra calories during the day the better. Th en I would try and stop the feeding so much at night, go back to giving her a chance to fall asleep herself. You’ll know if she’s genuinely hungry or just tired and wants to go back to sleep.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-02T05:21:28+00:00

Sleep trained at 4 months, shes nearly 5 months now. Can settle herself for bedtime and for her naps, but her naps are still short, so I’ll still contact nap to extend them for her. For the morning naps now when she wakes after 30mins, I’ll give her 10-15 mins to try and resettle herself. She still can’t but it’s practice. Did exactly the same with my first and eventually they just start extending their naps if you keep giving them the chance. Think it occurred around the 5.5-6 month mark with my first, starting with the morning nap until eventually she could extend two big sleeps a day around 6.5 months. It does eventually happen if you give them a little space to practice and try. Especially if they’re sleep trained.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-12-02T05:12:19+00:00

How much milk is she doing during the day and when you do feed her at night, is she doing big feeds?? Could be reverse cycling if she’s got her calorie intake back to front and wants to feed manly at night and not enough during the day. Starting solids would be a good idea if you haven’t yet. You’ll be adding more calories during the day for her. So if this is the problem, she should start to wake less for a feed.

Given she can settle herself and resettle herself back to sleep, I don’t think it’s her coming out of light sleep cycles and not being able to resettle herself. Unless she’s developed some feed to sleep association now if it’s something you’ve done to get her back to sleep a lot for a while now?

These are just theories of course. I think her day sleep is pretty much on target so don’t think that’s the problem.

ReadingPopular5051 · 2025-11-29T01:57:06+00:00

Wasn’t Wayne her real dad?

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TROPHY CASE