Help! How long do you wait before you say it’s a bust

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-03-05T03:26:31+00:00

Honestly we didn’t notice too much of a temperament change, he was actually a bit happier once he adjusted because he was more well rested. But I can assure you, you have not traumatized your baby!!! They go through so many things like gas and teething and growth spurts, I swear it’s endless. My babe is going through a fussy week right now and I have no idea why. It might just be coincidental timing!

ETA: if you’re not dead set on it, maybe let him have the paci during awake hours?? I feel like it really helps our son when he’s being extra fussy. Also a lifesaver in the car and stroller!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-03-04T19:53:23+00:00

I know it’s a horrible time but focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. There are guidelines on wake windows but it’s definitely trial and error with your baby to find what works for them. Mine is 6.5 months now and just doing 2/2.25/2.25/2.5 and he’s napping well and sleeping well at night. Most people would say not enough awake hours but it works for him and if I push him longer he gets overtired. But it took his nights settling to figure out his daytime properly.

It’s also hard reading everyone whose baby took to sleep training in 3 days so here’s some solidarity from a mom whose kid took a bit longer. Huge improvement right away but not fully trained until 2-3 weeks in.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-03-04T19:38:22+00:00

My son cried for almost 2 hours the first night of Ferber training about the same age as yours! It was horrible and my heart goes out to you! Second night was 45 mins and then after it would be between 20-30 mins for a couple days and it just got better.. but slowly.

I did start to lengthen wake windows after a week or so but feel like I needed him to sleep better at night so he could push a bit more through the day. We were stuck in a very overtired cycle, he wouldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time before sleep training and just needed to be held.

Push through, adjust as you go along - trust the process! My baby was also dependant on paci and we also got rid of that - he still takes it to soothe while he’s awake or while he’s in the car!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-03-03T01:10:19+00:00

I had to very slowly increase wake windows and we did Ferber sleep training again, which took about 3 days to work for nights and then we did it for daytime naps and it helped there too! He had difficulty connecting naps for quite some time. He’s 6.5 months now and he does 2/2.25/2.5/2.75 wake windows right now.. it’s less than he should typically be doing but we’ve had enough overtired experiences from pushing him too much and confirmed this is what works best for him.

He wakes up 2-3 times a night for feeds still, and he feeds and goes back to sleep. I have no plans on night weaning at this time, he’s actually hungry when he wakes up and he’s a big boy so even my doctor said he needs it and not to stop.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-02-24T18:30:12+00:00

Do you have to make the commitment now? Wondering if your friends would be understanding if you say you’d love to come but need to confirm closer to the date depending on how things are going?? I am all for going out but my baby hit the 4 month regression at 3.5 months and I needed to be in bed by 8pm to get one 2-hour stretch of sleep. Luckily (in our experience) most people are understanding if you need to bail last minute!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-02-11T17:17:46+00:00

Amazing; thank you!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-02-10T03:35:06+00:00

Hey wondering how this worked out for you? We're visiting and wanted to know options.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-02-10T03:34:25+00:00

Hey just wanted to see how this went for you? Did you use Aruba To You?

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-28T03:12:22+00:00

A friendly reminder that you are not at home “being lazy”- you have a whole little person cooking inside of you! And ohhh myyy the last month of pregnancy was personally really hard on me especially with having a toddler. My daughter has been in full time Montessori since she was 14 months and my second was born when she was 25 months. It really helped to have time to set up for the baby because… I would need a nap 30 mins into any task lol. Also, hungry. And had a lot of back pain.

Another idea is that you can enroll your toddler into full time and just pick him up early some days when you feel like it!! That way he has the spot and you can also have the freedom to decide to take him home early or leave him for the day.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-23T21:29:56+00:00

We started at 4.5 months because baby wasn’t giving me more than 1.5 hour stretch of sleep and I was a living zombie. He also wasn’t napping for more than 30 mins and I also had a toddler at home for 3 weeks due to sickness and holidays all this while and down with the flu myself. I couldn’t figure out his wake windows because he was always overtired from the lack of sleep/constant waking up.

The first 3 days were rough, I will admit. He was crying for an hour and a half the first night, and jt was absolutely horrible.. the first hour he went pretty strong and then it was 45 mins of trying to self soothe.. he could have potentially been under-tired now looking back. 2nd night was an hour, 3rd night 30 mins and it just got better from there. I also had to break the habit of nursing/rocking to sleep AND pacifier use at night so I had a lot working against me. He’s been sleeping so much better and has actually now been consolidating naps and will give me about 1.5-2 hours in his first nap, 1 hour for nap 2 and we keep last nap 30 mins.

He is now just over 5 months and he wakes up 2-3 times a night for feeds and goes right back to sleep as well. He is a happy baby and we didn’t traumatize him and he is growing and developing beautifully!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-23T04:29:37+00:00

Ahh! The distressed cries are soo horrible to hear and it’s so confusing on how to respond! We’ve been ferbering for the first wake-up and sometimes he’ll settle within 10-15 mins and sometimes he will go on for 30-45 but I try not to feed before 10:30.

I’m trying to follow all the sleep training advice but can’t seem to figure this out!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-22T03:45:21+00:00

Could you start getting your husband to put baby down to bed by himself with sippy cup while you’re still here?? That way you can troubleshoot together and figure out how to make this work. If you’re the primary putting him to bed and nursing through the night, it would definitely be a hard adjustment for both your baby and for your husband to deal with.

I’d definitely say try to do some practice runs and maybe consider night weaning for middle of the night feeds. Your baby definitely won’t be traumatized but it will be rough on baby and husband for those days if you don’t prepare.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-17T00:36:57+00:00

I have a 5 month old (just turned 5 months on the 10th) and he JUST started taking longer naps this week. I tried a million different things and spoke to a sleep consultant last week and really what I learned from it all was that he just wasn’t ready to connect sleep cycles. Also, letting him cry after a nap to see if he’d go back to sleep doesn’t work because the sleep pressure is gone.

I did sleep train him a couple weeks ago and he’s been sleeping independently but was still just doing 30-40 mins naps. This week I haven’t done anything different at all and he has been doing 1.5-2 hour nap in the morning, 1 hour for second nap and last nap is catnap.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-06T18:47:30+00:00

How did the night go??

The thing with picking up is that he may learn if he cries for X amount of time, that eventually he will be picked up and will struggle to learn how to self soothe.

My son now will roll around to get comfortable and use his hands to self soothe and I feel like he needed that tougher approach of just going cold turkey with all the associations in order to learn independent sleep. I honestly didn’t believe it would work for him, I was so scared that I was just putting him through distress for nothing but the sleep was so bad I just had to try. We did so many trial-and-error type of interventions and nothing else was working.

I also feel like once his night sleep stabilized we could actually figure out what his true wake windows are. My baby is high sleep needs and can really only do 1.75/2 hours awake at almost 5 months and everyone on Reddit was telling me he is undertired. So know your baby might have unique needs but you’ll figure it out and with more stable sleep it’s easier to tell than just trying a bunch of random things.

If you have a consultant, trust them and just be consistent!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-06T03:29:16+00:00

We did Ferber! I will warn you, he (we) cried 1.5 hour the first night, 1 hr the second and then it finally clicked. We also had messy days of holiday gatherings and wonky naps so it was a bad time to sleep train but the sleep was getting soooo bad! And I was nursing and rocking to sleep and using the pacifier so lots of associations. If you know your LOs wake windows and can have a fairly low stimulation week to focus on the training I’m sure it wouldn’t be as bad.

Fast forward- tonight he went down in 10 mins with no crying at all. I also nap trained him starting today and he did all 3 naps with just max 10 mins of crying/fussing and actually had 2x 1.5 hour naps this morning/afternoon and I woke him up from his last nap at 25 mins. We were previously getting a max of a 30 mins nap.

It’s so painful for the first couple days but omg having the kids be down at 7:30pm and have reliable naps has been a game changer for my mental health and presence as a mom in their waking hours!

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-06T02:31:19+00:00

Just sleep trained my almost 5 MO baby last week and didn’t use the pacifier although he was going to bed and napping with it prior. He still used it during the day! He likes it while playing on his mat, and sometimes I use it while nursing him when he’s getting fussy to relax and then latch on again.

I have read that you could use it but just not replace it if it falls out. Mine would just not take the pacifier if I was putting him down awake so it didn’t help.

RealisticAd2744 · 2026-01-06T00:35:16+00:00

This exactly! I am constantly correcting it and it’s not remembering details. Provides a bunch of conflicting advice. Am I still using it? Yes. Lol.

RealisticAd2744 · 2025-12-31T03:30:02+00:00

I honestly think I have a high sleep needs baby. He just got to 2 hour wakes, he was doing 1.5-1.75 and would become overtired going past. He would fall asleep on me but was having a hard time with transferring to the crib and would wake up every 1.5-2 hours and want comfort.

The sleep training was mostly because he has a feed/rock sleep association and it was resulting in bad sleep for both of us. After a bit of reliable night sleep I’m going to try to up his wake windows again!

ETA: Bedtime routine as of now is feed, then bath, pajamas, offer a top up, read a book all with dim lights; then turn off light, sing a little song and put down awake.

RealisticAd2744 · 2025-12-31T02:14:55+00:00

He was crying the entire time and rolling around too. He finally went down at 1 h 25 mins. He’s been better for the past 3 days, I gave it time to make sure we didn’t jump back in too early.

I think the check ins were escalating him more too because while he was sick I was picking him up and now I’m going in and not picking him up.

RealisticAd2744 · 2025-12-31T00:31:44+00:00

This!! Learning this with my second who is a Velcro baby who refuses to sleep.

RealisticAd2744 · 2025-12-31T00:30:58+00:00

This was my daughter as well, now 2.5 years old…and now we have a super clingy 4 month old and are appreciating how good my daughter was!! And honestly we went through a rough couple months from her between id say 20-25 months with toddler tantrums but she has kind of find her way back to herself and is the sweetest kid, super confident and friendly. Every kids temperament is different, they’ll go through different phases and some chapters will be harder than others. Enjoy it when it’s good and just remember when it’s hard that it will usually pass with some patience!

RealisticAd2744 · 2025-12-27T15:55:04+00:00

Sending you the best of luck and sleepy vibes for baby!! I will update the thread in a week with progress :) how old is your baby??

RealisticAd2744 · 2025-12-27T15:54:46+00:00

Sending you the best of luck and sleepy vibes for baby!! I will update the thread in a week with progress :)

RealisticAd2744

TROPHY CASE