When most people think of sleep training, they imagine letting their baby cry unattended until they finally fall asleep. That’s a pretty gut-wrenching approach for most. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are several ways to teach your baby to be a great sleeper. It’s all about finding an approach that works for you and your family and then coming up with a plan and being consistent.
What is Sleep Training?
In the most straightforward way, sleep training is the process of a baby learning to fall asleep by themselves without relying on an external sleep prop like feeding, a pacifier, or rocking or bouncing. Once a baby is 4 months old, they have the ability to self-soothe. For some babies, it’s a skill they need to learn. Of course, I absolutely love helping families teach their babies to be fantastic sleepers.
When your baby learns to fall asleep independently at bedtime, they can then fall asleep in the middle of the night without help. For most babies, this doesn’t happen overnight. Remember that your baby is learning a new skill and it takes some time. If you’re consistent and following a good plan, you should start to see great progress in the first 3-5 days.
When a baby relies on a sleep prop, like a feed, to get them to sleep initially, when they wake in the middle of the night in between sleep cycles (usually 45-90 minutes) they do an environmental scan to make sure everything is like it was when they fell asleep at bedtime. If it’s not, baby kicks into a bit of flight or flight and it leads to a full wake-up if your baby doesn’t have independent sleep skills to get themselves back to sleep. Has anyone played the paci game ALL NIGHT LONG?
Can You Sleep Train and Keep a Night Feed?
Yes! You can absolutely keep a night feed and teach your baby to fall asleep independently. So much confusion about sleep training lies around the feed. It’s a common misconception that if you sleep train your baby they can’t have a night feed. People believe that you have to wait until a baby is ready to drop all of the night feeds to improve sleep. This keeps families from working on sleep when the baby is less than 6 months old.
4 Sleep Training Methods
The different sleep training methods have various names, but they can all be put into these four categories.
CIO/Extinction
When people refer to CIO (“Cry It Out”), they are typically referring to the extinction method. This is a sleep training technique when you put your baby in the crib fully awake and do not intervene until the morning unless there is concern a child is hurt or ill.
Check-Ins
This approach has parents go into the baby’s room to offer reassurance and check in on the baby. For some babes, the check-ins are helpful. For others, it makes them more upset. It’s important to pay attention to how baby is responding to your interaction and the progress they are making when deciding when to go in for a check. The clock is there to guide you, but there is more to think about than simply how long it’s been since the last check-in.
Pick Up, Put Down
This method involves putting baby to sleep, allowing them time to settle on their own, and then going in to offer comfort by picking them up. Then, rinse and repeat until baby falls asleep. I find this method works best with newborns in conjunction with getting baby drowsy, but awake beforebeing put down. Drowsy but awake, however, is not a technique I find successful once a baby is no longer a newborn.
Chair/Stay In The Room
This method involves sitting in a chair next to your child until they fall asleep. Every few days you move the chair further away as they become more comfortable falling asleep with you further away. Within a week to a week and a half, you are no longer in the room.
When Should You Sleep Train?
There is no “best time” to sleep train. It’s going to be most successful when you feel ready to commit to making changes and being consistent.
Logistically, look at your calendar and find a time when you're not going out of town and don’t have any big changes going on. It’s never a good idea to sleep train when a big transition is happening like a move or a new school or a new sibling coming.
I do find that 4-6 months of age is a bit of a sweet spot. Most babies this age pick up on sleep training quickly.
Keep in mind that it’s never too late to make changes to your kiddo’s sleep. So if what’s going on with sleep in your house is not sustainable, make a change.
And if you want help getting results quickly, I can do that! Just book a call.