Share sleep training resources with me, please?

My baby will be 3 months old this week. We bed share, and he typically goes to sleep between 8:30-9 pm (10 pm on rare occasion.) He’s EBF and wakes up maybe twice a night to eat, usually around midnight and then again at 3 am, and then he’ll sleep till about 7 am. I’ve heard the term sleep training but I don’t really understand if I need to sleep train him; I mean, he sleeps pretty well except for the waking up to eat and I’m not sure I can do anything about that! I’m super sleepy in the mornings and I’m not sure how I’ll do when I return to work next month 😔

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Sleep training is more about getting babies to fall asleep independently in their own crib and being able to self soothe when they wake during the night. With my daughter we didn't sleep train until about 10 months because we'd rock her to sleep and then transfer her. But at 10 months she started waking up every time we tried to transfer her and crying until we rocked her again! It's not recommended until 6 months old and it's not necessary if you have a good sleeper!

Do you feed until he refuses? My lo eats for a long time before he goes down for the rest of the night. He sleeps for >11hours without waking up once. He eats every 2-3hrs during the day for 6times. We play with him hard! So he naps hard for 40min-2hrs. This routine really works for us and we plan on reducing the number of feedings down to 5times in the next few weeks. We continue with the eat-play-sleep pattern. It really worked out for us.

I highly recommend Takingcarababy’s resources to reduce night feeds!! We went from 2 feed to 1 feed this week by following her tips! Our baby will be 3 mo this week too.

The guide says its normal for babies to have 1 middle of the night feeding until 4 mo old.

Her advice but simplified:
1. Make sure baby is fed till full during the day
2. Let baby cry for a little bit before offering the breast. Often times they are not hungry and just need a little help to fall back to sleep
3. Make sure baby is not overtired or undertired during the day, a good nap schedule is key! For this, i use the Huckleberry app’s Sweet Spot to calculate my baby’s next nap. You can manually calculate 90-120 min of wake window too but i prefer to reduce that mental load

Curious why you are wanting to sleep training things seem to be going well? Babies don’t need to be “trained”.

thanks so much for sharing your feedback! 💜 I have noticed recently he’s been snacking a lot more and getting silly during feedings, pulling his head back and chatting instead of eating, and I think I’ve encouraged this behavior by laughing instead of redirecting 🥸 so he’s definitely not eating till full. I’ve just downloaded the Huckleberry app so I hope that helps us implement a routine too! 😁

Thatsleepdoc on Instagram has tons of good info! He's a pediatric neurologist that studies sleep

I agree! I don’t love the vocabulary associated with this subject (sleep training, sleep regression) but I’m a FTM and sleep training is a term I’ve heard a lot but don’t really understand. I agree things are going well with my bub, but I’ve found that I’m not able to sustain myself with interrupted sleep 🥱 (and I certainly won’t be able to make it to work on time if we continue this way) so I appreciate other parents sharing what’s working for them so hopefully my little guy and I can sleep through the night more frequently 😴

Totally! I like HeySleepyBaby. Definitely not a fan of TCB as her methodology is modified Ferber which has been shown to have negative psychological effects. But every parent has to do what works for them and each babe is different!

thanks for sharing! 💖 There’s so much information out there and it’s daunting trying to research it all, so I truly appreciate everyone taking the time to share what’s working for them! I’m looking into everything that’s been shared and Levi and I will be exploring our options to see what works best for him (and me! 😉☺️)

I don’t like the terms either & my guy has been sleeping through the night since about 10 weeks old, but I feed him a ton during the day to stack him up on calories for the night.

He used to wake up every day at 4am & I sort of trialed to see if it was just a habit for him or if he was truly hungry so I would wait about 5-10 minutes to see if he’d settle himself back down and he did - since he did that initial stretch I would just make sure he wasn’t waking up hungry and now he stopped waking all together - he sleeps in a crib in my room and is a thumb sucker, so that’s helpful. If they’re truly hungry, they wouldn’t settle, they’d just continue fussing, so that helped me determine it was habitual!

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Baby clothes

Just out of curiosity, why do parents love zipper onesies?

Don’t get me wrong, I tried zipper ones it’s easy to zip in and out when putting it on the first time and taking it out, but I find it difficult when changing diapers especially when baby is asleep.

I prefer those kimono style buttons where it’s easy to button or too down button with crotch snaps.

Is everyone thinking the same or different? Lol

At this point I’m not enjoying motherhood

My 22 month old is horrendous at the moment🫣 biting, hitting, pushing, pulling and shoving not only adults but children he also wants what other children have and will just snatch it away from them.

We repeat ‘nice hands’ ‘be gentle’ ‘let’s share’ etc

But how do I make him understand what he’s doing isn’t very nice? At the end of the day I feel like I’ve just been saying his name all day and nothing else.

What can I do?

This might rattle some people

Ok, this might get a bit long, and a bit bumpy, so get comfy and buckle up.

So about a week or 2 ago, there was a post on here regarding sleepovers. Not letting their child go to them as you can't trust who'll be at the house etc.

Now, given recent incidents in nurseries and schools, plus my own experience back in the 90s, I am more concerned about sending my child to nursery and later school than I am to a friend's house for a sleep over.

The other day a man was jailed for abusing children at the nursery he worked at. A woman has been arrested for sleeping with an underage boy and then getting pregnant by a different underage boy while on bail for the first offence.

Young girls and boys get sexually harassed and bullied when at school, not all of them. But more than you think. And not just by other kids, but by adults who we as parents are trusting to look after our kids.

A sleepover, is a more controlled environment, with only a handful of people coming into contact with your child. A school, a club etc there can be 100s of people coming into contact with your child.

I was targeted at 7 years old by the owner of a prominent private school. Thankfully, I wasn't SA'd. In year 5 of primary school, I started to develop early, I was harassed by the boys and teachers made remarks about how my uniform didn't fit right, always "adjusting it" around my chest and legs.

Years 7-9 of secondary school were hell. But it was all under the guise of "we're just messing around". A teacher twanging my exposed bra strap (none uniform day) is not "messing around".

Boys pinning me down trying to rip open my shirt to see my breasts.

I fear for my daughter. I hope she takes after my father's family, flat chested.

We need to educate all our children, what is acceptable behaviour. And to come to us, as their parents should ANYTHING happen.

Dummy

My baby has had a dummy since about 2 weeks old (now 5 months) and over the course of the last month we weaned her off it during the day only for naps and night (which was fine) and then 5 days took it completely away during the day.

The first day no dummy was fine, the second bit rougher. But now it feels impossible she just moans and cries all the time it takes ages for her to go down to sleep (she’s always been an amazing sleeper)

I thought it was meant to get better as time went on not worse. I’m at my wits end I dunno what to do.

Currently typing this as she screams uncontrollably in the car and I cry with her cos I can’t do anything.

Help

My LO every feed. Drs don’t seem to think it’s a problem the whole Muslim cloth gets soaked so much I’m using towels now. I’ve tried size O teats he gets really frustrated and still spills it out :(

How to help my husband understand why I'd like to breastfeed

My husband is very supportive, but he is also someone who wants to make things as easy and as stress free as possible.

With our first child, I tried to breastfeed, but due to my own medical issues postpartum, baby and I were separated a lot and my milk dried up so quickly. We introduced formula around 2 weeks PP, and I tried pumping as much as I could, but it just lead to nothing. It was heartbreaking. It definitely ruined a lot of those early weeks for me, I was wrecked with guilt and sadness. I cried every day and felt like such a failure.

Now my son is a healthy, happy 2 year old and I eventually came to terms with formula feeding him. He was quite content with the first formula we tried, never had feeding or gas issues etc, so it felt like a much easier option.

Obviously my husband witnessed all of this and now we're expecting our second baby, he sort of assumed we'd just go straight to formula.

I told him pretty early that I'd like to try breastfeeding again, and although I won't be putting so much pressure on myself this time, I've also done more research and I'm more prepared for the hard times that might come up in the early days/weeks, and I'm trying to prepare for any complications.

He's very supportive and says it's totally up to me and hasn't tried to sway me either way, but I do get a feeling the moment things get difficult PP he will automatically be buying formula. And he won't mean it in a bad way, he'll just be trying to make things easier for me and take off the pressure. He won't understand that it's unhelpful.

His thinking is that as long as baby is fed that's all that matters, and I agree mostly! But I also understand how beneficial breastfeeding can be and want to give it all my effort if I'm able!

So I guess I'm asking, are there any good resources I could send him to read? Preferably nothing too long/wordy, but something that explains the benefits and how to best support me during this time too? (Also something preferably from the UK as I know guidance can differ depending on country)