Help with sleep training please

I’ve been sleep training my nearly 5 month old to sleep independently in her next to me crib for day time naps and to stop sleep associations (rocking / being held) at bedtime due to additional wake up we were having after the regression hit us badly. I started this Saturday just gone, so we are day five now, and have been doing the pat/shh method with regular check ins. It’s gone well in that I can now put baby down awake and she will go to sleep by herself, sometimes she may grizzle/fuss but very little to no crying now. However, she has only been able to sleep up to approx 40 minutes max (this has increased from 30 mins which is what she did the first day or two). Prior to the sleep training we had a great routine (9-9) with three day time naps. She would sleep around 45 mins - 1 hour in the morning, 2-2.5 hours at lunch and then 30 mins in the evening before bed again at 9ish. Wake windows are approx 2 hours. She is now super overtired as she isn’t getting the same amount of day time sleep due to the short naps in the crib and her unable to extend the nap. I have been keeping her in the crib for the lunch nap (15-30 mins) to try and extend this after she wakes but she just cries on and off and doesn’t go back to sleep. For the morning and evening nap I will pick her up when she wakes. To try and help her not become overtired I have got her to go back to sleep in the carrier (how she used to sleep before the training began) so she would at least get an hour or so of sleep in total at lunch time (30 mins in crib then 30 more in carrier) or she will have a fourth nap, like today, due to the small cat naps allowing for another wake window/nap. My questions are: 1) is it okay to pick her up after 15/20 minutes in the crib if she hasn’t extended her sleep for the long lunch nap and let her sleep in the carrier or is this going to stop her from extending her nap in the near future? If not, how can I avoid her becoming too overtired? And how long might it take her to start extending / is there anything I can do to help? 2) how early should bedtime be if she’s not had a good amount of day time sleep? 3) I’ve been giving her the final nap of the day in the carrier regardless since sleep training began as I want to be sure she sleeps for this one so it doesn’t cause bedtime problems. When should I start putting her down for this in the crib or can i continue to have this as a carrier nap until she drops it? I know she will drop it in a couple of months anyway and I don’t mind holding her for this one (I do miss the contact naps!) 4) finally, I noticed she’s been waking at 4/5am but not crying, just lying awake and occasionally chatting but it takes her a long time to fall back to asleep. Sometimes she will cry and I will then feed her (one feed per night). But then she wakes again around 7/8am when it used to be 9am, and this throws our routine out. Should I go by wake windows when she does wake or stick to the routine times we have been doing for a long while now? And is there anything I can do to avoid this early wake ups? I’m hoping when she extends the naps it’ll sort itself out as she’s overtired… Sorry for the super long post but would really appreciate your help! Tagging admin @Nicola

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Hey! How are things going? To answer your questions…. 1) I suggest you should either give her 15 mins and call nap over, or, if you want to extend the nap, go in quicker to help her go back to sleep. I prefer the first option here because then you are really not causing confusion, but initially, if it helps you continue, offer a nap extension quicker. On the back of this though is trying to figure out why they won’t lengthen….. I’ll talk about that after 👍 2) At close to 5 months a 3 nap schedule is going to be your best move forward, so bedtime can indeed be up to an hour earlier if naps have been much smaller than usual. It’s trying to trouble shoot why the naps are short…. Which can indeed help bedtime not be tooo early. 3) For the 3rd and last nap of the day a carrier nap is totally ok to keep, I actually encourage it :)

4) What she used to do before sleep training can’t be compared to what she is currently doing. Mornings can take some time to come together so just always keep her there until your ‘earliest ideal morning’ and go from there. If you get her at 7am when she wakes, then you are enforcing that. You could leave her a little longer each morning to try shift her schedule a little later. So after all that here are some more suggestions…. I would increase wake windows to 2hr15 (being time out of crib to time back in crib). 2 hr is pretty short for a 5 month old sleeping well overnight. Make sure she is going down 100% awake. Feed 30 mins before bed, routine, and into bed without anything getting her drowsy. Make sure your shhing and patting isn’t now putting her ‘to’ sleep. If you are involves a lot still you have to work on removing that involvement. That then really makes sure sleep skills are solid, which is needed to help naps consolidate.

Make sure she isn’t getting a feed too close to nap time either - again you want her going down tried sure, but awake, not drowsy. Sounds like you are getting there but some tweaks may help 👍

@Nicola thanks so much for replying. So she’s fully able to go to sleep without any help from me. I can put her down awake and she will soothe herself by sucking her fingers and put herself to sleep. Unfortunately we still don’t have nap extensions yet. There was just one morning on day 7 she did it as I think I had stretched her wake window a fair bit due to her waking much earlier that day. Otherwise she hasn’t been able to do it yet and is usually up at the 40 minute mark. I am keeping her in the cot to see if she will lengthen it and haven’t been going in at all now. I will try your suggestion of having longer wake windows to see if that helps. Is it likely that she needs longer than 15 mins to fuss or if she was going to go back to sleep would it be in the 15 minute mark? Her night sleep is much better, just waking at 5/5.30 for a feed. Sometimes it takes her a while to go back to sleep as she will wake upon transition to the cot after her feed but I leave her to it.

@Nicola any tips on how to handle the clock change? I’m in the UK so have a couple of weeks yet but I’m wondering if this is a good opportunity to now put her on an 8-8 routine ready for clock change.

@Nicola sorry forgot to add, re earlier bedtime, if she’s napping 30-40 mins 3x a day and say her last nap ends at 6.30pm, should we put her to bed at 8pm (1.5 hour wake window?). That’s what I have been doing thus far and she falls asleep quite quickly.

You could definitely try leaving her a little longer but I do feel a small increase in wake window will help. 2 hours is more common for a new 4 month old. Just check baby isn’t having a micro nap before hand at any point. If you leave for much longer than 15-20 mins you will be running into the overtired issue during the next wake window so if you do try and say leave her for a little longer then you may need a small adjustment on the next wake window. Typically if you are practicing ‘crib hour’ it’s enough. Baby needs practice, time, full solid sleep skills, the right wake window, and a nice dark dark room. If you are feeding at the start of the wake window you may need a small ‘top up’ 40 mins before nap to make sure baby isn’t waking (and not connecting nap sleep cycles) due to a bit of hunger creeping in. Just don’t feel within 30 mins of bed/nap time.

And if the smaller window before bed is helping after a short nap day, then nothing to really ‘fix’ but keep an eye on it. With the clock change, your schedule will jump forward so if you don’t want 9-9…. Then I wouldn’t worry about a 7-7 or so just now as that will turn into 8-8 in a few weeks. The ‘spring forward’ one isn’t one to worry about really, and if you feel the schedule is a little on the late side you just wake her up in the morning and your desired time 👍

And about that night feed… because you are having issues with nap connections, I would try and not feed back to sleep. Feed in the night, for food, but place down awake - again, solidifying sleep skills. A loose feed to sleep association can cause the nap issues you are seeing. If you want to try the other things first and then you can have that in your back pocket.

@Nicola all sounds great, thanks so much! Just tried her on a longer wake window this morning but still 30 mins nap 😬😆 I know the morning one is usually shorter though so let’s see what she does over lunch! Thanks again, really helpful!

Just keep trying and practicing. For those 30 mins naps I would try aim for a full crib hour. One thing you could try, I don’t typically suggest it at this age, but you can sorta anticipate the wake up and be in there quickly to help shhh back over and see if she can connect the cycle. Naturally you can’t and don’t want to have to do that each time but a few times of ‘help’ can sometimes help the process you are trying to achieve. Overtiredness can be an issue so be careful not to over stretch the wake windows…. I’d be aiming for around that 2-2hr15 before nap 2, 2hr15 before the others, and if naps have been good then roughly 2hr15-2hr30 before bed. If naps have been short then that window may need to be shortened to help compensate. And just to confirm my wake windows are the full time out of the crib 👍

@Nicola fab, will keep doing crib hour with the longer wake window for 2/3 days and see if it works, if not I’ll try the assisted / go in and help her. I want to try and avoid that if I can but let’s see! I did this with my first too and she took to it like a dream 😂 all babies are different! This one does sleep better at night though. If she does extend the morning nap should I cap it at 1 hour as it’s the lunch nap that should be longer? Thanks again x

No don’t cap morning nap at 1hr. Let that go for even up to 2 hr. It’s better to bank sleep if she takes it for morning nap rather than wake her and risk her not sleeping much later in the day. 2 hr max morning nap 1 hr max 2nd nap (if morning nap was maxed out) 30/45 min 3rd nap (a full hr here will mean bedtime can get late). Basically you don’t want more than 3.5-4 hrs day time sleep. For example 7am up 9:15-11:15 nap 1:30-2:30 nap 4:45-5:30 nap 7:45 bed

@Nicola okay great. No success yday and the last nap didn’t work :( despite my best attempts to try and get her to sleep she fought it and I had to do early bedtime. I do feel like she may be teething at the mo as she’s fussing on my breast and crying out like she’s in pain when feeding.

@Nicola she did a 1.5 hr lunch nap today!!! 🥳 I hope it’s not a fluke. Thanks so much! I think the longer wake window might’ve done it, I put her down 2hr 15 mins but she was chatting away for a while before she fell asleep… She’s only doing 20 minutes before bed at the mo, not sure why. When does this one typically drop? Also, when can baby go by a routine rather than wake windows?

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