Sleep Training worked for us! Here are 5 things I Learned! 💤

We struggled hard, pretty much since birth. He was never a good sleeper. So we decided to pay for a virtual sleep trainer and let me tell you, worth the cost in our case (though it killed me initially). We went from waking every 2 hours to sleeping through the night (12 hours straight!) by making a few tweaks. Here are 5 things I learned: 1. Aligning the day schedule: rather than timing eating every x hours, we changed to a nap, wake, eat, besides bedtime for a total of 5 feeds. He gets about 6-8 oz per feed for a total of about 28-32oz a day. With that being said, we needed to make sure he was getting adequate sleep during the day, aiming for 2-3 naps for a total of about 2.5-3.5 hours of sleep a day. 2. Wake windows are crucial: he gets 2-3 hours between naps. First nap being on the lower end, and bedtime being a longer wake window. (At least 2.5 before bed!). 3. Stopping solids after 2pm: with a baby who spits up a lot and can sometimes poop in the middle of the night waking him up, we give him solids an hour after the first 2 meals. This works so he (hopefully) poops before bedtime and can digest everything ahead of time. 4. Giving them space to figure it out is okay: this can be controversial, but giving him some space to figure it out (even if it involves some crying), is okay. We did a version of Ferber, where we gave him plenty of comfort but also gave him opportunities to figure it out on his own and learn to self soothe. This was key! (Though so so hard). 5. If you’re as desperate as I was, get the sleep trainer! I had some free consults with a few until I found who I was looking for and the style I wanted. Though it was expensive, ($700 😭😭) it was so worth it in my opinion. After 7 months of barely sleeping, all 3 of us are completely different people now! He slept through the night by Night 3 of sleep training! And I probably saved money from all the sleep training books and tools I would have wound up buying out of desperation.