Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Gentle sleep training tips?
Is there such a thing as gentle sleep training? I have the Ferber book, but have yet to read it. I don't even think I have the time on my hands to read the whole book. Are there certain areas I should concentrate on?
I've never completely been on board for sleep training, but I think it's about time we do something with my little CamCam. He used to be such a good sleeper until he started getting ear infections and now I think the waking has become a habit.
He's still napping in the RnP. It has a 25lb weight limit, so we have some time, but it's a bad habit and it's a pain to haul to Ally's house every day 
He can also escape from it if we don't get to him fast enough. He also sleeps in it at night until midnight or 1, then he's in bed with us for the rest of the night. He's a really restless sleeper, so my sleep is constantly interrupted and DH ends up on the couch half of the time.
We rock to sleep, which I love and I know we would need to break if we sleep train. He goes down fine in the RnP without waking, but putting him in the crib is a different story. He wakes immediately.
Does anyone have any advice for me? I need some good sleep
Re: Gentle sleep training tips?
I don't know how much help this will be. But, I think the key is to be consitant. Even if he wakes up in the crib, keep putting him back in there. Does he cry when you lay him in the crib, or just wake? If you can, do your bedtime routine w/o the RnP, so he knows that his bed is where he needs to sleep.
I still rock El before I lay her down. It may not be to sleep, but that's our time and I love every second of it!
Also, it may take a few weeks but I think routine is key. GL!
Ahhh! poor little man!
I think if you just keep putting him in there, to get him used to it. Do you think it's *too big* and it's maybe freaking him out a little?
I'm certainly not one to speak regarding good sleep habits, but I have a few suggestions. Since he's a year old, maybe it's okay to make the crib a bit snugglier, kind of like the RnP? You could put a couple of pillows on either side of him. I've has some luck letting Ana use my pillow. It smells like me and she likes to snuggle with it. Also, maybe the shock of cold sheets is waking him? We have fleece sheets that don't get cold. Love them! I think I got them at mom4life.com
Yeah, I need to try pillows again. One night he was sleeping in our bed, on his tummy on one of my pillows. I picked him up, pillow and all, without changing his position and he stayed in his crib for 3 hours. I've tried moving him from rocking to the crib with a pillow and he woke up immediately, so I think the pillow and warmth combo did the trick. I didn't think about using fleece, so I will give that a try.
Just to provide some reassurance - you wouldn't need to give up rocking to sleep to get through the other bad habits. either adam or I rock ingrid to sleep for naps and night, and rocked G until she was at least 2 and both slept just fine throughout the night b/c they have different expectations when they wake during the middle of the night, which they learned through sleep training.
Do you feed during the middle of the night when he wakes ever? If so, read chapt 6 in the ferber book. If not, you really only need to read chapters 3-5. It goes pretty quickly and helps a lot to know what to do and why you need to do it (sleep science). Basically you just have to have him develop different associations w/ sleep, and therefore different expectations. I'm pretty sure you'll want to do a more gradual approach like we did. We would start by eliminating feeding, but doing anything else she needed to get back to sleep. Then making our intervention less and less each time. so we would rock at first. Then we would give up the rocking and just rub back, then we would give up rubbing back and just go in to comfort w/ our voice. Ya, the girls got upset when we left, but by returning in progressively longer stages, they were assured of our presence and eventually just got annoyed that we weren't doing anything else and went to sleep. If you stick to it, it really should only take a week or so and then you'll all be sleeping much bettter.
Oh, and we use super soft sheets too, the chamois ones from PB that are wonderful, and we put really soft blankets around the perimeter of the crib, and in the past we used to use a heating pad too, to make it as comfortable as possible.
good luck!
Nope, he doesn't eat when he wakes up. He goes between dinner to breakfast just fine with no milk or anything (sometimes we give a small cup of milk while reading bedtime stories.) He does use a binky though, which is the cause of some of his wakings when he loses it.
Just for clarification, when he wakes in our room he either wants 1. to get out of the RnP, 2. his binky, or 3. just to be closer in general. He goes right back to sleep once those are met. But even when he is sleeping, he tosses and turns quite a bit.
When we do get him in the crib he cries and stands when he wakes.
Thanks so much for the advice and for not judging me for having a 1 year old in a RnP