5 Nights into Ferber
We’re on night 5 of training for our 4.5mo. Sleep has always been extremely rough with very frequent wakes (lucky to make it over 1 hour at night), nursing to sleep repeatedly, eventually co-sleeping. He is primarily breastfed.
He does go to daycare so schedule is a little imbalanced (very short naps and long WWs at daycare), but I always work to have 10+ hours of awake time, less than 3 hours of naps, and a ~2.5hr final WW. I tracked his sleep for a week recently and he was averaging about 13.5h total sleep (BUT I did have to sometimes wake him up from naps or in the morning, so idk if it was perfect tracking).
This weekend’s schedules for example were:
-2.75/2.5/2.5/2.5 (total naps 2.75h)
-2.5/2.5/2.5/2.75 (total naps 2h55min)
Overall I think it’s been going decently, but we cannot shake the first/2nd 45min-1 hour wakeup/false start/inability to connect sleep cycle. That’s when he cries the longest. We’re feeding 30min before bedtime. He also is reallyyy working on rolling both directions as of this week, and will seem frustrated moving side to side a lot during his crying sessions
So far I think it’s going decently:
Night 1:
-bed 7:55, asleep at 8:42 (46min)
-1st wake 8:59, asleep 10:03 (56min)
-2nd wake 10:08, cried until scheduled feed at 10:30, fell asleep immediately upon placing in crib
-dream feed at 1:30
-3rd wake at 4:15, asleep at 4:22 (dream feed at 4:30)
-awake for the day at 6:50
Night 2
-bed 7:55, asleep at 8:02 (7min)
-1st wake 9:06, asleep at 9:36 (30min)
-dream feed 10:30
-2nd wake 12:40, asleep 12:47 (7min)
-dream feed 1:30
-3rd wake 4:37, fed (as planned for this time)
-awake for the day at 6:40
Night 3
-bed 8:00, asleep 8:05
-1st wake 8:45, asleep 8:49
-2nd wake 8:55, asleep 9:47 (52 min)
-dream feed 10:30
-3rd wake 12:58, cried/fussed until planned 1:30 feed
-4th wake 4:08, asleep 4:22 (dream fed at 4:30)
-had to wake him up at 7:00 for the day
Night 4
-bed 8:15, asleep 8:24
-1st wake 9:15, back asleep 9:17
-2nd wake 9:28, asleep at 10:20 (52 min!)…dream fed at 10:30
-dream feeds as scheduled at 1:30 and 4:30, no more wakeups!
-had to wake for the day at 7:00
Night 5 (currently)
-bedtime 8:21, asleep 8:25
-1st wake 9:15, currently still crying ~30 min later…
I’m keeping feeds every 3h since he is not ready to go 5h without a feed. We’re doing check-ins at 5, 10, 15 min (then continuing at 15min intervals). My husband does them and will do ~30 sec of shh, back/belly rub, then leave. He is in his crib, his own room, never used a pacifier.
He’s going to sleep initially sooo well. If my schedule is off by 10-15 mins some days, is that really enough to ensure these long crying sessions at his first wakes? I’m trying so hard to keep him wide awake for his last feed too, not letting him get drowsy on the boob.
I feel like the advice is always to add more awake time, but this has been his sleep pattern legitimately since birth. Even on days more recently with 10.5-10.75 awake time, always wakes up after ~1 sleep cycle.
Insight/advice is much appreciated! I feel like we’ve made some progress w/ the actual overnight portion, and falling asleep initially, but the first 1-2 hrs of the night are still really hard.