I need help, I’m losing my mind 🫠we sleep trained with Ferber at 5 months old. It worked fine at first, he’d sleep 7:30-1:30 or 2:30, feed, wake at 4:30, feed and then awake for the day around 6:30/7
The last few weeks have progressively gotten worse and worse. A week ago he was waking at 10:30/1:30/3:30/5 then at 5 I just bring him to bed and cosleep until 7 and up for the day. Last week I decided we would train the 10:30 with CIO (Ferber was just making him more upset) it worked ok and over the course of 4 nights he cried progressively less and then skipped that wake. Well fast forward to 2 nights ago, he woke and cried for TWO HOURS (a few back rubs and check ins because that’s a long time). I eventually decided to just nurse him to sleep. But now the past 2 nights are just a mess, up so many times and I’m feeling so sleep deprived it’s easier to feed him for 5-10 minutes and then get him back to bed; but I know that’s not sustainable.
Schedule and stuff: he’s EBF, ideal wake is 7am. I follow 2/2.5/2.5/3 for the wake windows. Naps suck and are only about 30 minutes unless we happen to be in the car, so he seems tired all day long. Bedtime around 7ish. Sleep routine is feed, bath, pjs, bed. He falls to sleep within 10 minutes, minimal crying, he seems to self soothe by rubbing the crib slats and eventually rolls over and falls asleep (our only win from sleep training).
What do I do about MOTN? I can’t handle 2 hours of crying (our house is 1200 sq feet and we have a 4 and 6 year old who have school in the morning and it eventually wakes them). I’m ok with some amount of crying and honestly open to extinction, but it seems like extinction crying would just get progressively worse throughout the night as sleep pressure lessens. Ideally I’d like to feed him 1 time over night. Ideas, tips, tricks? He’ll be 7 months on May 8th.