Sleep training parents - how are we handling MOTN wakes? Not willing to do full-on CIO. Baby will be 5 months in a few days. EBF/pumped bottles at work. Baby sleeps in his crib in his own room for naps and night.
My previously good sleeper is really in the thick of the 4-month regression and has been for almost three weeks. We did some gentle Ferber/FIO early on which helped a lot with the initial bedtime and naps, but he rarely woke more than once in the MOTN until recently. My longest stretch of sleep last night was just over 2 hours. I work full time in a high-performance career; I can’t keep doing that. It directly impacts my work product and my clients.
So far, I just jump out of bed after a minute or two of baby noise and immediately nurse him, and he’ll eat for 12 min and go back down with no issues. I think if I let him fuss it out a little more there’s a high chance he would put himself back to sleep after 15-20 min or so of complaining, but my line of thought up until recently is that I’d rather be awake for 12-15 min nursing him versus lying in bed wide awake listening to him fuss for 20+ min and potentially having to go nurse him if he escalates regardless.
I'm not necessarily ready to night-wean altogether (and I think he's too young for that). I don’t mind one MOTN feed, but he’s getting plenty of oz during the day to be able to either STTN or only do one MOTN feed (like he consistently did from about 8 weeks until 4 months, and still jumped a whole 10+ percentile in weight between his 2 mo appt and 4 mo appt). I just can’t consistently do the comfort nurse back to sleep every 2 hours at night.
For reference, baby is on a 3-nap day. Our schedule is 7/7:30 wake, 9:30/9:45 nap, 12:30/12:45 nap, then a third nap that may occur anywhere from 3:30-5:30 (if starting at 5 or later, I cap it at 30 min). Bedtime at 7:30/8:30 depending on how late the third nap occurred. He eats every 2-2.5 hours. Naps are usually only 45-55 minutes long (rarely we get one that's 1.5-2 hours). Wake windows are usually 2-2.5 hours (sometimes 3).
Yes, at times we did. We followed Safe Sleep 7 and so I slept in the C-curl position around baby with baby’s head at breast level. We have a pretty firm mattress. I used a small squishmallow as a head pillow for myself and kept all blankets at or below waist level. The majority of cosleeping deaths are from accidental cosleeping in an unsafe space like a sofa or recliner/glider.
My newborn had some medical issues (nothing that would make cosleeping any less safe) which meant I was driving him 1.5 hours one way to appointments multiple times a week and more than once I caught myself almost nodding off while driving… at that point I decided it was safer to deliberately and safely cosleep at times than to be so incredibly sleep deprived that I crashed my car with my newborn in the backseat.
I’ve always been a very light sleeper and am pretty aware of my movement when I sleep. I have a 5 lb dog who sleeps curled up next to me under the covers every night and has for years. During cosleeping I continued to sleep very lightly, was aware of every little move, and would always wake up in essentially the same position we fell asleep in. Baby would wake to breastfeed every couple of hours, I would pop the boob in his mouth, and I’d fall back asleep while feeding. He’d eventually fall asleep on the boob and most of the time I’d wake up briefly when he unlatched.
Because it was basically impossible for me to get a super deep sleep while cosleeping, it was a short term fix for us. We cold turkey switched baby to his crib in his own room at 8 weeks and we all started sleeping much better at that point. Cosleeping as safely as possible was very helpful for us but it wasn’t something I wanted to do long term. There’s certainly a level of risk with it no matter how safe you make it and I was never fully 100% comfortable with it. It’s definitely not for everyone.
edited for grammar, clarity, and more info
Did you sleep in the same bed as your newborn?
NewParents