I have a baby question- sleep training

[Bernadine]

How important is it?  Dd will be 4 months next week.  We have a good routine now- bath, songs, story, feed her, put her down mostly drowsy.  She sleeps in her crib.  She's asleep between 7 and 7:30, wakes up around 12/12:30, and then again at 4/4:30.  This second wake up is actually a good time for me, because that's about when my alarm goes off.  Three days a week, the latest I can let her sleep is about 5:15.  The other days, I usually keep her in bed with me and she'll sleep another two hours or so.

Is 7 a good bedtime?  How bad is it that I feed her right before she goes to sleep?  If I don't sleep train now, am I going to regret it in a few months?

And while I'm at it with the questions, how bad was the 4 month sleep regression for you?

Oh, and unrelated, when did you start solids and what did you start with?

I think that's it, lol.

[SKP82]

If it's not broken, don't fix it! I see no reason to sleep train if she's falling asleep on her own in her crib.

7:00 is a fine bedtime if it's working for your family. It's fine that you feed her before she goes to sleep (I'm pretty sure everyone does that). ☺️

[SKP82]

Oh and we started solids with #2 right at 4 months. He was so eager. With #1 it was 5.5 months. We start with baby oatmeal mixed with breastmilk.

[Bernadine]

Oct 9, 2016 18:56:37 GMT -5 SKP82 said:

If it's not broken, don't fix it! I see no reason to sleep train if she's falling asleep on her own in her crib.

7:00 is a fine bedtime if it's working for your family. It's fine that you feed her before she goes to sleep (I'm pretty sure everyone does that). ☺️

Thank you.  I know this is probably the right response, and that I'm just being a stereotypical first time mom trying to do everything "right."  Lol.

[VeryViolet]

The sleep stuff it seems like it is working for you and working for her so just keep doing it. If it is not working the re-evaluate but until then koko and don't mess with a good thing.

The four month sleep regression kind of coincided with a whole lot of stuff, teething, daycare, rsv, change in his sleep schedule (led by him) so it sucked but I don't know if it was the sleep regression or just generally a shitty time.

We started solids at 5 and a half months. DS was ready probably closer to five months and I pushed it off because honestly it seems like such a pain in the ass. It was but he was so excited once he started eating. He was grabbing for food and wanting to sit with us when we ate and stuff early (closer to four months). Our pedis big thing was making sure they had the head control/ability to sit and hold their head up once they hit those milestones and were at least four months they were okay with starting solids. We started with avocado thinned with breastmilk.

[Kristinmo]

I didn't sleep train until I was sick of getting up. Both of my kids only woke up once starting at about 6 weeks but then regressed to multiple wake ups a night between 9months and a year. That's when we sleep trained.

[julianabixby]

Following because DD just turned four months and is on a very similar sleep schedule (even the same wake up hours)!

We started her on solids this week. Our pedi said she had good head control and looked good to go, so we tried green bean purée on Friday. I thought it might be good to just go right to the veggies and get her started and so far, so good!

[emsumm]

You're doing perfectly :-)

[chickadee77]

Not everyone has to sleep train. If it's working for you, there's really no behavior that you need to change, right? So don't worry.

We started solids around 6 months. I think we started with cereals, then purees, and since she hated those, we moved to table foods pretty quickly. She wasn't a fan until right around a year.

ETA She still gets a cup of milk before nap and bed at two, so I don't see why you should stop. Also, 4-month wakeful was kind of sucky for maybe a week, but I barely remember it, so it didn't scar me too badly.

[Bernadine]

Oct 9, 2016 19:22:01 GMT -5 julianabixby said:

Following because DD just turned four months and is on a very similar sleep schedule (even the same wake up hours)!

We started her on solids this week. Our pedi said she had good head control and looked good to go, so we tried green bean purée on Friday. I thought it might be good to just go right to the veggies and get her started and so far, so good!

Dd has excellent head control, and is recently watching me when I eat, but she has hardly any trunk control, and I keep seeing that that is important.

[FastHands]

If it works for you, it's fine. I will say that after a while of 7pm bedtime, I was like "man, he sure has a witching hour at 6:30!", and eventually we realized he needed to go to sleep before that. That would be my only advice for changing bedtime, to pay attention to her mood leading up to that time. If she's happy and you're happy, then just roll with it.

We started the powdered cereal at 5 months, but my understanding is that the apa recommendation is to wait till 6mos. Our pedi told us to start at 5mos, but that may have had something to do with the fact that he was struggling to put on weight.

[Jalapeñomel]

I never did sleep training.

No sleep regression for my son.

Didn't start solids until around 8 months, tried at 6 he was uninterested.

[mekia]

We didn't need to sleep train DD. Yours sounds like DD was. It's great!

DS on the other hand... we finally ferbered at 7 months and never looked back.

Didn't really notice any regression at 4m.

We did BLW/purée at 6m. Tried earlier with DD because she never took a bottle, but didn't get the hang of it until 6-7m.

[macmars45]

7pm is a great bedtime if that works for your DD/your family.

H and I still feed our 5 month old DS to sleep. We'll stop when he has teeth.

We started solids a few days after he turned 5 months. We did a week of banana 1x/day and now we're trying rice cereal. Next up is pears.

[clairedunphy]

I never did any specific sleep training. If they got to an age I felt was too old to be up eating all night long, I did wean them from that by trying to get them back down without a bottle. Sounds like your little one is doing fine.

[thatgirl2478]

I don't see anything wrong with your schedule. She's 4 months old, so that's just kinda what they do.

FWIW we didn't start making DD2 sleep through the night (via Ferber method) until she was just over 12 months old, which was also right about the time she weaned. We never really needed to do that for DD1 since she slept through the night at 6 wks old.

ETA - sleep training is really just a fancy term for keeping the kid on a schedule. That's fine.  7 is a fine bedtime because a) she's little, and b) you need to do grown up stuff too. lol. If she's not fighting her 7pm bed time, you're fine. My kids are 2 & 5 and we start the bed time routine around 7/7:30 and they are usually in bed by 7:30/8.  They sleep until 7 (the oldest) and 8:30/9 (the youngest).

[hopecounts]

Yeah we sleep trained because DD wouldn't go to sleep on her own.
If your LO is sleeping on her own and it's working KOKO.

[cabbagecabbage]

I never sleep trained. Some people swear by it. Some people think it's awful. You don't have to do it and I certainly wouldn't add anything if your routine works for you and your baby is happy/healthy. My first had a wicked awful 4 month regression. I dealt with it knowing it was developmentally normal and would end someday but it sucked.