I am SO happy we decided to sleep train Luca. I am someone who needs sleep! Like I can’t function on 5 hours, or many interrupted nights in a row. I need a solid 8 hours, 10 would be preferable. 🙂 But since this isn’t all about me, I truly feel a full night of interrupted sleep is so important for a developing baby as well. So to sum it up, we all needed to sleep. 😉
I chose the 12 Hours of Sleep By Twelve Weeks Old method because a few of my friends have used it and I also knew it was something I could handle. The premise is to get your baby on a feeding schedule, which will help your baby naturally fall into a sleeping schedule. The nighttime feedings are cut gradually until your baby is really just waking up out of habit. This is where the “sleep training” comes in, because the baby needs to learn to self-sooth instead of relying on you to rock them back to sleep. With this method, you let your baby cry for 3-5 minutes before going in and helping them calm down (without picking them up!). Once they are calm you leave and then repeat until your baby falls back to sleep on their own in their 3-5 minute window. Sounds crazy, but it WORKED. But keep reading!
It worked very well for Luca, and many friends of mine, but all babies are different. I also have friends who babies could not calm by the “shush and soothe” method. So if this doesn’t work for you and you need to try something else it’s TOTALLY ok! If you can’t listen to your baby cry and would prefer to keep going in at night, all good too. This is a very “do-you” mom-ish blog.
What’s Happening Now
Luca is now 12 months and still sleeps through the night. He’s on an “8am-8pm” schedule, where he goes to bed somewhere between 8-8:30pm and wakes up somewhere around 7 (sometimes before sometimes after). It’s not 12 hours, but hell I will TAKE IT. We’ve fallen out of routine for things like cutting teeth, getting sick, being on vacation/out with friends etc. I am fairly laid back, where I like a schedule but if we fall off because we are doing something fun or he isn’t feeling well, all will be okay. We’ve had times where we needed to “re-sleep train him” for a few nights. He’s old enough where the going in and shushing him is no longer an option. He freaks if we don’t pick him up. So we essentially let him cry it out for a night or two to get him back to falling asleep on his own. It’s never easy to listen to your baby cry, but it’s usually 10-15 minutes or so the first night, then down to maybe 5 minutes the second night and by the third night he’s good.
Again, I am going to sound like a broken record on here but this is what worked for us. In general I think Luca takes after me and just loves sleep. I also didn’t follow all the rules with this method. I rock him to sleep still (it’s my favorite time with him), I didn’t start it until he was 16 weeks old, and I used a swaddle in the beginning. You find what works for you, and if you have any questions feel free to DM me on Instagram or shoot me an email. 🙂
Please Sleep
