in September 2024 Babies 🇬🇧

Advice/Rambling

So recently I’ve asked for some help for a sleep trainer purely to let my baby become more confident in independent naps as she has only ever contact napped. They have given me a schedule to follow, saying my baby is sleeping too much through the day at 4 naps a day and needs to go down to 3 naps where one of them is only a 45 minute nap. From then, my LG must be kept awake from 4:00pm until 6:30pm and to remove her dummy from her which she finds a lot of comfort in. I feel kind of off about it? My baby is not a baby that you can keep distracted when tired and she will take the place down if she is kept up too long. It felt very much that all babies should be able to follow this strict routine and we cannot stray from it, but some days she does wake up at 5:30am (teething) and I cannot keep to the 3 nap routine. I also don’t feel comfortable taking the dummy away from her. I’ve always been relatively fine with a few wakings through the night, yes it’s tiring, but I know it’s natural but I’m being told it’s not right that she wakes up through the night at 6 months. I don’t know how to go about the next phone call as I’m happy to cooperate with getting more independent sleep but I don’t want to be so strict on my baby that it starts to cause issues?

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I’d trust your gut feeling, our first was very welcoming of a strict routine and never strayed. Our second (sept 24) is a free spirit and will do what the wants when he wants, I literally can’t train him in to a single thing. Bottles, naps, night sleep, mood, you name it it’s different every day. Could you speak with them and say it’s just too strict for her and see if they have a lighter approach? I’m sure they’re not tell everyone the same thing so they may have a gentler or staggered approach rather than switching it all up at once x

Of course it's right for a baby at 6 months to wake during the night, you know what I hate about this whole sleeping through night thing is that it gets spoken about soo much and this is why it's suppose to be "the new normal". I was over the bloody moon my little one was sleeping through the night from 6 or 7 weeks old and she did it for months up until about a month ago and she wakes either once a night or sometimes twice, I've got used to it and I do kinda hate it because my son has always slept through since he was 8 weeks old and he is nearly 3. Personally from birth I've followed her cues, I let her nap when I know she's tired, I'm not going to spend my time trying to keep her awake to put her on a schedule which is ridiculous for a 6 month old baby. Like I know it'll work for some people but it just doesn't work for everyone and that's what these "sleep training" people need to understand! Every child is different

@Rhiannon thank you for this! I was listening to all this strict rules and thought oh my gosh this is such a high expectation for a baby. I feel pretty pressured when I just wanted help getting her more comfortable sleeping without me holding her even for one nap a day

i've used a sleep consultant before and i think it's just important to be really clear with them about what your goal actually is! it's such a shame they made you feel pressured. you weren't asking them for a strict schedule or for your baby to be this textbook perfect sleeper - all babies are so different with their sleep needs so actually telling you how many naps they 'should' do or how many hours they 'should' sleep seems quite unhelpful. i always think with advice, it's kind of a case of follow the bits that make sense and try and filter out the bits that don't seem in tune with your baby. difficult to do sometimes x

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