For moms with little ones getting enough sleep can be a challenge. Especially when there’s a new baby! The resulting sleep deprivation can become unbearable over time.
That’s the challenge baby sleep training methods aim to address.
What is Baby Sleep Training?
Baby sleep training tries to teach infants healthy sleep habits by encouraging them to sleep independently through the night. It typically involves having consistent routines and using specific techniques to help them learn to fall asleep and stay asleep on their own. The idea is that they shouldn’t necessarily rely on rocking, feeding, or being held in the middle of the night.
There are several methods and approaches to baby sleep training (or coaching). What works best depends on the baby’s age and their needs. The main goal is to ensure new parents and everyone in the house get a good night’s sleep over that first year.
Sleep Training Methods
Baby sleep training methods have come about over the last hundred years or so. Originally they were designed to make life more convenient for caregivers and discouraged holding the baby too much for fear of “spoiling” them.
It’s evolved some over the years to have more of a focus on baby’s needs too. The main goal is to help baby sleep better at night so parents can too. Newborns have different needs than babies six months and older. That said, here are some established baby sleep training methods.
Cry It Out Method
The “cry it out” (CIO) method (aka extinction method) is one many of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents may have used. It involves allowing the baby to cry for longer and longer times without intervening. The goal is to teach self-soothing by letting them cry until they fall asleep.
One version is to only allow baby to cry for a few minutes at a time. The extreme version is to shut the nursery door at night and no matter what it doesn’t open until morning. This method is highly controversial as it’s thought to put unnecessary stress on the baby.
This method starts with a bedtime routine and parents putting the baby to bed while drowsy. Once the baby is in bed, parents leave the room and don’t return until the baby falls asleep. If the baby wakes and starts to cry, parents don’t intervene. Instead, they allow the baby to cry for a predetermined time before checking on them.
Over several nights, parents gradually increase the length of time they allow the baby to cry before intervening. The goal is to teach the baby to self-soothe and fall asleep independently without relying on parents.
However, this method doesn’t always take into account that babies cry when they have an unmet need. I wouldn’t recommend the cry it out method to help a baby establish good sleep.
The Ferber Method
The Ferber Method is also known as graduated extinction. It was introduced in the 1985-best-selling book, “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems” by pediatrician Richard Ferber. It’s a variation of the cry it out method.
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