Sleep Training for a 2 Month Old?
Shout out to Puffer of Puffer and the Baby Fishies! And all the moms who have to deal with newborn sleep dilemmas.
Today we had our 2 month check up with the pediatrician and everything is going great. Baby Jay is 15.lbs! He is in the 97%, which means he is huge (!) for his age. I look at him and sometimes I want to cry because he is growing so fast. It was just yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital, weighing 8 lbs. I am very thankful that he is healthy and strong (!!!) but time is sure flying by too fast!
Anyway, the doctor, who I really used to like until this visit, asked us how sleep was going. We told her that he wakes up every two and a half hours or so. And she said, “Well, a baby of his size is definitely ready to sleep through the night.”
Huh?
I know this may sound crazy but I have been enjoying our middle of the night feedings. Since I am still working full time, I really see that as our alone time and I actually look forward to it, though I am sleep deprived. Nadia, on the other hand, poor thing, is really suffering from lack of sleep. She is unable to concentrate and, at times unable to form a coherent sentence. I have been doing most of the sleep duty but that still doesn’t help her. So I am trying not to be too selfish with my desire to keep the night feedings going for a little longer.
Anyhoo, Dr. Preggo (’cause she is so preggo right now!) told us that this was the perfect time to start sleep training. “Just just put him down in his crib– in his own room– before he gets tired and let him discover how soothe himself to sleep.
She said, “babies don’t sleep through the night but they can learn to self soothe.”
Nadia asked, “well, won’t he be hungry?”
“Well, we are all hungry at night,” Dr. Preggo said, “but we learn to sleep through it. Once they learn how to self-soothe, they will be happy. You don’t’ want your 2 year old waking you up in the middle of the night do you?”
“Well, no,” I thought, “but isn’t there any middle ground between 2 months and 2 years?”
“So, while your training,” she said “no matter what you hear, you should be prepared to just leave him alone and let him cry until he learns how to self-soothe,” she said. She said that we will probably have three rough nights and then it will be smooth sailing.
“Smooth sailing? Who can live through three nights of Baby Jay’s crying? He is only two months old,” I thought.
While listening to her, I really felt like I was going to cry. This may sound crazy, but the thought of putting him in his own room at two months nearly sent me over the edge. I waited three years to have a baby and now it feels as if he is almost grown. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but Baby Jay still sleeps in a bassinet in our room, though, to be honest; this is a bit ridiculous because I think that the max weight limit for a bassinet is– you guessed it–15lbs, so we have to do something.
Hence my dilemna: he is too big for a bassinet and, in my opinion, too big for a crib in his own room, far away from me.
Thankfully, this past weekend, my BFF gave us this really cool co-sleeper which will accommodate a boy of his size and beyond. While Dr. Preggo was sharing some of her ‘helpful suggestions’ about sleep training, she mentioned that even she didn’t put her baby in another room when they were doing sleep training; so why should we?
Anyhoo, Nadia noticed that I was really, really, really sulking quiet after that visit and she concurred that putting him in his own room right now was not ideal. But she said that “sleeping through the night is one thing I am really looking forward to.” She promised to look at the instructions for building the co-sleeper and that we ease into the sleep training this Friday.
Whew!
I still have a few days to get used to the idea.
Lots of other doctors would give completely different advice. I’m just saying.
1I must say, I’d have been a little peeved at that doctor. She acts like her way is the only way.
There are a billion different ways to do sleep training – from attachment parenting and co-sleeping to crying it out, and everything in between. (I got a lot of great ideas from Elizabeth Pantley’s “No-Cry Sleep Solution.”)
That being said:
A. Read every book on every subject you can get your hands on and form your own opinion by pulling things that appeal to you and work for your family to create your own version of how you do things.
B. Take all advice with a grain of salt.
C. Follow your heart.
2Congrats mamas! You have one of the first highly controversial mama decisions you will have to make. Mostly figure out what works for your family. There are a million opinions on what is right and what is wrong and so no matter what you do (unless it is completely wacky), someone somewhere will say that is the best thing for Jay.
Here is what we did. We kept Ziya in our room until she was 6 months to reduce chances of SIDS. She nursed whenever she wanted until she was around 6 months and then we took out the middle of the night feed. Now I dream feed her at 9:30 when I go to bed and then nurse her again at 4am. Like you I enjoy that quiet feeding time with her. If she wakes up before 4am, Fi goes to comfort her. We had lots of bumps in the road along the way including her waking up every one to two hours all night! We also had no idea what we were doing most of the time and spent a lot of time looking at her awake in the crib trying to figure out how to get her to sleep again.
You two will figure it out, and when you do he will grow and change and then you can figure it out all over again
Sleep and babies. sigh.
3Sounds like you got should-ed on unnecessarily.
Your mama instinct is telling you that it’s too early to radically change Baby Jay’s nighttime routine, and it’s okay to follow that instinct. Something gradual like the move from the basinnet to the co-sleeper makes great sense. What about just making that one change and seeing how things go?
Cheering for your whole little family.
4that whole thing sounds utterly ridiculous to me. seriously? sleep training a 2-month-old? i don’t think this has anything to do with size. we used a co-sleeper for our son and he slept next to us until he was 5-6-months-old, at which point he was just too huge to sleep in it any longer. it was wonderful and the point of it is, you get to attend to his needs conveniently (as possible). obviously different families, different rules, but i kind of think your dr. is crazy. plus, if it doesn’t sit well with you, your instinct is telling you something!!
5Just a quick response, as I have to get my sleep deprived butt to sleep. Regardless of his weight, 2 months is WAY too young for “cry it out.” Even Dr. Ferber, the guru of cry it out, does not recommend using the method until at least 4-5 months old. What you will teach him is that no one comes when he cries. Not self soothing. 2 month olds do not sleep through the night. This may sound harsh, but if Nadia is that tired, maybe she could spend the occasional night in the other room to get some uninterrupted sleep.
6i agree. he is far too young for cry it out. please trust your mom instinct on this one! you know what’s best because you know your baby.
fwiw, we didn’t start sleep training GP until she was 10 months. and they say girls typically self soothe better than boys…
7Follow your instinct. I just got lucky, I got a kid who pretty much “sleep trained” himself. For what it’s worth, 2 months is too early to let him “cry it out”. If she didn’t do it with her kids, why should you?
I hope Nada gets some decent sleep. I am going to follow my own advice and go to bed early.
8Yep, echoing the others. Two months is way too early. We had our daughter in our room until she was 9months. Honestly, we probably would have got better sleep if we’d moved her at 7 months, but check and console worked well for us after about 4 months, but the first four?! Eh.
9I like the comment by carrie. I don’t think the doc has any place suggesting that hers is the only way. there are so many ways to try ’sleep training’ and the reality is that each baby is different. what works for one child and one set of parents won’t necessarily be the right way for another.
ultimately you two should feel free to develop your own approach based on your own parenting philosophy and needs. it obviously didn’t sit well with you. I agree that two months is too young to start letting them ‘cry it out.’ (also see dora’s comment re: the arguments against it). even though you need sleep yourselves, I know.
yes, at a certain age and weight, babies shouldn’t need the night feeding, yet they may still wake out of habit and for comfort (or teething pain, which comes next, btw). but I’m annoyed that your doc would suggest such a harsh approach for an 8 wk old baby. it’s telling that she didn’t even take her own advice.
10So glad to see there’s a consensus here. I’ve been thinking about this post since last night. Personally, I would switch pediatricians. I have a neighbor that did “cry it out” with her daughter at a very young age. I found it very disturbing. I was discussing it with a friend who’s a psychologist (actually, also an ALI blogger), and she said she thought it was abusive to let an infant cry without responding at that age. Jay is a baby, it’s okay to “baby” him.
11I was browsing around yesterday in a book store and came across this book “Bedtiming” which looks at sleep training from a psychological and developmental perspective. It doesn’t prescribe a specific method, but instead talks about why sleep training will work, or won’t work at various ages. I started reading and really liked it! It describes the message your child gets, and how that can impact them developmentally.
http://www.amazon.com/Bed-Timing-When-Guide-Helping/dp/1554680476
http://www.askmoxie.org/2009/04/book-review-bed-timing.html
12I’m rushing to respond before I read everyone else’s responses. Sleep training a two month old???!!!??? We read “No Cry Sleep Solution” which I highly recommend because it explains how babies sleep and the biological reasons behind it. Honestly, a 2 month old is still getting used to being out of the womb and lots of ppl call the first 3-4 months the “fourth trimester” for that reason. We didn’t even fathom trying to “sleep train” Amaya or anything else until she was at least 4 months and for a lot of people, that’s still too early.
That doctor gets a fat two thumbs down!
13Just to clarify, at 4 months is when she switched to a crib in her room though she still woke up every 3 hours or so. Then we only went to CIO once we exhausted all other options, but she was MUCH older– closer to 1.
i’m absolutely seething at the idea of “sleep training” for a 2-month old!
14Wow! I think 2 months is WAY too soon. Jackson is 5 months and he’s just starting to put himself to sleep. I still think of them as so little at 2 months, they still need us to be there for them. I always thought of that stage as a time when we built trust. When he needed me I was there for him. When he cried I tried to make it better. I don’t think you can spoil or create a monster at that age. I think our babies grow up way to fast as it is. Do what you are comfortable doing and what you think is right for your baby.
15Well my husband works full time and I take care of the twins full time so I was so happy when they started “sleeping through the night” they sleep usually from 10pm to 4-5am. And we did do a version of sleep training because we have twins and so we let them self sooth for 5 mins and then if they cry any longer we go running!
16I forgot to add that they have slept in their own crib since they were born (But they are together) and their room is right next to ours in our tiny tiny house and they started sleeping through the night once they got to be about 10 pounds. We started our version of sleep training at 4 weeks and they quickly got very good at putting their selves to sleep, I don’t think we would have done it with just 1 baby, but, with 2, we would have went nuts otherwise.
17wow! i think you should change pediatricians! sammy is 17 lbs and was waking up every 1.5-2 hrs to eat ’round the clock. our pediatrician said at his age he should really wake up every 3 hrs to eat, but nothing about sleeping through the night yet. she also said that he shouldn’t have more than 40 ounces of formula a day and that for night time feedings, give him enough to get him back to sleep. we’ve started to stretch out his feedings by a half hour usually through distraction (diaper change, singing, reading, playing) but if he’s not having any of that we feed him. so far he’s doing great and is on a 2.5-3 hr feeding schedule which really works for me at night.
as for the moving him to his own room, that probably won’t happen for several more months. he’s still a baby and needs to be in close proximity to us to feel secure. not to mention he has reflux so i’m always listening for any signs of distress. i have a couple of books on getting your baby to sleep through the night but i don’t think sammy meets all of the criteria. i’ll send you the book titles in a separate email.
18On an unrelated note, I love the new header!
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