leoniem's Profile

We have our second child now and we sleep trained (Ferber) her at 6 months when she suddenly started waking up more and more frequently. We trained my son (now 2.5 years) only at 9 months and that was after 9 months of 2-hourly wakings and endless hours searching the internet for solutions and support. Until I finally couldn't handle it any longer and decided to bite the bullet. It was tough. We had more complicated issues with him, which Ferber also addressed; my son moved his day earlier and earlier - I still have his sleep charts on my computer. I think part of the reason it just went from bad to worse with him is that we initially followed Elizabeth Pantley's technique, which REALLY didn't work, and her method relies a lot on you doing the soothing bit. With both my children the crying lasted a maximum of 3 days and never longer than 15 minutes at a time, but we armed ourselves with a bottle of red wine every night and all of us were the better for it afterwards. You have to occasionally "re-train" them after a trip away and when you break the rules, but it's usually only for one night and I now love listening to my 8-month old daughter chatting away to herself before she falls asleep. She also wakes up happy and not screaming like my son used to do. I can really recommend the Ferber method, it's the least amount of pain involved with the best long-term results.