The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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6.5 month-old baby is not sleeping well. He wakes up frequently, wants his mother.
For the first few months, almost all his sleep was either co-sleeping (common in Europe, but it never felt safe to me), or in the presence of an awake parent (holding, carrier, stroller, car). For a while, we had some success putting him down after he fell asleep and him staying asleep for a few hours, but it would often take a long time to get him into a deep-enough sleep that he would staying sleeping upon being put down.
I eventually strongly suggested sleep training. I read stuff online, Emily Oster and others, and figured we should give the Ferber method a try.
My wife didn't like it; I found it difficult too, and actually I caved on night 3, even though it was kind of working at other times. But I regret caving and think we should have continued.
But our state-issued parenting advisor recommended a gentler method which I can't see working; it rewards his crying with attention; lo and behold, he cries every time he wakes up alone.
Now my wife and I are at odds; It's been 2 weeks of this with little-to-no improvement. She is getting less sleep than I am.
3 older women in my life whose opinions I respect (mother, aunt, landlady) all say we just need to do sleep training properly and stick to it.
The modern Zeitgeist says that sleep training is cruel, even if the studies don't. My wife's friends and family are on her side too. My wife was worrying that the 3 nights we did of Ferber method have ruined our son completely (on all 3 days after he was in a great mood all day...).
We're a little over 2 months in with our first child, and unfortunately our baby doesn't like sleeping on her back like the literature recommends. I was on baby-duty last night, and about an hour after feeding and burping her, I tried putting her down in her crib to try to build those self-soothing skills. Unfortunately she just ended up crying so hard that she coughed/spat up the milk she drank earlier in the evening. She seems to enjoy sleeping at a 45-degree angle, so she went on a pillow and I ended up sleeping next to her that way. Babies sure are a handful. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My son didn't like sleeping on his back either, so we let him sleep on his tummy. That let him sleep for far longer stretches. We weren't too worried about him suffocating, because
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