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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...).
For some, doing "the pause" from birth (when newborn wakes, set a timer and excruciatingly force yourself to wait 4-5 actual minutes before responding; we had to use the timer because when we "felt like" we'd waited 5 minutes it would actually be 1-2) results in babies learning to sleep through the night pretty naturally, often by 2-4 months old. As described in the book Bringing Up Bebe (an interesting discussion of the author's experience of cultural parenting differences between France and the USA).
That's what happened for us--and then came the 4 month sleep regression. First time that happened, we'd just recently stopped sleeping in shifts and it didn't occur to us to go back to sleeping in shifts (we should have). We got to the point of waiting up to 15 minutes before going in--so, basically Ferber--and that was enough.
Reading over your comment, I would suggest you start by putting him down awake. At his age he may be having the "Fell asleep in my bedroom, woke up on the lawn" reaction. (By which I mean "Fell asleep in a parent's arms, woke up in the crib" can cause the same kind of reaction in a baby that the foregoing would cause in an adult--"What happened? Where am I? This has got to be bad!")
! does she know that?
I've kind of mentioned it. But she's very "what do you mean", and I'm struggling to express all the ways that her anxious parenting is stressing us all out.
It's stuff like
Remember though your first child is the most stressful, it's common overreacting to stuff because you've not experienced it before. Second is easier and by the third you'll be almost leaving your kid with strangers (I exaggerate a little, but only a little!). Her overprotectiveness sounds pretty normal at this stage. Though the dog thing sounds pretty ok, dogs and babies is a risk I wouldn't take even now after raising 3 kids to adulthood. People routinely underestimate how unpredictable dogs can be with babies and kids in my direct experience.
But boundaries are not just for kids! It is ok if she wants to do x but that doesn't mean you have to. You have to agree on the big things but your day to day parenting can and maybe even should be different. You don't have to have the same reactions. Ferber is basically what we did and it worked fine, but the chances are whatever method you use won't have any long term impact on your baby. This is more for the parents. The baby will learn to sleep at some point regardless.
Negotiate you taking over the putting to sleep duties perhaps if she is finding it too difficult. Her relationship with your baby and her relationship with your baby are different. You taking different duties is entirely ok.
My top tip is starting to teach your baby sign language from pretty much right now. They can learn very basic signs pretty quickly and just knowing milk, more, done is very useful. For my three kids anecdotally they also seemed to be less stressed when they could communicate even very basic things. They won't be able to make the signs themselves probably for another couple of months but they will start to understand. So when you sign sleep or bed, after a month or two they will know what is happening, and my experience is that made things easier. That is probably the thing I was most skeptical about when one of my wife's friends suggested it, but was blown away by useful it was (and to be fair) how cute it is for your child to be able to make tiny hand signs and actually begin to communicate into the world before they can speak more than a few words.
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