Sleep Training our 11 Month Old Daughter – Update #1 (Nights 1, 2, 3)

This is the first post in the LiveFrugaLee Parenting section. I’ll be blogging about our experience with sleep training our 11 month old daughter. So far, it’s been 3 full nights, and it’s going according to plan.

What is sleep training? Sleep training is one of the more controversial topics in parenting. For those who are new to the subject, sleep training is training your little one (“LO”) to fall asleep on their own by “self-soothing.” The reason it is so controversial is because it requires letting your baby “cry it out” for extended periods of time. Opponents of sleep training may consider sleep training akin to torturing or abandoning a baby. Proponents of sleep training believe that the temporary pain results in long term benefits for both the parents and the baby . Once sleep trained, the baby gets better rest, and the parents are able to get uninterrupted sleep.

I’ll be honest. For my son (now ~4yo), I was totally against sleep training. I was a fierce opponent and believed that it was akin to abandoning him. A baby cries for a reason. It is to let us know they need something. I viewed sleep training as a baby falling asleep by losing hope that anyone was coming to console him. I thought it would ruin the trust relationship between the baby and the parents and cause long-term damage and trust issues. It would have been especially difficult because our son had really bad eczema on his face, so we decided not to sleep train him.

What made me decide to sleep train our daughter? The short answer is books and people. I’d say parents who sleep train are definitely in the minority. Most can’t handle the screams and cries of their LOs for extended periods of time. However, I’ve talked to many parents who sleep train their LOs, and they swear by it. They put their LO down around 7pm and pick them up at 7am (or 8-8). Once properly sleep trained, they don’t cry when you put them down, and if they wake up, they put themselves back to sleep or quietly play by themselves until a parent picks them up. I read enough in books and research articles that show that sleep training doesn’t cause any long-term damage to kids. I envied those that could put their kids down at 7 and have some time to themselves before getting a full night of uninterrupted sleep. I was also a little less hesitant since it was our second kid.

There are many different ways to sleep train (6 most popular baby sleep-training methods). I went with the Ferber method, also known as graduated extinction or check and console. It works by putting your LO down in the crib and checking back in intervals, gradually increasing the time between intervals. I didn’t follow these exact intervals, but here is a good example of graduated extinction.

Most experienced sleep trainers start when the baby is about 4-6 months old, before they can stand up. We started at about 11.5 months, so we had to deal with our daughter standing up. It seemed hopeless that she would ever lay back down, but surprisingly, she eventually did.

We just completed 3 nights of sleep training. Here are the deets. I should preface this my saying that our daughter was typically a decent sleeper anyway.

NIGHTS 1, 2, and 3

Night 1: My wife had to suddenly go out at 11pm and our daughter was still up! I pulled a fast one on my wife and decided to take this opportunity to sleep train our daughter. Luckily, when she found out, she wasn’t opposed. I put my daughter down around 11:30pm and went back in 5 minute intervals for the first 3 checks. Each time she stood right back up and was screaming and crying. I was monitoring her from another room on our Nest Cam. I kept going in at 5 minute intervals, and sometime after my 5th check, she laid down by herself and fell asleep. When I went back in to check on her, I would stay for no longer than 1 minute. I would lay her back down (she was always standing), and I would pat her back a few times and reassure her and tell her I love her. As soon as I left, she would stand right back up and start screaming and crying again. It took about 30 minutes for her to fall asleep on the first night,. I think I got lucky because it was so late as the first night is the worst for most parents (1.5-3 hours sometimes). She slept right through until around 7am. TOTAL TIME TO SLEEP: 30 minutes.

Night 2: I started around 9:40pm. I tried 7, 10, and 10 minute subsequent intervals. She fell asleep around 10:30pm, in 50 minutes. It was the same again with the screaming and crying and standing right back up. However, after the 3rd trip back in, she eventually laid down by herself and continued crying and would occasionally stand back up again. She woke up around 3:45 and it took another 50 minutes to put her back to sleep using 10 minute intervals. She woke up around 7:30 for the morning. TOTAL TIME TO SLEEP: 50 minutes

Night 3: During the day, our daughter had two relatively short naps, so I tried putting her down around 7pm. I also decided to get rid of the pacifier and to use no light but continued using a small fan for white noise (wife previously turned bathroom light and fan on for white noise). She screamed as I was carrying her to the crib, knowing what was coming. I decided on 7, 10, and 12 minutes intervals. She fell asleep after the 2nd check. She did wake up at 5:30, but after one trip back after 5 minutes, she fell back asleep within 10 minutes. She woke up for the morning around 7:30. TOTAL TIME TO SLEEP: 22 minutes

Today is day 4, and I had my wife put her down for a nap using graduated intervals. She did 7, 10, and 10 minute intervals. Our daughter stood up, screamed, and cried, but after the 2nd check, she fell asleep in about 30 minutes.

So far, I’m hopeful that sleep training will work. Our daughter seems to be making progress. I’ll probably post in a few days with another update.

Have you sleep trained your LO? When did you start, and how did it go? If you have any tips or recommendations, please comment below!

Here is a link to Update 2 (Nights 4, 5).

Graphic: Canva / Jenny Hwang