Does sleep training make sense for a baby with intermittent sleep difficulty?

Question

We are pretty lucky as far as sleep goes. We have a 6 month old who generally sleeps through the night.

...except that when going down to sleep (unless she's completely wiped out) she cries and we need to take measures like rubbing her belly in order to get her to calm down and go to sleep. (Although, she does actually use her thumb as well to pacify herself.) After her first 45 minute sleep cycle she may or may not wake up again and need the same thing. And in the process of going to sleep during that first sleep cycle she may or may not wake up and need the same thing.

But after the first sleep cycle, she seems to be out for the rest of the night. Conceivably, she's sort of waking up between sleep cycles I suppose, and getting herself back down to sleep during this time?

Would sleep training (such as the Ferber method or something else) work for us in this case or not?

Answer 1

This is just a personal opinion, but a 6 month old is still a very tiny baby who needs your presence and affection a lot of the time. If she sleeps through the night most of the time I'd say you're luckier than most people. Pretty sure she'll learn to sleep through that first cycle as well sooner rather than later and personally I wouldn't mind being with her to get her to sleep.

My 15 month old has rarely slept 4 hours at a single time and usually wakes every two hours. But this is a million times better than when he was 6 months old.

Answer 2

I agree that you are very lucky with your daughter's sleep. She sleeps much better than our 18 month old too.

However, I can say that our son also used to be very erratic after the first 45 min sleep cycle, it was always unpredictable whether he would wake up or not. If he did wake up he would always cry. If we comforted him quickly he would go back to sleep easily but if we didn't get there straight away he would cry more and take longer to settle. In the end he stopped that without us doing anything. I guess he just grew out of it, maybe his sleep patterns matured. Now the only time he wakes up after such a short amount of time is if he's unwell.

If this is your only sleep problem, I'd say it's probably not worth the stress of sleep training for you and her. Presumably you are not having your sleep disturbed by this if it's only 45 minutes after your baby going to bed. I would expect, based on our experience, that if you continue to comfort her for a while longer then she'll grow out of it.

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to whether sleep training would work for this or not - maybe someone else would know that if it's something you particularly want to try. But hopefully you can be reassured that it's not necessary if you'd rather avoid it.