Bedtime fading is gradually making your child's bedtime earlier. It can help your child fall asleep earlier or spend less time awake in their cot or bed after bedtime. Sometimes babies and young children take a long time to get to sleep. This can happen for many reasons.
The bedtime fading sleep training method is a strategy based on the theory that if a baby isn't ready for sleep, she won't willingly go down. The fading approach involves paying attention to your little one's sleep patterns and cues and adjusting her schedule to find the bedtime that works best.
For example, if you want your baby to be in bed at 7:30 p.m. but they don't fall asleep until 8:30 p.m., you'll start by putting your baby down at 9 p.m. You'll then gradually move their bedtime by 15 minutes every night (8:45, 8:30, 8:15, 8, 7:45, 7:30) until they fall asleep at 7:30 p.m.
Cry it out
The cry-it-out or "extinction" method involves putting your toddler to bed and letting her cry until she's fallen asleep with no help or visits from you. It can be effective and won't cause any lasting harm to your toddler — years from now, she won't remember a thing.
Recent research has shown that, at least in babies older than six months, sleep training with controlled crying and bedtime fading (both described below) improved babies' sleep and didn't lead to increased levels of cortisol.
The 15 minute rule
This helps with associating your bed with sleep and has been found to be one of the most effective strategies to address long-term sleep difficulties. If, after 15 minutes, you find that you are not asleep, don't stay in bed. if you're still awake after another 15 minutes, get up again and repeat.
"You can do it up to age 2, but the older your child is, the harder it's going to be," he says. He says for most methods of extinction-based sleep training, including the Ferber method, babies usually cry the hardest on the second or third night.
A baby "should simply be allowed to 'cry it out'. This often requires an hour, and in extreme cases, two or three hours. A second struggle will seldom last more than 10 or 15 minutes and a third will rarely be necessary."
A modified version of this, often known as “controlled crying”, suggests parents should ignore cries for a set amount of time, before responding briefly to reassure their baby, gradually increasing the amount of time between checks.
Tell the child that it is time to sleep, give them a kiss or a hug and then leave the room. Wait at least five minutes before returning. Tell the toddler again that it is time to sleep, give them a brief kiss or hug, and leave again. Repeat increasing the intervals you are gone by two minutes each time.
Do Babies Naturally Drop Night Feeds? It is natural for babies to drop night feeds on their own. This is because your baby will be able to last longer without food. You can start to prep your baby to drop night weaning by gradually giving him less time on the breast each night.
Many babies continue to breastfeed to sleep until they are two years old and even later. Slowly they seem to need it less and less until they fall asleep lying next to you or you just put them to bed one night without that last breastfeed.
Myth #2: "Breastfed babies can't be sleep trained because they still need overnight feeds." The good news is that you can sleep train your baby and still feed them overnight because sleeping and feeding will be two separate events.
Newborns are not typically capable of self-soothing, and encouraging them to do so can be harmful, as their sleep patterns are irregular, and they need to eat frequently to gain weight. By around 3 or 4 months , it is possible for some babies to self-soothe.
Experts recommend beginning sleep training when babies are 4 to 6 months old. This age range is the sweet spot, since babies are old enough to physically make it for six to eight hours overnight without needing to eat but aren't quite at the point where the comforting you provide has become a sleep association.
It is a common misconception that if you want your baby to sleep well, you have to do some form of sleep training, but we're here to tell you this isn't the case! Many babies, and especially those under 3-4 months of age, are perfectly capable of achieving good sleep without any formal sleep training.
Long continued or oft-repeated crying can produce so much cortisol that it can damage a baby's brain, she says. "That doesn't mean that a baby should never cry or that parents should worry when she does. All babies cry, some more than others.
Crying it out
It's OK to let your baby cry if the baby doesn't seem sick and you've tried everything to soothe your baby.
For most of them, I think it's because they're afraid they're going to miss something. With others, it might be because they're frightened of the dark, or afraid to go to sleep. And for some kids, they simply want to be in control. Bedtime just becomes another arena in which kids will try to fight with you.
Your brain signals your adrenal glands to release stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. These chemicals boost your heart rate and blood pressure, so if you hold them in while trying not to cry, it can translate into chest tightness and heavy breathing.
There are a multitude of high-quality research studies that all show that sleep training is safe for babies, causes no psychological harm, doesn't impair the bond between children and parents AND doesn't negatively affect children long-term.
Leaving your baby to 'cry it out' has no adverse effects on child development, study suggests. Summary: Leaving an infant to 'cry it out' from birth up to 18 months does not appear to adversely affect their behavior development or attachment.
Your baby's intervals of crying should be no longer than 10 minutes. And with the bedtime fading technique, you put your baby to bed a little later each night, shifting bedtime back by 10 to 15 minutes, until your little one is tired enough to fall asleep on their own, even with a bit of crying.
Experts generally recommend around the age of 3 is when children are capable of self-soothing and can move to independent sleeping.
Long stretches of crying can start when your little one is around two weeks old and continue until they reach three to four months. Inconsolable crying that can last up to five hours a day is a perfectly normal stage of development called the period of PURPLE crying.