How to sleeptrain the right way with Ferber Method + tips
Do you want tips on how to sleeptrain with the ferber method the right way? What do you have to do? I share our journey as well as some tips for your family.
How to sleeptrain with the ferber method
The Ferber Method is an adjusted version of the ‘cry it out’ method or complete extinction. The idea is to put your baby down drowsy but awake into her crib and let her cry. You will keep doing checks at set time intervals as longs as your baby cries until he falls asleep. Every time your baby wakes up during the night, you repeat the process. Before you start any sleeptraining method, consult your medical team to give you green light to do so.
When to start sleeptraining with the ferber method?
The general recommendation is to start not earlier than six months. I personally know families that start during the four month sleep regression and their kids did just fine. My tip to sleeptrain with the ferber method is to wait until your baby has turned six months old. At this point she will be able to self sooth with a little cuddling cloth or to suck on her thumb. At the other hand she will not be able to stand in the crib yet which will make things a lot easier. But in the end I think it is best to start when you feel comfortable and confident to do so!
Why did we choose to sleeptrain with the ferber method?
In the first six months I did many things to help my baby to fall asleep other than sleeptraining. I nursed or rocked her to sleep, I stood with her in the room until she fell a sleep, we did bed sharing and co-sleeping and we did a lot of carried naps.
As the months passed all those things started to get more and more time consuming. At first I could rock her to sleep and leave the room within 20 minutes. When she was close to six months it would take me 45 minutes or more!
Our girl also started waking up sooner and sooner. Even if I would invest 45 minutes to get her into her crib, she would not sleep more than 20 more minutes before she needed the whole process to start again. We decided to take her with us to bed during the night in order to get some sleep. At this time we had no evenings and no bed to ourselves. We knew that it was time for our girl to learn a new skill!
My tips before you start to sleeptrain with ferber method
I have three tips you can implement before you sleeptrain with the ferber method.
- Establish a bed time routine
- Make sure your baby is not over- or undertired
- Put your baby down at the same time every day
We would stay consistent putting our baby down between 7 pm and 7.30 pm. We would use the four B bedtime routine: bath, breast (or bottle), book, bed. That helped our daughter to know that it is time to go to sleep and start producing the important sleep hormone melatonin.
Throughout the day we made sure that she would sleep enough but not too much. Check on how much sleep your baby needs here learning about wake windows.
Start sleeptraining with naps or nighttime?
We started to sleeptrain at bedtime rather than nap time. Here are two reasons why.
If you have a bad sleeper and are up all night you might not believe this: babys sleep easiest at night. The circadian rhythm tells us to be awake during the day and sleep during the night. Therefore your baby will most probably fall asleep easier in the evening and at night. In our experience our girl cried much shorter going to sleep at night than with nap training.
Our second reason was that we had much more trouble with her messed up night sleep than her day sleep. We could handle doing contact or carried naps throughout the day. But at night we really needed to rest as well.
A good reason to start nap training could be that stress levels of your baby are generally lower in the morning. But keep in mind that they are also better rested and will likely cry longer simply because they can before they wire out.
How we did checks
After we put our baby down we would leave the room and started a timer as soon as our girl started crying (which was immediately as she touched the matras). When the time was up and our baby cried uninterrupted we would do a check. There are different approaches to the checks. One of the most important tips when it comes to sleeptrain with the ferber method is to stay consistent. In order to stay consistent my husband and I agreed on the following procedure during checks:
- We would go into the room and do the ‘sh’ sound.
- We would tell our baby that we love her.
- We would pat her on the belly or back until she became calm again but no longer than 1 minute.
- Then we left the room again.
How often to do checks according to ferber method
In the table below are the check times from Richard Ferbers book ‘Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems’.
| 1st check | 2nd check | 3rd and subsequent checks | |
| Day 1 | 3 minutes | 5 minutes | 10 minutes |
| Day 2 | 5 minutes | 10 minutes | 12 minutes |
| Day 3 | 10 minutes | 12 minutes | 15 minutes |
| Day 4 | 12 minutes | 15 minutes | 17 minutes |
| Day 5 | 15 minutes | 17 minutes | 20 minutes |
| Day 6 | 17 minutes | 20 minutes | 25 minutes |
| Day 7 | 20 minutes | 25 minutes | 30 minutes |
In our experience sleeptraining with the ferber method we found that the table above didn’t fit our needs. Contrary to what I expected our girl would calm down a lot when we checked in. Yes, she would scream real hard when we would leave but after a few cries she would be calmer than she was before we came to check in in the first place.
We personally decided to follow them the first two days. Day 3 we would do 8 and then 10 minutes and I never stretched it further than that. It worked for us that way and think that begin confident and happy with what you do is more important then following the exact procedure.
Weaning or not when sleeptraining?
We chose to not wean our baby completely during sleeptraining. There is research that suggests that most babies older than 6 months will be able to go without breastmilk for 6 hours. But there is actually no research backing up the idea that babies can go without breastmilk for longer than that from six months onwards. The leche league recommends to wait as long as 18 months with night time weaning. However there are babies that wean earlier than that age by themselves.
I personally decided to feed her after 6 hours if she wakes up. Some nights she does, others not. Since sleeping through the night wasn’t my goal when we started to sleeptrain with the ferber method this is fine for me .
My tips on the pacifier when sleeptrain with ferber method
Our baby was really attached to her pacifier. She would wake up when it would fall out of her mouth. As soon as the little nipple touched her lips she would go right back to sleep. It almost looked magical. So I was struggling a lot on what to do with the pacifier. Here are my three simple tips when you sleeptrain with the ferber method and your baby loves his pacifier:
- Use the pacifier as much as you need it before sleeptraining
- Go cold turkey when you sleeptrain
- Take it away at daytime and nighttime at the same time
I once heard the quote: “parents are more afraid of taking the pacifier out than babies are”. And I believe it to be very true! I was so frightened to not have this little peace of safety to put into my babies mouth as soon as she would make an unwanted sound. The questions if she could fall asleep at all without it bothered me very much too. But in the end I decided to go cold turkey with the following reasoning:
The sucking reflex disappears after the first 3 months so my baby didn’t actually need a pacifier. I don’t want my toddler to have a pacifier so there will be tears involved taking it out anyways. So in my reasoning I thought ‘better having tears once (and possibly a little more) than multiple times.
How much did our baby end up crying?
First night
In the end our babygirl ended up crying for 25 minutes the first night at bedtime. We went in 3 times until she fell asleep. She woke up again only 15 minutes later, as we were used to from her. But surprisingly she would settle after 6 minutes of crying and only one check. Still in the evening she woke up once again and didn’t even cry a lot anymore. She would complain a bit and then remain silent which left us checkin in two times in the 40 minutes she was awake. She woke up at 1 am where I fed her and at 4 am but settled quickly both times.
Overal time crying was a little over an hour the first night.
Second night
The second night she would take 35 minutes to fall a sleep but was only crying 20 minutes. We checked on her 2 times. She would wake up at 10 pm and settled back to sleep after 10 minutes with one checking. Then she slept until 5.40 am which I marked in our diary with a big !!. I fed her and she settled right back.
Overal time crying was less than 30 minutes that night.
Third night
She would fall asleep after 32 minutes with 30 minutes of crying. We were discouraged that it would still take this long. She woke up twice this evening but only complained for a short amount of time so we didn’t even check in. The next morning after 12 hours and 15 minutes our girl woke up – hungry and happy. We couldn’t believe it! She slept through her night!
Total amount of crying was 35 minutes that night.
The following nights were similar to night two and three until she finally fell asleep within 10 minutes at day 7. We actually stopped our diary there and were happy that it worked out after all. I generally noticed that she would cry less hard the longer the week continued until it was more a complaining than a screaming.
Update from two months
Eventually she would settle without any tears at all until her first tooth came. Anyways after two months she wouldn’t cry longer than 5 minutes at most.
How did we solve daytime sleep?
At first I tried to nap-train at the same time as we would tackle nighttime sleep. But I quickly noticed that she would cry much more at nap time and it simply wasn’t worth the tears to me.
Two weeks after sleeptrain with the ferber method I would feed her to sleep and put her down then. She would wake up but settle after a few minutes to sleep and finally started doing those long and amazing naps of 1 to 2 hours! We still do carried naps as it fits in our schedule but I am happy that she can do both now. In fact, as I am wiriting this post she is sound asleep in her crib since 1,5 hours.
Set backs and my tips to push through when sleeptrain with ferber method
We noticed that she would have an extinction burst at night 6 and in the second week of sleeptraining crying for almost 45 minutes. Even though it was hard, we pushed through going in for checkins every 10 minutes. I still don’t know why she cried for so long, but it gave me rest that she was crying moderately instead of screaming the entire time. If those set backs happen I have 3 tips to push through:
- Stay consistent with your check times but also listen to your gut
- Distract yourself so that you don’t hear your baby crying all the time
- Seek help from our spouse, friends and family
Consistency is the key to succes. I told myself that all the tears would be useless if I now would give in. And it worked. But by all means if your gut tells you there is something wrong, listen to it! For me it was clear that my little girl just wasn’t able to settle to sleep and that if I would take her out of her bed she would smile at me and be just fine. Awake, but fine.
Listen to music, even with your earphones or leave the house. Your baby doesn’t cry less just because you listen to it. But of course make sure that someone is listening and keeping an eye on the baby.
If things get rough and you are tired of getting up and hearing your little baby cry, go and aks for help. I asked my husband to do most of the checks because it would break my heart to hear her scream when I left the room. It is okey if other people help you do it or stay distracted if necessary.
My tips sleep train with ferber method
Here is a summary of my 6 tips on how to sleep train with the ferber method:
- Start around six months
- Start with nighttime sleep
- Use a good bedtime routine
- Go cold turkey with the pacifier
- Use the intervals you are comfortable with
- Be consistent
Some encouragement to get started
In the end we are so happy that we finally did it. When I think back I had two mayor fears:
Firstly I was worrying that the bond between me and my baby would suffer and secondly I was questioning what kind of mom I would be letting my baby cry without soothing. In the end nothing changed between my little baby girl and me and I still feel the same mom – just a little better rested.
So I wish you good luck with getting started and if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.
