Sleep training?

danieliza1127

Good morning!  I wanted to ask you guys this since our babies are all close to the same age.

My LO is just over 3 months.  He goes to bed around 8:30 and usually wakes up anywhere between 1 and 3am to eat and he goes right back to sleep no problem.  He has had a cold for the last couple of weeks so he had been waking up around 4 or 4:30 in the morning completely congested, so I would take him and lay on the couch with him on my chest and then we'd both sleep until time to get up (6 or 7ish).  It wasn't ideal but it would keep him asleep and seemed to help his nose drain and not be so congested.  Well this week he is well again, but he's still waking up at 4:30 or 5:00 and won't go back into his crib.  I pick him up and he immediately falls back to sleep but when I lay him back down, he just tosses his head back and forth and won't settle, so I've been ending up back on the couch with him.  Now, I don't mind this terribly.  I mean, I'm not getting great sleep for that last hour before we start our day but it's better than no sleep at all.  But I've read Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems (Ferber) and he says that even if you don't mind getting up with the baby, you could be messing with his sleep by doing that.  Basically neither one of us are getting good sleep for that last hour or two before morning.

Before he got the cold, he would sleep 6 or 7 hours straight and then get up to eat and go back to sleep for 2 or 3 hours.  He's not doing that anymore ever since he got sick, even though he's well now.

So this morning, I'm thinking, okay do I need to do sleep training?  He goes to bed great, no problems there.  It's this 4-5am waking that we need to stop.  I worry though, is he too young still?  Ferber says you can try it between 3 to 4 months and if it doesn't work just stop and try again in a few weeks.  But my LO isn't even falling asleep on his own yet so I just wonder if it's too early to try this.  Have any of you needed to do sleep training yet?  Do you think I should try or just suck it up and sleep on the couch with him for a few more weeks and see if it resolves itself?

We have an appt with his pedi on Monday for his 4 month check-up and shots so I'll ask the doc then too what he thinks but I'm curious if any of you with babies around the same age have dealt with this yet.