When it comes to making your baby adapt to sleeping habits, it can get confusing as well as infuriating. Fortunately for you, we have found one of the most renowned methods to help your babies sleep.
Experts call this method “The Ferber Method”. This read is going to tell you all there is to know about the Ferber method.
What is The Ferber Method?
Developed by Dr. Richard Ferber, The Ferber Method is a method explicitly designed to help teach the babies how to self-soothe and how to sleep. Actually, Dr. Richard Ferber Penned down the whole book on the Ferber method, which goes by the name of “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems”.
However, if you are a busy bee and don’t have enough time to go through the whole book, we have tried our best to give an overview of how to follow The Ferber method step by step.
As mentioned above, this method is designed in a way that teaches your baby a method to self-soothe themselves. Due to this, the babies sleep in longer stretches or even throughout the whole night.
However, The Ferber method sounds very much like the “Cry-it-Out” method. However, the main difference between these methods is when you go in the room and support your baby during the learning process.
How Does The Ferber Method Work?
To begin using the Ferber method, you have to ensure that you layout a healthy foundation for the baby to sleep. To clarify, we mean that you go through your method training checklist. Doing so will allow you to make any necessary changes to the sleeping and feeding schedule of the baby.
Once you are done doing that, also make sure that you have a way to keep track of the time. Having the proper schedule is fundamental to making this method work effectively!
Now that you are done ensuring everything we mentioned above, we can start with the Ferber Method.
To make things easier for you, we have broken down the entire process in steps. We have done this to ensure that the steps are easy for you to follow.
Nevertheless, let’s get going!
- To begin with, Follow your consistent bedtime routine. Usually, a bedtime routine would end with a consistent phrase or a song.
- When your baby gets Drowsy, lay your baby down in the cart. Make sure the baby is not sleeping, however.
- After putting the baby in the cart, leave the room. However, if you don’t prefer to leave the baby alone, you could place a chair in the corner and stay in the room. This will allow you to keep an eye on your baby.
- If your child does not cry, all is well. However, in case your baby starts crying, start your timer. Once again, there is no need to start the timer if the baby is not crying.
- Only when the timer goes off, you should go and check in on the baby. When you check in on the baby, console the baby and offer support. However, make sure that when you are offering comfort, make sure the baby does not sleep.
- Repeat the whole process of checking in on your baby with different time intervals. Keep trying The Ferber Method with varying intervals of time until your baby falls asleep.
However, if you don’t know what Intervals you should use, the time intervals can depend on the intensity of your baby. To clarify, we mean how Persistent your babies are and how much crying you can bear.
Some babies are going to create little fuss while there will be some that will scream their heads off. The suggested time interval are 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and then 10 minutes.
Conclusion
We know how difficult parenting can be, especially when the baby keeps waking up at night. However, to make things easier for you, we have written this guide on following the Ferber Method. We hope that this comes in handy.
Happy Parenting!
