Nobody is driving down the baby sleep road, looking at their finely detailed baby sleep map, saying, “Well, it looks like we’ve missed the turn off into Putdownawake-port so in the next 4-6 weeks we’re going to have to exit into Cryitoutsville.” Instead you wake up one morning feeling nauseous with the realization that sleep has totally gone off the rails, things have gone from bad to horrendous, and the only way out of this dark pit of exhaustion is CIO. The decision THAT CIO is the answer is immediately followed by the question of WHEN it should happen. Because CIO is a scary prospect for most people, they want to find the optimal time for CIO.
I think the mental dialogue goes something like this, “If we can triangulate the best time for CIO we can minimize the crying, get things sorted out prior to starting daycare, and maybe get a night or two of sleep before the MIL shows up and starts critiquing the non-housecleaning.”
Is There a Best Time for CIO?
Based on the number of people asking me about when to do CIO it’s clear that there is a widely-held belief that:
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- There is indeed an “optimal” time for CIO.
- That I hold the secret to it.
- And I can possibly be convinced to relinquish the secret CIO scheduling decoder ring if asked nicely enough and/or with enough capitalization/exclamation points. (Ex. HELP we’re DESPERATE!!!!)
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Which is totally understandable. CIO is HARD and SCARY. If you’ve taken my advice then you know that commitment is key. So you don’t want to dive in and then realize, “Woops! We picked the wrong day.” Because once you start, you are committed regardless of which day (right or wrong) it is.
Additionally there are a number of books that talk about wonder weeks and sleep training that suggest there is indeed an optimal time for CIO. Which is where emails like this one come from:
[box type=”blank” class=”border-dashed2″]I always knew we needed to make some changes, but I just don’t know where the time went. Month 6, 7, and 8 went by and although not ideal for most, my catnapper, frequent waker still was rocked and nursed to sleep usually quickly and easily. I just began staying in the same room as our son while he napped, and if he woke up I was right there to shoosh or nurse him back to sleep instead of catching up on things, having time to myself, or with my husband. My son took two 1-2.5 hour naps instead of 40 min ones, we were in a rhythm that worked for us, and I was oblivious to the monster that I created.
All was fine and good until I emerged from my little bubble and realized what I had done. I have a child who cannot even begin to self soothe. He is to a T how you would describe a child with a sleep problem on your website. He frequently wakes and has never once in his life fallen asleep unassisted.
I found this book that discusses certain windows that are better to train your child to sleep. I explored this a bit more and discovered that months 9-12 are not only not optimum, but that they are really bad windows to try to train your child to sleep.
Seriously. Does that mean I have to deal with this until his first birthday? What happens if I forgo this advice? Is it really okay for my child to sleep train at almost ten months? What will happen during this cognitive leap if we barrel through? I know failure is not an option, so I don’t want to try and give up. Do I need this book? Or is this me finding one more reason to hold off on doing what my child really needs?[/box]
This is my response to her email:
[pullquote type=”3″]
You are going down the rabbit hole of doubt. Don’t do this. It’s dark in there. Probably lots of spiders too.
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The Myth of the Optimal Time for Sleep Training
People love the idea that you can triangulate the “optimum” time to sleep train your baby. But it’s a myth. THERE IS NO OPTIMUM TIME. There is always, ALWAYS a wonder week, growth spurt, separation anxiety, travel, developmental milestone, starting daycare, teething, ear infection, cold, shots, etc.
There IS a kernel of truth in these books in that yes – growth spurts, developmental milestones, separation anxiety, etc. will all happen and that trying to sleep train or night wean while your child is in the throws of a vicious growth spurt and thus eating constantly is not ideal. And yes many of these things happen on somewhat predictable schedules so that in an ideal scenario you would avoid them. But there are two key words here that are easy to overlook, but you shouldn’t because they’re really critical.
Somewhat and ideal.
Babies are somewhat predictable. For example I talk a lot about the 4 month sleep regression/wonder week/growth spurt. Because for most people, it’s a doozie. But truthfully, do you want to know when the 4 month growth spurt will occur? Sometime between 3 and 5 months. Or not at all. The idea of an optimal time for sleep training assumes that these developmental milestones are known quantities. But they aren’t.
And most of the time there is no ideal scenario. Much like the search for the perfect haircut or a winter coat that is both warm and slimming, the search for the ideal time is futile.
Maybe it’s today. Nope! Raging ear infection. How about next week? Uh oh – baby has figured out how to stand up at the crib but can’t sit down and is getting stuck. That’s going to put us back another week or two while we practice sitting. How about now? Ugh…now we’ve got that wedding in the Hamptons. Then your Mom is visiting. Then you’re going back to work and can barely muster the fortitude to face dropping off at daycare much less sleep training.
Sometimes you just need to work with what you’ve got. Waiting just prolongs the anxiety and chronic sleep deprivation. There is no guarantee that waiting till next week or next month is going make things any easier than they would be today.
And sometimes now really feels like it’s not the right time. And who knows, maybe it’s not. But if you give yourself a little mental breathing room, I think you’ll find that most of the reasons you’re using to convince yourself that it’s NOT the best time for sleep training all boil down to one simple fact: you’re not ready.
And that’s OK. But let’s acknowledge what’s really going on. If you’re not ready, don’t do it. Figure out why you’re not ready. Maybe there are other alternatives you want to pursue first? Maybe you need some time to get comfortable with the idea? Maybe you need a little emotional support?
But in general, unless your child is a) seriously ill or b) you’re about to launch on some massive international travel, the ideal time is now.
What About Bedtiming?
Bedtiming is a book that tries to help you figure out the ideal window to sleep train based on the rough time frames of various developmental milestones. If you disagree with my assertion that there is no ideal time then I’ve shared their suggestions here, followed by my own 2 cents on the subject.
| Age | Bedtiming says… | I say… | |
| 0-2 1/2 Months | BAD time | Agreed, they’re NEWBORNS. Please don’t try to sleep train your newborn baby. | |
| 2 1/2-4 Months | GOOD time | Nope. For a number of reasons: they’re still really young, you still have lots of tools at your disposal, and the dreaded 4 month sleep regression is likely to fall sometime within this window which I would argue is possibly the LEAST ideal time imaginable. | |
| 4-5 1/2 Months | BAD time | I would argue that they’re still on the young side. Also babies younger than 6 months generally haven’t developed object permanence which is cause of almost all of your “baby up all night” problems that result in sleep training in the first place. Also, unlike “older babies” you still have some soothing options at your disposal. | |
| 5 1/2-7 1/2 Months | IDEAL time | They say ideal, I say it’s the first age at which I would seriously consider sleep training. Most babies don’t generally have a highly developed sense of separation anxiety at this age (note: separation anxiety is not your friend when sleep training). Alternately many babies have a big growth spurt/sleep regression at 6 months which is best to be avoided. But as noted, trying to plan around these things is a fools errand. | |
| 8-11 Months | WORST time | Really? It’s true that separation anxiety peaks at this time. However often separation anxiety causes sleep issues so severe that sleep training is the only practical solution. Also separation anxiety/object permanence are the developmental milestones that lead to the most severe sleep issues. So they’re effectively telling parents that sleep training is not possible at the exact time when it’s generally most needed. | |
| 12-16 Months | GOOD time and the last chance for an efficient and satisfactory sleep training experience | That’s right folks, if you don’t manage to get your kid sleeping by 16 months you are doomed DOOMED I tell you. | |
| 17-21 Months | BAD time | At this point I’m starting to feel badly for people. If neither you nor your child has had any real sleep in almost 2 years, I don’t think you need some book telling you that you need to wait another 6 months. I think you need a drink and a warm hug. | |
| 22-27 Months | GOOD time | Yay! It’s been 3 years but the book says we can finally do something about this hot mess! | |
| 28 Months-3 Years | Last window of opportunity to initiate or repair sleeping habits with ease. | Wow. Better get on that because this is the last chance we’ll ever have to establish healthy sleep habits before our child becomes a chronically overtired person forever and turns into Ted Bundy. | |
| 3 1/2-4 Years | BAD time | I guess this means you have to wait until they’re 5. But why stop there? After 5 it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump until they’re in college. |
Listen, I don’t mean to be glib. I know this is hard stuff. But if you’ve come to a place where CIO feels like the right answer for your family, then go with that. Don’t wait for ideal. Ideal never comes. There is only today.
And if I haven’t convinced you, maybe the final words from the Mom who sent me the email above will.
“If someone were to ask me what my number one priority in life is at the moment I would say my child’s sleep, If they were to ask what most of my time is spent doing, I would say putting my child to sleep. The reason I bite my husband’s head off with a mere glance of the wrong kind is because I have poured any and all patience, understanding, and love into putting my child to sleep. Sleep…
I have this beautiful, smart, healthy boy and all I can do is think about sleep instead of enjoying this small window of babyhood I have with him.”
Does anybody have any experience with this? Maybe you jumped in and wished you waited? Or you sleep trained and found yourself wondering, “Why didn’t we do this ages ago?”
My son Aiden has a developmental dussability which contributes to his sleep issues. We figured we would never let him CIO be aide obviously this was not his fault so I would just continue to be exhausted and he would never sleep for the rest if his life! Fast forward to 9 months And he’s sleeping in my bed, waking up every 20 minutes, husband sleeping on the couch and finally he starts playing and kicks me in the face! My son gave me a black eye! My pedi said you can let him CIO now. He will understand and don’t miss this time or you will be sorry! I was convinced it wouldn’t work since he has brain related sleep issues but we decided to try thanksgiving weekend and if it didn’t work by Sunday abort the mission. On the first night he slept after 45 min and when he awoke same thing. By Saturday night he was asleep in 15 minutes! Success! Now my daughter is sleeping with us.. Very well I might add. So well she won’t sleep anywhere else! Can’t wait until 8-9 months and do CIO again!
This is such a great story. So many people are terrified of what will happen and they’re convinced that for whatever reason it won’t work for them. But they’re reasons aren’t even in the same hemisphere as yours and whaddya know, it worked for you guys!
Congrats on your success!
Hi Alexis
Thank you for all your advice! I have followed your website and recommended to many!
This is my situation… I have a just over 4 month old baby boy (Alexandre). He has been an absolute challenge to put to sleep and stay asleep until about 3 months. I am positive he has cows milk protein allergy and he had colic. I am avoiding dairy and he seems to be sooooo much more settled and content and has grown out if his GI issues. We are dependant on a swaddle, swing, white noise and dark room for sleep. Over the past few weeks I have managed to be able to put him down awake in the swing and he will now fall asleep in about 15-20min with almost not protesting or fussing!!! Yeah success! He naps in his swing and starts out his night sleep in swing (we move him to crib after we dream feed at 11:30pm). The first few weeks in his crib were horrendous with him waking every couple hours and me resorting to feeding him to get back to sleep. I stopped rushing in and let him cry a bit and now I see him on the monitor wake up and then squawk for a couple min and then fall back asleep on own again! Yeah, success again.
Now I would really like to break our dependence on the swing and am considering trying the CIO to bed and naps in crib (because the only way i can put him down awake is in the swing). I have the swing on lowest setting now and i do go in and turn it off when he falls asleep. We still have him swaddled, which i know we need to loose soon (or right now) bc he is starting to roll but he just doesn’t seem ready to loose the swaddle.
My question is do you just do it all at once (take away swaddle and swing and CIO in crib) or do u try ease into it and swaddle with one arm out etc. I have tried to nap him without swaddle and with just one arm swaddled and he will not fall asleep on his own in swing this way and if I can manage to rock him fully to sleep he will just wake up the second I lay him down or he will only sleep 20min. He also will not take a soother.
Also, do you recommend you do the CIO for bedtime sleep training and nap training at the same time? Or do you make sure we get good naps during the day doing the same thing we have been doing so that he is not overtired by the time we get to thr bedtime CIO?
Thanks so much for your help!
I’m not Alexis, but I have a baby who also had milk allergies and had to sleep in a swing, so I have been in your shoes. My advice would be to leave well enough alone for the time being. Your baby is sleeping well swaddled in the swing. Why mess with that? 4 months is too early to think about CIO, in my opinion. I was also really worried about getting my baby out of the swaddle and swing, but every time I tried to remove one of those things, she didn’t sleep, so I went back to them immediately since I hate crying and love sleeping. Finally, at a little before 6 months, she fell asleep in the non-moving swing without the swaddle, and a few days later I put her in the crib where she fell asleep with zero minutes of crying. I was shocked and never thought it would be so easy since my baby started out life only sleeping in only 30 min increments day and night! She is 8 months now and goes down awake in her crib for all naps and nights. We threw the swing away last weekend (used it so much the motor burned up). Just don’t try to force things before she’s ready and maybe you won’t have to do CIO. Keep trying to get her to sleep in a non-moving swing and when that works, then think about a move to the crib. Rolling shouldn’t be an issue if he’s in the swing, so I would try to lose the swaddle first (but, again, not necessarily now). I am certainly not opposed to CIO if it’s needed, but I don’t think you’re there yet, and hopefully you never will be.
Thank you so much for your advice! I agree with you that 4months is to early to CIO. See my note below in response to Alexis for how things panned out 🙂
Hey Kirsten,
Have you seen this?
http://www.troublesometots.com/weaning-baby-off-swing/
He’s still little. So I would say you can either go with Betsy’s sage advice and leave well enough alone for now.
Or you could transition him out of the swing at bedtime (regardless start there). But definitely keep the swaddle! My guess is that putting him down in a non-moving swing at bedtime wouldn’t involve much drama.
You’ll note I’m really careful with my words here because somebody reading this could think, “OMG if my baby sleeps in a swing the only way to get them out is by Ferberizing!”
Where I think if you do your bedtime routine, put baby awake in the swing and leave the swing OFF, he’ll grumble for 10 minutes and fall asleep. This is not CIO.
Once he’s sleeping swaddled in a non-moving swing for a few days you do the same thing in the crib. You stick with the swaddle for now, no rush on that front.
Let us know what happens, OK?
Thank you so much for your response!
Yes, now that you reminded me I do remember seeing your post on breaking the swing. Funny enough, right after you posted the response to me… Alexandre started to seem to fight going down in the swing and would just be squirmy and arch his back. So I thought what the heck… Lets jut put him in his crib and see what happens. Success, he feel asleep with no tears.
I never believed people when they said one day your baby will just grow out of habits… And I guess mine is getting there…Only problem is he now wakes up at the 40min mark and cries. What do we do now? Do we let him CIO and if so for how long or do we go back in and rock to sleep? It’s tempting to go back to putting to sleep in swing bc this way he stays asleep but I know we need to break the swing eventually 🙁
We are still dependant on the swing for naps.
Thanks so much!
Good news. He easily went from going down awake in swing to going down awake in crib. Just a few nights of protesting a bit after waking at 35 min mark and now I often wake in the middle of the night and look at the monitor and he is awake and happy and must eventually fall back asleep bc I fall back asleep and don’t hear anything. Today I successfully transitioned him to going down awake in crib for his naps as well!!! Yeah. I took your advice and kept the swaddle but everyone keeps telling me I need to loose the swaddle. I fear if I take swaddle away we will have a lot of crying… What do you suggest????
I really think your advice of using the swing early on as a sleep tool was great because although we became dependant on the swing, at least we were able to put him down awake in it and I am sure this is what helped us transition him to crib with NO crying at all. I have read about babies that this happened and never would have dreamed it would ever happen to mine because he was just about the fussiest sleeper in the world with full on screaming meltdowns as a regular part of our day as I would bounce him to sleep on exercise ball for hours and hours….
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
Good news. He easily went from going down awake in swing to going down awake in crib. Just a few nights of protesting a bit after waking at 35 min mark and now I often wake in the middle of the night and look at the monitor and he is awake and happy and must eventually fall back asleep bc I fall back asleep and don’t hear anything. Today I successfully transitioned him to going down awake in crib for his naps as well!!! Yeah. I took your advice and kept the swaddle but everyone keeps telling me I need to loose the swaddle. I fear if I take swaddle away we will have a lot of crying… What do you suggest????
I really think your advice of using the swing early on as a sleep tool was great because although we became dependant on the swing, at least we were able to put him down awake in it and I am sure this is what helped us transition him to crib with NO crying at all. I have read about babies that this happened and never would have dreamed it would ever happen to mine because he was just about the fussiest sleeper in the world with full on screaming meltdowns as a regular part of our day as I would bounce him to sleep on exercise ball for hours and hours….
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
What you wrote here is just great. I let my baby CIO at 5 months and in two weeks he had it figured out. We still hit the 6 month sleep regression/growth spurt but made it out alive. Honestly, I finally got to the point where I was like, I gotta get sleep; I don’t care if my baby is teething, has a cold, bla bla bla, or every other excuse why I can’t sleep train now. After I finally got my (very sensitive) sleeper to fall asleep on his own it didn’t matter if he was teething or had a cold or whatever; he would still fall asleep on his own. So I knew that those excuses weren’t valid to begin with.
But, being a “sensitive” little guy, he still woke up at night and required me to help him fall asleep. I didn’t mind that too bad, because he napped very well, and went to sleep on his own, and well, if you compared it to how it USED to be, it was actually really good! So I put off further sleep training, using the excuse, “well, he’s always been a sensitive sleeper.” I disassociated nursing completely from bedtime, but he would still wake up at night, wanting to nurse, and screaming bloody murder if I refused.
Scoot along to 12 months. Pregnant again. Exhausted. Needing sleep to the point of depression. I decided that my “sensitive” little 12 month old needed to learn to sleep through the night with no nursies, no help from mommy. I had been dreading this for so long, afraid that he would become very insecure and that it would take months to accomplish. My husband had to become the one to go to him at night instead of me. The first night was no worse than usual, to my surprise. Less than a week after we started, he slept 12 hours without making either of us get up once! (Ok he cried some at night but went back to sleep on his own.) He’s in the middle of teething 4 teeth at once, and even that doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’ve been asking myself WHY WHY WHY did I wait so long to do this!!!!! And perhaps it wasn’t that my son was such a sensitive sleeper, but rather that I believed he was and therefore didn’t sleep train him, which obviously made him APPEAR to be a sensitive sleeper. Hopefully my experiences this time will benefit me for the next one.I’ll definitely be coming back to your blog for reference!
Hi Sara
Sounds like my situation is similar to yours, only my boy is 9 months. He is great at falling asleep by himself but still needs me in the middle of the night to fall back to sleep, and wants to be nursed until he is asleep…. I can’t unlatch him prematurely or he will cry just as if I hadn’t fed him at all!
What did you do to teach your bub to sleep through? Did you just send hubby in there to settle him in the cot each time? How long would he cry for before returning to sleep?
Allissa
Hi Allissa
Yes your situation sounds very familiar. My baby would continue to wake up sometimes as often as 4 times a night, and rarely less than 2 a night, up until I decided I could no longer handle nursing him at night.
What we did was this: Mommy had to go hands off completely for nighttime. I would nurse him about an hour or so before bedtime. Then hubby would put him to bed. When baby woke up, I would stay in bed (which was actually not that easy to do) and tell hubby to go to baby. Hubby would offer some water in a sippy, hold him and pat him just a bit (but not till he fell asleep) and put him back down. The first night he woke up 4 times. The first waking he cried for 45 minutes, after which hubby went in again and gave him water, and then baby settled down to sleep. I’m not sure at what point he realized that if he woke up mommy wasn’t coming to him anymore. But the rest of that night I don’t remember him crying for more than five minutes per waking. Next night he woke up 3 times. Then a few nights of 2 wakings per night. (Progressively better.) Then one night he was down to one waking. The next night he slept through the night. He did wake up and cry but not for long (less than 5 minutes I think) and went back to sleep on his own. I think he must have just figured out that no amount of crying would bring mommy to his crib at night, and that’s why he started sleeping better. Of course every baby will be different, but I was surprised it wasn’t worse for us. When he woke up in the morning I would nurse him. I am working on weaning him completely but was afraid teaching him to sleep through the night and stopping all nursing would be too much at once, so this was my compromise.
Hope this makes sense!
Sara
Sara, is great what you have accomplished! I’m jealous..
My girl turned 1 a few days ago. She still wakes at night and wants to nurse. The problem I have is that she sleeps with me. She still naps in the swing and I don’t know what i am going to do once she can’t use it anymore.
I haven’t tried anything yet because I don’t know how to start. Her crib is next to my bed but she never uses it.
You gave me encouragement, thank you.
Claudia,
It’s going to be super hard to get out of night nursing while co-sleeping. Not impossible! Just hard. So if you’re really keen to stop night nursing I would start by getting her to sleep in her own bed (but continue night nursing). Once she’s comfortable sleeping away from you the weaning will go much more smoothly.
Good luck!
Thank you for your response Alexis. I will try that!
This is so good to know. I have a 9 month old baby who goes down after a bottle drowsy but awake fine and wakes up 2 to 4 times a night. I am exhausted.
So my question is did you CIO at bedtime or just night wakings? For night wakings, how long did you let him CIO before daddy went in? Did daddy soothe him to sleep or just reassure and let CIO again?
I am exhausted and really need to do something.
Thanks!
Such a great story!
You know it’s hard because they’re changing SO quickly where we just get locked into “Well this is how we do it.” Like the fact that they’re not newborns anymore sort of sneaks up on you 😛
While not nearly as dramatic I night nursed my first for 14 months before I hit the wall and decided we were done. He grumbled for 15 minutes and that was the end of it. I had the same, “How did we not do this months ago?!?!” revelation you did 🙂
Forget my CIO nap question… I just recalled (and reread this on your CIO step by step post) where you said to do whatever you need to get good naps when doing CIO for bedtime 🙂
Just looking for your advice on the swaddle and CIO 😉
Hi. Ever since my daughter was born she slept at night 5-6 hours straight. Pedi would tell me to wake her up to feed. Though it didn’t feel right to me to disrupt her sleep hence growth. Note she was born 9.1 pounds so her weight was never an issue. Now she is 7 months. She takes three naps during the day (one hour after wake up, one around 3pm, one around 5). She goes to bed around 9ish and she wakes up at 9-9:30am. All three of us sleep together. She’ll wake up around 6am, to locate me and breast feed. We go back to sleep immediately. My only concern is that she needs me to fall asleep -naturally- and I’d like to get her to sleep alone but how can I practically do that when there is nothing to keep her on the mattress? Note our “bed” is on the floor (no frame or boxspring) and I don’t want a crib. Is it impossible? Any ideas?
Lucy,
So you want to keep co-sleeping but you want her to fall asleep without nursing? Is that correct?
For starters, it sounds like she’s sleeping great so at least at this point the “nurse to sleep” thing isn’t a problem for anybody. So yes it’s really likely TO be a problem in the future but it’s not today. So that’s great.
If you feel that you really MUST do CIO (I’m not sure if that’s my vote at this point though?) you simply do it with you IN the room/bed facing AWAY from her.
But given that she’s doing pretty well all around I might lean towards more of a pull off method – nurse till she’s drowsy, pull off. Keep repeating until she falls asleep OFF the boob. This can take a awhile but works if you can stick with it?
I got so worried about the learn-to-put-down-awake-by-6-mo guideline from this site. It was very hard to break out of nursing to sleep BUT having obsessed about it for a few months, it was somewhat easier on than it would have been if we hadn’t worked on more gradual techniques. So bedtime CIO at 7 mo – for which we did shorter intervals than Ferber suggests, plus went in and picked up briefly to soothe instead of just left her in the crib – put her down awake of course – went really well, less than 10 min of crying and less than a week. Night weaning attempts at 9 months took a lot longer for her to stop waking, plus there was travel & sickness thrown in, so it worked much better when we finished that at 11 mo. Then I didn’t want to press my luck and figured that dealing with that one last 4-5am nursing session was fine – we are only now at 16 months working on it and honestly, maybe we could have tried sooner, but I don’t believe my daughter was ready until a bit later than most kids are. I also feel more comfortable now that she seems to understand “milk when the lights are on.”
Every kid is different. Every parent is different. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for waiting a little longer if that is what you need – it’s not going to be “too late.”
Hey Kay,
Well I’m sorry to have freaked you out about the “6 month deadline” but forwarned is forearmed right? But I’m right in there with you on the “it’s never too late”.
It’s like smoking. It’s never too late to quit that too 😉
7.5 months. I didn’t read Bedtiming but a friend did and I figured I might as well sneak into the “ideal” window if such a thing was for real. I have no idea if the timing contributed to our success but I went from 6-8 nurse-back-to-sleep wakeups a night to 11 straight hours of sleep in less than a week (followed Sleepeasy plan for rapid night weaning). At 12.5 months he has continued to sleep through almost without fail through teething, colds, what have you. I tried the same CIO with checks method for naps and it was a total fail at that age. I gave up and tried it again about a month ago and it pretty much worked. I do have a couple friends with year-ish babies who have not sleep trained and are starting to break down. I tell them they are in a good training period again because.. get it over with already! Like the email in your post, you don’t want your whole relationship with your child to be centered on the sleep obsession. I honestly only still read this blog at this point because Alexis so funny. 🙂
” I tell them they are in a good training period again because.. get it over with already! ”
DITTO. Is there ever a ideal time for anything? The ideal time for me to get a haircut was 3 weeks ago and I missed it. Does that mean I shouldn’t still get a haircut today?
Thanks for still reading. I haven’t really thought about the fact that I technically need to get a whole new crop of readers every 12 months! So thanks for sticking around 😉
Hey Jenny,
what is the Sleepeasy plan for rapid nightweaning? I have been doing CIO for 10 days now and it takes her an hour to go to sleep and she wakes up and screams for two hours even after i have fed her!
I have had two bad sleepers – my now 2.5 yo son didn’t sleep a wink until 8 mos (after CIO) and my 1 yo daughter didn’t sleep at all from 3-6 mos. We had to CIO with both, and we still deal with disruptions when traveling, sick, or teething. But let me tell you CIO is a wonderful thing – for those who want/need to do it. The sooner, the better, after 6 mos. I totally feel for anyone who is sleep deprived/sleep obsessed. Do what you feel you need to do, and know you are not alone!
Yay!
I’m actually thinking of updating my “is it time for CIO” post to include being sleep obsessed. When you spend 99% of your emotional energy and time on it, something’s gotta give 😛
Using your site has helped us so much! I used to study every sleep article and follow it to a T. I would also read ahead to prepare for what I need to do to help my child sleep. Things got so great that i’ve stopped. My son is now 15 months old. Between getting sick, teething, staying out late, etc., his sleep is all messed up now! CIO is not working because he throws up.. a lot. We made a big mistake of introducing videos at nap time and bed time. He would fall asleep watching something- nothing fast paced for naps and now it seems like that is what he wants for bed time. It calms him down and he gets sleepy very quickly. It’s either that or he cries for more milk. He no longer uses the pacifier so I think he wants the bottle for sucking purposes but does not like water. We also have to hold him for about 20 minutes after he falls asleep before we put him down or he will cry. I can’t believe things got so bad. Everything was perfect! He fell asleep on his own, and if he had a bottle during the night we were able to stick him right back into the crib. Any suggestions? Please help!
Hey Sylvia,
Ooof that sounds rough. Yuck.
OK well for starters I would stop the video at sleep time fullstop. Not because I’m one of those “don’t let your kids watch TV” people, but because any screen time (TV, iPad, etc.) signals your body to produce seratonin which is a “wake up” hormone. So think about DARK lights for the 30 minutes prior to bedtime.
Also MOST kids will fight sleep or really anything for the opportunity for TV time. So the whole “TV before sleep” is setting you up for failure over the long-haul.
Also no more milk in the bottle at bedtime. Sure he likes it. But trust me you don’t want the dental issues that the milk bottle can bring. The only thing he can have is water. If he doesn’t want it that’s his choice, but it’s his only option. I know it’s easy for me to say so because I don’t have to deal with it, but really, it’s got to go.
Maybe removing the bottle from bedtime entirely is the answer. I suspect the reason he throws up so much is that he has a full tummy because of the bottle. So maybe you kill two birds with one stone?
I hold a grudge against stupid Wonder Weeks, and the people who constantly refer to sleep regressions, because I believed them and in part because of that spent 18 months of my son’s life trying to pin down his “regressions” instead of realizing that he was a crappy sleeper because good sleeping habits don’t always come naturally. So anyway, I can attest that 18 months is a pretty good time to do CIO… especially if, like me, you’re lucky and Alexis does the first night for you…!!!
Hee hee 🙂
It’s still one of my all time favorite stories. We agreed that you guys would leave and WE would handle things and call you when we were “done.” Then you showed us the guest room because, presumably, you figured we would be there till dawn?
I remember thinking, “Wow she must be thinking that something truly horrible is going to happen here tonight.” Which made calling you to come home ~30 minutes later that much more delightful 🙂
I’m afraid I will get negative replies from this but I thought I would share my experience with a younger baby. Starting around 2 months old my daughter became very difficult to put to bed. We were swaddling, white noise, rocking, shushing, not keeping her up longer than an hour or two, etc. We could get her to fall asleep in our arms but she would wake when we put her in her bassinet and my husband and I would spend up to three hours each night trying to get her to fall asleep and STAY asleep. We tried putting her down “drowsy but awake” but that would lead to fussing and then crying. Eventually she started to cry a little each night in our arms until putting her to bed became not only long and tedious but also cry inducing. We won’t even talk about naps. She got them but this same long tedious process went on. I felt like all I did all day was try to get the baby to sleep. We had a swing but went out and bought a bigger, better one. This bought us a couple weeks of longer napping but still required the long process, and hoping, and praying, we could get her to sleep and do it without crying. By the time she was 12 weeks old, she was inconsolable at bedtime. The only thing that stopped the crying (she was already in our arms, swaddled, the whole nine) was to undo the swaddle and not try to put her to sleep. But the kid has to sleep so that definitely wasn’t the solution. My breaking point came when I could not get her down for her first morning nap and she was a crying mess. That first morning nap had always been the easiest, the sure thing, and when that went, in a fit of tears (me and baby) I called my mom and asked her what to do. The answer was to swaddle her back up, put her in the crib, and walk away. 15 minutes of crying later our daughter was asleep and woke an hour later smiling and happy. The next nap it took 6 minutes of crying, the next 3 minutes, and when she went to bed for the night, she cried for a minute and a half.
The second issue we’d had was that once we got her to sleep at night, she would wake 45 minutes later, and then again 30 to 45 minutes later; usually waking about three times before she finally slept for the night. Our first day of letting her cry, I did not go to her when she woke after the first 45 minutes of sleep. She cried about 20 minutes before falling back asleep and that was so hard for me. But she didn’t wake up anymore that night. It took two nights of letting her cry after that initial wake up and she no longer cries anymore. She still wakes up briefly after about 45 minutes, we can see it on the monitor, but she is able to put herself back to sleep very quickly.
I’m not advocating CIO for everyone and I realize everyone’s baby is different. I also knew my child was not hungry, wet, sick, etc. when we did this. She was already sleeping 10-12 hours through the night, not waking to nurse, which I realize is early for a baby her age. For us, letting her cry was the best thing we could do because all she needed was to sleep. She was already crying in our arms and our attempts at soothing her were just keeping her awake, furthering the problem.
Prior to this, I was so against letting her cry and I have searched the internet, questioning if I’m doing her harm (her pediatrician has assured me I am not and that she needs to learn how to put herself to sleep). I also read “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” for guidance for her age group.
Two weeks later she still fusses sometimes when we put her down but there are many glorious times when she goes in her crib and falls asleep without a peep. The times she does cry, it is rare for it to last any longer than 2 to 5 minutes and certainly (so far) nothing longer than 15 minutes. My husband and I are happier, calmer, and no longer dread nap and bedtime (although it is never easy to hear her cry even for a minute). Our daughter is getting more sleep and has transitioned to her crib for all naps and bedtime. I feel like I am slowly letting my sleep obsession go. No more crazy internet searches or book purchases. For us this was the answer at 3 months. I just wanted to share my story in case there was someone else out there experiencing something similar.
Thank you for sharing this. It may not work for all kids at that age, but people need to know that CIO within reason is usually simply implementing common sense, not some cruel form of parenting.
Marie, your story is so similar to ours. However instead of us biting the bullet at around 2 months old when our holding/soothing/everything but the kitchen sink was NOT working we kept going for another MONTH AND A HALF believing that LO was too young and it would be too traumatizing to do CIO beforehand….. what were we thinking.
Our CIO was a success after 1 night and it just emphasized that LO was ready for it and we shouldn’t have worried and waited so long – I agree that every baby is different but sometimes it is us parents who have to wrap our heads around the process and get ourselves ready!
Marie, your story is so similar to ours. However instead of us biting the bullet at around 2 months old when our holding/soothing/everything but the kitchen sink was NOT working we kept going for another MONTH AND A HALF believing that LO was too young and it would be too traumatizing to do CIO beforehand….. what were we thinking.
Our CIO was a success after 1 night and it just emphasized that LO was ready for it and we shouldn’t have worried and waited so long – I agree that every baby is different but sometimes it is us parents who have to wrap our heads around the process and get ourselves ready!
Hey Marie,
I would hope that nobody here would jump on you for what I see as a HUGELY successful story! You did some research, listened to your gut, recognized that what was going on was NOT working for anybody, and you made a change that worked out FANTASTICALLY.
And really, resulted in barely any crying. So on whole I say cheers to your success 🙂
I did CIO when my baby was 6 months old (now 1 year old)and never with my now 3 year old. With the younger baby, he was a crappy sleep from birth and would scream every time I put him to sleep despite all of my rocking, feeding, cuddling (I even threw out my back trying to comfort him when he was 1 month old). After months of virtually no sleep, I started dreaming about going to a hotel one night just so I could sleep for more than an hour, and I got close to even making a reservation. That night, after 3 or 4 wakings and sitting trying to rock him to sleep for an hour at 3am, I just put him down and let him cry for 45 minutes. He fell asleep and stayed asleep the rest of the night. I followed all of your instructions for the subsequent nights, and after a few nights of taking 20, 15, 10 minutes to fall asleep, and miraculously staying asleep, I began to preach the gospel of CIO. Why hadn’t I done this with my older one, who didn’t really sleep well until she was two? I think as mothers we seem to think that if we’re not torturing ourselves we’re somehow selfish, and we don’t love our babies enough. Seeing my baby sleeping well, waking up with a smile on his face and being of sane mind to appreciate all the fun moments with both kids made me realize that there is nothing selfish about needing sleep. We both needed to sleep, and we were finally able to do it.
“I think as mothers we seem to think that if we’re not torturing ourselves we’re somehow selfish”
Right there with you. Like motherhood is this really important jobs and really important jobs should make you MISERABLE so if you are MISERABLE you must be winning!
Hello all. I’m hoping I can get some advice for my 3-month-old. Since he was about 5 or 6 weeks old, he has only taken 30 minute naps. Every once in awhile he’ll slip a 40-45 minute on in there but it’s pretty rare. And he only takes about 3-4 of these 30 minute naps each day, so it’s not like he’s catnapping all day. I don’t let him go past the 1-2 hour window of wakefulness. I use a swaddle, white noise, the swing, and a pacifier. Still he will only take a few 30 minute naps each day.
For the past couple weeks, he is now harder to get down at night. After initially putting him down, he will wake up several times after only 20-30 minutes or so. It takes several hours and multiple wake-ups to finally get him down. Then he wakes every few hours after that until morning.
I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong and I’m feeling like a complete failure as a mom. He rarely gives sleepy cues – or at least they are hard for me to read if he does. When he wakes from his naps, sometimes he cries but other times he is quiet and just lies there in his swing until I finally go get him up because I realize he is not going back to sleep. If he cries, I have tried leaving him alone for a few minutes and I’ve also tried going in and soothing him. Neither works.
I also don’t know how to tell what time to put him to bed at night. How do I know if he just needs another nap or if it’s time for bed? Especially with his naps being so irregular, his bedtime is hard to get consistent. I have tried putting him down earlier for bed before but he still wakes constantly for the first couple hours or so. Right now we initially put him down between 8 and 9 usually, but he doesn’t fully go down until closer to 11ish because of all of his wakings. I’ve tried putting him down in the 7 o’clock hour and it didn’t make a difference. Do I need to go even earlier? What do I do about his few short naps during the day? I worry about the sleep he is (or isn’t) getting and am at a complete loss as to what to do. I would appreciate any feedback! I feel like the mom above – each day is consumed with constantly trying to put him to sleep and worrying all day about his sleep.
Your LO sounds a bit like mine when she was young. Only 30-45 minute catnaps until about 4 months old when she learned to fall asleep on her own with some CIO at night (I do a 20-30 minute sleep routine before putting her to bed). Because of her short naps, she would have up to 5 naps a day because she would tire so quickly.
I also let her CIO for naps when she first fell asleep, and also when she woke up at the 45 min mark (she fell back asleep after 2-15 minutes of crying and would often sleep for up to an hour or so after that). I still have to do this sometimes, she’s now almost 5 months old, but other times she’ll sleep 1.75 hours straight.
Anyway, I wanted to answer your question about bedtime which came about very naturally for us and based more on my bedtime than hers 🙂 . At about 4-5 weeks, I found that it often took me nearly 1.5-2 hours of rocking and shushing before she was fully asleep and knowing that I need to be asleep by about 10pm in order to get enough sleep for myself, I started putting her to bed at about 8pm, after she’s been fed and changed. I noticed that she didn’t wake up after 30 minutes like she usually did for naps and often slept for 3-4 hours, so I figured that this must be what her brain considers night time because different parts of the brain control naps and night sleep, which is why she didn’t wake up after 30 minutes. Also, she had a witching hour problem and babies always sleep their longest stretch after witching hour, so that was also factored in when we determined that her bedtime should start around 8pm.
Thanks for your reply, Kristen. How long did you let her cry when putting her down for night and for naps? I don’t even know how long it’s ok to let him cry for. When you say you put her to bed at 8 – is that when you start putting her down, or you start putting her down earlier and then 8 is when she finally falls asleep for good? Sorry for so many questions, I just feel so lost as to what to do for my little guy and I feel like I’m messing it all up – and messing him up in the process. I’ve tried putting him down at different times between 7 and 9:30 and he wakes up multiples times for the first couple hours no matter what. I don’t know if I need to go even later or earlier than those times or if I’m just doing something wrong.
Aaaaak – you ate my comment! Damn you site administrator! Oh wait…that’s me.
OK short recap of my huge email – …
I think you need to let him fuss a little bit. Fuss it out doesn’t mean cry for hours. But what happens if you set a timer for 10-15 minutes. I think if you give him a little space to settle he may surprise you. If you don’t want to push it at naptime that’s OK but I would definitely try when he’s waking every 20 minutes at bedtime. Make him prove he needs you.
It’s hard to say when his bedtime should be but if you’re starting around 8/9 I would start there. 7 is probably where he needs to be longer term but I would assume that’s too far off where you are right now.
One thing I forgot to mention in my last comment is that he has been pretty attached to the pacifier – not going down with out it. He tries for his thumb various times when he’s not swaddled, too, so he definitely likes to suck. The past few days he has actually gotten very good at finding his thumb and sucking on it at various times. Should I try swaddling him with that arm out so that when he wakes up he has something to suck on to soothe himself (without me having to give him back his pacifier)? Or will un-swaddling one arm right now just make things worse?
Sara,
I am in almost the exact same situation for naps and night sleep with my almost-4-month-old, except we have possible reflux, teething, and gas issues complicating the picture.
I was just wondering if you followed Alexis’s advice about letting him fuss for a little at bedtime, and whether it worked. And if you did, was he swaddled at the time? We are still using the swaddle, but he’s able to break out of it as soon as he started wriggling and fussing. And are you using the pacifier? Our little boy has also become rather attached to it.
I’m feeling for you– we are pretty crushed by sleep deprivation at this point. But we’re nervous about CIO because we’re not sure if he’s waking because in pain.
I wouldn’t vote for CIO for a 4 month old with reflux. Not to say that you can’t but and babies surprise me CONSTANTLY. But I’m fearful that it wouldn’t go well.
Look you can always experiment with one arm out and see what happens. Some babies are savants to manage to get that thumb into their mouth with laser accuracy. Others just flap their arm about their head until they get really frustrated and yell at you about it. So OK if that happens – the experiment failed (for today) and you’re back to both arms in for swaddling. No harm done right?
Sophia,
We have been letting him fuss a bit (15-20 minutes) here and there and we have seen some small improvements with that. He has always had a strong need to suck and actually got decent at finding his thumb last week (during wake times) so we decided to try swaddling him with that arm out to see how it would go. It actually seems to be working fairly well. He isn’t perfect at finding it, but good enough that he can soothe himself a lot of the time with his thumb. This has helped a lot, too, I think. When the pacifier falls out, he just goes for his thumb and most of the time it works.
We have seen improvements in how long his night sleep stretches go and we’ve gotten to the point where we no longer have to put him down completely asleep for his naps – we can put him down nearly asleep and he sucks his thumb until he’s completely out. Also, when he wakes from naps (they are still super short), he tries sucking his thumb to soothe himself for a bit before crying. He has never been able to get himself back to sleep for naps, but I’m hoping he will be able to soon or that they will just get longer soon. And as things get better, we will work on putting him down more and more awake to teach him how to do it completely on his own. Things are slow-going, but they are at least moving forward and improving which is success for us from where we were before!!
One thing to mention – our little guy started busting out of the swaddle pretty early (at like 3 or 4 weeks old), but wasn’t ready to be un-swaddled at that time so we started using a double swaddle and it worked perfectly. We have been doing that ever since and he can’t bust out of it. You may want to try that out if your little guy still needs the swaddle. There are a ton of youtube videos showing how to do the double swaddle. I found them in the comments section on one of the swaddle posts on this site.
Anyway, swaddling with one arm out and letting him fuss sometimes have seemed to help things for us – we still have a long way to go but we have definitely seen some improvements that are huge for him. We still have him in the swing (non-moving, though, at this point – another improvement) because he seems to have a little bit of reflux, too, so he doesn’t do well lying flat. Also, we have had major gas issues with him as well but that has started to improve, too. I don’t know if he’s just starting to grow out of it or if changing my diet has helped, or both. Maybe take a look at some of the things you are eating and see if there is something that could be a possible cause.
Try some small changes and see if things start to improve a little. It may be slow and gradual but at least it will be moving forward – that’s how we feel anyway!
I feel for you, sleep deprivation is a beast! Good luck!
Sorry, one more question – because his naps are so short, should I be decreasing his waketime? According to the sleep schedule on here, he should be taking 3 naps a day, but should it be more if his naps are so short?
For a while you may be stuck with more than 3. Especially if he’s not going to bed till 9+
Hi Sara
I have 5.5 month old twins with similar issues. At 4 months the sleep regression hit- my son was sleeping thru the night (7 pm-7 am) and my daughter only woke up once to feed. Then the 4 month sleep problems began- they both were waking up 5-6 or 7 times at night- being not sure what to do so i just fed them.
Well I quickly dropped that to only feeding 2x for my son and three times for my daughter (she’s really tiny and seems to eat more at night). All the other times I just turned on some other white noise or sleep sheep (heartbeat) to get them to fall asleep and then turned it down (there is still white noise in the room- but the sleep sheep or iphone noise is turned off). I also decided to only feed my son after midnight.
They would also wake up 30 min after being put down and it would take several put downs for them to finally sleep. But they’ve stopped doing that and I don’t know why or how? My son, though, has started to suddenly wake up an hour after being put down but it almost seems like a sleep cry (an intense sleep cry).
Fast forward a month and I am feeding my son once a night but my daughter is still being fed up to 3x a night but it is getting better. Both have arms out of their swaddle (daughter for about three weeks and this is night three with my son with minimal wake ups). But I do co-sleep after 3 am as I’m pretty tired and want to sleep.
Naps (all motion naps for now) have been 30 min for many months but I think they may be consolidating their naps a bit (45 min to 1.5 hr at times). Some days I can get away with only three naps but most times they need 4 naps to get them to bed time (630 bottle, 7 pm bed).
I still have sleep associations with going to sleep but I’m working on it slowly (one child at a time). My son is no longer falling asleep at the bottle but is pretty drowsy when done and will cry when being put down. If he still has some milk in his bottle I feed him again, or else bump up the white noise until he falls asleep.
For now what we are doing is somewhat working so we will see if we need CIO. I lean towards CIO during wake times at night and not so much for bed times.
Twins are 5X as hard as a single baby. Don’t forget that.
I’m not sure if CIO at night would be your friend. Have you considered trying to wean off one of the 3X night feeds? If she’s used to eating X oz at night and you go cold-turkey CIO its going to make for a rough few days (you can do it though, it will work). But what about trying to wean off 1-2 of those night feeds before you go that route?
Have you read this?
http://www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-3/
Thanks Alexsis!
I’ve tried knocking out the third feed (430 am-ish) but then DD cries off and on until 7 am and then wakes up DS (who is in another room). I’ve also tried knocking off the first night feed (10ish)- BTW these two feeds are breast and the middle is bottle) but she cries off and on and wakes DS who doesn’t get fed until midnight or beyond.
I know the first night is the toughest and it will get easier but i really don’t sleep until 4ish as the babies wake up off and on until this time. At this time I can’t afford less sleep then what I get (as I am also pumping at night). So you can see I’m just waiting until what is somewhat working isn’t.
Right now DD is waking up more bc she’s bopping her head on the crib rails or rolls over and doesn’t know how to roll back (she’s wearing a sleep sack)so I roll her back and put on the sleep sheep (on top of the white noise in the room) as a distraction and turn it off 5 min later or so.
Regarding naps- I’m proud to say that DS is just being manually pushed at the start and falls asleep in a non moving swing (I’m only assuming).
Honey – you cant be up all night till 4 AM. Your BEST shot of decent sleep is to aim for their bedtime until say 2 AM. So I would buckle down on two things:
1) Getting them on the same feeding schedule. I don’t care if this means offering #2 food before he’s waking up for it. But getting them eating & sleeping on the same schedule is critical for your sanity!
2) Getting them to go from bedtime till some reasonable time. Say 7 PM – 2 AM. I think gentle weaning can work but I’m hearing that there is crying on and off when this happens. Are you perhaps trying to wean off TOO quickly? Are you trying to get more food into them during the day to compensate for the calorie drop at night?
This is not easy stuff AT ALL and I totally hear that you’re barely keeping it together and thus can’t really afford for things to get worse. But what if you buckle down for 1 week with these two goals – they eat and sleep at the same time and nobody eats between bedtime and say 2 AM (or whatever goal you feel most realistic). Then YOU go to bed WITH them at 7 – who cares if the house is a disaster and you ate PBJ for dinner. Trust me on this.
Then YOU sleep 7-2 with them and if you’re up constantly from 2 till morning it’ll be rude but not impossible.
Thanks Alexis!
I’m currently in the teething stage now so more wake ups from that too- although last night they “STTN” (5 hours each).
Question- DD gets put down drowsy sleepy in her crib, but immediately wakes up, rolls over and proceeds to spend the next five or ten minutes adjusting herself- no fussiness at all. So basically falls asleep awake. But come 3 in the morning and she will cry and cry- I just fed her her bottle at 2 am so I did nothing at 3 and let her cry and she cried for an hour, almost an hour and a half! Why? She can put her self to sleep. Was she truly hungry? I checked on her and she wasn’t caught in the rails and she was safe. Is she just used to me rushing in and BF her? Does she know I’m in the room sleeping so cries more? I just don’t get it. She never cries during the day and saves all her crying at night!
Thanks for this, Alexis. You’re great. I’ve been using your site since early on (2 months or so) and am usually able to find advice on our situation du jour within your posts – however, we now have a curious conundrum. I have a generally great sleeper: 11.5-13 hrs a night with one feed at around 4am. Naps vary – she likes to cry in protest (often for 20 minutes at the start or in the middle) but still usually gets in 2 or 3 solid naps every day. Occasionally, a nap is short, crappy, and/or doesn’t really happen. She is 5.5 months but really more like 6 because she arrived 10 days post date.
So last night, I accidentally left the baby monitor off. I awoke at around 6am and at first thought “Sweet! No night feed!” Then I realized that the monitor was off. I fear that I have unintentionally done night 1 of CIO. Of course, I have no way of knowing when (or if) she awoke to feed or how much she cried, because even though we sleep in the next room, our house is freakishly soundproof and we DO NOT HEAR HER without that monitor. Nika slept past 8am (slightly unusual), and got tired again within an hour. She then cried in her crib for a full half-hour (much louder than usual) before finally settling down for Nap #1. It’s been an hour, and she’s still asleep – we’ll see how the rest of the day goes.
I had no intention of doing CIO at this time, especially since she was eating heartily at the 4am wake up. Now what do I do? Do I continue to turn the monitor off at night just to be consistent? Or do I return to night feeding on demand because we were all fine with it? I guess I’m somewhat reassured that she did return to sleep (after god-knows-how-much crying) and that she ate normally once she awoke. I’m sure she’s CAPABLE of making it all night without nursing…I’m just not sure how I feel about it or whether it’s necessary at this time.
Wah? Oh wait there’s more…
Night #2: Wow. Just wow. We are now going on 12 hours of truly uninterrupted sleep (and yes, I did go in just now to check for breathing)!!! I guess CIO only took one night.
I do understand that CIO is not the same as night-weaning, and I really had no intention even of night-weaning just yet, since Nika’s 4am wake-up was working for us (I often start my day at about 5am anyway). I beat myself up terribly yesterday – My baby was (more than likely) crying in hunger, and I never came for her!!!! My husband was supportive, as was my no-nonsense southern mother (“Baby, that child wouldn’t o’ gone back to sleep if she was all that hungry. You ain’t hurt her one bit.”) Still, I felt that she was a bit “off,” at least for the first half of the day. Did I violate her trust? Would I make it even worse by being inconsistent and giving in to cries for food on the 2nd night? After deliberating all day, I finally decided to leave the monitor on as usual but to wait out any superficial crying. And to my surprise…..not a peep!
Okay, we are now officially at 12+ hours of peaceful slumber. Oh frabjous day!!!
Hey Donna,
I was going to start by saying that unless you are living in a Nuclear Bomb Shelter I just cannot imagine that your daughter was screaming for ages while you slept in dreamless slumber. Especially when your body is conditioned to waking at that time. However this is all moot because…
YOU’RE DONE!
Wait – is your Mom a Steel Magnolias? That is the cutest thing ever. Can she be a consultant on my site? I’ll pay her to give down home southern parenting advice because it sounds like she’s super sensible and probably has tons to teach us all 🙂
My mom is awesome for sure. She don’t fret ’bout nutin’. She stands in stark contast to my mother-in-law, who f’s up Nika’s sleep whenever she gets the chance with her hand-wringing and over-indulgence (OMG, the baby sniffled. Must. Pick. Up. The. Baby!!!) But that’s OK – all that matters is that my husband and I are cut from the same cloth, somewhere between the two extremes.
My mom would LOVE to give advice. It’s her favorite pastime. Careful not to get too enamored with the down-home thing, though….it’s a trap. For example, you might object to the part where the kid has to go out to the woods and pick their own beatin’ switch… 🙂
Let her know if she wants to share some southern advice here, I would TOTALLY jump on that.
I would imagine great things like this:
“If your kids can’t stop fighting with each other give them a fighting pit. Like they use for chickens. Two kids enter, one kid leaves. Trust me a few days in the pit and they’ll figure out how to work it out quickly enough.”
OMG – now I want to write as a sassy southern lady. Is it too late to create that online persona? Probably (I live in VT for starters).
But not a joke – if she’s interested I’m totally game!
Is it harmful for a younger baby to undergo the CIO method? My baby is 4 months old and my pediatrician told me to leave her to CIO now because she no longer needs to be fed during the night. My husband has been trying to get me to leave the baby CIO from the beginning. Is it too soon?
Harmful? No. There are lots of opinions about when is too young/old. I’ve stuck with 6 months because I’m writing on the Internet and if total strangers are going to take my advice (they can and do) then I want to be pretty conservative about what I’m saying.
Is CIO right for you? I don’t know – it depends on what you’re trying to do. But I WILL say that most 4 month olds are still eating at night at some point so if the goal is to get her to fast for 12 hours straight, I would maybe lean towards being a bit more generous.
If it helps, everything I’ve got on the subject can be found here http://www.troublesometots.com/cry-it-out/
“If neither you nor your child has had any real sleep in almost 2 years, I don’t think you need some book telling you that you need to wait another 6 months. I think you need a drink and a warm hug.”
Oh god, thank you. I’ll take a spiked hot cocoa with that hug please!!!!!! Seriously, my 18 month old has been a huge challenge. Through most of the first year I happily nursed overnight, because my supply dropped precipitously when I didn’t. Then a year rolled around, and suddenly he was up even more than he was as a newborn (as a newborn through 8 months, he went to bed, slept till around 1, nursed, went back to bed, and maybe would be up at around 4 and then back to sleep again. No big deal right?). Suddenly he was waking every 90 minutes, or less. I got into the habit of cosleeping with boob out in the early morning for my own sanity. Over the last few months I’ve tried nightweaning, and it’s helped, but not solved the problem. Now we’re in CIO land. And it’s hell. He goes to sleep after crying only about 30 seconds at night, that part’s easy. But my god, the waking up at 2:30? He cries for a few minutes, then goes quiet. Then just when I’m going back to sleep and drifting off, he struggles out of sleep and is up again. Rinse and repeat ALL morning until it’s almost 5 AM and I just can’t take it anymore and give in and allow him to nurse just so I can maybe grab ten minutes of dozing. He never goes full bore or hysterical or cries for more than a few minutes at a time, but he’s not going back to sleep either. I feel like I have the worst hangover in the world. I haven’t slept more than five hours at a time (and even that is rare) in two years. I’m just So. Done. The first few nights I decided not to rescue him overnight, he cried for around 10 minutes then went back to sleep till 5 AM, I thought I had totally won parenting. Then the last few nights happened. Do I just need to stay strong?
I can’t take much more of this. Do I just need a bottle of wine? Does he need a bottle of wine?
OMG YES!
Stay strong. You’re done. The milk bar is closed. Full stop. Hello extinction burst. You can do this.
*fist of sleepless solidarity*
I do hope so! Last night was a bit better, so we’ll see! It’s hard though, bedtime used to be so quiet and gentle, and I had him going to sleep on his own but with me in the room. I know this is the next step but it’s hard to listen to (I say that, but honestly he’s never cried more than a few minutes at a time, it’s just the intervals at which he does that’s so rough!)
“THERE IS NO OPTIMUM TIME. There is always, ALWAYS a wonder week, growth spurt, separation anxiety, travel, developmental milestone, starting daycare, teething, ear infection, cold, shots, etc.” So true!!!! Bam! That’s me high-fiving you right now Alexis. Another great post. Thank you for helping sleep-deprived parents everywhere! You rock!
Thanks Katie 🙂
Strangely this came up like 5X this week and I could totally relate. I would totally be the type to graph things in Excel trying to come up with the optimal sleep plan based on co-variate data.
Speaking of graphs, I happen to know somebody who knows how to stage things so that they look cool and take gorgeous photographs. She also happens to have the most AMAZING sleep log THAT HAS EVER EXISTED.
I can’t wait to get my hands on a good photo of it 🙂
Ok, ok. I get it:) But honestly, I don’t have a “stage” big enough for that sleep log. I will put my creative hat on and get back to you.
Alexis,
Thank you for all your advice! You and your blog has been a God send. I have no idea how I stumbled upon it, but thank the Lord I did.
For any parent who has a 6 month+ child and is finding themselves up every few hours at night with their healthy and beautiful baby, please take Alexis’ advice! After my daughter turned 8 months we found ourselves in Cryitoutville. I had tried putting baby down awake, but working-mom-guilt had given me a great excuse to cuddle and rock and shush and cuddle some more with an older baby. I created a sweet little cuddle monster- at 3 freakin’ AM. So, I read every single blog on Alexis’ site and kept waiting for the ‘right time.’ Let me tell you, that ‘right time’ NEVER came! Finally my husband and I decided that Hannah was healthy and we were home and could give a solid routine for the next two weeks. Although she had just learned to stand up in the crib and could not yet sit on her own- we went for it.
From that experience I have learned something very critical as a first time parent- my decisions are not always right, however I make every decision out of love and wanting to give me child what is best. Did my daughter cry for an hour the first night? YES! But, the second night she only cried for 30 minutes, the third night 15 minutes and the fourth night only a short whine. Did I have to go in my daughter’s room and lay her down a few times? YES. Did that ruin our sleep training? NO!!!! My daughter is turning a year old in a few weeks and things are going well. She has nightmares, her diaper leaks, and sometimes she cries after I’ve done everything to reassure her before putting her back in her crib. The difference now is that she protests for a few minutes and then she lays down and goes to sleep on her own. If you follow Alexis’ advice I promise things will get better. Probably not perfect, but definitely better!
Aw thanks Lizzy,
And thanks for sharing your story. This stuff IS scary and people get hung up on the fear of “what will happen”. Sometimes bad is better than the unknown. Lots of people feel the exact same way you did – scared, working mom guilt, etc. and will really appreciate your candor in sharing your experience here!
My 20-month old had been a notoriously bad sleeper since I pushed out his nine and a half pound hiney. Like others who posted, we tried everything and finally re-visited CIO in March, right before his new baby brother was due.
New baby (almost 3 months old) has been a great sleeper thus far, praise you Lord and knock on wood…big brother is starting to wake at night, scream, fuss, you know– not stay asleep. Refusing to go down, too. Hubs and I have hesitated to just let him do his thang and CIO because we don’t want him waking up baby brother (who is in the cradle in our room)–no amount of white noise will prevent these baby banshee cries from being heard.
Room temp is good… Pjs good… Tummy full….diaper dry….almost all teeth are in….
What to do? Let him go for it and cry and risk waking up new baby?
Charlotte,
Welcome to the New Baby Bed Bounce! (I’ve been meaning to write about this as soon as I find a better name than the new baby bed bounce).
This is TOTALLY normal and happens ALL the time. ALL THE TIME. New baby shows up, older sib isn’t keen on it but rolls with it for awhile. A few months go bay and suddenly – BOOM – HUGE BEDTIME DRAMA.
Why? Because now we’re sharing time and attention with the new baby. What’s a great way to guarantee getting time and attention for yourself? Exactly what he’s doing. Nobody wants baby to get woken up so Mom and Dad are johnny on the spot the minute you make a peep. And smart savvy sibs figure this out.
The answer? Talk to them about it. Make sure you are filling their bucket. Carve out time for them and make it SACROSANCT. No fussy baby interference, just them. Do what you need to. Maybe you hire the neighbor’s 14 YO to hold your fussy baby while you and older brother play in the sandbox and have popsicles? Whatever. Fill his bucket.
Then establish the boundaries at bedtime. He’s almost 2 – he gets stuff. If “you’ll wake the baby” is a power tool it’ll get used. Tell him over lunch, “We love you but bedtime is bedtime. Screaming is not OK. If you have a hard time falling asleep you can sing songs, count toes, play with your bed buddies, etc. Screaming is not OK. Mommy and Daddy love you and are always hear for you. But we won’t be coming in after bedtime. That’s your time for sleep. We’ll see you in the morning with big hugs and kisses!”
If he wakes baby he does. So be it.
My 13 week old daughter is addicted to her pacifier. Won’t go to sleep without it, won’t stay asleep without it. The other night I had to put it back in her mouth every hour. Her naps are short because she wakes needing the pacifier. If I can get to her quickly enough I can reinsert the pacifier and elongate the nap (not an ideal situation).
At night I’ve resorted to nursing her back to sleep and letting her stay in bed with me after her first feed, just so we can get some sleep.
I spend most of my day worries about getting her to sleep! It’s all I do.
Help!!!!
Chrissy I was you about 6 weeks ago so I got rid of….my daughter was six months at the time so you have age on your side. It took her about two days but it worked really well. Don’t start at night, no one thinks clearly at night. I started during her day sleeps, a little extra settling was involved, and a dark room helped but make sure baby is tired but not crazzzzzzy tired because she is going to take a little longer to go down so you don’t want a manic on your hands. But it saved my sanity, you can do it!
What other soothing does she have? Make sure she has LOTS of soothing other than the pacifier. Minimally swaddle + white noise. Then try the pull out method to see if you can help her gently fall asleep without it. No major crying at this age right?
We had this dreaded pacifier problem too! My kiddo is 17 weeks now, co-sleeps with us, and was addicted to her pacifier. Starting ~2 weeks ago, I started having to replace the stupid thing many many times in the night (instead of maybe 5 or 6 times, which is what it had been and which I sort of could live with). It kept falling out, but she would just go crazy if it was not in her mouth. We tried to gradually get rid of the pacifier by letting her get relaxed / almost asleep, then removing it, put it back in if (when) she gets upset, repeat ad nauseum. We tried this for 5 nights and were making no progress (it was taking 1.5-2 hours to get her to sleep every night and she was still waking up in the middle of the night wanting it back) and getting extremely cranky (not just the baby).
So, we decided we had to go cold turkey with the pacifier. I made my husband (he is the one with tendencies toward emotional jelly) go to the other room with earplugs. I had her next to me in bed with my arm over her chest (like we usually sleep) and I just let her cry for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I picked her up, rubbed her back for 30 seconds or so (she quieted), put her back down. Cry for another 5 minutes, pick her up, repeat. 32 minutes after we started, she was asleep. It was full-blown wail one second and the next second cherubic sleeping baby. She woke up 1.5 hours later and we did the same process with fairly serious crying again, but it took only 15 minutes. She then woke up later to nurse and went back to sleep very easily after I fed her.
The second night, we did the same thing and it took 27 minutes, but this time there was really no full out crying. It was just fussing, whimpering, some hand-sucking, and intermittent semi-crying. I still picked her up briefly every 5 minutes if it seemed like she needed it. And then at some point, she was just asleep. After 5 hours, she woke up to nurse and whimpered for just under ten minutes before going back to sleep for the rest of the night.
Tonight will be night #3, so hopefully there will be even more progress. But I am really amazed by what has happened over just 2 nights, and I also wanted to share the “modified crying it out” we are attempting with our ~4 month old co-sleeping nursing baby, since it *seems* to be working for us.
Also, I was so happy to find this website! Thank you Alexis!
Hi Alexis,
Man, the timing for this is perfect. We have been struggling with my 4 month old’s sleep for almost 4 weeks.
Simply put, I know he’s “too young” but I’m not sure what else to do other than CIO. Whether it’s for nap time, bed time, a night time feed, or a 45-min. wake up (4 month sleep regression, I hate you) he *hates* to fall asleep, or more properly, he’ll fight for play time and attention if we so much as breathe in his direction. Sometimes he’ll fall asleep nursing, or be sleepy enough not to fight it when we put him down (though that’s rare). But otherwise, any soothing techniques we try seem to either not work, or make him more enraged that we’re soothing him and not playing with him. It seems like any involvement from me or his father is seen as an invitation to “play time.” Even if he’s tired and I *know* he’s tired, he’ll grin like a fool and coo and gurgle and even head-butt us for attention if we rock him. Same thing minus the head-butting if we bounce him in his bouncy seat. He’s never been a fan of his swing, so that’s been a non-starter. Add to this that he now breaks out of his swaddle regularly and seems to like having his hands in his mouth (but also seems to flail a lot when trying to fall asleep un-swaddled). He does put his fingers in his mouth for comfort when he’s awake, so I’m hopeful that we can lose the swaddle eventually…maybe now?
I’m at my wits’ end in terms of trying to figure out how to help him to sleep without physically being with him (and thus being totally distracting). We do have a loud noise machine that plays white noise, but I don’t think that’s helped significantly. Out of utter desperation, we’ve been doing a pretty half-arsed version of CIO, going into comfort him every 5-10 minutes. But that seems to make him more enraged when we leave. I have no problem with night feeds, and am happy to continue those, but….how to get him to sleep in the first place?
I feel like this post is all over the place, but I am out of my mind tired and I have no idea how to get my darling baby boy to sleep short of leaving him to cry. Help!
My gut says to stick with the swaddle and try double-swaddling to try to keep him from popping out. He’s probably close to being done and hand sucking is awesome. But sometimes younger babies end up flailing their hands about their heads more than actually sucking/soothing.
As for how to get him to sleep, if you’re going CIO stop the half assessed and DO it. You’re right – you’re gentle and kind visits are making things worse. Start with bedtime. Try for 2 nights – no visits. Report back. OK?
My daughter did the same thing at 4 months, got horribly angry no matter what I did to try and get her to sleep (she is a notorious nurse to sleeper) and I was just about at my wits end and then one day she just stopped being a bum and started nursing to sleep again (she just didn’t seem to have the ability to self soothe yet). which was ok at the time but now at 7 months old we are doing modified CIO for nighttime and nursing to sleep for naps. Anyways a little off topic but I just wanted to say that there does seem to be hope!
Well, it seems to have worked! We also dropped the swaddle for naps and that went so well that he’s in the sleep sack at night too. We have a bit of protest crying when we leave and then sometimes fussing, sometimes babble. And then sleep, glorious sleep! He actually grabs the sleep sack and kind of shoves it in his mouth to chew on as he falls asleep. A little unorthodox, but we’ll take it. He still has occasional days of bad naps, but his night sleep is much better, thank goodness!
Hi Lizzie,
I read your post hungrily as it sounds so much like our story! Our child is 4 months and while I know it’s a bit young to CIO him I have no other choice; my back has been thrown out from co sleeping (which I loved but I can’t walk around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame any more). I am trying the CIO but whenever we put him down he cries for more than an hour! Now granted, we did try it cold turkey (as Weisenbluth talks about in his book). He does eventually go to sleep after about an hour of crying. Last night he went to bed at 7 though, and then woke up four times! Everytime he does I nurse him back to bed and then gingerly put him back in his crib, hoping that he will fall asleep! How did you do the CIO? Any suggestions would be so welcome! Minelle
Hi Minnelle,
First, I hope you get some sleep soon! So we started first with naps, and then moved to CIO at night (and at that point, there was not so much crying). We also made sure to do it when he wasn’t over-tired. I’m not sure about your son, but ours likes having a small blanket (the Aden and Anais security blanket…I’ll include the Amazon link at the bottom) to chew on as he falls asleep. I know it’s technically a no-no, but when he’s alseep I always check on him and it’s never in front of his face- always clutched in his hand by his side. Also it’s muslin, so even if it did stay over his face I feel like he could breathe through it. That’s kind of up to you, though.
So. Naps first. I cleared 3 days so that we could put him down at the first sign of tiredness and just let him go. At first I did go in to check on him, but that seemed to make it worse, so I stopped. And honestly by the evening he kind of “got it” so that there was I think 20 min of on/off crying and then babbling to sleep. I think working with naps is easier for everyone because he’s not so tired and your nerves aren’t so frayed.
At this point he goes to sleep pretty well for naps and bedtime and only really screams if he’s over-tired.
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/aden-anais-Security-Elephant-Previous/dp/B0030DFRPC
Good luck!
I think CIO is in my future but I’m a little confused, no one addresses night WAKING. My daughter can self settle really well, but at 7 months she has started waking in the night… I’m a little lost and there seems to be little advice out there…. None in fact! Everyone is so obsessed with getting babies to sleep but, guys, what do you do if they wake???
What does she seek when she wakes up? What do you do to get her to fall back asleep?
Hi, my son is 8 months old and still co-sleeping/night nursing with me. I did not mind it but now that he’s so mobile and curious it’s becoming dangerous. About a month ago I mentioned to his pediatrician that I wanted him in his crib (I always did ideally) and she said to just have him CIO. Well we tried it for naps only for a few days but he would cry for hours without falling asleep. He made himself hoarse a few times. We’d always put him in after he had already fallen asleep, the crib woke him up every time we set him in it, so I stopped. Now I’ve about reached my limit since it’s a safety issue and I figure I just need to do it…but, he just wakes up the moment we set him in the crib and we live in an apartment it’s such a source of stress hearing him cry both as a mom and someone who knows its got to be driving our neighbors nuts. The guy above us is a young punk who blasts music, he did it louder and longer than ever the weak we tried to crib-train….
I’m totally lost on how to get our baby to like his crib. He sleep on pillows away from me just fine, anything soft, but he will not sleep flat on his back, even at an angle unless it’s soft. I know you say babies don’t care about their cribs, but why is it so easy to put him on a pillow to sleep far away from me? I will hear any advice, I just want to lay out all of my observations even if they’re flawed.
*WEEK (not weak) we tried to crib-train…
One more thing I forgot to mention but is pertinent I think, he will sleep in his crib for hours ON A PILLOW. He just wakes instantly if he touches the crib mattress. But then I can’t sleep while he’s on a pillow because I worry he’ll suffocate.
Stephanie,
Clearly he has a sleep association with something that is like a pillow. So my first thought is to run it by your pediatrician. Is there anything he/she feels would be OK to put in the crib with him that might mimic the pillow-like feeling? Like a layer of foam UNDER the fitted sheet?
OR is there a safe sleep lovey that is soft enough to give him that “pillow-like” feeling?
Of not then I would consider CIO at BEDTIME. Naptime is a rough go so if you’re trying to get baby moving towards the crib, I would start with bedtime.
Last option is to remove the pillows from your bed. Get him used to sleeping sans-pillow where he’s ALREADY sleeping and THEN try to move to the crib.
Good luck!
I agree with Alexis (well mainly because she’s the expert 🙂 that CIO is easier at bedtime than nap times. I just did CIO with my 3.5 month daughter and she just fell asleep after roughly 5′ of crying (which tore my heart apart). Still not much luck with nap time yet. She’s still napping in the swing.
Good luck!
HELP ME PLEASE!!!
My son is 8 months old and still doesn’t sleep through the night. He wakes up 2-4 times and sometimes more. Only rarely has he been up once at night.
The thing is he needs the bottle to fall asleep, night time or nap time.He always has to be on the bottle, milk or water, for him to fall asleep. I have tried giving him water instead of milk at night thinking that he will eventually learn not to have any feeds at night and this doesn’t work. He wakes up more times and I am now wondering whether he is getting enough calories or whether he is crying because he is hungry. He is quite big, was born at 9.5 pounds.
I am tired as it takes me a long time to get back to sleep once I am awakened, my husband is tired too. Please help!! What method do you think I should try?
Hey Maggie,
You get what the root problem is right?
http://www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-i/
It’s this. It’s what happening AT bedtime. Read the whole post. There’s a part II and III that I think answer a lot of your questions. Good luck!
This is so helpful! So glad you have this wisdom. 🙂
I want to give some hope to those mommies out there who are scared to try sleep training/CIO. My son is almost 10 months old, and as I type he’s sleeping peacefully in his crib. That might not sound earth-shattering, but believe me, IT IS. From day 1, he has been the most alert, aware, and hilarious baby with the most EXTREME aversion to being away from his mommy at all, ever. We swaddled, with white noise, we bounced, we shooshed, and sometimes we successfully put him into his bassinet for sleep. However, that sleep never lasted very long. With the first sneeze or fart he was wide awake and screaming. It didn’t take long for us to take him into bed with us, bleary-eyed and desperate. He always went directly to sleep as soon as we put him next to us. Fast-forward 9 months and my son had never fallen asleep on his own, slept with my nipple in his mouth, napped only in my lap, and screamed every time he couldn’t see me for 2 seconds until I came back. The only way he could sleep without me was if I nursed him in our bed, and gently slipped away without waking him. Except suddenly, HE COULD CRAWL. So those barrier pillows were worthless now that he could crawl over them and potentially out of the tall bed onto the hard wood floor. My husband had been gently pressing me to try something, anything, to help our little man sleep on his own, so here’s what I did. About a month ago I started a longer, more recognizable bedtime routine. Diaper change, book, nursing and lullabies, then bed, in our bed, like usual. In about 2 weeks I could tell he got the routine and knew it was bedtime. Last week I started putting him in the crib. It was hard, I won’t lie. It is hard to listen your baby cry when it seems like you spend all day trying to prevent or soothe just that. I made the personal decision not to let him cry for more than one hour at a time, so I did have to rescue him once or twice. A little over a week later, he cries when I put him in his crib for bed, and that makes me sad because he used to love bedtime, but he stops crying right after I close the door. He has slept longer and better each night. I do bring him in bed with me in the middle of the night when he wakes up to nurse, but only because I decided on a more gradual approach. He’s such a happy baby, and I think part of that is because I have been an attachment mom when he needed me to be. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe I would have been this successful if I had tried this at any younger age. So for us, 9-10 months has been the perfect time to teach him good sleep, with some crying but less than I expected. And he can finally soothe himself back to sleep without me there to help! Like he just did when the stupid dog next door woke him up. When he is completely settled into his nighttime routine, I guess I will tackle naps. For now, I’m enjoying having some time to myself after 8pm! So, if I can do it, you can too.
At 3.5-4 months we were have a hard time w/ sleep. But I wasn’t emotionally ready to “go there” and I didn’t know how to do a CIO method – I hadn’t read any books and I was so out of my mind tired, info on this topic made obsess, over anylize (out of confusion) and paranoid. God what a mess I was. My husband convinced me to Ferb. our baby. I did and it was a MESS! It made him more upset. Eventually I found this site which was perfect because it summed up “all” the info and how to. We CIO at 6 months, just 2 weeks before going on a trip. We knew it was a small window we were working w/. But there was NO WAY we could stay w/ family and have our baby waking up every hour+! We did it, it worked in 3 days (32m, 12m, 4m) but I course you have to stick w/ it beyond the 3 days. We did. It always hurts my heart to hear my baby cry but not following through would be like putting him through it for nothing. That have me the courage and strength to stick to my guns. All was good. But we had to CIO again at 8 months after we both got sick and napped together all day. He was also cutting his first teeth then. He’s now 1yrs old. We’re dealing w/ more teeth so sleep is disrupted again. I’m pregnant again and I feel condident for this next one. I will have the opportunity to try to avoid CIO. But if we have to go there I know how to do it and I know its not going to harm my baby 🙂 …watch, I’m going have a baby that is a perfect sleeper! That would be wonderful!
Hi I am dealing with a 9 month old that will not sleep. He did well up until about 6 months old when he had a horrible cold that lasted weeks he received Benadryl every night for bed but still woke about 2am & 5am then sleep till about 8am. It seems to me he became dependent on the Benadryl to sleep because after taking it for almost a month he now wakes up every few hour and just screams getting him back to sleep is almost impossible! Once I get him back to sleep it usually takes me an hour & he is up again in 2hrs. He goes to sleep well on his own for naps & at bedtime which is at 8pm but after that come 10pm he is crying out all night & can not put himself back to sleep. I usually pat & hush him but for at least an hr before he sleeps again. We are exhausted his crib is in our bedroom makes the CIO hard to do, we have tried but he cries for an hr & I give up he gets so upset he chokes & sounds like he is going to throw up. He usually gets a diluted bottle at about 1am & 5am out of desperation. We had planned to move his crib to share a room with his brother but at this rate that will never happen. Please I will take any advise I can get I have read so much but everything I read states to put them to bed awake an alone and we do that & he goes to sleep fine but then he wakes up & it is all over with! The other night we even tried to sleep in the living room thinking he sensed us but come 10pm he started.
We CIO our little one at 5 months and it has worked very well, she falls asleep on her own for naps and bedtime. My question is, she always cries. It’s only for 5-10 minutes (sometimes more if she is over-tired)but will she every just got to sleep without crying or is this just her way of getting rid of some energy?
Hi Alexis – Thank you so much, this gave me the courage to take the CIO plunge and it all started so well…. but we have a big problem which I can’t find addressed here, well not exactly, and I’m in desperate need of advice on how to proceed please (refrained from using exclamation mark).
Night one: dad put him (6 months and 1 week old) down after bedtime routine, left room, he cried loudly for an hour and 20 minutes, fell asleep, then woke up 3 hours later, b-fed sat up in bed, asleep in my arms, back into crib within 15 min slept another 4 hours, woke up, fed sat up in bed, he nursed some then was wide awake, looking up at me smiling, babbling, etc. I knew he wouldn’t go down in crib so finished feeding him lying in bed and he slept for 3 more hours.
Night two: Dad put him down awake, left, he cried for only 5 minutes (!!) fell asleep. Woke up 3.5 hours later, fed sat up in bed, asleep in arms, back to crib within 15 min, woke up 4 hours later, fed sat up in bed, put back in crib, he tossed and turned a bit, then started crying. We left him in crib, he cried for about 45 minutes then fell back asleep for another 3.5 hours. Whew.
Night three (here’s where it gets decidedly worse): Same night routine as previous, we astounded how little he cries and falls asleep on own. Woke up 4 hours later, fed sat up in bed, alseep in arms, put back in crib, sleeps, wakes up again 4 hours later, fed for about 20 mins or so, falls asleep, move to crib he throws head from side to side and wakes up starts crying, we leave him there. HE CRIED FOR TWO HOURS AND 5 MINUTES. Loud, screaming, hysterical crying. It was horrendous, I lay there feeling so stressed and gazing at him through the darkness with clenched jaw which is still sore today (Did I mention he’s in our room? We have a small 1 bedroom apt so it’s very close quarters. Trying to find a bigger place but keeping getting out-bid, so will most likely be here a few months longer still.) Finally at 5:25am he stopped crying but then laid there shouting and babbling loudly for another 30 min until I got him out of his crib and brought him into bed, fed him lying down and he fell asleep for about an hour and a half before waking up again, and then we got out of the bed.
So he has woken up around 3am/3:30am each night so far that we’ve done CIO and not gone back to sleep in his crib … last night was so bad I am absolutely dreading tonight. And our visit to the mother-in-law’s this weekend where he will sleep in travel cot for first time and most likely wake up a batch of visiting family.
You mention in FAQ on nighttime CIO post that they may wake up early for a while and if they stay awake then well that’s your day started. But what do you do when they are waking up at 3am regularly, feeding, then crying when you put them back down in crib? And what do you do if they are waking up around 3am, feeding and then seem wide awake? We have black-out blind, ocean whitenoise continuous, no lights on in room, his arms are still swaddled but we are moving him to sleeping bag soon as he keeps busting out regularly now.
Nap info if it’s of interest: short napper but getting better, ie getting one nap over 45 min. He used to only sleep in stroller and now sleeping in crib won’t sleep in stroller. Currently naps about 30 min, two hrs after waking, 1 hr 15 min around lunchtime, and 30 min around 4pm. B-fed to sleep for naps – getting day sleep any way I can at moment.
Feeding info: breastfed, eats about every 3 hours in day, just started giving him some fruit and veg last week which he’s eating bits of twice daily now.
Any advice greatly appreciated, we don’t want to give up….
Thanks very much
Georgia
PS happy to provide any further details which may help with advice giving!
Still really struggling with this, would love some advice… about two weeks after we started CIO he’s still going to bed well, cries under 10 minutes each bedtime in cot, but overnight is not getting any better.
We’ve found leaving him to cry after he wakes up late at night/early morning doesn’t seem to work he will cry for hours and our one bedroom is only place for us all to sleep… We are exhausted and need a plan of attack… The boob has lost its power to put him down at this time as well, he’ll suck away and mess about for 45 min – hour and still be awake.
Help…. thank you!
Hi Georgia,
did it ever get better? If so, would you share? We have had similar issues with my daughter…
Hey Georgia – I think the real crux of the issue is what is happening earlier in the night (the result of which is your late night/early morning crying). Here’s my theory…
1) You’re probably nursing too close to bedtime so that while technically you’re putting baby down awake baby still maintains a huge suck=sleep association. Also nursing baby fully to sleep at night wakings is potentially part of the picture too. So the answer would be to separate nursing from bedtime AT bedtime, and to not nurse until fully asleep at night.
2) The reason it gets worse as the night goes on is that the biological imperative to sleep is strongest at bedtime and gradually weakens through the night because you’re less sleepy (because you’ve caught up ON sleeping). So while you can “get away with stuff” earlier in the night, as you get closer to morning things that are problems will start to blow up on you. Which is why I say the problem is actually what is happening earlier in the night, you just don’t see the evidence of it until later in the AM.
So if this is your situation, make sure there is a big gap at bedtime. Also if you’re using a pacifier at bedtime that needs to stop. If you’re using a pacifier at all at night I would suggest ditching it (feel free to use it during the day if it’s working for you at naptime). That may be enough to rectify the situation. If not, then you’ll need to make sure you’re putting baby down awake after night feedings. Most babies are OK with middle of the night feedings that result in sleep, most often it’s bedtime that is the root cause. But in rare occasions you need to be diligent at night too.
Does that make sense?
I spent months stalking this site. I just got on here to read a little bit and realized how much things have changed for me. It’s not perfect but wow, what a difference five months makes. At 6 months we moved W. to his own crib and he wasn’t having it, so we accepted CIO. It didn’t end in a few days like many books say it will. It was on and off CIO for months. I know that sounds horrible but I have a strong-willed baby and even though it killed me to hear it, it was better for him and for me in the long run. At 6 months he was nursing every two hours at night, napping five 30 minute naps a day and I had a constant eye twitch from lack of sleep. Now he takes two 1.5-2 hour naps, plus a third shorty if he’s tired and he sleeps from 7:30pm-7am. We just finished our fourth night of sleeping THROUGH THE NIGHT (and if he does cry I let him and it hasn’t lasted long). I just want to say that I understand the rut the woman who wrote you the email is in…completely. I was her, constantly soothing and having no life outside sleep obsession. My soul would die a little when I would hear W. cry himself to sleep. I’m all about attachment parenting, home birth, amber teething necklaces, hippie-granola everything but some babies just need to cry it out. Sucks, but it’s true.
I think the sleep obsession stuff really resonates with me. When things are getting to a place that we literally obsess about sleep (and honestly so many people DO this) it’s really a sign that something. Must. Change. And that the disagreement about parenting philosophy needs to go out the window and we need to step back and say, “OK, this was not according to my plan. But my plan isn’t working. Time for a new plan.”
Thanks for sharing your story 🙂
Any advice on a 10 month old who is the perfect candidate for cio except that she vomits quickly and consistently when she cries? By the time we get her bathed, changed, and new bedding…there was no point made by 2 minutes of crying. She wakes frequently until around midnight and needs to be laid back down although she sometimes does it on her own.
I have a 4 month old 1 week. I’m desperate! I was going to try and CIO for getting to sleep initially this weekend, but I keep seeing it may be too young? I’m falling into post partum/sleep deprived depression and am not sure I can function much longer. If I try now and it’s not successful can I just try again at the 5 1/2 month? I don’t want to try and have to give up because it was too early. He only sleeps 2 hours at the most each interval and is the classic cat napper 30-45 min each time unless I hold him for an hour and bounce him when he starts to wake. I have a 3 year old and can’t hold him for every nap!
Hey AJ,
I think it’s really healthy that you’re in-touch with where you are emotionally and what you need to do to care for yourself (and by relationship, the whole family who depends on you). I think if you’re feeling this way regardless of what you choose to do CIO-wise it’s a great idea to look into getting some help (therapy, mediation, etc.). Because CIO may or may not work and improved sleep may or may not help, OK?
As to your question, If you’re giving baby ALL the soothing you can (swaddle, swing, white noise, dark room, consistent wind-down, not awake too long) and still feel it’s getting you nowhere you’re welcome to try.
My hesitation comes from a few places however. For starters most 4 month olds are often in the place of having a growth spurt/sleep regression. This can throw you off regardless of what you try to do to improve things. Yes 4 months is young but c’est la vies. Also make sure you are clear in what you are doing. When you say “try and then try again at 5.5 months” I worry that you’re leaning towards dabbling and dabbling is not a great plan for everybody.
If you’re committed (are you?) then start with bedtime and commit for a solid 3 days. See what happens. No checks. You’ll hopefully see dramatic improvement over each night in terms of the amount of tears.
I’m not saying that you don’t need to go in and feed him at night (you will!) or that this results in 12 hours of sleep. But hopefully you won’t be needed every 2 hours after 3 days.
Good luck.
I’m committed! I will try for 3 nights! I’m doing all of the above! Never awake more than 1.5-2 hours, he’s swaddled in a woombie, dark room, white noise.
I’m thinking put down awake in crib and let him CIO initially and then attend to his other night wakings in hope that within a couple weeks he will sleep longer and longer. Sometimes he wakes after only 45 minutes so I’m sure he just can’t get back to sleep and is not hungry yet.
Yes I’m to the point of all my thoughts are consumed with sleep!
I guess I’d like to know your opinion of how long is too long to let him cry?
I appreciate it soooo much!
I have followed so much advice from this site and it has helped me and my baby sleep for almost 9 months, but I am now in a difficult situation. My baby slept in a swing for 6 months, then we transitioned to the crib with no crying at all. Since then, she has gone down at night and for all naps awake and fallen asleep with minimal crying/fussing. However, last week she started refusing to nap without extensive rocking, and waking up many times during the night and not going back to sleep. I have been going in and feeding and rocking her because tthis is just so unusual for her, but she still won’t sleep. Any ideas why this is happening? I think we are going to have to CIO even though she had been a great sleeper without it. Bedtime had still been good but tonight She cried for about 15 minutes before falling asleep. My question is-what do I do when she wakes up during the night? Do I just not go in at all? Check on her at intervals Ferber-style? Is CIO effective then? She hasn’t had any night feelings since 5 months so I don’t think she’s hungry and feeding her doesn’t make her go back to sleep anyway. I am really at a loss as to how I should proceed and would appreciate any advice.
Maybe the 9 month sleep regression? I think Alexis has a post about sleep regressions. Also, AskMoxie.com has some good info?
I haven’t finished reading all this but I read a couple of comments and I’m in tears. I will continue reading and hope I can follow some of the advice. Btw I’m a ftm and lo is 13 weeks.
I would be interested in Alexis’ opinion about Georgia’s case. We have had similar problems with our daughter, among many others.
So much of the sleep training talks about getting a baby to fall asleep but what about the baby who goes down easily but wakes often? My son is almost 23 weeks old (5 months, 1 week) and goes to sleep pretty easily 99% of the time. I do nurse him but he is usually drowsy, not completely asleep when I put him down.
He wakes 2-4 times a night. Sometimes he takes a full feeding, sometimes not. He has done 5-7 hour stints enough times to know that he doesn’t need to eat the every 2-3 hours he’s been waking (and he;s gaining weight well) He hit the 4 month sleep regression (we were on our way to only 1 wake up a night) then got sick with croup. He does take a paci but isn’t dependent on it and usually spits it out as he’s falling asleep.
He has a bedtime routine (bath, jammies, nurse, bed) that we started around 6 weeks and have gradually moved the start time from 8 to 7:15. First wake is usually somewhere between 10:30-1, and then every 2-3 hours thereafter. And always between 4:30-6 where we’ve created a bad habit (I know) of bringing him into bed with us to try to catch an extra hour of sleep. He is always fed at 7am regardless of night wake ups to start the day.
Naps are hit and miss, I keep him on a 3 hour, eat – play – sleep schedule during the day which usually works pretty well. I sneak an extra feeding in at 6pm. Daycare tries to follow it the best they can but not always successful. He does a lot of the wake at 40 min interval and can’t put himself back to sleep.
Sorry, I digress – my ultimate question is can you do CIO in the MOTN or is there something else I should be trying?
I completely identify with one of the last paragraphs. I also have a beautiful, healthy, bright little boy, who is nearly 9 months, but for the last few weeks all I have been doing is obsessing about getting him to sleep, rather than enjoying spending time with him.
We decided a week ago to stop with the boobs at night as I was convinced it was about soothing rather than hunger, and I was exhausted. We offer him formula in a cup (he’s not good at bottles) in case he’s hungry, but he doesn’t take very much. However he now wakes more at night than ever – has gone from 2-3 wakings per night to waking every 90mins or so. If left he gets hysterical and takes a lot of soothing, although if we reach him quickly he can be put back to sleep quite quickly. Skin to skin contact seems to be what he needs though. He seems to hate his cot, and although a couple of months ago i could confidently put him down awake, now unless he is completely comatose he starts crying as soon as he feels himself being lowered into his cot. He can self soothe – he had a lovely long nap of about 2 hours a couple of days ago, during which i heard some grizzling as he stirred and then slept again. There just seem to be so many things to untangle i don’t know where to start.
I am really glad to have found your site though – makes me feel less alone and is giving me some ideas about how to start. It’s refreshing to find a baby advice site with a sense of humour – most are far too earnest! Thank you!
Hi Alexis!
So I have a 4 month old who is not a bad night sleeper but not a great napper. We have bedtime routine as follows: bath, lotion, read a book, bottle in dark and quiet room, then pacifier to help her fall asleep in my arms and then dad takes her to her crib once she’s deep asleep enough to take out the pacifier. She stays asleep from between 9-930 to 445-545 most nights. She does stir a lot during the night I can see ok the monitor but always finds herself back to sleep. So on average 7.5-8 hrs straight at night then wakes up for a feed and then back to sleep until between 730-9am.
I want to CIO because I know that it’s not great that she takes her bottle right before sleep and I want to put her into her crib awake.
My questions are..: how do I do this?! Should bedtime routine be bottle, bath, lotion, book, sleep? And the pacifier, I don’t want to give It to her to soothe because she still doesn’t know how to put it back in her mouth properly. Also, when she wakes at 5am, can I eliminate the feed? Also, se is able to roll on to her stomach and she’s fine to sleep on her stomach, she often does all night, the problem is when she wants to roll back over she hasn’t figured that out yet … Do I go in to flip her back when she does this?
I feel like this post is all over the place… Please help!
Hi,
We have an almost 4 month old (in 4 days). She has been a pretty good sleeper for what I think but I’m about to go back to work and wondering if she can’t get better. Right now, she usually gets a really good nap about 1 hour after she gets up in the morning. She often will wake about 30-40 min into this first nap but with minimal help (binky and singing) she will fall back asleep and sleep for a total of 1.5-2 hours. After this, i follow a 3 hour eat-play-sleep schedule as best possible but her naps from here on out are pretty bad. She needs sleep between each feeding as she is very alert and active but gets overtired/cranky very easily. However, she might sleep for 10 min or 45 minutes but never more than that and 20-30 is most common. She usually gets fed between 4:30 and 5pm and by 6:30 she is sleepy and cranky and often hasn’t slept much in the previous cycle. So at this point I put her down to bed with a new routine: bath most nights, jammies, lay on the floor and read a few books, sleep sack on, feed her then swaddle and rock/bounce to sleep. Usually she goes down in the crib very sleepy but will often fight sleep or wake up right as we put her down. However, she tends to think this is a nap and about 45 minutes later will wake up crying. The crying can then last for 10 min – 1.5 hours and usually requires bouncing, rocking, singing anything to get her sleepy again and we often have to do this a few times before she really knocks out for the night. She will generally be ‘out’ then till between 12:30-2am. I will feed her then and usually goes back into the crib rather quickly with minimal rocking and then will sleep till 6:30-7:30. Sometimes waking around 4am but I don’t often have to go to her and she will fall back asleep then.
My issues are these:
One, at night I am feeding her than putting her down for the night but often still have to rock her as she is not completely asleep and this can take up to 30 min. and she often wakes up 45 minutes later screaming and might need up to an hour of helping her get back to sleep. Should I stop nursing her to sleep? and should I let her CIO after she wakes up and hope she gets back to sleep on her own? She is swaddled with one arm out and usually gets a binky but often spits it out when she is asleep and i don’t normally have to put it back in through out the night.
Two, she is not the easiest to get to sleep. For her morning nap I still spend anywhere from 5-20 minutes getting her down. Other naps i might even spend 20 minutes to get her down for a 20 min. nap. She can fall asleep on her own but not often. So what is the best way to shorten the time it takes to put her down. Do we do CIO with naps or should I start with night time first? Also, she is generally a pretty happy baby but fights sleeping really hard. is there any way to get her to sleep longer in her naps or help her consolidate her naps?
Ok, so my 4.5 month old girl is currently sleeping in my bed! We want to start trying to CIO at 5.5 mon… Is it harsh to try it in her crib? I can’t take it anymore! She won’t fall asleep without us walking… Yes we have tried swing, etc it did not work! And she will only sleep at night wih me in the bed and most naps are at the most 30-40 min! Sometimes we get lucky but she is usually up right away! My mom watches her and all of our backs are breaking! I am in be at 8 so she can sleep and it is not good sice I have an older son who totally hates me since she gets to sleep with me and I’m in bed at 8! No alone time with him. So, we want to attempt CIO in HER crib and what about her pacifier? She can get it in her mouth herself but don’t want her to b two and still needing it to sleep! Is it cruel to do CIO in her crib and quit the paci cold turkey? We did CIO with our son and quit paci same night but he never slept in our bed! I’m done! Thanks! Just feel like my son is getting neglected and I never see my husband as he gets home at 7, I’m in bed at 8 with her and he’s now sleeping on the couch! And since I’m home from work at 4 and so much to do between then and bed no one sees me except my daughter! Ok done rambling! Thanks!!!
Regarding the international travel comment… How do you plan CIO when there’s major travel coming up?
My baby is 6 months old and we’re about to go on a 20-hour trip (2 planes, transfers, etc.) back home. We’d like to sleep train him at night and for naps, especially since he has to start daycare in two weeks where he will have to nap alone. How many days after the trip should we wait to let him get over jet lag before sleep training? Will it be too much for him to be sleep trained AND start daycare (and start on solids) all at the same time?
Also, we will be off on another huge trip late October and will be away for the whole of November. Does it make sense to sleep train before all this, or is it too crazy and we should we wait until we are back in December and settled?
Thanks!
I have finally started sleep training at just over 10 months! The nights are going great, only few minutes of fussing before sleeping through (few little cries in night but only for a min) which was such a surprise as I have cuddled/nursed lay with my baby for every nap and and sleep his whole life!
But! What I am having trouble with is the naps. I tried to leave him to CIO but he gets too upset and everything I’m reading says to tackle naps later. So I’m back to cuddling and nursing him to sleep for naps but when do I start naps and how? Please help as I’m so confused right now!
We did CIO with my daughter when she was 13 months old, and it worked like a charm. Over the past eleven months, she has had a couple brief periods of tough sleep but for the most part, she’s been sleeping eleven-hour nights and taking a 45-90 minute nap mid-day.
We moved last week, and since then, her naps have gone completely haywire. She was pushing the boundaries before the move – asking us to sing another song, asking us to rub her back longer, etc – but she’d always go to sleep. Since our move a week ago, it’s been so tough to get her to nap. I put her down an hour and a half ago and she is still screaming her head off upstairs in her crib. She hasn’t taken a single break, just straight crying for 90 minutes. How long do I let her cry? We’ve done this before and it’s worked, but now that she’s 23 months old, I feel like she has the stamina to cry all day! She’s such a stubborn kid that I fear it’s a definite possibility.
The stakes feel so high now too because I’m pregnant with twins and I NEED her to nap so that I can nap. My doctor is getting after me about resting more and taking care of myself, but it’s so tough to do without that midday break. Please let me know whether I’m fighting a losing battle trying to get a 23-month-old to CIO for her nap. (By the way, she goes down fine at night. She might cry for a minute but then goes right to sleep. She has been waking up really early though – like 5:00 – and WON’T go back to sleep, which is why I REALLY need her to nap! I’m very tired and feel guilty about not giving the twins the rest they need.)
Hello,
My daughter is 6 months and has reflux and I am apprehensive about sleep training her. Wanted some feedback if anyone used CIO with thier reflux baby and whether it is a good idea for me to try it out.
We have two 7.5 month olds who have reflux. They have been on meds for about three weeks and the reflux has improved tremendously. We started sleep training three nights ago because they were waking at least twice a night out of habit, not needing food. We did the wake-up, wait 5 mins, go in, pat on back, wait 10 mins, 20 mins, 30. It’s worked for those three nights (I’ve likely ruined that now). It can be done with a reflux baby – is yours on medication?
Hi!
I have a 5.5 month old and we are just starting CIO. She HAS to fall asleep in the coking chair, with a paci, while being rocked.. it’s insane. I’m over it. And if she wakes up randomly, the ONLY thing that will put her back to sleep is in the rocking chair, paci, etc… Vicious cycle! LOL So- I am putting her down drowsy, going in every 10 min, and re inserting the paci, putting my hand on her for about 30 sec, then walking out again. Its nor really working, …. but we just started.
My question- does this sound right? Any other suggesitons??? She is in her crib, unswaddled and breastfed.
Hi Kate/Alexis
My daughter is on zantac. We just transitioned her to the crib in her room from a pack n play in our room. She sleeps in the crib in the night but refuses to settle there in the day. She wakes up twice in the night on average for milk… But sometimes will cry due to discomfort from the reflux and wants to be held then.. I read on this site and others that crying makes reflux worse … So was wondering if anyone had tried CIO with Thier reflux baby and if they would recommend it….also is 6 months too early to expect for a reflux baby to be sleep trained using CIO….
So I read your comments above about the ideal time for sleep training and am now a little worried about our decision to start tonight. Our son is 18 months old and because of his reflux (up until about 12 months) had been rocked to sleep nearly upright since he was born. He never had any issues with sleeping through the night once we put him into his crib until we went on a family vacation 3 months ago and his nightly routine was ruined. We’ve tried everything except for CIO because like many other parents, the idea of our baby screaming uncontrollably for an extended period of time concerned both my wife and I. Now, completely sleep deprived, we’ve both come to the conclusion that it is time to initiate a psychological change, but seeing that 18 months may be too late is a little concerning. Could you provide any insight as to why the 18 month mark would be a less ideal time to start given our situation? I appreciate your feedback.
Dear God I need to rewrite this post.
My intent was to poke fun at a book which suggests that there are good and bad times, that these times are knowable, and that you should schedule things in for “good” times. Sadly this doesn’t seem to come across – you are not the first person to misunderstand which leads me to believe that what I wrote is the problem. *sigh*
18 months is not too late. In fact I would suggest that “whenever you recognize it’s time for a change” is the exact right time. I was trying to convey that message with this post but clearly failed.
Tonight is a great night. Also your baby might surprise you. I was just talking to a lovely woman from Iowa who had a very similar situation as you did – 18 months old, various medical issues early on led them to this point, terrified of what would happen.
When you say “our baby screaming uncontrollably for an extended period of time” it sounds like a pretty miserable experience. And I can’t promise you that won’t happen. But it’s far more likely that if he’s been going to bed at the same time every night and has a good routine, when you put him in his crib he’s going to complain about it for a while. Maybe 20-35 minutes. Then he’s going to fall asleep.
Come back and tell me if I’m right…
Well I purposely waited to respond because the first 2 nights went way too smoothly. My wife and I decided to let our son CIO without going in to check on him (besides our baby monitor). He cried for about 8 minutes the first night, 5 the second, and then 5 or less the rest of the week. Last night (1 week from starting) my wife told him that it was bedtime, put him in his crib, and he simply laid down and went to sleep. So far it has been a breeze. Not only has he been going to sleep easily, but he’s also sleeping through the night (something that we haven’t experienced in months). I have actually been wondering why it took so long for us to give the CIO method more of a fighting chance. It seems to be working out fine for us so far. Thank you for your words of encouragement.
Hey Peter,
Thank you so much for sharing your great news! 8 minutes eh? Well it doesn’t get much better than that. Congratulations for having the courage to take the big step and I hope you all enjoy your well-deserved sleep!
Cheers 🙂
Alexis
Hi, my baby girl is almost 11 months and she sleeps through the night. However she’s not sleeping on her own.. This is my fourth night trying CIO. The first nights I was going to check on her while increasing the time. She was crying for 25 min and then she was falling asleep while I was in her room. Now, after reading your article I decided not to go in her room and let her cry… Well I am writing this while she screams… It’s been over 30 min.. when do I know it’s too much… Thanks
Mihaela
Hi Alexis, could you please reply to this one? I have been browsing on this same issue, as mentioned by Mihaela when I came across your site and I am finding it most helpful compared to the others.
I am ready to try CIO starting tonight. My baby is also 11 months and she only sleeps in my arms…gets so restless and wakes up 3 – 4 times at night. We are both very tired every morning.
Please help!
…furthermore, I commented on Mihaela’s post (hope you don’t mind Mihaela) because this is the only thing that would freak me out, is if she cries for too long. Again, when would I know when it’s too much??
Hi Grace,
I remember that night. I was in tears while writing… Having time for myself in the evenings was very important. That’s when I do my school work. I didn’t know how to put her to bed quicker:) CIO didn’t work for us. We stopped after that night. What worked for us is Love and Logic. I am not sure if you are familiar with it. The way we were doing things was wrong too. I was giving her the milk in our bedroom after bath, rocking her to sleep, and then moving her in her crib. That was her routine and she didn’t know different. Now, it’s pretty easy. No TV before bed, she gets her bath every evening, after bath she gets in her crib by herself, drinks her milk on her own, and then she puts herself to sleep. I am with her while she does it. While she drinks her milk sometimes we read stories. Sometimes before bath. We make her feel good in her bedroom. Her bedroom is now the fun place 🙂 If I leave her by herself she comes gets me and that’s ok. Good luck!
Hi Mihaela,
Thank you for making time to write this. That actually feels so much something I would do (stay with her while she falls asleep) rather than let her cry it out…although I know CIO has worked for some mothers.
I will definitely try your method out first for sure. I am so glad you replied before I was to try out CIO tonight, I can so imagine going mental doing it and it would be heartbreaking to see and will probably not last 1 minute of it for sure, and i’m sure it was for you and some mothers as well.
Thank you and I am very happy to hear things are working out for you and your 20 month old baby now (if my maths right haha).
Fingers crossed
I am also wondering how long to let my baby CIO. He is almost 10 months and I’m trying to get him to fall asleep in his swing then move him to his crib. He falls asleep quickly for naps in his swing, but he has been crying for over an hour in his swing tonight. When is it too much for him?
I don’t understand what is happening. He needs to fall asleep in the location that he will spend the whole night. At 10 months I would advocate for that place to be the crib. But if he’s falling asleep in the swing and then you’re sneaking him into the crib, you aren’t really achieving independent sleep. So at heart, I’m not sure if your approach is really the right one.
As to the “when is it too much for him” question – the answer is, when he falls asleep. Personally, again, I question your use of the swing and any sleep strategy that involves sneaking from one location to another is not going to end well. But if you’re asking – is crying 1 hour a terrible problem my answer is no.
Hi! I just have a quick question for clarification. While my son is crying it out, should we be going in every 15-20 minutes or so to pat him, tell him it’s okay, etc without picking him up (I’ve read this from other sources) or just let him cry until he falls asleep?
Thanks!
HELP! I’m in tears writing this. I’ve followed your advice on the page the best I could but must be doing something wrong.
My preemie 6month old (4 corrected ) had been waking sometimes 6x a night. 10d’s ago I started not feeding him before bed and it did improve to 1~2 wakes for a few nts. But now were back to waking to every hour or two.
For example Today went like this.
615 bottle
730-9 sleep(fell asleep alone in chair)
1030 bottle
1230 cried would not sleep
100pm sang and walked around
115 went in crib almost asleep
2pm woke up /bottle
3. Sleep Again
345 woke
5pm bottle
615 bath, sang, walk around , layed down Almost asleep
645 asleep
815 woke, fed 6ozs
945 cried until given 4ozs
1015 asleep
I don’t know what to do , We need sleep . I haven’t
slept in forever!!!
I’m also confused as to whether or not I follow the 4month old schedule or the 6mth old????
Thanks
Deidre
Here’s our dilemma:
Our son is 14 months (almost 15 months) and used to go to bed on his own (for naps and bedtime). Recently, I quit my job to stay at home and it seems things fell apart there. He started screaming when we put him in his crib at night and waking several times in the night, inconsolable. We attempted CIO (as we did when he was 6 months, worked then). Didn’t work this time and it seemed to make him scared of his crib. (crying anytime he even got close to it, close to nap/bedtime or not.) We ended up singing him to sleep and when he wakes at 11-11:30, we co-sleep for the remainder of the night. It started as a “get through it” measure, but now we’re stuck. How do we get unstuck with all these issues? (going to bed on own, staying in bed to hopefully sttn).
Any suggestions or help? We’re tired.
Also, his bedtime used to be 7:30, consistently. We’d change him and he’d snuggle with me for a few minutes before crib time and I’d leave him awake. Now it’s completely unpredictable, sometime between 8-8:30 and can take upwards of 30 minutes to get him to sleep. Used to consistently do 2 naps each day and now fights one. (also unpredictable – sometime between 11 and 2.)
Hi Sarah
Have you considered dropping the second nap entirely? I think based on Alexis’ post he could be ready to move to one. Also, I would try to keep bedtime consistent. What is your bedtime routine? Is it the same every night? He could be anxious because he doesn’t know what to expect next.
Food for thought 🙂
Hi Lindsay,
Thanks for your reply. Yes, we’ve dropped a nap and fought with him for a few months to get bedtime and naptime more predictable. I have to rock him to sleep for nap, but he falls asleep on his own in his crib for bedtime (with us singing to him). Our routine is PJs, snack, books, diaper/sleepsack, cuddles/singing, bed. We bought a nightlight and that seemed to help, though maybe it was just coincidence.
Our next battle will be to get him (back to) sleeping all night in his own bed. He used to sleep all the way through the night in his own crib, and wake up talking and happy. Now, he wakes up every night at 10:30 crying. Sometimes he can be soothed back to sleep in his crib and other nights it’s over and he will only fall back asleep in bed with us (or cry for a very long time, until we give in). The trouble is that he doesn’t sleep as well in bed with us (and we don’t either), even though that’s where he wants to be.
I’m pretty sure it’s just going to take a rough few nights of not giving in to picking him up, but it’s so hard in the cold of the middle of the night, so I’d be open to any other suggestions!! He’s a persistent little guy!
We had the exact same problem with our son around 12-13 months. He had been sleeping thru the night and all of a sudden, was waking up at 10 pm, 2 am, 4 am, and crying. I started taking him into our bed and co-sleeping for the remainder of the night, b/c soothing or middle of night bottles didnt work, and CIO was yielding 20+ minutes of shrieking, which I couldnt bear. But taking him into our bed proved to be a fatal mistake … everything got worse and worse, and he got more and more adamant about crying and getting us to “Rescue” him earlier and earlier. After 2 or so weeks, we gave up and committed to CIO again. Even if it took 3 hours. We weren’t going in there. After 3-4 nights, it basically worked. Was miserable, but we broke his defiance.
Our 26 month daughter is really struggling right now. Her bedtime tantrums have become so bad that we can’t even give her a bath or read her a story anymore because she just starts crying, knowing that it means bed time is coming. We just end up putting her to bed hysterical which seems extra stressful for her and for us.
Last night while crying it out she pulled her diaper off and then woke up at 5am covered in pee. Her bed was soaked. We’ve had her in pull ups and two piece pajamas but I guess we need to use regular diapers and a sleeper for a while. We ended up bringing her into our bed for a few hours after that because we felt so bad.
It also doesn’t help that she’s learned to ask for the potty, which she screams about from her crib sometimes but it’s impossible to tell whether she means it or not.
Venting. Any suggestions would be great but I don’t know what we can do differently. Hopefully things get better over the next few days.
Hey Jessie,
Few things to think about:
1) Talk about bedtime when it’s NOT bedtime. She understands your words so use them! Talk at lunchtime. Talk about what happens at bedtime, talk about why it happens (health, growing up big and strong, etc.). Talk about how she needs sleep, mommy needs, sleep, etc. and remind her that even though you’re not there with her you’re always nearby and you always love her.
Talk about what is and isn’t OK. What happens if you take off your diaper? You sleep in pee – yucky and cold! What happens if you can’t sleep? You can tell stories, play with your stuffed animals, sing a song.
PS. The no-diaper pee thing sounds horrid but honestly? It’s a natural consequence playing out. What a great learning opportunity for her! Honestly, I would be very matter of fact about the whole thing, “Well this doesn’t feel good does it! Maybe next time you could keep your diaper on so you don’t have to sleep in pee.”
2) Is her bedtime the right time? She might be having an extra hard time falling asleep at bedtime because bedtime is too early. Most kids are napping till 3 but if she’s taking a long/late nap she might not be ready to sleep till a little later. something to consider?
Don’t get drawn into the drama, calls for potty what have you. Give her one call back (something to discuss over lunch!). If she wants to use the potty she gets once chance then you’re done. The reason she’s calling for the potty is because it’s effective. So keep things really neutral and matter of fact. “OK here’s your chance to use the potty. If you need to go potty later you have your pull up. Good night, we love you! We’ll see you in the morning!”
Thanks for your perspective on the diaper pulling. That’s actually a really helpful way of looking at it.
She did the same thing during her nap yesterday, which was in a playpen because someone else was watching her, and she pooped in the playpen!
Last night a few hours after posting, she woke at 2am which she has not done in a while and we were so worried about her pulling her diaper off that we ended up just bringing her into bed with us again. I know we’re not doing ourselves any favors with this but we’ll keep the diaper thing in perspective next time and try to worry less about it.
If she wakes up in the middle of the night do you recommend that we go see her once?
As for the timing of her bedtime, I don’t “think” this is an issue. I’ve read the article that you linked before and we’re pretty in tune with when she gets tired relative to her naps.
Thanks for replying!
So after all that, she learned how to climb out of her crib tonight. After an hour of crying she climbed out, open her bedroom door, and greeted me in the living room. Excellent! Frustrating as it was I couldn’t help but find it amusing.
Anyways, I had watched a video a couple of months ago where a toddler was doing this. The mom was instructed to sit on the floor sideways, not talking to the baby or making eye contact for any reason. Every time the baby crawled out the mom would just put pick her up and put her back in, and then sit back on the floor again.
I did this tonight and she crawled out well over 100 times. She finally gave up and laid down to sleep.
So now I’m not sure what to do.
Do I employ the technique which I used tonight for a few nights? I can see the merit in this, as it gave me 100 opportunities to reinforce that her crying or crawling out of the crib doesn’t work. It was exhausting though.
Do I fortify her room and just let her wail at the door? I was already having a hard time letting her CIO… and this just sounds worse.
Should I transition her to a toddler bed? It seems that if I’m going to do first technique that it would be an ideal time to do so.
Never a dull moment.
Sounds like your baby is showing signs that she`s ready for a toddler bed. I would definitely try to transition her, along with the advice suggested by Alexis.
So we are starting now and have questions. Daughter is just 6 months and while she sleeps well at night (although needs the pacifier reinserted a few times, which we’d like to stop) our issue is naps. She used to be so easy and would sleep for 2-3 hrs at a time, but has needed more and more soothing lately and is just too dependent on it. I toughed it out but now she’s 6 months and it’s time. My main question is, how do we handle inconsistency with daycare? I work 3 days a week and she goes to a center with 8 total infants in her room with 2 teachers. They will not CIO. They say they can only let them cry for 5 min so they usually end up rocking her to sleep (and gets maybe two twenty min naps might I add). I am afraid this will confuse her, although I’m hoping she will draw a mental boundary line between what happens at daycare and home. My hope is that she gets good enough at self soothing that it becomes a non issue and she can go down awake at daycare, but what to do until then other than her not sleeping at all there? Thanks!
Wanted to post an update – we are in week 3 and things are going pretty well overall. She goes down at night with a few minutes of talking to herself but generally doesn’t cry. The pacifier thing became a non-issue, and she has been sleeping through the night without waking much. When she does, she talks a bit and goes back to sleep. Yay! Naps are a little less easy. She will usually talk to herself for 10-30 minutes before going to sleep, and doesn’t cry much which is good. She usually wakes up after her first sleep cycle, and then will do the same thing (talk for 10-30 min) before sleeping again. So overall, CIO is working pretty well and I can’t complain. I do think though that her daycare situation is confusing her. If they put her down awake, she just gets upset and won’t sleep. If they rock her to sleep, she fights them until she konks out and then won’t transfer to the crib. It just seems like she is over the whole rocking to sleep thing. I know it can’t be healthy for her to be getting one short nap at daycare, but that is what we’ve got. On a daycare day, she usually gets 12-13.5 hrs of sleep over the 24 hr period. On a non-daycare day, she gets 14.5-15.5. So for now, I don’t know what to do besides soldier on, because the daycare situation seems pretty bleak.
Hi Alexis,
Will you be making the CIO post for naps soon? We have a 6 1/2 month old who only takes 2-3 25 min naps during the day, despite trying (aka fighting her) for hours on end. at night, she is so tired that she falls asleep while eating. she sleeps for 4-6 hours, then wakes,and takes 2-3 hours to get back down..only to sleep for another 2-3 hours. I know the problem involves not being able to put her down awake, but dont know where to start with CIO considering her terrible napping, but marginally OK night sleeping…ideas?!
This exact thing! Our daughter is 6 months and a bit, and sleeps at night pretty well- one or even no wake ups, and in her crib. But the only way we can get her to take any manner of decent nap is to hold her. Otherwise it’s fussing for 30-60 min for maybe (if we’re lucky) a 30 min nap in the crib. Why won’t she nap in the crib?
Thanks for any insight.
Sarah
Yes! Same here with my 7 mo olds. And I have twins, but they’re both doing about the same thing. Sleeping ok at night, falling asleep by themselves in cribs, (fussing 20-40 min), waking 0-2 times at night for snacks. But if I try cio for naps, they’ll fuss through the entire nap, rather than sleep, then fall asleep when I nurse them. So frustrating! Any tips? I have been slowly moving their bedtime back, since they were falling asleep waay too late. Is that messing up naps?
It sounds like the three of you have a variety of things going on and I’m not 100% convinced that nap CIO is the answer. AND I’m knee-deep in book writing and don’t have time to write that post anyway? Why not? because it’s sort of complex. The nap and nap CIO chapter in the book is the loooongest chapter in the whole shaboo.
Rayna – the fact that she’s awake for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night tells me something is off with her, likely something beyond the bounds of CIO. My best guess is bedtime is too early or too late by a significant margin but it’s hard to say. Her night sleep is on the short side so it’s hard to say. Given her age I would say consider changing bedtime and dramatically bump up the soothing – maybe swaddle, swing, white noise. Sure she’s a tad old for a swing but anything that breaks you out of that 2-3 hour of “awake” in the middle of the night is a good thing!
Sarah – lots of 6 month olds don’t nap well in the crib. Have you experimented with a swing?
Allie – Ditto on more soothing at naptime. Generally an early bedtime is better so when you say you’re moving bedtime back, without more details, my gut response is to push it back up.
Good luck guys – I know this stuff is hard!
I have a question. I tried CIO a couple of weeks back but was inconsistent so we tried again this week. We are on night 4 tonight. Last night she fell asleep after 25min instead of 45. The previous nights she has slept til 6am, last night woke up at 4am, so I did what you said and stayed up with her and nursed her. She went back down 1 1/2 hrs later for 2 hrs.
I hope that this didn’t start a habit but she hasn’t been eating at night for a while. Anyway, she naps about 30 min at a time maybe twice a day unless she sleeps on me. I’m your other post you said to have them sleep however possible but don’t do CIO for naps yet. If not now, when should I start CIO for naps or will that just come naturally to her when she finally falls asleep on her own without crying? What would you suggest? I really need help and feel so helpless at this point. Thank you!
Update: last night she fell asleep on her own after 3 min of crying. That may have been just a one time thing but hopefully it sticks. She has woken up again around 3am, after 40 min of on and off whining/crying, I went in to try and get her back to sleep by rocking her, she pooped so I changed her and I rocked her for a bit, i put her in her crib awake, and now she is Crying it out to go back to sleep. I guess my question is, how do I get her to sleep through the night, and also is there a way to get a baby to sleep for 10 hrs?
And back to my original question still.. When should I start CIO for nap? Or will that come naturally after she figures out how to sleep on her own at night?
Thank you Alexis, I’m sure you know how appreciative we all are for taking your time to respond and help us mommies out.
Hi Alexis! Your site has been amazing – my son went from sleeping 2 hours max to 7 hours at a stretch at 6 weeks when I put him in the swing. We use loud white noise and have transitioned him into the Magic Sleep Suit around 4 months, which seemed to work well for about a month.
So here’s my situation – I could use some reassurance or advice. I am considering CIO at 5 1/2 months and wondering if this is too early, or if I’m giving up too soon. I was really hoping to use the swing to teach him to fall asleep on his own. I’ve been trying since 6 weeks. He is 5 months now and while it does occasionally work – maybe 30% of the time, for naps or nightwakings, but never for bedtime – the rest of the time, for the last three weeks, he starts crying hysterically and I have to rock him to sleep. When we rock him to sleep, he is up every 15 minutes (sometimes he gives us 45 minutes) all night (naps he will go 45 min-1.5 hr). Each waking, I try to get him to fall asleep on his own, in the swing or crib, and when he does, he will usually sleep the rest of the night. But if we are lucky this may happen around 2am, and if we are unlucky, it may not happen at all. I know it’s a bit early, but it seems like an object permanence issue. I am going to be traveling for business next week and he will be 5 1/2 months, so I thought it would be a good time for my husband to do CIO – I don’t know if I could do it while I’m at home, and I don’t know how many more nights we can go on like this. Should I keep on trying the swing? I am nervous about the cortisol studies I keep reading about and keep thinking I should hold out until he is a little older, but every night is like torture for my husband and me, and I don’t think my son is having a great time, either. He used to sleep so well. I think you have a great perspective on CIO and I’m hoping you can let me know your thoughts on this timing and situation.
I just wanted to thank you again for everything you have done on this site, and to tell you that if you charged for this stuff I’d be happy to pay. I sent a bit over PayPal, you should be proud of how much value you have been providing for free!
Hey Kelly,
Thanks for your contribution – I honestly am hugely appreciative 🙂
OK stop reading the cortisol studies. The whole thing of research and cortisol is a big hot mess. I could go into depth about how flawed they all are but you are tired already and would quickly fall asleep. But the bottom line is this: chronic sleep deprivation leads to high levels of cortisol, crying leads to high levels of cortisol, cortisol leaves the body relatively quickly when you aren’t crying and aren’t sleep deprived. So nobody really knows what is worse – a few days of crying or months of sleep deprivation. My gut says “months” but there currently is no science to back me up on that.
Anyhoo…back to bedtime. The key is what happens AT bedtime. So if you’re going to say “the swing isn’t working” then I would commit to crib for the entire night. But feel free to keep working at it during the day – in fact I STRONGLY encourage you to do so. Daytime CIO is a whole different beast and something to avoid if you can. So swing for naps, crib for bedtime.
I’m really surprised he’s so freaking out AT bedtime and it makes me wonder if there isn’t a bedtime issue tripping you up. Bedtime too soon? too late? Something to consider?
But I also am totally OK with you leaving the house and letting Dad be the big meanie while you’re gone. Dads are often GREAT at this. They tend to be more firm and get quicker results which means LESS crying and LESS cortisol. So if it helps you have my stamp of approval for the “stick Dad with the dirty work” plan.
Goo luck!
It’s funny, you know, I knew that sleep deprivation caused cortisol to spike, but I never connected that with my son’s sleep deprivation. If I wanted to make connections, I probably should have done this research before I even got pregnant and all my brain cells started dying. ;-)It definitely makes sense that a single spike is less damaging than chronic high cortisol over the course of months.
Honestly, I don’t know what his problem is with bedtime. We do bath, bottle, song/story, and bed every night, and we try to keep it soothing and enjoyable. I’m a wake time fanatic since reading your post, so I usually start the routine at 1.5 hours awake so he would theoretically be drifting off to sleep at 2 hours. But this was not working for us, so I actually experimented with shorter and longer wake times leading up to bed, but those experiments were even more disastrous (serious catastrophes). Bedtime falls between 7 and 7:30 depending on his last nap. But the struggle often takes another 20-30 minutes. I think I’m going to take the next week to work with the swing at bedtime and try moving bottle before bath and spending a little more time winding down after bath. If that doesn’t make an impact, Dad may have to be the bad guy. I appreciate your endorsement of that plan!
Thanks so much for your help, Alexis. You’re doing god’s work. A god, anyway – the sleep god? I’ll let you know how it goes.
OK we are on day five of sleep training! Little man is doing great – sleeping through the night, so much happier during the day. The crying at bedtime is hovering around 30 minutes since day one, which isn’t too bad. It’s worth it to have a happy kiddo and mama. Thanks so much for your advice, Alexis!
Hi Alexis,
My son is 8 months now and he is still not sleeping through the night. He is inconsistent and wakes up every few hours. We put him down at 8pm every night with the same consistent routine and he falls asleep easily but does not stay asleep. When he was 4 months, we used the magic merlin sleeper and it helped but he continued to wake up. Now that he is older, we wanted him to have more movement in his sleep which the magic sleeper prevents you from doing so we tried the halo on him and now he wakes up and is moving all over the crib, on his tummy and begins to cry. I have been nursing him or holding him until he falls asleep most of the time. I tried CIO but the problem is, he will still wake up a few hours later and for me to do the CIO a few times each night seems excessive and very difficult. Do you agree or is that normal? most people I speak to do this once a night and their baby will sleep for the rest of the night but my son continues to wake up. I am trying to wean him off of nursing at night as well so I give him less each time but then he cries because he wants more. Not sure what to do or what the best approach is? any advice would be helpful.
Thank you!
Hi Alexis,
I absolutely love your website! I have found it immensely helpful in navigating and evaluating the abundance of sleep advice that seems to be out there. However, I am still having some trouble with my little one…
Currently, my 7.5 month old goes to bed completely awake after her regular nightly routine (boob, bath, pjs, white noise, bed). She occasionally chats to herself a little before popping her thumb in her mouth and going to sleep. She hardly ever cries when going down for the night. This is totally awesome (we worked hard to get her to this point), but she is not yet sleeping through the night. I could handle her waking 1-2x or even 3x. However, she is waking 5-6x per night! It’s like clockwork…she wakes every 1.5 to 2 hours.
When we first started working on her sleep (around 4 months), I was feeding her twice a night because she was still young and I wasn’t ready to cut her off. However, even after several weeks of very consistent sleep training, she was still waking at least 3x per night and crying for extended periods (minimum 30 minutes). I figured that she just wasn’t ready so I went back to feeding her every time she woke. Fast forward to our current predicament.
I know she doesn’t need the food so I started cutting down the amount of time she spends at the boob each time I feed her at night. We got down to the 2 minute on one side mark. However, instead of just sleeping through, she still wakes. Further, less than 2 minutes, she will not go back to sleep. Instead, she cries and ends up screaming, for hours!
We have no idea what is going on or how to handle this. Letting her screaming herself hoarse is not an option. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
PS. Sorry for the novella!
Hi there!
I was hoping to get advice on sleep training. I’m not sure how I know I just know I’m doing it wrong. My daughter is 8 months old and wakes several times a night for feeding or reassurance.
Her bedtime was 6-6:30 but she’s learned to crawl and it’s thrown off her bedtime. She now goes down around 7-7:20
It’s hard getting her to sleep now that she’s moving
She’s always been very active and I thought once she finally got active it would settle things but it hasn’t. It’s gone in the opposite direction!
Arg!!
I’m so frustrated and tired.
CIO, not CIO. I’m to the point where I don’t care how it happens I just need an outside perspective on how to get her to sleep more and go down easier
Please be my advisor!
Thanks 🙂
Btw I love this site. Informative and funny 🙂
Hi Alexis,
My husband and I broke down and started CIO with our 4 month old daughter. I’ve been struggling with PPD and sleep is such an important component to a healthy frame of mind. Anyway, we reached the end of our rope; sleep was becoming an obsession (it was taking us 3+ hours a night to get her to sleep at night) and I was not enjoying our daughter because her sleep and mine were consuming all thoughts. Long story short, the crying sucked but CIO was the best decision for our family. She has the tools to fall asleep on her own and we got out of her way and gave her the opportunity to use them…she is a contented finger sucker. Night time is going well now but naps are becoming a marathon event (similar to what was happening with bedtime) and often fails unless I’m holding her, have her in the Ergo or lay down with her. Question: CIO naps? When and more importantly, how?
Thanks so much.
Tina
PS – love your blog. Enjoyable to read, inclusive/non-judgemental and very informative.
I’m so glad I found this website BEFORE what you call the ideal window of 5 1/2 months…now we can do this right the first time. (I hope) My question is this: Our boy is a preemie, so are we training based on his ACTUAL age, or his CORRECTED age? It’s a difference of 6 weeks, which is pretty significant. Right now he is 15 weeks actual age, 9 weeks corrected age. What would you think about this?
Thanks,
K8
Dear Alexis,
I absolutely love your blog!
My daughter is 5 months and 1 week. She goes to sleep very easily at her bedtime of 7-7:30 after book, bath, bottle. She just started rolling over to sleep on her tummy and that has made falling asleep at bedtime even quicker. However, she is waking up twice at night, and recently as early as midnight. She is gaining weight very well but doesn’t take many oz during the day (max 24) so I am fine with feeding her once a night, but midnight seems early for her to need a bottle. Sometimes we offer her the bottle at her first waking and she doesnt even want it, so I dont think she is always waking up out of hunger. So she will typically wake up somewhere between 12-2 AM and then again around 4:30-5 AM and then at 7 AM. It certainly isn’t horrible, but she is a good self soother and a good napper, so I really do believe she doesn’t need the multiple night wakings. and I dont want to keep feeding her at night if she doesnt want it! But then last night at midnight she took 4 oz (after 2 attempts to rock her back to sleep without feeding) so she is a little all over the place with night feeding.
We have tried to let her cry it out for her night wakings (max 10 minutes) and she does not put herself back to sleep. We have tried patting her back, that doesnt work either. The only solution seems to be feeding her (sometimes as little as one ounce) and/or rocking her for approx. 10 minutes.
Do you think she sounds like a good candidate to CIO? How do I determine when to attempt to feed her and when to attempt to let her CIO? I am not against CIO I just don’t want to start it too early when she might still need us.
Many, many thanks!
My baby is 5.5 months. I have also been waiting for the optimal window. On Wed it will be 5.5 months since expected due date. (as recommended by Bedtiming). My baby is a screamer… a shrieker…. it is horrible to listen to. If I were to rock/nurse her to sleep it would take hours. As soon as I put her down… screaming… start again. I started letting her CIO at 4 months. She cries 5 min at bedtime, 5 minutes at naptime and goes to sleep. Fantastic right?? NOPE… she is up again 30 min later screaming away. It got to the point where I would give in (at night time) and co-sleep at around 9:30p.m. (I also have a 5 year old who needs my attention) 2 weeks ago.. .BREAKTHROUGH. naps extended.. no more waking from naps, screaming violently. She was almost like a normal baby. As soon as day sleep got better, night sleep tanked… even more…. Every night, wakes up at 4:00am to party. Maybe goes back to sleep for a few min. Back in bed for a nap by like 7:15am… baby is constantly exhausted as am I. I am mean. My older child is suffering, as I am a total bitch all of the time. I resent my husband for not being able to help. I should also mention that my first baby was also the worst sleeper ever. We never really followed through with cry it out, and have been paying ever since. She is a terrible sleeper at age 5. We currently live in a 2 bedroom bungalow (as this baby was conceived with an IUD in place) (not that I am not thrilled to have her). I have been sleeping in the same room as her. On Wed, I will drag my mattress to the living room and begin the night time CIO attempt. Do I dream feed her at midnight (she goes down at 6:30) Do I wait for her to cry around then? Last night we put her down at 6:30, and she woke up 5 times, screaming hysterically, before 9:00pm. Baby sleep problems are terrible. I feel like a shitty parent. I am obsessed. How do I fix it?
And this is why I’m terrified of the IUD!
But you don’t want to talk about birth control so back to your sleep issues. Hmmm…
Well I do wonder why she is so…screamy. I would hate to be missing something that is bothering her. Reflux? Dairy? Or do you think she’s just a super intense kid? If the answer is “super intense kid” then I would definitely push for swaddle and loud white noise and super dark room. Super intense kids generally need to sleep in very distinct conditions. Even if you think she’s too old for swaddling I would strongly consider it. Or minimally a merlin magic sleep suit or something.
Consistency is key. As exhausted and frustrated as you are bringing her to bed with you is a short-term fix that creates long-term problems. The key is to focus on where you want to be and “night parent” from that place, not just what will make things better tonight.
Trust me – I get how tired you are and how much you probably want to smack me right now but it’s totally true.
Also check link below – I think this is part of where you guys are getting tripped up and why nothing is getting better.
I believe the key for you is to not give in at 9:30. In fact it may (assuming there isn’t some niggling thing that makes her so unhappy) be best to fully ignore until midnight. I love the dream-feed idea and strongly support you trying that.
Try full extinction from bedtime till the midnight dreamfeed and let me know how things go. Good luck!
Alexis
Like I’m sure many parents are, I was against CIO until I wasn’t. At 5.5ish months my son had become a co-sleeping, NON-sleeping, constant night nursing, non-napping monster. We were actually able to get him to the point of falling asleep in his crib on his own, but it was all over the place after that. He would wake up anywhere from every 30min-1 hour after that. We would eventually give up and bring him into our bed. That eventually stopped working, and he would be a restless, wakeful mess all night. Four nights ago my gut told me it was time for CIO. My husband and I reached the point of such exhaustion, feeling like we had done everything that we could, it was actually much less difficult than I thought it would be to listen to him cry. The first night he cried for 45 min after his first wake up. After that he woke up a few times and cried himself back to sleep, with the longest cry time of 12min. Last night seemed like a fully successful night. He was asleep by 7, woke at 7:55 and fussed himself back to sleep. He woke to eat at 10:30 and 2:50, but both times cried himself back to sleep for 10-12min or so. He woke again at 3:50, and we decided to bring him into bed after 10-15min of crying that wasn’t letting up. I’m wondering if I should work on letting 3:50ish times go or if this is close enough to being an “early wake time” and there is no harm in bringing him back into bed to nurse to sleep….thinking he will grow out of waking at this time? Thanks!!!
Hi Alexis,
Thanks for the response. Here is the update:
On Sunday, I put her down at 6:30 pm… she woke at 7:30pm and cried… for 45 minutes. At that point I dragged a mattress into my living room and set up shop for CIO. I was going to wait until Wed, but thought, “she’s already cried for 45 min.. might as well be hardcore”. She woke again at 9:30, cried for 20 min, 11:30 cried… I went in and fed her, put her in her crib.. she went right back to sleep. I heard her at 1:30 and watched…, in horror and fascination, on the video monitor, as she played in her crib for an hour and a half. WTF??? (forgive my inappropriate internet speak) Woke at 4:00a.m, fed her, back to sleep until 7:00a.m. … Monday and Tuesday have been versions of the same. It doesn’t seem to be getting better. I have to add that she is a miserable baby all day long, and this has been ongoing for about a week. (all signs point to teething). Nonetheless, I will press on…. for at least 2 more weeks. Somethings gotta give.
I appreciate all of your advice and agree with all of it. I am angry with myself as I looked into Merlins Magic suit 2 months ago, but didn’t buy it. Now I fear it’s too late, as she is rolling over a bit. (I do have a white noise machine, blackout blinds and a grobag) Anyway… good luck to all of you who are also suffering with this belligerent babies. Thanks again!
Lauren… don’t do it. Our first daughter woke up every day at 4:30am for two years!!! Squash this behaviour before it becomes a two year habit. (although I TOTALLY feel your pain) Co-sleeping does seem like the easiest solution at the time…. until it isn’t.
Okay, quick update. After 4 nights of CIO (with wakings for a feed around midnight and 4:00am, waking time at 6:15) we seemed to be getting somewhere. There was minimal crying at bedtime, and a brief arousal, 5 min cry around 9:30pm. Woo-hoo (I thought). Last night.. day six. Horror. She woke up at 12:30 for a feed, and then at 2:00a.m. I ignored the 2:00a.m. She cried, and cried… and played (as seen on video monitor) and cried until 3:30. At this point I went in there and gave her a boob, made sure she wasn’t soaking wet, feverish etc… and put her back in her crib. After trudging back to my mattress on the living room floor, she continued to cry. At 4:30, I gave in, went into the room and brought her to bed with me. She stopped crying, but was still awake in the bed beside me. I ignored her, and eventually (around 5:00am) she fell asleep until 7:00 am. I feel like I have screwed myself. Do I start over?… I guess I’m going to start again. Do I just have a really bad sleeper?? At 3:30am, I was reading Healthy Sleep Habits, and telling myself.. don’t go in there, don’t go in there,… I really think she would have continued to cry until morning. Should I have just let her. Selfishly, my husband is working today, and the thought of functioning on 2 hours of sleep while taking care of two kids was super scary. I resent Dr. Weissbluth in that he doesn’t address these long periods of night waking in his book. Is it just my baby? Has this happened to anyone else? What did you do?
Thanks for your advice and this great website! I really appreciate you taking time to answer everyones questions!
Anyways, here is the update on our CIO for our 6 month old which we started last week. The first night was total torture but now he cries for 15 minutes and then goes to sleep on his own without a pacifier or nursing. He also went from waking up every hour to waking up only twice a night (which I am ok with)I consider this great results! Also, will he cry every night when I put him in or will he outgrow it?
In addition, naptime is a huge battle which we both dread. I put him into his crib and he screams and cries then just lays there awake.I feel guilty making him cry so much..
My question is how should I be handling naptime? Is CIO the way to go?
Looking forward to your response!
Hello! I love your website, and I am SO EXCITED for your book; that way I can physically hand my friends your book and open it up to a relevant page instead of sending them a link and hope they actually look at it 🙂
I have a sort of CIO question, and not sure where to post it…so starting here. Our son is 21 months old, and has been sleeping through the night and going down with no issues since about 5 months (shortly after I found your website). HOWEVER, we fell into a binky trap, he didn’t actually take a binky until he was about 6 months old which meant we totally didn’t take it away from him at the recommended 7-8 months. It wasn’t an issue with waking in the middle of the night, so we finally got around to it at about 18 months. First 3 days were torture (30+ minutes of crying at bedtime and nap…running to the corner and jumping up/down in protest), then about 1.5 weeks of 10-15 minutes of crying, then almost magically (when we were on vacation of all places) we had our sweet bedtime boy back and he went to his bed happily said “night night”, talked for a few minutes and passed out. We were over confident in our success, celebrating our massive victory…then 2-3 weeks later he started crying again 🙁 Not a ton, but he cries 5-10 minutes at night and nap EVERY DAY FOR THE PAST 2 MONTHS. No other sleep issues — sleeps through the night, wakes at 7 or 7:30, naps are a bit more volatile (range from 1.5-2.5 hours, and occasionally just sits in his crib and plays).
I kept thinking it was a phase, or separation anxiety, or whatever…but now it has been so long I feel like we need another plan of action. I feel like I read somewhere on your site that 5 minutes of crying is not CIO, it is just them protesting having to go to bed. Is that true, is this normal? I am TERRIFIED for when he figures out how to get out of his crib and instead of standing at the rail crying he jumps out and follows me down the hall. Toddler sleeping is starting to scare me as much as infant sleeping!
I just found your site today and am now quite worried about this whiole sleep thing! my son just turned 8 months and boom, he’s definitely now got separation anxiety. We have co-slept since day 1, and still do. i haven’t slept in 8 months basically. He gets sleepy around 6pm everyday and so i breastfeed him when he starts to cry (meaning he’s sleepy) then he’ll fall asleep. problem is first of all, he doesn’t fall asleep by himself! even if he’s exhausted and we lay down, he will just go on all fours and bawl his eyes out and roll around until i put him on boob. and the same goes for every time he wakes up during the night. i don’t even know how im supposed to begin getting him to sleep on his own, i really want to stop breastfeeding him and actually get a whole night sleep (even 5 hours straight would be heaven). im afraid of CIO because i try for a few minutes to see what happens but the intensity gets worse! where do i begin? 🙁
Hey Joanna,
In his world, the way he sleeps is by nursing. When you take that away he’s frustrated because he knows now other way! And of course the intensity get’s worse. That’s how he’s letting you know how frustrated he is. “Mooooom! What do you expect me to do here? I need the boob to sleep!”
But you’re right – he needs to sleep without nursing. This is a longer issue than I can get into via a comment but you’re options are essentially these:
– Cry it out. Yes he will ry and yes it will escalate. Also it will work. But it may or may not be the right course for you.
– Help him fall asleep by any other means. Sometimes co-sleeping parents have good luck with patting and shooshing, or rubbing his back or what have you. He’s still not falling asleep on his own in this scenario, you’re simply switching to a different association that is generally easier to gradually wean off of. Parents often find that dad (or anybody not you) will have better luck with this.
This can be a tough path and will take far longer. But if you’re having reservations about CIO there is no harm in taking 1-2 weeks and making a committed effort to help him fall asleep in a way that’s not nursing.
Good luck!
Alexis
So we are doomed 🙂 No seriously I mam so worried. My son is 2 yars & 10 months. He has slept through the night for a long time now, so can obviously self settle as I understand there would be periods of the night he wakes & settles back to sleep. Gettign up / waking up through the night was never really an issue …. but getting him to bed in the 1st place … When he was born had reflux & was often nursed to sleep. We tried a number of sleep techniques but never were consistent due to a number of reasons. When we started sleep training properly & were doing quite well he fractured his leg (Just over 2 years of age). Plus he got quite sick. He was a very un happy wee man & the doctor said to go easy on him. We were also successfully potty training. The sleep training & potty training were put on hold.
NOthing’s been the same since. His optty trainign went out the window. He is a very anxious wee man, who cries in his sleep. Calls out for us/ comes to our room once a night every night. I was heavily pregnant & now havea 3 month oold so my energy levels were low. My uhsband works very hard & is exhausted so his energy was low too & so when our wee boy would come through we’d just let him nito bed wiht us PLUS we felt so sorry for him as he just seemed so sad. Having the baby only made things WAY worse. On the night it happened our wee man didn’t know we’d gone to hospital so woke in the morning with Poppa there but no Mum & Dad. Then he got a tummy bug & wasn’t allowed in hospital. I was in hospital for a week. He didnt see me for a week as he wasn’t allowed in (it was a bad bug) & as far as he was concerned I disa ppeared one night.It was horrible. Now he won’t let me out of his sight. I can’t even put him in his car seat & pop back to close the front door without huge anxious heart broken tears 🙁 Anyway so … we still have the same sleep routine & all is fine up until the point where ligts go out. We don’t leave the room until he falls asleep. Now he gets so worked up because baby is in our room & he feels alone that dad sleeps in his room on a spare bed, btu still we cannot leave until he’s asleep & lately even I have been in there with him & Dad while I feed baby so we’re all with him til he gets to sleep. He just seems so sad which makes me sad because he’s such a loveable wee man. I am so worried he’ll have life long sleep issues because it’s so far down the track. He never used to get up during the night either and this has just gotten worse & worse 🙁
Hi there! Your website is unbelievable. I’m a newcomer to the site, but your statement “you’ve been googling sleep training forever” hit home. My daughter is now 6 months, but months 3 and 4 were hard with sleep — all swaddling/bouncing forever. At 4.5 months, I decided to let her cry for 5-10 minutes at each nap time – eventually brought this to bedtime, and it worked really well. She falls asleep on her own for naps and bedtime, but not for night wakings. I have only recently let her cry for a bit during the night – 10/15 minutes – but then I go in and nurse. I’m hoping for your opinion on a couple things:
(1) Is nighttime CIO the same as bedtime CIO? Do I just let her cry during the night, and that’s that? I know she can fall asleep on her own – she does all the time except night wakings.
(2) When she goes down for a nap, if she’s still crying hard at the 10-15 minute mark, I go in and pick her up to soothe her for about 3-5 minutes. I then put her back down (awake). She may cry for another 5 minutes, but usually that’s it, and she’s asleep. Do you think this is creating a bad habit/sleep dependency, or is the soothing okay?
Thanks a ton – I know you can’t respond to everyone, so thank you so much for all of your work putting your site together.
Hi Alexis
First let me just say that I absolutely adore your blog and have been reading it religiously since the day I stumbled upon it from Google.
Now, I’m a first-time mom with no idea what I’m doing (at least that’s how I feel). My son is only almost 3 1/2 months old but I feel like I’m driving myself up the wall with this whole “he has to learn to fall asleep by himself or he will grow up into a monster forever and I will go more insane,” because all I can think about is sleep, sleep, SLEEP due to the fact that I’ve been spending morning, noon, and night googling infant sleep training, or anything to do with my son sleeping AND of all the horror stories Ive read on how their 11 month old never sleeps. I don’t want that!
Am I overanalyzing this whole baby sleep thing or am I on the right track? Should I be concerned at this point that my son can’t fall asleep without any help? Or that he wakes up every 1 1/2-3 hours at night (he is ebf…)? Or that his naps haven’t “consolidated” into 2-3 consistent naps and only last 40 mins?
I think the main reason I’m so conserned about his sleep habits is that I have to return to work in a week and I want the transition for not only him, but the people who will be taking care of him as well, to be as smooth as possible.
Sigh. I know, I sound crazy… But it certainly feels like I’m on the fast track there!
Anyways, thank you for your awesome blog. Hopefully I’ll get this whole sleep thing down before I’m really in the weeds. For now I’m gonna keep immersing myself in your posts in hopes of an eye-opener!!
Tried CIO with checks and she lasted over 4 hours the first night. It was horrible. She’d cry on and off the entire time. It did make it worse when I went in to check on her, so I stopped after awhile but peeked in on her. The next night she cried on and off for 2 hours and nights 3 & 4 weren’t much better. Then she came down with a bad cold, congestion and cough, so I held her for 5 nights in a upright position. Well we’ve now created a monster. She’s up 45 min. after I put her down and then every 10-30 min for the rest of the night. I do breastfeed but only do that around midnight, since she’s asleep by 6:30 and then again around 3 am. I don’t know what else to do!!! HELP
Hello Alexis, I love all of your great insights, thank you. I have a 4 1/2 month old daughter who never fell asleep unassisted in the last couple months. Until not too long ago, she used to fall asleep while breastfeeding, or by my side in our bed(she sleeps with us :)). Then, she stopped wanting to fall asleep by my side or while being nursed, and I did the Mistake of starting to rock her. That worked for few weeks. In the last week, she refuses to fall asleep being nursed or rocked, she throws herself back and arches her back and starts crying. Also, she starts talking in her language, and yells after a while, like saying let me fall asleep my way. Honestly, I feel I am in her way of falling asleep. I have to return back to work, 3 nights a week for 12 hours, and she needs to learn on how to fall asleep unassisted, I think ITS TIME:). Also, she loves her pacifier, but in the last few weeks she takes it out of her mouth, and then tries to put it back on, but is not always successful, and if I don’t help her she starts crying. Also, she takes about 3-4 naps a day which are between 25 min to 2,3 hours if I sit by her when she wakes up. We love having her in our bed, we always wanted that, but she is such a light sleeper, and we can barely turn in bed, and if she is not fully asleep, she hears us and wakes up. She also fusses a lot in her sleep and my husband has to go in the other room so he can rest for work, and I hate having him in a separate room. I was wondering is there any way we can still have her in our bed, and try the CIO method sleep training? Last night for the first time in couple months she fell asleep in the swing after about 55 min of crying/ complaining. She wakes up about 2-3 times at night, in a 13-14 hours night, to be breastfed, and goes to sleep right away without no problem. So I guess my questions are: How can I do the CIO method if she loves her pacifier and i will not go in every min to replace it? (BTW, CIO is the last resort for us, nothing else really works for her, she is a very strong willed child and not a calm one, but a very happy baby overall, always smiles even after a 10 min nap.). How long does the crying last in the first nights when starting to sleep train, because I do not feel comfortable letting her cry more than an hour…
Thanks so much. Love your humor. I needed a laugh.
I was going to wait until my 10month old turned 12months, but after reading this I feel it’s ok to start now before I collapse from exhaustion. Wish me luck
I love this site, it has been so helpful to me! We recently started CIO out with our 10 month old and I guess I’m looking for a little reassurance that we’re doing the right thing. I have been able to put him down somewhat awake before and he seems to fall asleep fine – but it’s very, very hit or miss. Most of the time its anywhere between 10-30 minutes of rocking to get him to sleep, sometimes followed by more crying as I finally lay him down in his crib. Getting him to sleep has become so unpredictable and is causing a lot of anxiety. While I love the snuggles, it’s too much. Waking in the night is anywhere between 1-3 times each time needing rocking and/or nursing. I suppose my question is; it appears that he has some ability to self-soothe (sometimes going to sleep on his own, sometimes sleeping nearly through the night) so is letting him CIO maybe not necessary? Is he just wanting extra cuddles before sleeping? It just seems in the past couple months that the rocking is becoming more necessary and at 2am standing next to the crib nearly tipping over from exhaustion while rocking this sweet little man… I’m just losing my mind a little bit. But I also don’t want to make him cry when maybe it’s not that bad? Especially compared to other stories I’ve read with 4-6 night wakings. Just curious your opinion. Thank you!
I should also say, the past two nights it’s taken him an hour and 45 minutes to get to sleep on his own. It’s hard when I know if, after about 20 minutes of him crying, I was to go upstairs and rock him he would be out like a light in 30 seconds! But, that would just be continuing the problem, right? I’m sure I know the answer to that.. 🙂
Omg that chart had me laughing!
I ended up doing CIO unplanned one night after my pacifier-hatin’ 9 month old, in one beautiful culminating finale to a couple weeks of regressing from 1 night waking/nursing to ~3, just simply woke at some ungodly hour crying uncontrollably. No issue could be found, and nursing, rocking, bouncing, new diaper, etc. wouldn’t work. After an hour I threw up my hands and basically said, “I’m sorry, I’m out of ideas!!!”, left the room and cringed & pleaded to God for 15 min. Then he fell asleep. One more night of the same and he has never needed me again at night. He’s now almost 13 mos.
And mind you, he has never been an “easy” napper. I remember one day when he was 2 months-ish, I was “that” parent who didn’t bathe or EAT bc I was in the sick cycle of “soothe/absolute silence/oh crap, he’s up & still overtired…get him down NOW!!”
So there’s hope!!!!!
Hi. I have started the CIO method 8 days ago. Was going quite well. Did the Ferber checking method. Times were reducing over the days but then 5th night took longer. I know it was probably because I soothed too much and she was almost asleep already so 4 hours later she was up again and again. I thought I had mastered it because she didn’t cry but what had of course happened was that she was already asleep or 2 seconds from it. Anyway my question is the following. I am using the dummy even though she cries mainly with it in her mouth but if it has fell out I do replace it and say my message and leave. I was patting but this made things worse so just message dummy and out. I want to know if the shit is going to hit the pan if I now decide to remove the dummy altogether? Let me just add that it falls out and she doesn’t wake up and has gone all night but then there are others where I have had to replace it at 6am to get another hour which is what was happening before the CIO method anyway. So can I go cold turkey and take it away at night or will this cause problems with it from now on ?? Many thanks
Hi Alexis. Please please get back to me I’m so desperate. I am obsessed with my daughters sleep and suffering from chronic insomnia and depression. My daughter is 6 months old and I Have been doing the CIO for 10 days. Her naps were the typical 35/40 minutes after lots of soothing buggy whatever but she wouldn’t sleep for longer than that even in my arms.
The first few nights took 45/50 minutes with checks for her to sleep and she started to sleep through from 9.30 until 7. I moved her bedtime earlier and no she sleeps at 8pm but has started to wake at 4/5/6 so I would wait for a certain amount of time go in and put her dummy in to which she would fall back to sleep and then feed her around 6am when she is awake awake to get another hour or 2 out of her. I am using a pacifier still. Is is possible that this is the problem? Also what should I do when she starts crying at 4am and there on? I know that going in and putting the dummy back in is what I was doing every 2 hours or less before the CIO but as she started to sleep through with it even though at some point it fell out during the night, I thought it was okay to keep it. Is it too late to take it away????
Also tried for naps first few days and they were horrendous. Crying for an hour and half screaming no sleeping at all. Stopped and tried again around the 6 day mark. Worked for one but the next day awful again. Tried yesterday for her 12pm nap and 4pm nap and worked with her sleeping 1,5 and 1 hour but then tried the same again today and she slept for 15 minutes and then screamed for another 70 minutes or more with checks.
Please help me I don’t want to give up after what feels so long but it seems to be getting worse not better and I don’t understand why.
Is it the dummy and should I do full extinction at night? What if she doesn’t go back to sleep?
She actually sleeps for quite a few hours the first part of the night but as I don’t sleep for more than 3 and haven’t for 6 months I’m losing my mind.
She usually gets up around 8.30am but crying and then I try to put her down at 12 and 4 and bed at 7.30/8 but yesterday is worked today it was awful. She did sleep for an hour at 3.30 alone but woke up screaming after that and was miserable for the rest of the day. More than even because that was the only nap she had. Before this I was holding her or lying down in my bed with her to force longer naps but I can’t keep doing it. I need to gain some control. Please reply when you can. Thanks
Anybody??
Taken from Alexis’s post on How to cry it out (you should definitely read the whole post tho) :
7) Give baby as much soothing as possible!
For older babies (6+ months) your options are generally limited to loud white noise, block out blinds, and a small lovey. It’s sometimes helpful to have Mom stuff the lovey in her bra and wear it there all day so that it smells like Mom. If your baby is still swaddled that is also really helpful. DON’T use any sleep aids which will feed into your object permanence problem. So pacifiers, timed music, etc. are all forboden.
11) Cry it out does not mean night weaning.
IF your baby has been eating/nursing at night then you will need to feed/nurse your baby when they wake up. CIO is not a good way to cut out night feedings as hungry babies will cry A TON. If your baby had been eating at predictable times then feed your baby when they “regularly” would be eating. If your baby wakes up crying at a time other than when they would regularly eat, then I recommend you don’t go to them.
If your baby was previously sleeping glued to your boob (don’t laugh, this is a REALLY common problem) then sorting out what is a cry for attention vs. a cry for food will be challenging. You’ll need to listen to your baby and your gut and make the best determination you can. I would suggest you try to space out the feedings as best as you can. For example if you nursed your baby at 6:30 PM then I would be reluctant to offer more food before, say, 11:00 PM. If you nursed again at 11:00 PM, then potentially the next feeding could reasonably be expected to happen at 3:00 AM. However these are not hard and fast rules, listen to your gut. It’s almost always giving you good advice.
13) When baby wakes up early?
CIO is very effective at bedtime because there are a number of biological factors that make it very difficult for your child to stay awake at that time. However if your baby wakes up very early in the morning (4:00 AM or 5:00 AM) letting them cry will almost never result in them falling back to sleep. If your baby wakes up very early and doesn’t seem to be falling back to sleep (it’s been longer than ~20 minutes) then it’s morning time for you. This is horrible but generally temporary. You may want to consider offering baby a quick snack, putting baby in the swing, or bringing baby back into your bed. Sometimes these options will buy everybody a few more hours or sleep. But crying is unlikely to do anything productive.
4)Can I use CIO for naps too?
That is a whole separate topic which I’ll write about in the future. I don’t recommend tackling naps until AFTER night sleep is well established. So for now, focus on getting night sleep sorted out and let things settle into a positive and predictable sleep routine before you start mucking about with naps.
5)Won’t they get confused if I keep (rocking, nursing, pacifier) for naps but not bedtime?
Different parts of the brain regulate day vs. night sleep so you aren’t mucking things up by rocking to sleep at naptime then using CIO at bedtime. Many people feel they need to tackle the whole day at once but I don’t recommend it. Sorting out naps tends to take a while and involve quite a bit of crying and not napping. Babies who don’t nap become overtired. Overtired babies cry at bedtime. A lot. So with the goal of minimizing crying you would work on having GREAT naps (by any means necessary) so your baby is well-rested coming into CIO bedtime. Once night sleep is well established sorting out naps becomes easier (because well-rested babies sleep better), which is why I recommend focusing on night sleep FIRST before moving on to nap battles.
GOLD STAR COMMENT SAM 🙂
I only just saw this reply now and I actually did all that and it worked. I tackled the naps after 6 weeks of sorting her night sleep and she slept. She napped in her cot also for 2 of her 3 naps. Thanks for answering ladies and yes there is light at the end of the tunnel. Now she’s 3,9 years old and has started to wake earlier than she used to (9am before), but with school she needs to be up at 7:30am anyway. She does go to bed at 9pm, but we live in Spain and it’s almost impossible to be any earlier. Anyway, thanks again girls! Xx
Just wanted to add that you should check out the post on wake time lengths to help you with naps later on: https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/are-you-keeping-baby-awake-too-long/
I think maybe baby is awake too long and that’s why you’re having some trouble at naps.
We have an almost 5-month, that we think is ready for CIO. He doesn’t need any night feedings, and puts himself to sleep after his bedtime routine.
Bedtime routine is just a nighttime bottle, jammies and then falls asleep downstairs on his own (well, we are there with him but he puts himself to sleep) – laying on a Boppy pillow (supervised). Sometimes he has a pacifier, sometimes not. Then we’ll transfer him upstairs for the night, where he is swaddled (arms out) and with white noise. He does wake up after awhile, and then needs help falling back asleep – which is why we’re thinking he needs CIO.
Question is, too young? Are we creating bad sleep associations by having him fall asleep downstairs rather than upstairs? He usually wakes up for the day around 7:30, but is known to be awake at 4:30 or 5 (will fall back asleep if given a pacifier, or placed on that dang Boppy pillow)
Thoughts??
Kelsey,
There are two things happening here that stand between you’re current plan and him ACTUALLY putting himself to sleep.
The first thing is that he’s falling asleep downstairs and then is transferred into a bed upstairs later. He needs to FALL asleep where he’ll remain for the night.
The second is the use of the pacifier.
Sleep training is all about how he FALLS asleep, it’s not ideal for fixing later wakeups (sometimes it is, situationally specific). so THAT’S your issue. He needs to fall asleep IN his bed, ideally without the pacifier.
Is this a CIO situation? Maybe maybe not. I would work on it with a bit of assistance (belly rubs, soft words, etc.) and see what develops. You may find that he just needs a bit of a nudge. If not, CIO is your backup plan.
Hi Alexis,
I have been pouring over the articles on your site trying to convince myself one way or the other whether to start cry it out training with my daughter. She is nine months old. She has always fought sleep since the early days. We have a solid sleep routine in place of bath, pajamas, white noise and fan (since she is a very light sleeper) nursing and then walking around the room singing until she falls asleep. She doesn’t usually sleep more than three hours at a time, sometimes 4,5 or 6 but that is rare. I was planning to do a more gentle sleep training approach but I am honestly so tired and the idea of the no cry solution sounds so daunting that I haven’t committed to any plan at all! My husband and I decided that we would try night weaning first since she has always been nursed to sleep at every waking overnight. We thought this might introduce some comfort measures that would help us with sleep training. My husband would put her down for the first two times of the night. The bedtime routine starts at 6:45 but it can sometimes take her until eight or later to go to bed depending on how fussy she is. She almost always wakes about 45 minutes after the first put down. Then I go in for the remainder of the night wakings. Things were actually going pretty well and night wakings reduced from 5 to 8 times a night down to four.Plus, she has been getting easier and easier to see youth back to sleep over the past week that we have been trying. I was getting excited that maybe we wouldn’t have to do heavy-handed sleep training after all! Enter sleep biting.She has occasionally biten at bedtime before she had teeth and I thought maybe I was hallucinating because how could this sweet baby be biting me? Now she has four teeth with another on the way and the biting has only increased since we started night weaning.Now she bites while I hold/ walk with her for naps and bedtime and my arms look like I’m being abused! I have tried everything to get her to stop and nothing works. Now I feel that we might have to do CIO sleep training because I can’t take much more of this biting behavior. What are your thoughts? Thanks for your help. I’m seriously lost here.
Just a week shy of my little boy’s 8 months and considering cio. Otherwise we do a lot of “attachment parenting” including bed sharing. I’m not tired, I hardly wake when I nurse him back to sleep. But as he is an avid crawler, I’d prefer him falling asleep in his crib and staying asleep! Additionally, having to walk him or carry him in the ergo for every nap sucks – zero time to get on top of life!!
Now to the big question: we are about to head on a long trip in a week, 8 hour time difference etc. staying for over a month. Do I train him right away, today, pre travel or rather after we have arrived and re-set his clock?
My daughter is 5 1/2 months and one of the most laid back chill baby’s ever!! But she still wakes up twice a night which is driving me nuts… and sometimes I can’t get her to sleep. Sometimes she puts herself to sleep if I just lay her down with her nuk (she also sleeps on her belly)… sometimes she falls asleep while eating… sometimes she falls asleep while swinging, or me holding her, or on a car ride. She takes little 10 minute cat naps thru out the day. She only takes longer naps it seems when I am holding her or sometimes in her swing.
I’m finding it hard to create a schedule with her because I work days half the week and nights the other half. When I work days she usually falls asleep around 8 or 9 for me (puts herself to sleep, rocks to sleep, ect) when I work nights we usually don’t make it home til around 11… where she either stays asleep and I transfer her to her crib… or she wakes up, eats, and then falls asleep by one of her many ways. I don’t know if crying it out would work for her since I can’t commit to a bedtime… it also keeps my 6 year old son awake whichis not okay since he has school in the morning.
When she wakes up in the night I move her to a bassinet where I usually prop a bottle and she immediately falls asleep (rarely will she not fall asleep but if so sometimes she gets moved to my bed. The bassinet is right next to my bed so I take the bottle away once she’s asleep.. she usually wakes up between 1 and 3 for that bottle and then again between 5 and 8…
She is only eating 4oz at a time. So I don’t know if she is genuinely just hungry or if it’s a habit or if that’s my way of getting her back to sleep. She’s a little chunker and loves eating just does less more frequently. She recently has started baby food so I was hoping that would fill her up and have her sleep longer but so far it doesn’t seem to be working.
She seems to sleep for longer periods of times in my bed… but I still try to keep her in her own crib for as long as possible.. I do feeel she is going thru a growth spurt so that might explain some and she has been chewing her hands like crazy so I think definitely teething but either way I feel I have a couple of problems going on here I need help with…
How do I deal with the not being able to have a consistent schedule issue?
How can I get her to sleep thru the night?
Does the fact she doesn’t nap a lot/long matter if she seems generally happy thru out the day and not over tired?
Does crying it out seem like the best option or should I start with other things.. and what other things would those be? Thanks 🙂
Thanks Janine for your story. Finally we found something that worked for us!
Hello! I love LOVE your website! So helpful and informative. For me, it was probably too much information at one time. My 9 month old is not sleeping through the night at all, waking most nights every hour–not to feed, not for the pacifier, just because! There are some nights that he wakes up every 2 hours seemingly starving to death! He is currently sleeping in my bedroom in a crib next to my bed. We are working on getting him into his own room. My question is: where do we start? Night weaning, pacifier weaning, crying it out? what do we do first? ‘
thank you!
Hi Alexis! I have read your book (and several others) to help guide our sleep training journey. Out son is 5.5 months old and we started sleep training him 5 weeks ago essentially out of desperation as his sleep completely devolved into 1-3 hour naps at nigh after getting the flu – he was starting to self soothe and get 5-7 hr chunks before that. At the end of week 2 of sleep training we were doing great and had crying to about 15 minute episodes (we ended up doing pure extinction because the shiffle/graduated extinction just made him suupper mad). After this high point things started going downhill and in the last week my parents visited and now we are at 1+hrs of crying 4/5 days with a random 20 min cry. We usually pick him up after 1.45 hrs of crying which we’ve done twice in 5 weeks. We have stopped sleep training for a couple days but night sleep has immediately gotten shorter – 4-5 wakings vs 2. We are left constant wondering is it gas/teething/wonder week/growth spurt? Any advice how we interpret this change? We are ready to restart since the visitors are leaving but im bracing for a return to long crying :(.
That’s what I think of CIO – last thing. This no-CIO sleeptraining worked perfectly. I know Susan’s method from my friends, she was pretty excited and I also decided to try it. And she was totally right! Why use any kind of CIO when you have such a great alternative!
Hi Alexis, our 13 month old was a good sleeper up until about 6 weeks ago when she got tonsillitis and ever since is night waking and now this week has started to hate going to the cot, she will scream going down the hall as she knows where she is going. We tried CIO one night but she is gagging to be sick with the screaming so eventually gave in after 1 hour. Her scream is intense and is very reluctant to be soothed and ends up being put in the pram to sooth out of the room. Any advice would be great
Hi Alexis, I have ALL the questions. And I apologize if these have been asked and I didn’t see the comments. My son is 13 months old, still night nursing, still co sleeping and recently started thinking that 1 am is a great time to demand food not just mommy’s milk then he proceeds to party like a Rockstar until 3 am. I am READY to do CIO and I’ve tried but he literally cried for almost 2 hours. We went in a number of times to console him but it was way worse afterwards. He finally started to fall asleep standing up with his arms draped over the railing and head laying on the rail. That couldn’t possibly be safe, so I went pick him up to lay him down.. mistake! I ended up sitting next to his crib and tapped his leg then the mattress and he FINALLY sat down but still rested his head on the crib wall so he could see me. He again fell asleep like this and I guided him down. I thought yay he’s down! It only took 3 hours! Then 2.5hrs later he is screaming bloody murder. So, in my exhausted stupidity, I just brought him to our bed. And it’s pretty much gotten worse since then.
My questions are: How long is too long to allow him to cry? How long before we console him? Do we console him? Do I totally ignore the 2am wake ups and let him CIO all over again? Do I attempt to move him if he falls asleep in a less than ideal position? Do I need to hire a sleep consultant? Or just buy headphones?
Thanks for your advice!
I doubt the issue is as simple as “how long to wait” – you could hire me if you’re leaning that way. But honestly I would start with the PLS book to troubleshoot why he’s struggling so. I suspect there are more contributors here than just “wants more milk” and sometimes sleep is like that! Multifaceted and thorny.