I've had it! We're doing CIO

So we're officially doing CIO for naps. We're doing the extinction method. This morning I was breastfeeding each of them every 30 minutes, then attempting naps every 30 minutes, without any results.

This afternoon DS cried for 40 minutes and is still asleep.
Haven't had to do CIO with DD yet, but I know it's coming.

We will do CIO at bedtime too, although ours usually to sleep at night fairly easily.

Questions - If you do CIO at night, what do you do if they wake up screaming at night, after they have already fallen asleep? Is it okay to stick their paci back in? If we do this, they usually go right back to sleep. It seems that if I let one of them scream, it wakes the other up and I have 2 screaming babies.

Sometimes they still wake at night and I nurse them (for only one feeding). Is this ok? Their weight gain is borderline, so I hate to not feed them. When did you cutout nighttime feedings altogether.


Thanks for your help! DH and I are having a big discussion tonight so we're on the same page and do this the same way.

 

Mine still aren't STTN. Alyssa [DD2] has been STTN maybe 4 days a week for the last couple weeks.. Rose [DD1] still wakes 1-2 times a night. I tried to do CIO, but it was horrible for us. So I decided to give Rose a 6 oz bottle when she wakes up the first, then 4 oz the second time. And if she wakes again.. I let her CIO.

We do CIO for naps sometimes though. I let them cry for about 10-15 mins then check on them [tuck back in] but then I leave them to CIO until they fall asleep. Also I think it's alright to put the paci back in for them to fall asleep. If it works, then I say DO IT ^_^

 

We haven't done night time feedings since they were about 4 months old. They had a much later bedtime and woke at 5am. Now they sleep from 5:30/6:00 until almost 7, with no wake up. If they do wake up randomly we don't go in, unless of course they are hysterical (that's how we know something is truly wrong). Typically one may wake once, moan and go right back to sleep.

We have the paci clips now, and I wish I would have bought them sooner. I have read that some people leave multiple pacis in the bed so that they can find one. We always had one, and used to have to go in and give one to my son all the time when he was falling asleep.

 

We used to replace pacis, now we live four in each crib. I never hear them all night

 

I usually go back in after 10-15 minutes of CIO to re-insert their pacis and they almost always fall right asleep. I think if it works for you then go for it! If my girls wake up screaming in the middle of the night/early morning then I know they are hungry I go ahead and feed them, but they normal don't do this as they are sleeping through the night.

 

If you make them CIO to go to bed at night, but they typically or often STTN once the are already asleep then I would go check on them. On the other hand, if you are trying to do CIO to get them to stop night wakings I would not go in at all. I'd say it's not CIO if you go in and give a pacifier. I think you need to be hard core about it--all or nothing. Other disagree and use the Ferber method, where you check and console. My guys would just get more worked up when we went in.

Oh this is such a sore spot for me. Mine are 12 months old, and I still feed them sometimes in the night (I've made an exception for the past few weeks due to molars.) If they are only waking occasionally, and you are worried about weight. I'd keep the feed. I think they probably will grow out of it. If you had kids like mine, who woke every 3-4 hours until 8 months old--then I'd tell you to go hard core and not go in at all. Although I'm a bit of a hypocrite, because I did CIO, and then the night waking started again. I decided I could deal with only one waking opposed to 2-3.

 

Questions - If you do CIO at night, what do you do if they wake up screaming at night, after they have already fallen asleep? Is it okay to stick their paci back in? If we do this, they usually go right back to sleep. It seems that if I let one of them scream, it wakes the other up and I have 2 screaming babies.

i think this depends on your overall goal. if your goal is just to get them to go to sleep on their own at the beginning of the night, and then you have a different method for dealing with night wakings (for example baby wakes up crying, wait 5 minutes, if still crying do a paci check/re-insert) and you're consistent with it then that's fine. if your goal is to eliminate night wakings entirely though, then i think your best bet is to just not go back in. period. decide on your night time (example 7:00pm to 7:00am) and no matter what, you don't go back into the room until 7:00am. PPs suggestions of paci clips or leaving multiple pacis in the crib sound like good options. you would only be this "hard-line" during the training period. once they are consistently sleeping through or only waking briefly, it'll be a different thing if they suddenly wake up in distress at night - then you would use your judgment on whether you should go in & see what's going on or whether you think they'll go back to sleep on their own.

Sometimes they still wake at night and I nurse them (for only one feeding). Is this ok? Their weight gain is borderline, so I hate to not feed them. When did you cutout nighttime feedings altogether.

i still nurse my girls at night (especially Riley as she's my smaller girl) - the rule here is 5 minutes of crying & then i go in & check. usually if there's nothing noticeable wrong then i just nurse quickly & put them back down. i have absolutely no soothing skills outside of this. :blush: again, i think it just comes down to consistency. choose your approach & stick with it. you can always reassess if they were to, for example, suddenly start waking every 2 hours & wanting to nurse rather than waking once to nurse every once in a while, you know?

 

When we first started CIO the girls were waking 2/3 times to eat, after doing extinction for bedtime they only woke up once to eat. Initially we set the time that we would feed and not go in at any other time, the time was midway between last feed and wake up time so i knew it would be hunger and not calls for me. Now that we all know the drill, i know that any crying in the night is for a reason so i go in. Amber is great, a lovey or stroke to the head settles her if her teeth are giving her trouble. I have had to pick Ruby up and rock her a couple of times when she has been bad with teeth and when she was sick but this hasn't caused us any problems so far. It's not like she needed me for help in going back to sleep, which was why we did CIO in the first place. Best advice i got was to decide what our plan was and stick with it. When you have your talk set some rules out so you are both clear on how to deal with the situation. Start as you mean t go on and the babies will learn so quickly! So sorry it's gotton so bad, it's very hard to not go in but when they get it you will all reap the rewards, wishing you lots of luck! :hug:

 

GL with CIO! Of course it's okay to feed them if they wake up in the night and are hungry. I only stopped feeding mine during the night when they'd wake up and then not take anything, they were just waking up for cuddles.

 

Thanks for all of the support and advice. It's going well so far . . . This morning DD and DS went right to sleep.


4 more questions . . .


1) Sometimes I can tell they are in that wired, overtired state. In this case, should I attempt to soothe and then put them down even though they are very awake? Or should I wait and attempt a nap later?

2) Both DD and DS are starting to roll from back to tummy in their cribs. DS is starting to like tummy sleeping, I think, but sometimes they both cry when they get onto their tummies. Since I'm doing CIO, should I just leave them? Of course I wouldn't know that they rolled onto their tummies unless I go to check on them while they are crying. Normally I would go and turn them onto their backs. Should I go in and turn them onto their backs after they are asleep?

3) Since the 3rd nap is "optional" at this age, do you still let them CIO for an hour if they don't seem like they want to nap? I'm guessing that if I commit to putting them down, I should have them CIO.

4) In HSHHC, the author says to have post-colic babies cry for 15-20 minutes because they have problems with self-soothing. He says to let easygoing babies cry for up to an hour for naps. My babies did have colic and are fussier than average. However, I don't see how it would work to only let them cry for 15-20 minutes. Should I give them an hour, even though they are not really easy-going? Yesterday I let DS cry it out. He cried for 40 min. and then slept for almost 2 hours (great for him).

Sorry for all of the questions. These are my first babies and I have no clue what I'm doing!

 

1. If they are overtired, I would soothe them a bit & then put them down awake. If you wait until later they will likely just get more overtired.
2. I would not move a sleeping baby if I could help it. If they are strong enough to roll themselves to their belly, I would just let them sleep that way.
3. If you are going to put them down then, yes, I would definitely do CIO. If they just don't seem to need the nap, I would skip it altogether.
4. I usually went for 30-45 minutes if I could. I had a hard time letting them cry so that was about all I could take but, luckily, it was usually enough with my kids.