CIO - Naps versus Nighttime

Our DD's are 5 months old and have started waking several times at night for no apparent reason other than to chat and cry. They refuse to go back to sleep without considerable comforting, and it's getting tiring. We would like to do CIO - and at the same time, transition from swaddling to sleep sacks (they bust out of the swaddles now anyway during the night), and ditch the pacis (which we have to replace during nightwakings).

Right now, they go down to sleep relatively easily - one requires little or minimal soothing at naps and nighttime if we swaddle her and stick the paci in, and the other has to be rocked until she is asleep (usually about 5-10 minutes) for all naps and nighttime.

My question is .... should we tackle all sleep times (naps and bedtime and nightwakings) with CIO all at the same time? Or should we start by doing CIO only for the nightwakings, and then tackle bedtime and naps? I am worried about being inconsistent, but I want to make sure they can get SOME sleep while this process is happening.

Thanks in advance!

 

If you feel comfortable tackling CIO for all 3, then go for it. We've so far only done CIO for nighttime and wakings, and not naptime. And the boys go down at night with relative ease and sooth themselves back to sleep after night wakings, since we did CIO to deal with those particular issues. We have yet to do much sleep training for naps because my mother watches them during the day and she is always rocking them to sleep and never laying them in their crib awake to nap (unless she has no choice due to the other baby melting down). So I figured it would be futile for us to do any sleeping training for naps on the weekends since she would likely reverse any progress we may make during the week. But not doing CIO at nap time has not hindered their night time sleep training at all. So if you're not comfortable doing all 3 at once, then don't. It should be fine IMO

 

Thanks so much for the feedback!

 

Glad you posted this. I am in the SAME boat. Nightwakings are killing me!! We are going to first wean off of the night bottles - because I'm almost positive my boys don't need them anymore.

 

Our boys will fight and carry on and cry for over 30 minutes if you put them in their crib and they aren't wanting to nap. But last night I laid Brandon in his crib and he hopped up on all fours obviously not ready to sleep. But he never really cried, instead he just babbled and cooed a little bit, laid down, and was asleep in 5 minutes. So the sleep training at night has been a success, even though we've not did any consistent sleep training/CIO for naps. GL!

 

Actually, you raise a good point re: feedings. We have been feeding once in the night (breastfeeding) until now ... but my view is they don't need it anymore since we are doing 3 cereal feeds during the day, I don't really sense it is a hunger cry, they don't nurse greedily or for very long in the night, and they are waking at very erratic times.

 

I'm right there with you! The nightwakings are killing us at 5.5 months. For the last few nights my little boy has been waking at least every hour, sometimes every 20 minutes!! And then as it gets closer to morning he will cry seemingly inconsolably. The only thing that soothes him at that point is nursing, even though he usually will have nursed twice before. We are running on empty.
Let me know how CIO goes! I have heard that babies can separate nighttime from naptime, so you can train for them at different times. Sorry not much advice here, just commiserating. Good luck!

 

By the way, does anyone know if there is a weight that babies should be at when you can stop feeding them at night?

 

I read 9 pounds. A friend told me 13 pounds. But maybe talk to your pedi to verify. I want to wean off the bottles first so that I can be sure that when they cry, it's not out of hunger. My boys are around 15 pounds at this point - and are eating 4 7oz bottles during the day. Once we wean off the night bottles, they'll probably go up to 8oz bottles. GL

 

I would start with a very consistent bedtime routine. Try that for several nights to a week to get them used to it, then do the CIO at night. A good bedtime routine is a great stepping stone to STTN.

I personally would tackle nighttime first, you should only change one thing at a time otherwise it gets overwhelming for a baby. So I would tackle the bedtime routine and then nighttime crying, and once they are getting a good nights sleep, the naptime battle won't be quite as difficult.

For nighttime weaning the easiest thing i've found to do, is when they wake up to eat, make them wait as long as you can before feeding them. So if they normally wake at 3am, try to put them off with lullabies, paci, soothing, or just letting them fuss for 15-30 mins. Longer if you can without them crying. If my kids woke up really crying, then I would go ahead and feed them, but if they were just fussing, I'd let them fuss as long as possible.

Over the course of a week or two I would continue to push off their feedings and eventually they'd just sttn. My oldest two slept through at 6 and 8 wks, and the twins at 12 wks.

 

We just tackled this issue this week with our 4.5 month olds! Well mostly with our son, as our daughter always does pretty well putting herself back to sleep without any soothing from us or paci replacement.

Contrary to previous advice posted, we actually started with naptimes as those were always easier on our son in general. He usually would take a paci and then drop it within a minute or two and fall asleep. So we just did our normal routine, but without the pacifier. The first time he cried for a while, and we went in every ten mins or so saying "shh shh, it's time to go to sleep" and maybe giving head rubs or belly pats, but never picking him up. Within 30 mins he was asleep, and it has gotten easier and easier since then! He did so well with the naptimes that day that we ended up doing it for night time as well. The first night he fussed about 30 mins going down, and then fussed about 5-10 mins an hour (he would wake and cry and then go back to sleep, we didn't go in during the first 10 mins fyi) until about 2 a.m. and then he had his normal 3 a.m. feeding and slept through til 7 a.m. This week has been amazing. We started the routine on Tuesday, and today (Friday) he went down to bed no problem with no paci and not even a single fuss or cry and has been sleeping soundly for three hours now and will likely continue til his 3 a.m."ish" feed.

I don't agree either that you can't cio if you are still night time feeding. My twins are both over 16 lbs and they still wake once for a feeding. Not sure if it's habit or need, but my pedi said I shouldn't force dropping it. I know what their schedule is and how to read their cries so I know when to let them cio and when to feed. Usually we cio until 1 or 2 a.m. and then if they wake and cry more then 10-20 mins straight (that desperate cry...you know it!) then we feed and put them back down. Eventually when they are older I'll wean them off of that feeding, but for now I'm happy to only wake once a night to feed.

Oh I should also mention that we dropped the swaddle for our son at the same time since we felt that it wasn't fair to take away the paci and not let him have his hands free to soothe himself. He is doing fine with being unswaddled as well!

 

I wouldnt tackle all 3 at once. That is alot of change for a little baby. I too would start with naps so that they are learning to self soothe and then hopefully that will carry over to the middle of the night. It's like teaching them a skill that they can use. We went cold turkey on the paci at 2 months because I just couldnt get up 20 times a night to put it back in. Then once they can self soothe, I would see what your nights look like and go from there. If they are waking twice a night, then I would probably CIO for one of those feedings and do the other at that point.

Then I would transition out of the swaddle and then work on the rocking. GL!

This is tough because they are still pretty young to say they dont need to eat anymore in the middle of the night. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Weisbluth says that they can wake up until 9 months old to eat in the middle of the night. Both of my boys followed suit with that. And although I would have killed for a good night's sleep I just felt like maybe he was on to something and that they needed to eat despite being well over 20 pounds at 6 months. ardon:

I dont really think anyone goes by that anymore.

Well, my DD was born at 9 pounds, just to give you some perspective. Does that mean that I didnt need to feed her? Of course not. Every baby is different and you can just slap a weight limit on a baby and say that they are "blank" pounds so they dont have to eat at night.

Excellent informative post!! :good: