CIO Questions

How old were your babies when you started CIO and how long were they sleeping over night?

 

How old were your babies when you started CIO and how long were they sleeping over night?

 

I think the girls were around 7 months when we started doing CIO with any type of consistency. They started sleeping through the night at about 6 months, but then they cut teeth and quit sleeping through. We started CIO after their teeth came in b/c obviously they were in pain...they didn't start back truly sleeping through until around 8.5 to 9 months.

 

We never did it for Sarah, because she started sleeping 11 hours at 3 months. (Don't hate me!)

We did it with Amy at 5 months, but mostly for bedtime. She was already sleeping about 7-2, then a bottle, then back to sleep till 6, but it was taking forever to get her down in the evening, so we did CIO for that.

After that, we started not going to her in the night when she fussed, but she never really did much of that anyway. And she is still getting that before-dawn bottle.

 

I tried at 6 and 7 months my girls never went for it. Right now I have given up and I am going to try again when they are 8 months old.

 

We've tried CIO every once in awhile...which for us is letting one or both of them cry for 10-15 minutes. Sometimes they would go back to sleep on their own, but most of the time they wouldn't. Now we do our best to catch them before they wake up fully and put a paci in their mouths. I'm not sure they're capable of self soothing just yet, but that could just be my boys. We have managed to get them to go thru the night without eating using this method (note: they are getting all their calories during the day). We still have a few wake-ups each night, but I'm hoping those will end once I find a swaddle blanket that Morgan can't break out of! LOL

I think you could try a 10 minute CIO session and see how it goes. You can kind of tell if they are going to settle back down or if they are ramping up, kwim?

Sorry I'm not more help! Just thought I would respond since my boys are close in age to your babies. Hopefully some of these ladies can give you better advice!

Shannon

 

We tried CIO at 6 mos. and again at 7 mos. with NO luck so I've given up on that. Mine get up several (4-7) times per night each.

 

We did modified CIO at about 3 months to get the girls to sleep in their cribs at night instead of on me or my dh, and also to get them eating only once at night instead of 2-3 times. We decided to get them eating only once because instead of taking a full feeding when they woke each time they would only take on ounce or two and then wake up hungry 2 hours later.

We would put them down around 9 and when they would wake around 11 or midnight we'd go in and soothe them until they were quiet with pacifiers, shushing, etc. We never let them cry for more than 5-10 minutes at a time. Then when they woke again around 2 or 3 we would feed them, and then they'd go back down until 5. Within a month of getting them on a regular schedule of sleeping from 8:30 or 9 to 3, then eating, then going back down until 5 or 6, they both dropped the overnight feeding and started sleeping through.