Cry It Out......

Okay, Maeve and William have been STTN since last Monday. William sleeps from 6pm until about 6/7am no problem, we really dont hear from him.

Maeve is giving us a little trouble. Always seems to happen AFTER midnight, never before. She fusses and fusses, then we go into her, her eyes are closed and we replug her pacifier. Then we go for a few hours and things are quiet, we all sleep. She will also cry and we go in, replug and we all go back to sleep. Some nights are better than others, with either like one or two times or it seems like all night!

SO! Tonight, we are putting our game faces on and are going to full on let them CIO. I will let both of them CIO during the day when going down for naps and Maeve ALWAYS calms herself down after 10 minutes and goes to sleep. Will is the same. So I KNOW they can do it at night.

How long is too long to let them CIO, HSHHC says one hour! Seems excessive. We want SLEEP, we need SLEEP and these babies need to get on board!

Okay, send some good sleep vibes, some strength and support please! xoxoxoxjillian

 

Good luck!!

Mine still dont sleep through the night, I keep thinking we're almost there and then they regress! <_<

 

I always followed the 20 min rule--that said, mine never lasted that long, usually more like 5-10 min.

 

hey jillian

like I told you in my message, I usually don't let them cry for more than 30 min, which my mom thinks is excessive, but you know your babies can sooth themselves at nap time so they will do it at night too!!

just hang in there and stay strong, don't let those little buggers tell you what to do, haha

 

We did CIO with Emma and I know I never let her go an hour, far from it. I think I did like 15-20 min., something like that. On our worst night, she cried on and off for a couple of hours, with a little bit of rest in between. Good luck.

 

Good luck, Jillian! I can't wait to hear how it goes. My one DD STTN for 12 hours straight and my other one keeps waking at least once, sometimes twice, a night to eat. DH and I may do CIO with her this weekend to see if she can STTN. I think we're moving one crib into our room for the event. Will you be separating Mave and William? Just curious! Good luck and please let us know how it goes.

 

Okay, so here is our update. Bruce and I put on our "game face" and were emotionally and mentally prepared to CIO for Maeve. They did their usual 6/6:30pm bedtime and all was quiet, as usual, until 12:30pm when Maeve started that light crying/fussing. I cannot even call it crying because her eyes are closed and it isnt a cry that says "feed me, I am hungry" or "change my diaper".

We re-read the chapter on CIO in HSHHC for extra support too, both Bruce and I. Well, she cried for an HOUR. A FULL ON BLOODY **** HOUR! Of COURSE we went in to check on her with the intention of NOT letting her see us or make noise. We just wanted to look at her to make sure she was okay, not wedged up against the crib bumper, or for some crazy reason....busted out of her swaddle (those Miracle blankets are amazing by the way).

She seemed fine according to Bruce, he did report back to me that she was kicking up her feet and turning her head from side to side. That concerned me, so in I went. Well as I scanned the crib for her pacifier (it wasnt in her mouth) I realized that it was UNDER her poor little neck!

I felt like the biggest MEANIE for not going in sooner. Anyway, I replugged her, which I SWORE I wouldnt do, as I wanted her to put herself back to sleep. She went right back to sleep, of course.

THEN 20 minutes later William started with the fussing. We let him go half an hour until Bruce couldnt stand it anymore and I started crying because I had literally been awake since 12:30pm when Maeve started. Bruce kept going in to Will to replug until 5:30am until Bruce just threw in the towel and fed William and then Maeve at 6:30AM.

SO Maevey did a great job from 2:30am until 6:30 am....but our usual ANGEL baby Will, who usually sleeps from 6am-6pm was a fusspot.

UGHHH. So we start over tonight. ANNNNNY words of advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the support guys! xojillian

 

I was never good at this part. My brother and his wife always let their kids CIO and have great sleepers. Me, I still have a two-year-old in my bed! I am not strong when it comes to this stuff. I am trying to do everything right with the twins though. I wish you luck. It sounds like they can make it through without eating, and that is huge!

 

Hmmmmm...I don't know if I am much help-but I just wanted to send you some :hug99: :hug99: . We did this last weekend-and I'm going to be honest-the first night wasn't too bad because I left-and we had a fan on at night. When I went to bed I cried my eyes out. But in the end-it worked. They did wake that first night(I could hear them over the fan). The 2nd night they didn't, but Nicholas woke up at 5:45am and we let him CIO for an hour and then got him. I wouldn't go longer than an hour. And when he cries-it's not all out screaming. It's fussing on and off or some babbling mixed in.

I will say this though-they sleep GREAT and it's only been one week! We had to do CIO when we put them down instead of rocking them, and we did CIO(at the same time) to stop feeding at night. They generally wake up happy every morning and they are NOT starving!

And fwiw-we didn't go in to check on them. We check on them when we go to bed and if we wake in the middle of the night. The last thing you want is for them to see you!

Most of all-you know your babies. You do what is best for you. If it helps-leave the house if you have to. Go outside, go in the basement, etc...They will stop crying. And you-and them-will be getting some much needed sleep!

 

Okay, so I guess what is SOOO hard about all of this is that there are two (duh, I know). My dilemma is, what if one of the babies cries for that hour mark......do we go in and plug in pacifiers? Doesnt this defeat the whole purpose of having to get up and go in multiple times a night to replug pacifiers????? Maeve falls asleep with hers in, Will spits his out. I leave them that way, unless they fuss for me to come in and replug.

So what should I do when we hit that hour mark and one of them is still crying? And if one wakes the other, do we let them both just go all night crying, soothing back to sleep, then up again crying?

I sound so stupid, dont I? Common sense prevails, but when you are sleep deprived and pretty much up all night listening to the crying/fussing of two babies off and on, it truly does things to your brain.

Thanks guys. xojillian

 

This is hard! :hug99: Emma was our binkie girl, and also the one we needed to do CIO with. I don't even remember what I did with binkies during the time she was doing CIO. But after she started STTN, I set a rule that I didn't go in there after 9, unless it was for more than 10 min. And hardly ever did it even last 2-3 minutes.

 

I said I would never let my baby cry it out ... then I had the twins and the "you know what" hit the fan! They were colicky and screamed day in and day out for the first 4 months of their lives. They would scream from 5PM until 2 AM with only breaks for nursing ... they would go that long without sleep despite our best attempts to get them to ... go ... to ... sleep!!! Finally, around 4 months they started doing lots better and by 5 they were going down around 8 and waking once for Hannah and twice for Meredith. Then, came month 6. They started waking ALL THE TIME! I would nurse them and they still wouldn't go back to sleep ... they would go to sleep and wake 30 minutes later. The point at which I changed my mind about letting them CIO, I had gotten up 23 times between the two of them one night and enough was enough. My Ped said that it was most likely social waking ... that they most likely needed to nurse once but no more than that. So, we decided to let them CIO to go to sleep (we had been rocking and re-rocking to sleep until they finally stayed down). I said I would not feed them before 2 AM. Well, that didn't really work for me. The first night, that is what happened ... Meredith woke at 12 and cried until 2 and I went in and fed her. Then, the next night she woke at 11 and we stuck to our guns and she cried ... FOR THREE HOURS then fell asleep and woke a few hours later and I fed her! It was so heartbreaking. I laid there questioning my worth as a mother and feeling like a horrible person. OH, and BTW, HSHHC says there should be no end to night time crying ... that for NAPS it is one hour but for night time ... no limit to the crying or you will teach them to cry for long periods and you will go to them ... anyway, to make a long story short, I decided that I would nurse when they first woke up but not again ... so then, if Meredith woke at 11, I would feed her and if she cried after that, then I knew it wasn't from hunger ... it was from not being able to self-soothe. That worked much better. Once they learned to self-soothe they dropped night feeds on their own at around 9 months old for Meredith and 8 months old for Hannah. pm me if you need support! I have been there! But, oh, the joys of sleep training ... they go down for naps and night EASY and they both STTN 12 hours!!! YAYAYAYAYAY!

 

If they are not crying out of hunger and you want to do CIO, then as Traci said, you should not have a time limit on the crying. We did CIO at 11 months, and they could put thier own paci's in their mouths at that point. They cried ALOT (most of the night) the first night and were STTN by night 4, so it took 3 nights. Not for the faint of heart by any means.
Most babies tend to get confused and most parents do not have much luck by setting limits (say go in after 20min of crying etc).
I wanted to use the method that involved the least crying, for us that was extinction CIO. All the other methods involved several mins of crying several times a night for several nights. This way they cried for 3 nights and not again

PM me if you want more details or support

 

Traci, you rock. Thanks for the clarification on the HSHHC one hour nap rule......missed THAT VERY important tidbit on no night time limit. Okay, we can do this. DH is sleeping but if we wake up (ha!) from hearing one of the babies cry, I am going to share that with him! I feel so much better about it all right now. Thanks.

Big deep breath.......about to shut my lap top off and go for it! THANK YOU my TS buddies.

THANK GOD I have you all! xojillian

PS, A couple of you have PM'd me asking me to update how our experience goes with CIO! I now feel strong enough to put on my game face again tonight. I just went and pulled out a fan to run tonight to block the noise! I will report back to you all in the next day or so. Let's see how it all goes, not for the faint of heart, true, but my 5 and 4 year olds are excellent sleepers to this day because I did CIO. The dynamic is a little different with twins though, so that is why I sound SOOO clueless!

 

Good morning! Well, I took some advice from this thread and turned on TWO FANS in our bedroom last night! We initially started out with one fan and we could hear Maeve crying. So I turned on a second fan and that was much better.

Bruce and I actually SLEPT! We could faintly hear them crying and that was great. I was able to fall asleep and not be so worried. The next thing we knew, it was 7:30 AM!!!! The babies usually wake to eat around 6/6:30am!

I went in to the nursery to find William crying and Maeve was happy as a clam sucking on her fingers! She actually busted OUT of her Miracle Blanket, and was able to get her fingers to her mouth. (blessing in disguise, I guess)

So for me and Bruce, we slept and it was heavenly. As for the babies, I had two smiley faces when I went to pick them up from their cribs.

LESSON LEARNED LADIES: TURN ON THE FANS when you do CIO! What a lifesaver!

Have a great weekend and thank you so much for the support xojillian

 

Four months is pretty young for CIO, even the most pro-CIO professionals usually recommend 6 months. While I am not completely against CIO in all circumstances, it seems pretty cruel to me to let your baby get used to sleeping with a binky, and then let her CIO without it when she is swaddled and can't replace it/suck fingers or something. You should at least make sure that they are old enough/capable enough to self-soothe before you turn a fan on and let them cry while you sleep. FTR, my 5-year old is a great sleeper, and we never did CIO with her.

 

I am on day 7 of no paci's because of constant night wakings. I hired a sleep coach to help me with their sleep routine because I needed the support. We went cold turkey on no paci's. 1st night ds cried for 45 min. dd cried for 1hr 15 min. we stayed in the room the whole time letting them know we were there gave them there favorite comfort toy and waited it out. The 2nd night way better, and now at day 7 we had our first night with no wakings for both of them. Naps seem to be a little bit of a struggle but I will work with that. My biggest encouragement was in speaking to my girlfriend that told my here 2 yr old still wakes at night to find her soother and can't go to sleep without. You are doing your kids a favor and teaching them now how to self sooth. Can you imagine two years from now plugging there soother in. Don't get me wrong this is very hard but I can't believe how quick the babes have improved and that is loads of encouragment. Good luck and be strong.

 

Jillian, that is such great news about last night. Congratulations on sticking it out!! You've inspired me and I'm going to talk to DH today about possibly doing it with our little one who doesn't STTN. Let us know how things continue to go!

 

Smiles in the morning... yay!

 

Just to clarify to the pp who gently shared her opinion about our babies being too young to CIO.....I appreciate your "devils advocate" opinion (not being facetious here, being sincere).

We decided our babies were ready to CIO as they have been STTN for over 13 days straight......(meaning they are NOT hungry in the middle of the night and are NOT night waking to eat). They do however fuss, it is a low grade cry that does not indicate hunger or need of a diaper change. Their eyes are closed during the entire thing. So it is more of fussing and DH and I hopping up every flipping time to replug pacifiers.

They also self soothe VERY well at times....at nap time during the day, Maeve will fuss it out/cio for a mere 10 minutes and put herself to sleep. Will is just our easy angel baby who falls asleep the second his little head hits the crib sheet. And he sleeps from 6pm until 6am, no problem. Maeve has had a few nights of NO night fussing/waking.

They are ALSO taking anywhere between 10-14 OUNCES of formula at each feeding every THREE and a HALF hours.....at their 4 month check up this week, given their formula consumption, ability to self soothe and STTN for the last 13 nights, their weights are 14lbs 2oz and 16lbs 5oz......our PEDIATRICIAN gave us the support and resources to read/educate about the right time to CIO and suggested "no time like the present".

SO we felt it was a good decision not a "cruel" one. Every family is different, every pediatrician is different and certainly every baby is different.....you have to do what you feel is right for your family. I will not feel bad for my CIO decision! Even though it is one of the hardest things to do as a mother.

I appreciate the support, kind words, varied opinions and shared experiences from all of my TS friends. So thanks for sharing

xojillian