Do you regret doing or not doing CIO? Will we?

One of my biggest regrets as a parent was trying CIO with Jamie. She was a marathon cryer because she had acid reflux until about 9 months and could not take medication. After that, we tried CIO in various forms and actually let her cry one night until she went to sleep after an hour and 45 minutes (following a friend's advice that we needed to stick it out no matter what). Thinking of that night makes me sick to my stomach. Everyone had convinced me that CIO was the only way.

Don't get me wrong. For most babies including my Nicole, CIO worked great, but it's important to recognize when it's not working. CIO made Jamie terrified of her crib and of sleeping. We ended up having to put her in our bed or we never would have gotten any sleep. I think that using a gentler method with her would have prevented all that.

 

We do not regret doing CIO. It was hard to do, but was really helpful for us. We did not attempt CIO until our girls had dropped all nighttime feedings. After that, they were each waking 4-5 times at night (and not at the same time). They did not want to eat and would go back to sleep immediately after we picked them up. We first tried co-sleeping. DH would sleep in one room with one of the girls and I would sleep in another room with the other because our bed was not big enough for all of us. Unfortunately, that did not help either. They continued to wake throughout the night. So, after much discussion with DH and talking to friends with young children, we decided to try CIO. We picked a date when we were going to be home for at least a month because we travel frequently. We decided to start on a Friday night because so I would not be tired going back to work. I started telling the girls that they needed to sleep in their own beds and talking to them about going to sleep and sleeping all night. At 9 to 10 months, I do not know how much they understood, but I wanted to explain to them if they did understand. I set myself up for the worst case scenario and we put them to bed. They both cried for less than 15 minutes then went to sleep. They each woke up once that first night and went back to sleep within 5 minutes. The amount of crying at bedtime decreased each night. Within less than 2 weeks, they were going to sleep without crying and sleeping through the night. (They were still early wakers, but they liked a bottle around 5am, so we would get up and give that bottle, then they sometimes would sleep a little longer.)

I think CIO can be very useful, but you have to know your own children and tailor it to your situation. My opinion is that CIO should only be used on older babies who are no longer eating during the night. It should be used only to assist in breaking poor sleep habits but not if your child is hungry, sick, teething, etc. I can't really comment on children that cry for long periods of time because I did not have to deal with that. I do think that CIO is not the right thing from some children and you have to make the best decision for your children and your family. My daughters responded well to it. They were happier after CIO because they were so much more rested. Before CIO, they were always exhausted because they were up all though the night. After a few days of sleeping all night, they were like new babies -- so much happier.

Best of luck to you!

Sandy

 

I had to do CIO with my older dd and with my twin ds.. I don't regret it...they sleep great...and have slept great since 5 months...

the only thing that I would say...is don't go in every 15 minutes... I did that with older dd and it took 3 weeks to get her to CIO so that she finally went to sleep without crying...
With ds I did a cold-turkey CIO where he cried for over an hour and finally fell asleep... it only took him 3 days of this before he didn't give me problems anymore...

 

I did it and don’t regret it. I dont think you will find many people that are regretting their decision one way or another.

First of all I want to say that my experience so far taught me that babies are very different and the response to CIO varies a lot. There is no silver bullet and sometimes CIO methods need to be adapted to your child specifically (thus the "sleep help" consulting services that are more common that you would think). Doing it younger is better but the best time to do it is when they dont nurse/get bottles over night.

They were on EBM until almost 1 year old and I used to be very emotional and very responsive to their cries in this first year. We did CIO at around 6-7mo at my DH insistence and did it with one child at the time, they were in separate rooms at that time. I took away the night feeding relatively early at 7 mo old.

Alex took it very well, cried hard for only couple on min then settled in a kind of endurance soft cry for 20-30 min or so and he was sleeping through after 4-5 nights of CIO. But he was already sleeping longer than Natalia, woke up very briefly to sleep and used to get right back to sleep with no fighting at all. He was "good sleeper" material and was therefore very easy to train. I never had to do again with him.

Natalia was another story altogether. She did not respond well to CIO she would cry very hard until vomit. We tried couple of months later and it did not work much better pretty much she was screaming for hours at bedtime even after I moved them in the same room (first night I moved them together Alex slept with his hands on his ears)

She still wakes up at night when she is sick, sometimes she has night terrors and she did not start sleeping through the night consistently until 14 mo old. She still fusses sometimes at bedtime even through we have them on a very consistent routine and she knows the drill very well by now.

What worked with her was putting her to bed 1/2h later than Alex, she get to read couple of more books in the living room and most of the days she asks to be put to bed after 15-20 min after Alex goes to sleep.

This is one of the hardest things to decide in the first year, good luck!