I hope you guys don't mind yet ANOTHER CIO/STTN question from me. :blush: Well, we aren't there yet, tonight is night #3, but so far things are going well. But here's my question - after we are done with CIO, how do we know when to go in to them? When should a cry be ignored and when should we go to them? Right now we're only going in if they cry more than one hour, and so far they haven't. I became worried about this tonight when DS, after going to bed at 7:30, started crying at 9:00 for no reason we could ascertain. We went in since it was not a usual time for him to cry, and thought maybe he needed to burp. He didn't. This made me think about when they're teething, etc. I don't want to ignore them when they need comforting, but I also don't want to ruin what we're establishing now with CIO. This is so difficult to navigate! Also - Do you sleep with a monitor on? I am not sure I can sleep with their every little noise and occasional cries. Up until this past weekend I was sleeping in their room with them but have now moved back to our bedroom (hurray) and am not sure what to do...I got zero sleep when I was in there and it is not much better with the monitor.
Try not to stress about figuring it all out now. I admit this was a source of great stress for me as well, but you just eventually get a sense of what kinds of cries are ignorable and which ones need to be responded to. I think we tried to let any "breakthrough" crying go for 5 minutes before we responded, unless it was obviously a shriek of pain (which essentially never happened, but I suppose could happen if you child had a bad ear infection or got a leg stuck in the crib slats or something). Once our babies got the hang of putting themselves to sleep, they were so reliable about it that even if we did go in to them once in awhile, it didn't set them back or anything. We really hardly ever needed to soothe them during the night, but if we did, they would be right back to normal the next night. We never used a monitor and in fact I wear earplugs. This is mainly to block out DH's snoring, but it also helps to block out non-essential noises from the girls' bedroom. I can still hear a real cry, but not the little whimpers and snorts that babies make in their sleep (or the flip-flopping and sighs that older kids make). It took awhile for me to learn to sleep again withouth constantly being on high alert. It started getting better as soon as we did CIO and they started STTN (around 5 months), but they were probably around a year old before I really was able to relax about it and trust that I would get a decent night's sleep.
We haven't done true CIO yet, and should we ever really want to do CIO I am nervous about it for the reasons the OP mentioned. There have only been a handful of times that I have let a LO cry, hoping that they would just fuss for a few minutes and then go to sleep. While they actually did go to sleep within a few minutes a couple of times, there have been other times where they would keep on crying and when I went to check on them after 5 minutes or so I realized that they had spit up and were wallowing in puke, which made me feel AWFUL (they are tummy sleepers). They both spit up a LOT, no matter how much we try to burp them during and after their before-bed bottle. There have also been a few times where one of them will wake up after going to sleep for the night, and after I let them cry for 5 minutes I went in there and they let out a HUGE burp, which was obviously uncomfortable for them. I'm hoping we will learn what their "real cries" sound like before we ever try CIO, but honestly it is sometimes hard to tell the difference. As for a monitor, I would probably sleep just as bad if I didn't use one, because I would probably always think I hear something that I don't, or wonder if they are sleeping ok, etc. If I'm not "first responder" though (and we alternate that duty nightly) then I'm able to relax more knowing that DH will be the one to check on them if they wake.
I always let mine fuss for a few mins before going in. I can usually tell if they are going to settle down or if they are going to fuss until I go in. Sometimes it's a burp, sometimes they are stinky, sometimes they just need their paci and their lullabies. I always use a monitor, and still use a monitor for my older kids. (Now we have 2 going so it's really fun trying to figure out which kid is crying from where! :lol The kids bedrooms are across the house from us and with fans running in all our rooms, and the air or heat running, I can't hear a thing in my bedroom without a baby monitor. When my kids get the stomach flu they start puking in the middle of the night. Usually around 12-1am. EVERY-SINGLE-TIME!! I have a fear of them puking and not being able to call me and me not realizing it until morning. My son is 7 and it's just the last year or so that he's able to wake up before he gets sick and either call me or make it to the bathroom. My 3 yr old still can't, she just starts puking in her bed.
One of the benefits of using CIO to get my kids to STTN is that after that point on, crying in the night that lasted longer than 5-10 minutes meant something else was going on. I knew they could put themselves back to sleep, usually within a few minutes of fussing, so if they cried for more than 5 minutes I knew something was up and could check on them. Honestly after that first week, they put themselves to sleep at bedtime and STTN almost every night. It was very very rare for them to cry in the night, and when they did I felt comfortable waiting those 5-10 minutes before checking on them. I did CIO at 9 months though, so I can understand why you might be more worried about checking on them at 5 months. With things like teething, you usually have an idea that something is going on based on how they act during the day. If they're drooling up a storm, chewing on everything, fussy with the bottle, etc, then unusual crying in the night probably means teething pain, which you can treat with tylenol or motrin and a few cuddles. I've always used a monitor as we all sleep with our doors closed. Even now, we still use monitors. In fact, we upgraded to video monitors now that they're in toddler beds and can wander around their rooms at night.
I did not have to use CIO at first to get my kids to STTN but once they started doing so, I did the exact same thing. I usually found that if they woke at night, it was usually because they pooed...so I would go in check for a stinky, try to burp them and if all was good, I would lay them back down to go to sleep. With teething, like Jessie said, I could tell by how the day was going that it would be a night problem. I usually waited about 5 minutes or so to go check on them. I didn't use a monitor for long because our bedrooms are so close together, I could still hear the kids if they cried.
We are still in the middle of sleep training right now. We initially did CIO at 4 months. DD now sleeps through 12 hours with no more than a whimper unless something is wrong, so when she cries longer than 5 minutes we always go in. Initially, our rule of thumb was to let them cry if it was in the first 3 hours after they went to bed. After that, if they woke at night we would still get up and feed them. If they woke in the last hour or so before it was time to get up, we would let them fuss until at least 6:30 AM as to encourage a regular wake time. DS is still having occasional night waking issues and has never been as easy to put to bed even after sleep training. He usually cries when we lay him down because he wants to play or be held. We let him cry for up to an hour unless the cry is escalating and we can tell he is not calming down. He is stubborn and sometimes will quiet for a while and then cry again or wake and cry an hour after going to bed. When this happens we do not go in. They are now at an age where we can tell the fussing cry from the angry cry from the pain cry and won't go in unless it sounds like something is wrong or someone is hungry. When DS was teething recently we went in every time he cried because it was very shrill and we were afraid he would wake his sister. Our room is right next to their room so we do not use the monitor. This way, we hear only the cries and not the sleep noises. Good luck figuring out what works for you. I have found that with my two CIO did not eliminate the night waking but it made it so that I could get up, feed and lay back down because prior to CIO I had to rock them to sleep each time. It is still a work in progress but I am very glad I did it! :youcandoit:
Once we were done with CIO, I just kind of went with my gut feeling. I could usually tell if they were just fussing & would probably fall back asleep, or if something was really wrong that required my attention. Sometimes I got it wrong, but more often than not, I guessed right. Also, if they were fussing in the middle of the night and it lasted more than 10 minutes or so, I would check on them. And I never slept with a monitor for any of my kids. I always found that I woke up when they cried, even without one. ardon:
We're going through modified CIO right now and one thing I do is turn the volume down on our monitor. That way only I only really hear the crying, and not the rest. The only issue I've been running into is one boy crying to sleep right when the other is waking up. It's happened twice now where I think it's time to go in and check on boy A, only to find out he's asleep and it's boy B crying for food. That makes me feel pretty bad.
We have a large fan running in our room to drown out noises from cars and neighbors so I leave the monitor on. If there are cries in the middle of the night for my two it means they need something. It used to be the pacifier, but now that they are in big boy beds, it's usually that they are cold and need to be covered back up. After CIO (and during teething) if they cried I would go check on them before letting them CIO to go back to sleep.
After we did CIO, my rule was that I would always give them 5-10 minutes to try to work it out on their own if they woke up. I found very quickly that they almost always worked it out on their own in less than 5 minutes. If they don't, I go in. If I start to see a pattern forming, I do CIO again. Honestly, at almost 2, I go in pretty much whenever they cry. I know now that DS, if he wakes up crying, has lost his blankie or paci or has had a bad dream and needs me. DD often fusses and I still give her the 5-10 minutes because she almost always settles herself back down. You'll figure it out. You'll know what's normal vs. unusual waking. You'll recognize if you are in there every night for a few days and you need to do a refresher CIO.
I forgot to answer the monitor question. We still have and use a monitor because we keep their and our doors closed. I turn it down low, and it doesn't bother me. I could probably hear them without it, but I like to have it. We have white noise going in their room too, so I get the added benefit of soothing myself.
