Okay, CIO HELP!!!!!!!!

Okay, so I gave in and am giving CIO a try. I am dedicated and consistant. The first night they cried for 1/2 hour (going in only made it WORSE because we didn't pick them up...I thought I was going to die! Talk about anxiety!!) We have been doing it for 3 days/nights now. Now they cry for no more than 5 minutes (still kills me) but they will sometimes wake up 15 minutes after falling asleep and cry again for up to 15 minutes.

Did any of you find this with yours??

Okay and everyone keeps saying 2-3 days and they're used to it...do yours really not cry at all when you put them in the crib or should I expect 5 minutes of crying at every nap/bedtime. I know I have to stick this out because I made the decision, but I have cried more in the last 3 days then I have in a really long time. I just need to know so I can prepare myself if they are going to continue crying EVERY time I put them down.

TIA!

 

Okay, so I gave in and am giving CIO a try. I am dedicated and consistant. The first night they cried for 1/2 hour (going in only made it WORSE because we didn't pick them up...I thought I was going to die! Talk about anxiety!!) We have been doing it for 3 days/nights now. Now they cry for no more than 5 minutes (still kills me) but they will sometimes wake up 15 minutes after falling asleep and cry again for up to 15 minutes.

Did any of you find this with yours??

Okay and everyone keeps saying 2-3 days and they're used to it...do yours really not cry at all when you put them in the crib or should I expect 5 minutes of crying at every nap/bedtime. I know I have to stick this out because I made the decision, but I have cried more in the last 3 days then I have in a really long time. I just need to know so I can prepare myself if they are going to continue crying EVERY time I put them down.

TIA!

 

Mine still cry on occation. Even last night Brooke cried for 20 minutes or so until she fell asleep. I just dont turn on the baby moniter until they are asleep just because it can be so much on a mommy to hear her baby cry. Occationally they will wake up for a little bit too and then go back to sleep.

 

Shylee still cries for about 10 minutes every night when we put her down for bed, Liam only cries when he really needs something. *lol* Shylee is my little "drama mama" So CIO is a little harder on her but she is getting better about it. But if i go in there during that "10 minutes" then the clock is re-set and she will cry an additional 10 minutes before zonking out. Good luck - it is hard but you can do it If they are fed, changed and not sick it is ok to let them CIO in my opinion

 

Not really the answer I was hoping for but I appreciate your responses! So how long have you been doing CIO that they are still crying? DD seems better this morning, she went down without a peep...DS on the other hand is still crying, it's been 4 minutes (there is a break and a hmmmm between screams though, so I think he's just mad). This is just really hard and I'm a big baby when it comes to my kids.

 

Okay, husband here trying to get the wifeto try the CIO.
Right now when the girls cry the wife brings them in bed with us...this is killing me...don't want this to keep going. So this weekend I am taking the plunge and running the CIO method. Now, when I first put the girls down and they cry...can I leave them be for 20 minutes before going in the room? When I do go in the room..don't pick them up correct? Just try and comfort them with a back rub..ect..
Soon they will fall asleep right? Even if the one keeps waking the other? They will/should fall asleep.

What about in the night when they awake...do i do the same thing? Let them CIO? We are in a sound sleep (we are never really in a sound sleep) and the girl(s) start crying..go in give them the paci and rub a back...then let them CIO for what? 10 minutes...I am taking control of this at home but need to have a game plan for the wife...I have heard several times that i need to get the book by Kim ??? Good Night Sleep Tight.

Advise here please

 

I would think that at the beginning, it is normal to cry for a few minutes. But this is great beacause they are learning to put themselves to sleep!!!


I just started CIO on Tuesday and it is a miracle to see it work. My story is that they each wake 2 times (at different times) to eat at night. Before Tues, they ate 6-8 oz every 4 hours. they go to bed at 7 and then they woke between 10-12am for another bottle AND then 2 times during the night. THey also have solids 2 times a day. I finally realized they are eating out of habit and i could not do it anymore physically. My boys are big boys and are in no way lacking nutrition!

On Tues, when they usually wake for their 1st middle of the night feeding, i let them CIO. I seem to differ from many of you because I DID NOT feel bad at all when I heard them cry. THis is because I knew they just ate and diaper changed. One slept right through the others cry and then the next hour the reverse happened. I also did not feel bad because i made the decision to CIO because I was so tired and it felt great to not get up and get a bottle! THey basically cried on and off throughout the night.

THe next night, they slept until 4 (huge for us!) and then i had them CIO. THey woke at 6:00 and were ready for their bottle. The good thing is they ate 4 8oz bottles that day. THey had room since they were not getting calories at night.

Last night they woke at 5:30 and i had them CIO until 6:00.

This feels amazing! WHen i get them in the morning they are happy! Also, their morning naps the past 3 days have been longer than 35 minutes!


Team D...I cant remember how old your babies are and I am by no means an expert in this CIO as I have only gotten advice from people here and my sister but If I remember correctly, your little ones may be too young for CIO. Lets see what advice others may be able to give you!

 

Ha, I was just coming on line again to so that my girls are 8 weeks on Tuesday...is this to young for CIO? If so then what do I do? Do I go to them with every cry? I am really tired of sleeping with a girl on my chest (never thought I'd say that..but am reffering to my daughter..HA!) Anyways..I don't want to form bad habits..I don't want to be a bad dad...but I also don't want to stay awake for the next 3 months...the last two hurt.

Please advise what to do with 8 week old babies and their sleeping...should I have a pattern already???

Very confused on what to do and how to act....

 

TeamDougall

Again, I hate giving advice when I am not an expert but from being at this site so many times now the responses begin to become so similar.

At 8 weeks, i think it is survival mode for you and your wife and bad habits cant be foremd at that point. You dont want them sleeping on you for much longer but for now you really need to do what works. Swings are good too.

At that point, babies need to eat in the middle of the night. It is totally normal. I think it is more rare to hear a baby NOT waking to eat at that age. I was an emotional mess at 8 weeks. Beofre having my boys, i remember people talking about sleep deprivation and i thought, ok, how tired can you really be. Wow, I never knew it could be that bad! Our boys slept on our chest at the beginning too. It scared me too much though so we used swings mostly. You can worry about habit breaking later (they say it takes up to a week to break a habit) Deal with that when you have more energy!

Someone with more experience can confirm or deny my thoughts. I just thinkthis time is so hard and believe it or not, as the weeks and months go on, you will forget how bad it really was!

 

I think 8 weeks is too young for CIO. But maybe that's me. I would slowly break them of the habbit of sleeping on your chest. Have one place at night where they will sleep, once you put them in sleeping place I would let them cry maybe 5 mins. Pick them up and start over, calm them down, let them get drowsy, back in sleeping place. They should get the idea,eventually, LOL. Hang in there, I also have 8 week twins, And I know sleep is precious. My boys sleep in bassinets,at night, but would love to be held instead. But with two I just can't. I think consistency is important, babies are smart. I wish you and your wife luck, this was just an idea that worked for my kids. jesica

 

Well this is good to hear..I am not doing CIO as of now..I am doing what calms my girls and gets me the most sleep....but just want to make sure I'm not doing the wrong thing. Thanks for the input...being the first kids we have..this is all trial and error.....But it is so hard!!!! (that's what she said..HELLO)

Anyways thanks for the advise..it is always welcome on this site...that is why I am here....Plus who doesn't wantto be the only guy in a room full of women..LOL...even if it is only a chat room.

 

I am going to do CIO at night with my ds at 3 months if he's not showing any improvements. He's completely stuck at 11.30 pm - 1 am and another feeding anywhere between 3-6 am. He wakes up twice, and again not improving. I realize he still needs to eat at this age, however, I find it funny that one day he can sleep 7 til 1 and the next day he's up at 11.30 pm. I know it's only a 1 1/2 hour difference but still. Sometimes he has eaten twice already at 3.00 am (and then sleeps until the morning), sometimes he still needs a second feeding at 5 am.

Personally, I don't feel bad about CIO either. I feel I am doing it for the right reasons at the right time.

For naps, I already do some CIO. I leave them for 5, 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes and at 4-5 weeks they were soothing themselves to sleep and they still do. Right now they hardly ever cry, it's just finding the right moment (tired, but not overtired).

The other day, my ds woke up after a nap (45 minutes) and started crying. I was just eating my lunch, so I let him and decided to go afterwards. A few minutes later, he was quiet and slept for another 1 1/2 hours. What would have happened if I would have gone in ... I may have taken 1 1/2 hours of sleep from him (and quiet time for me

 

ditto everything that has been said.

I would like to add - don't think they are asleep once they stop crying after 5 mins - My daugther likes to take long breaks between crys sometimes even up to 30 minutes. My husband and I look at each other and say "she is still awake?"

Also I would not go into the room if the cries are more like whimpers trying to get attention. Or crys with pauses in them. You will know the difference in cries.

Plus it really helped me to have my husband say wait 5 more minutes after she cried for 30 or more minutes - usually in the extra 5 minutes she would fall asleep.

I am letting my five week old son CIO sometimes when nothing else will work to put him to sleep. But I don't let him cry very long and usually he has a different cry so if he is crying hard I know it is not giong to work and I pick him up and try to calm him.

Best of Luck,
Nikki

 

I think before you consider CIO, you have to take in account if your twins were full term or preemies. I think 8 weeks is too early for full on CIO, but that is me.

 

Team Dougall- 8 weeks is too young for CIO. I would highly recommend Healthy Sleep Habits Healthy Child. It has been so valuable for us. It basically recommends no CIO at night until after 6 months. By following the guidelines in the book mine starting sleeping through on their own waaaayyy before I would have had to start CIO...thank goodness!!

P.S. Swaddling helped us when they were smaller, and so did sleep positioners in their cribs. With the sleep positioners they really stopped waking at night unless to eat. It took me awhile to figure out they were startling themselves awake from moving around too much and the postioners or swaddling surely helped.

 

I suck at CIO, Kaleb will seriously cry for up to 2 hours of and on...it's horrible but I'm too tired.

I'm really posting because you have a Brooklyn Kate, and so do I! Although my sweetie pie is 6 years old! My Brooklyn Kate is has dark hair and dark eyes. I'm curious if you Brooklyn is the same!

 

Hi everyone!
We just started CIO with our boys, who are 7 months/6months adjusted. It is working great and it is such a relief to not get up to feed them 2 or more times a night. However, we did CIO with our first son who is 3 now, so we knew what to expect! CIO is not a miracle that will prevent all crying at night or at naps in most cases. (I'm really bad at trying to explain things in few words, so forgive me if this is super long!)Our 3 yr old was waking every 2 hours to eat (still!)at 6 months. He was breast fed and slept in the bed with us until we did CIO. After 6 months of no sleep, we asked his Pediatrician and he said after 14-16weeks (we were quite late in starting!), you can try CIO for getting them to sleep at night and naps but you still should expect to wake up to feed at least once. I cannot remember the exact weight he told us was the magic number for refusing night feedings all together, but I think it was 15/16lbs. As long as you make up the missed feeding in the daytime and the baby doesn't begin to lose weight you can continue to refuse night feeding using CIO.To us that meant not ever going in to his room when he woke up at night. He was 22lbs at 6 months so we went cold turkey with him and did CIO and refused feeding all at once. It took 3 nights for him to stop crying for more than 10 mins while going to sleep and stop night waking. It was incredible! We did try the going in to confort him method first, but it was like hitting the reset button for him and he'd cry harder and longer every time we went in.

Now, with our twins, we again waited until 6 months, but not by choice. We were going to start at (their adjusted age of) 16 weeks and they got bronchiolitis, so we couldn't do it. Then they started teething and we couldn't do it and then they got RSV! They are just now well and we started this week.They are huge boys that weigh in at 24lbs and 22lbs, so they really did not need to be getting up to eat at night any longer. We still comfort them to a very drowsy or sleeping state and place them in the crib. If they wake, we do not go in to comfort them. I have tip-toed into the room to make sure they have their paci's in the crib and to make sure nothing was physically wrong, but no comforting back to sleep. They have done incredibly well. They have gone from no real morning nap to a full hour to hour and a half each morning and the same in the afternoon. They are sleeping from 6:30pm until 5am at night. I do not go into them at 5am though, I let them fuss and they will go back to sleep until 7am. I count it as a waking because they are usually awake for more than 20mins, which means I am too! I followed the HSHHC book for much of the schedule and suggestions,and I highly recommend the book! The sooner you read it, the better of you will be. The book repeats over and over that sleep begets sleep and it is son true! My boys we only sleeping about 2hours for naps in the day and were waking every 4hours at night going to bed at 8pm and getting up at 7am. The very first day after CIO at night they took normal naps! When they wake at naps, we leave them until nap time is over, which I designated at one full hour in the crib. If they sleep longer than one hour, great! I will wake them after 2 hours of sleep to protect the next nap or bed time. This is something mentioned in the HSHHC book and it seems to help.

There are so many wonderful,helpful people here at TWinstuff. I hope both of you get the advice you are looking for about CIO. It really helps me to hear all the stories from the more experienced parents here! Good luck. And remember Team D, things will improve after 12 weeks so much!You cannot spoil a baby at 8 weeks of age. Do what you have to do to get some sleep. You are doing a great job!

Thanks for listening to my story!

Kelly

 

quote:
Originally posted by Tamera:
I suck at CIO, Kaleb will seriously cry for up to 2 hours of and on...it's horrible but I'm too tired.

I'm really posting because you have a Brooklyn Kate, and so do I! Although my sweetie pie is 6 years old! My Brooklyn Kate is has dark hair and dark eyes. I'm curious if you Brooklyn is the same!


Oh my gosh!! We haven't met another Brooklyn in person (I think I've seen another on this board) but certainly not a Brooklyn Kate...great minds think alike huh? (Lynn and Kate are family names). My baby girl is a golden blondie with big blue eyes. Nice to meet you!


I am still struggling with CIO but on the positive note, my kids are taking AT LEAST hour naps (yesterday it was 2.5 hours for each, and then another hour in the afternoon - WOOHOO!!!!!!! as compared to their previous 15-30 minute naps! AND DD went down AGAIN twice with out a peep and the other times cried for less than a minute.

DS on the other hand...still crying (the really sad, "you've hurt my feelings and where's my momma" cry) It usually doesn't last more than 5 minutes, but I noticed today when he was babbling he sounded kind of hoarse...GUT WRENCHING, has anyone else noticed their babies are hoarse after beggining CIO!!?? He did go down tonight without crying though (but DH cheated...he fell asleep at the end of his bedtime bottle)!

As for the 8 week olds, I am no expert either but 8 weeks is too young IMO. At 8 weeks, if they cry it means they need something - I didn't even start CIO until last week and mine are 9 mos, however I would suggest doing it earlier than I did if you are going to do it. I sang and rocked my babies to sleep EVERY time day and night...now I am paying for it. If you really need sleep, don't let those babies cry - hire a night nanny. We had one for the first few months and it's the best thing we ever did. Contact your local MOMs club, they should have a list of independent NN's (if you go through an agency, it will be more expensive). Good luck!

 

Oh and Kelly, Thank you so much for your story. I didn't know about the waking them after 2 hours (honestly, I never thought my kids would even come close to sleeping 2 hours during the day) so that is great that I know that now! I appreciate your post and story!

 

Barbie-

You are welcome! I never thought mine would sleep more than 20 mins at a time during the day myself! I swear they would fall asleep and within 20-30 mins, they were wide awake and happy as can be. It drove me nuts. Once I started CIO this week, the real naps suddenly appeared. Of course, I have made a real effort to take them upstairs and put them in their cribs after they have been awake for 2-2 1/2 hours and let them nap, which I wasn't doing before. I always just let them fall asleep whenever they fell asleep. It hasn't been perfect, but the sleeping schedule is working so much better for us.A good example is today! They started rubbing eyes and having abottle at 9am, so up they went and they fussed and cried for about 45mins and then fell asleep until 11. In the HSHHC book, he has a sleep cycle that goes something like, wake at 6-7am, nap at 9-10am,nap again at 1-2pm, sometimes a brief late afternoon 3rd nap and then bed at 6-7pm. This is basically what I'm following and I will adjust the times starting with whatever time they wake in the morning.

Funny, I went back and looked at a journal I kept when my 3 yr old was a baby and he didn't ever nap well until after CIO either. I kept thinking he napped great! Oh how soon we forget the struggles. Good luck!

Kelly