Poll On Sleeping Through Night And Cio Age

We are very much struggling with sleep issues in our house. I have spent all morning going through several months' worth of posts here on TS learning about CIO and other sleep techniques. It seems as though there are many different ages and opinions on teaching your baby(ies) to sleep through the night. I would really appreciate it if we could all vote on our experiences with our children so we can have a side-by-side comparison so to speak.
Thanks in advance for your help!!! Please feel free to leave any comments too!

Please refer to "sleeping through the night" as no nighttime wakings and sleeping 10-12 hours or so. Example: Going to bed at 7:30 pm and waking at 7:00 am with no night feeds or crying periods.

 

Not offering advice but would love to read the advice u get off other moms. My girls will be 4 in June and I could count on my hands the amount of times they've slept through the night. We have major issues here. I have never tried CIO

Hope you find some answers (hopefully help me to).



Amanda

 

I just realized I meant to post this in the expecting club but posted in 1-5 where I spend most my time. :blush: Could a mod possibly link this there so I can get as many responses as possible? THANKS!!!

 

I feel CIO was what worked for us. We began around 4 months or so mostly with naps, bedtime wasn't really an issue. I do think that each baby is a case by case basis. But we just wouldn't go in the moment they cried. We tried both the graduated plan and complete CIO. We realized that if we used CIO completely, the issue would go away in a day or so.

We also separated our girls for naps around 4 months to allow for this training. Around 6 months we then separated them for bedtime as well. Sleep was really important to me and the girls for our sanity. I wanted to create good sleeping habits from the moment they came home.

I followed HSHHC.

 

11 months for us and I credit their maturity. Prior to 11 months, they had been waking only once to nurse in the early AM from 9 weeks onward (with the exception of the occasional growth spurt/teething/illness). I consider that to be normal for age as did our pediatrician although I understand some pedis would disagree.

We didn't use any tactics other than consistency with bedtime and routines. They are happy to go to bed -- helping me zip up their crib tents and saying "night night" as I leave the room.

 

Sarah slept through (11 hours) at 3.5 months -- Amy not till 13 months! However, from 5 months on, Amy slept exactly the same hours as Sarah, except that she woke once for a feeding. So this doesn't quite meet your definition of sleeping through, but it worked pretty well for us. It was nice when she gave up that last feeding, but it wasn't that big a deal having to feed her once a night.

We did CIO for bedtime and naps. Sarah stopped allowing herself to be rocked to sleep at about 4 months, so it was CIO by default, because the only way to get her to fall asleep was simply to put her to bed and leave her alone. For Amy it was cold turkey CIO, around 5 months. One night we quit swaddling, quit rocking to sleep, and just put her in her crib (after the bedtime routine). She screamed like a banshee for just over an hour the first night, then gradually diminished until it settled down to about 15-20 minutes of fussing.

They have never just laid right down and gone to sleep, and probably never will. But most nights now we just get chatting and complaining, not outright crying.

Neither of them tended to wake frequently during the night, even before we did CIO -- they mostly slept 3-4 hours between feedings, at least after 6 weeks or so. So I'm not sure doing CIO made any difference in terms of how long they slept -- for us it was just a question of getting them to fall asleep on their own without us having to rock them for 45 minutes, then have them wake up the instant we laid them down, etc.

 

I didn't respond since Sofia slept through at 4.5 months and Ryan not until 11 months. I tried CIO with Ryan several times, but never did get it to work with him. He would just continue to cry.

I think you meant to ask to link this to the First Year. The new software doesn't allow linking. I can move it to FY and it will leave behind a notice that redirects to the threads new location. Let me know if you still want me to move it.

 

Mine were different ages and have such different sleep habits, that I only voted based on the later one to sleep through the night.

Bea started sleeping through at 4-5 months, off and on a little earlier than that. I did CIO with her around 5 months to establish bedtime, but have never really had to do it for night wakings. She also naps like a champ. The reason we did it at 5 months is because she used to be soothed to sleep by the swing, but it stopped working for her, and nothing else would work to get her to sleep. So we did CIO, and it worked in I think about two weeks. With her, we did the "go in and reassure" method and not cold turkey.

Ainsley OTOH, did not start sleeping through until 10 months. She would wake in the middle of the night to get in bed with me. I put up with that for months, but then I just couldn't take it anymore, as she wouldn't fall back asleep, she would stay awake for over an hour and pull my hair and face. She also needed to be held to sleep. I finally did cold turkey CIO, as I knew going in and reassuring would just make it worse with her. First I did it for the night waking, and that took a week, then I did it for bedtime, also a week. I still have nap issues with her though, way too long to get into.

 

QUOTE(FirstTimeMom814 @ Apr 9 2007, 12:32 PM) [snapback]211575[/snapback]
I think you meant to ask to link this to the First Year. The new software doesn't allow linking. I can move it to FY and it will leave behind a notice that redirects to the threads new location. Let me know if you still want me to move it.



Whoops....can you tell I am sleep deprived!!!! :blink:
I think a move would probably be a good idea since most of the CIO posts are in the FY forum. If you think it should stay here for all the BTDT moms that would be fine too. Whatever you think is best.

 

The poll was a little difficult to respond to because I had different answers for each girl. I have my twins in separate bedrooms, they've been apart since about 8 weeks. One started sleeping through (6PM-7AM) around 12 weeks, but stopped again for 2 weeks around 16 weeks, and is now back to that sleep cycle. My other daughter started sleeping from 6PM - 10PM and then from 10:30PM-6AM. This just started recently, about 2 weeks ago. Before that she was also waking at 2AM to nurse. It started almost exactly on her 5 month birthday.

We did not do CIO but we did do sleep training around 10 weeks old. We started doing a routine that we stick to every time. Now they know it so well they fall asleep as soon as we put them down.

 

Emma slept through at 4 months on her own. Jake slept through at 6 months, using CIO.

 

I didn't do the full CIO but I modified it somewhat. I couldn't let them cry forever but I started from day 1 with watching their cues and putting them down drowsy and I swear by this. I would let them fuss some but once it got to a certain point I would go to them and try all over again. Honestly, once Carson found his thumb, he started sleeping through the night. Cameron just started sleeping through the night and they are 21 weeks old now. Last week, I got 5 nights out of 7!

 

My girls started sleeping through the night (8:30 or 9 p.m. to 5:30 or 6 a.m.) at 4 and 4 1/2 months. By 6 months they were sleeping 6 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. We started using the book Good Night, Sleep Tight when they were about 3 months old. We used it first to get them sleeping in their cribs, then to get them eating only once during the night. They both dropped the 3 a.m. feed by themselves and started sleeping through. They were too young for full-blown CIO, but we used a modified form of letting them cry for 5 minutes, then going in and calming, then cry for 10 minutes, go in and calm, etc. At that age calming mostly meant replacing their pacifiers.

Hope you get some sleep soon

 

My answers don't go well together, so I thought I'd add a quick explanation. All of my kids starting sleeping through the night at 4 months - we were so lucky! They just went to bed one night and slept through and stuck with it. However, my boys stopped doing so well when they were about 15 months. So after a long period of them just going to bed and sleeping, we did CIO then. It took about 2 weeks for them to realize bedtime was bedtime, but since then they've been fine.

 

Mine slept through the night-- 10 hours at about 5 months of age. Then from there they just progressively started going to bed earlier and waking up later until they were down for 12 hours each night.

We have never had sleep issues per se, but they have definitely gone though phases where they wake up some nights more than others-- especially when they are teething. When we get in a "phase" I do at some point have to let them CIO to get back on schedule. So I guess I do a modified CIO when they aren't sleeping well.

But generally speaking mine have always been decent sleepers.

 

I am woken up everyday to one or both wanting to come in and sleep with me. They slept through the night for about 4-6 months then daddy went to Iraq and they really havent slept the same since. Our bedroom is bigger now and they sleep on the floor in our room but maybe once a month we get a night where they arent waking us up.

 

Very hard to answer....my Noah slept through the night when he was 5 months old....then at 6 months things changed due to teething beginning, getting colds, shots, time change.......we have been CIO for 3 weeks now. I do not go to them unless they are really distressed. They may wake up 2-3 times a night and FIO for a minute or so and then go back to sleep. Some nights, Jacob never makes a sound and some nights Noah never makes a sound.....do they have slept through the night but, sometimes they will FIO and go back to sleep. Very hard poll for me to answer.

 

I did not vote, but we used Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child method of sleep training at five or six months. I highly reccomend this. It is a very gentle method & for us, it worked within three or four days, with minimal discomfort us or the girls.

 

I too have different months for both babies. Kevin started sleeping through the night 7pm to 6am or so with a dream feed at 10pm when he was 2 1/2 months. He did this on his own and it was usually in his bouncy seat with a binky. I gave Paige until she was 3 1/2 months and 12 lbs or so and did CIO with her. She had already slept through until 7am 3 or 4 times prior. It only took her 2 days and then she was sleeping all night 7pm to 6am or so, again with a dream feed at 10pm. I took Kevin's binky away at 7 months because he started waking up wanting it several times per night and did CIO with him for 1 night and he's slept great since. They still have occasions where they wake up at night, but they usually get themselves back to sleep. Sometimes I'll go pick them up and tell them everythings ok and lay them back down and they go back to sleep. Kevin is in the habit of waking up between 5:30 and 6:30am and talking to himself for an hour. Mostly he goes back to sleep and sometimes not, but we dont go get him until 7am. He rarely cries. Paige wakes up crying between 6:30am and 7am.

 

My girls slept through the night (8 hrs) starting at 5 weeks. It gradually went up 12-14 hrs a night until they got sick at 7 months. Then they started waking up through out the night, I finally did CIO as a last resort at 8.5-9 months. Now they are sleeping 12 hrs a night. YAY :Clapping:

 

I read somewhere that sleeping through the night is 5-6 hours at least. Amazingly, they just, all of a sudden, started sleeping through the night last Friday, at 12 weeks adjusted age. It's gone on for 4 days now, so I guess it's for real. They were always on the NICU schedule (every 3 hours) before they decided they wanted to eat on their own schedule about a month or two ago, and now they're sleeping through the night. It's what DH and I have been waiting for, and it's so nice for it to finally happen. We don't feel as tired anymore.