specific CIO question- desperate!

After reading about CIO form many of you over the past couple of months, it looks like my boys time has come!

Here is my situation...they go down for naps and bed time very easily. They wake 2 times each at night to eat. At first I thought well they are hungry necause they dont eat so much during the day so i have adjusted their day time eating schedule to every 4 hours they drink most of their milk and they have a fruit (split a jar) with cereal in the morning and at 5 they have cereal and a veg (split a jar). THey have a 7:00 bottle (sometimes they fall asleep during this bottle and refuse to finish it) and then they wake at 10:30-11:00 and they drink another bottle. I am ok with this bottle becasue it is my hope that this bottle takes them through the night.


i feel like they are getting enough to eat during the day and should not be so hungry in the middle of the night.

Have you ever had to do CIO when they wake to eat? SOmetimes one will eat at 10:30, then 1:30am and cry again at 4:00am. And then the other one will be on the opposite hour feeding schedule in the middle of the night and it is never ending. THere is no way they are hungry. Can they be crying out of habit and want to eat out of habit. They do drink a full bottle when they wake for their middle of the night feedings

Please tell me someone has gone through this and how to solve it. We are going nuts. My DH was so frustrated he left for work at 5:00 since he had been up anyways.

One more thing...they are in their own crib but share a room as we have a 2 bedroom house.

 

After reading about CIO form many of you over the past couple of months, it looks like my boys time has come!

Here is my situation...they go down for naps and bed time very easily. They wake 2 times each at night to eat. At first I thought well they are hungry necause they dont eat so much during the day so i have adjusted their day time eating schedule to every 4 hours they drink most of their milk and they have a fruit (split a jar) with cereal in the morning and at 5 they have cereal and a veg (split a jar). THey have a 7:00 bottle (sometimes they fall asleep during this bottle and refuse to finish it) and then they wake at 10:30-11:00 and they drink another bottle. I am ok with this bottle becasue it is my hope that this bottle takes them through the night.


i feel like they are getting enough to eat during the day and should not be so hungry in the middle of the night.

Have you ever had to do CIO when they wake to eat? SOmetimes one will eat at 10:30, then 1:30am and cry again at 4:00am. And then the other one will be on the opposite hour feeding schedule in the middle of the night and it is never ending. THere is no way they are hungry. Can they be crying out of habit and want to eat out of habit. They do drink a full bottle when they wake for their middle of the night feedings

Please tell me someone has gone through this and how to solve it. We are going nuts. My DH was so frustrated he left for work at 5:00 since he had been up anyways.

One more thing...they are in their own crib but share a room as we have a 2 bedroom house.

 

Well, it depends. If they are eating a full bottle or close to it, they are obviously still hungry and need the calories. If that is the case you can try feeding them more during the day. If they only drink an ounce or two, then it's habit. If you want to do CIO, they will learn to sleep through the other crying.

 

I believe they are crying out of habit. At this age, they dont need to eat in the middle of the night. My pedi. said at 4 months they have the capability of sleeping through the night w/o eating. I tried CIO at 5 months and you just have to be tough. We went cold turkey...from eating and rocking all night every night to nothing. It only took ONE night.
My husband and I put them down for bed at 7:30, kissed them and told them night night. (We have NEVER just put them down and walked away).
They share a crib. They screamed for 30 minutes and then fell alseep.
They woke up at 2:00am. We patted them and walked out immed. They fell back asleep until 7 am.

The next night we decided we would NOT go in at all. They slept all night anyways..no crying.
They have been sleeping through the night (no eating or anything) ever since.

Whatever you are doing now is creating a habit..they cry b/c they are used to getting picked up/eating. (who could blame them? ) It just takes 3-4 days to create a new habit. It's HARD, but soooo worth it. You just have to keep telling yourself...it's sooo good for the babies..they need their rest (and so do you!)
My babies are happier and more rested than ever.
Good luck

 

It is so hard, but once you put your mind to it, just go with it!!

I found that once I put my boys to bed I could not go into their room for any reason, for once they saw me, I was back at square one. I am sure that my boys were waking in the night just to see me, because they knew that I would come and get them (because I was so worried about waking the other one!). Also, I often nursed them back to sleep which was a really bad idea( but I was desperate!, because I knew they were not hungry,and I would suppose yours are not hungry either. Eventually my boys started clapping (and stopped crying!) when I came in the room, which told me I neeeded to do something drastic!!!

So.... Once I started letting them cry it out, they rarely woke each other and by night #4 I was able to kinda sleep through it as their cries were short and not as loud. By night 7 they were sleeping wonderfully again!! It was the best thing I have done, as they are now sleeping 10-11hrs again and so am I!!!

Good Luck!

 

According to alot of books and peds, its normal for children to still need a bottle at night up to 9 months and if your babies were preemies that would be 9months adjusted. I know for us, my girls are 8 months old, 6 adjusted and when they wake up during the night they are STARVING. Enough so that I can hear their stomachs growling. We do CIO at bedtime but not for night feeds. All the peds weve had have said that the term "sleeping through" is sleeping 5-6 hours straight...definaly not what i consider sleeping through

 

Ferber says (I know I cringe when I quote someone like that) no CIO til AT LEAST 6 mos of age. AND if they are eating full bottles they need to eat, we dropped nite feedings at 7 mos when they were only taking an oz at a time in the nite. Try feeding more during the day, or giving them a later bedtime?

 

At only 5 months, I would not try to do CIO for all night wakings. I know the peds say babies "should not" need a night feeding at 4 months, but I think that's just ridiculous.

On the other hand, I doubt they really need to eat that often. I would suggest feeding them at most twice during the night (the first waking and the 4:00 one), but try to soothe them without feeding the other times.

Or, you could try gradually watering down the bottles and reducing the amount, in the hopes that a) they will eat more during the day to compensate, and b) they will not enjoy it as much, and will stop demanding your attention if that's all they're going to get from you.

CIO does work and I am a fan of it in some circumstances, but I think it's too early for you to do total cold-turkey CIO on them.