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NER: 'Modified' CIO or other sleep success stories
Since there seem to be a decent sized contingent of us I'd love to hear others stories. What worked? What didn't? What would you do over again or change? Thanks ladies! Here's mine:
DS has never STTN (other than 3 random fluke nights). He was waking only once from 6 weeks until 4 months. Then it all went out the window. I used No Cry Sleep Solution to get him back to 4 or so wakings each night and also to shorten the wakings and make it so he could go back to sleep on his own after he nursed. Now I'm trying to move beyond that.
My goal is to get him down to 1 night waking (or to STTN but I'd happily settle for 1 if that's what he needs). DS is a much happier little man when he wakes only once or twice versus when he's up every hour or two. Plus of course I'm a happier person when I get some sleep and I am a firm believer that a happy mommy equals a happy family. I'm planning to use Ferber's gradual spreading out of night feedings - comforting him but not feeding him between times. I started a little a few weeks ago, but then DS got sick and I refuse to do anything other than comfort him when he's not feeling well. The reason I think we'll have to do some CIO is because DS doesn't settle if DH or I are in the room - it makes him more upset because he wants to play rather than sleep but he's too tired so he just gets mad.
The first time I laid DS down without feeding him he cried for a total of 60 seconds before going back to sleep so I'm hoping it will be that easy when I try it again.
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Re: NER: 'Modified' CIO or other sleep success stories
We had great luck with Ferber for eliminating night feedings. It was to the point that DS was waking up, taking the breast for maybe a minute, and falling back asleep, so I was ready to knock out the two feedings he was doing that at (at the time was waking 3 times a night). It worked like magic, for us. We hardly had to try. One of Ferber's ideas is to space out the feedings time-wise, and one night, when he woke up a little early for a feeding, I fed him, got him back down, and then, when he woke up for the next one, I kept going in to comfort him until it was time for the 2nd feeding (which really, we only had to wait 10 minutes or so until it was close enough). The second night, did the 1st feeding at the same time, and then, waited a bit longer for the second (he was apparently reading along with us, because he waited until later than the first night to wake up, so it happened really naturally). After that, he dropped the 1st feeding completely, and at this point, we're down to 1 night/early morning feeding, where he actually eats instead of sips.
Seth has never done what I would call "sleep through the night," even to this day. He has, however, in the last week, begun to go to sleep between 7 & 8 and not wake up again until 4:30. He doesn't go back to sleep at 4:30, but IMO, 4:30 is not an appropriate wake-up time and thus it is not sleeping through the night. He's not 5 months old and I don't think the "5 straight hours" thing applies anymore. He's a had a few nights in the last week where he's gotten up 2-3 times, though, too.
So that's our present. As for our past.... well, he started waking up only once to nurse and going right back down at 2 months. That lasted for about 6 weeks. Then he got up twice per night. Then three times. And then by the time he was 6-8 months old, he was getting up 10-15 times per night and it took ALL that we had to lay him down so we could get some sleep. He didn't want to sleep in our bed and he didn't want to sleep in his crib. Sometimes he'd be up for hours in the middle of night. We had to sleep while physically holding him if we wanted to get more than about an hour (if we were lucky) of straight sleep.
I tried the No Cry Sleep Solution. I read tons of sleep books. I tried night weaning, thinking it would help. We tried just DH soothing him. We tried swaddling. We tried not swaddling. We tried different pajamas and diapers. We tried soothing while we stood right by him without holding. We tried SO MANY things because I was SO anti-CIO. I had told so many people before we got to this point (when things weren't "that bad") that I wuold never let my baby CIO because it wasn't fair, etc. You've heard all the reasons.
But since I was a SAHM and alone with Seth all during the day after having been able to get a couple hours of broken sleep every night.... it was very taxing. I was getting very depressed. I have a very scary history of depression I'd rather not get into, but it wasn't a chance that we could take. DH and I would fight more because we were so tired and frustrated. Seth was fussy always because he was tired. So we did sort of Ferber.
It was hard. But he learned not to cry when put in the crib (co-sleeping was no good for us. Our bed is too small and DH wasn't on board.... plus if he could see us, he just wanted to be held). It was sad to hear him cry. We went in every 1-3-5-7-9 the first night and upped it every night. We never did more than 3-5-10, I think.
And it's not perfect. Like I said, he's never slept through the night and it's been months since we did it. But it's SO MUCH better. I can function. We are happier and more well-rested. When he wakes up now, I go in and hug him, lay him down and turn on his music box. He usually goes back to sleep. If not, I go back in in a few minutes. I try and figure out what is wrong. It usually doesn't take long for him to go back to sleep.
I never needed him to STTN, per se. I just needed a little bit of sleep. I can handle 1, 2, 3, even 4 nightly wakings. But (literally! no exaggeration!) 10-15 wakings EVERY night was too many. I am embarassed and sad that we had (yes, we did HAVE to) to CIO, but it is what it is.
(sorry for the book, here)
We FF and we're still REALLY new to all this so take my insight for what its worth, but DD was sleeping through the night by 8 weeks.
What finally got us there was putting her to bed earlier than we had been. Yup. If she goes to bed overtired, its going to be a longgggg night. She's gonig to wake up multiple times. She's going to be one big fussy mess.
I start her bedtime routine before she's even showing signs of being tired.
No matter what time her "dinner feeding" occurs, her last feeding of the day is at 7:45 pm. After that I set the mood to get her sleepy. Lights are dimmed a bit, white noise in the background, I rock her and sing softly to her. As soon as she nods off in my arms, she goes in her crib. I cannot let her get to the point of being overtired. If she starts doing that tired fussing, rubbing her eyes, etc., its too late. She's crossed the line into complete exhaustion and she's NOT going to get a good night's rest once that happens.
As for cutting out the middle of the night feeding, when DD got to the point where she didn't finish that bottle at all for a week straight, we weaned her off that feeding. I still kept a bottle ready to go but when she'd wake up I'd change her diaper, give her a pacifier & see if she'd go back to sleep on her own. For awhile it was inconsistent. She'd spit the pacifier out and cry for a bottle one night....then for 2 straight nights afterwards the pacifier would be enough for her to go back down on her own. Eventually the need for the bottle disappeared entirely.
DS started STTN really early all on his own so it was luckily never hard for us, he was maybe about 7 or 8 weeks old. For the next several months anytime he did wake up I would feed him and comfort him until he fell back asleep.
Around 8 months or so he was waking up even though he wasn't hungry. Anytime he woke up we would give him about 10 mins to see if he went back to sleep. Keep in mind this was always just fussing, whimpering and crying, never screaming or getting extremely worked up. If he didn't fall back asleep after 10 mins we would go in, pat his back or rub his tummy and sing and speak real softly to him for about 5 mins. We didn't pick him up out of the crib because he would really wake up and just want to play.
Anyways, it worked so well for us and we had less than a week of having to do this. We started a bedtime routine with him pretty early of "dinner", bath, reading and then cuddle and song. I think that is what helped make it easy for him. That and the fact that he is just naturally a really good sleeper.
We are also completely aware that we could have to do something different for our next LO. Every child is so different and just because it worked really well the first time doesn't mean it will this time.
My son who is 4 months old has always been really good at sleeping through the night it took some effort but he would go down in 10 to 15 minutes of us coming back in to put the pacifier back in but he would go to sleep at 6:30 to 7 and then sleep until 6 and some times be up once to eat.
Our problem has always been naps, he would not nap in his crib, I could not get him to lie down and fall asleep like he would at night so I would just hold him to get him to nap for 1 to 2 hours but I would not be able to get anything done and being attached to him for the entire day was hard for me. So we decided to do CIO for naps which is what Healthy Sleep Habits says to do, they say let them CIO for an hour and then go in. So this is the third day that we have been doing this and the first nap he cried for 50 mins, the second for 30 min and the third for 20 min. The next day it was 20 min, 15 min and 20 min and then the third day (today) it only took 9 min the first time and the 10 min. The problem is that he has not napped for more than 35 minutes, so I often when he wakes up I have to pick him up to get him to sleep again for an hour in my arms. So it has not been perfect but the 45 minutes of him napping in his crib is letting me do things like laundry and dished and type this response.
So every baby is different but this has worked for me so far.
Good luck