***taxbride or anyone else who CIO/Ferber***

mrsjessnjorge

Can you tell me a little more about how you were able to eliminate the night feedings? I want to see how things go once Nico starts solids in a month. If we don't see an improvement in his sleeping, my DH and I have decided to let him CIO. Tania- how did you do it with Graciela? We have tried on 2 or 3 occasions to let Nico CIO but in the back of my mind I always wonder if he's hungry and then I start thinking that he might have been too sleepy when I last nursed him and he didn't get enough milk. I have always ended up going back in and feeding him. I really want to stop doing this. It's just so hard with the BF since I don't know exactly how much he has drank. I even thought about giving him a bottle for the last feeding so I can monitor the ounces. I don't get to nurse him that often since I work fulltime and I really would not want to give up one of our sessions just for the sake of making sure he drank enought to sttn.

Any suggestions would be great help! Thanks.

MellyMelB

I was lucky and did not have to do CIO with Sophie to eliminate any night feedings. She pretty much did that on her own. We used CIO to get her to sleep and we did not need to start this until after she was already STTN. She never took a paci and was one of those kids who just needed to cry herself to sleep. I can go into more details but this post would be a book - but suffice it to say - CIO worked for us and worked well.

However, back to the feeding thing, I have always heard from doctors and parents that once they reach 12lbs in weight - they no longer need that middle of the night feeding, they are doing it from habit. I remember one doctor friend asking me, "How often does hunger wake you up from a dead sleep?" It doesn't. Never. LOL. If I were you, I would take that into account and also take into account how much and how often Nico eats during the day. Its not hunger that is making him cry and call to you. He wants you. He is used to getting you and that comfort you provide. In my opinion, he is ready to learn to go back to sleep on his own.

Now...how you do this without letting him cry...I don't have any suggestions. It is the most heartbreaking sound in the world, your baby crying for you. CIO is not for the faint of heart. Its not easy. I can recommend for you to watch the clock. 5 minutes can feel like 50 minutes when you are listening to them cry - so make sure you are aware of how little time has actually passed. So, try not to let the sound get to you. Turn down the moniter and watch the lights. Give yourself a time limit, go in, recover him or re-position him, pat him. Basically to let him know you heard him and then leave his room and go to bed. If he is still crying in 10 minutes...go in and do the same. Then give it 15 minutes, etc.

I firmly believed that CIO is a training session for both baby and mama. It was super hard on my and my husband but in our case....there was no alternative. And after a few days it worked. Definitely try it first on a day when you do not have to work the next day. Also, make sure he is napping well. Sophie was one of those kids that slept best at night when she had napped well during the day. So, make sure he is getting his 3 good naps a day.

ox,

Mel

mrsjessnjorge

MellyMelB:

Its not hunger that is making him cry and call to you. He wants you. He is used to getting you and that comfort you provide. In my opinion, he is ready to learn to go back to sleep on his own.

I totally agree. Maybe I just try to convince myself that he is hungry because I feel bad that he is crying for me and I feel like I'm abandoning him.  I would say that 2 out of 10 times that he wakes up in the middle of the night, he nurses like a champ. But the other 8 times, he latches on for 2 or 3 minutes and I can tell he is just soothing himself and using me as a pacifier. Maybe this is because he has never liked to use a real pacifier and doesn't know how else to soothe himself.

Thanks for your advice Mel

mavilabride

I didn't have to do CIO to elminate night feedings with my Sophia either.

Her normal nights were to nurse at 7:30, 10:30, 2:30am, and then 6:30.  I started noticing that when she woke up at 2:30am, she was nursing for maybe a minute before falling back to sleep.  So I got rid of it and when she would wake up, I'd do the pick up/put down.  Basically, I'd pick her up, pat her back, give a couple of kisses, and then put back down to sleep.  The more nights that went on, the less time I'd spend holding her.  It got to a point where I would just pick her up and switch her position and then she just stopped waking up.

By the time she was ready to get rid of the 10:30 feed, she was on formula.  Again I noticed that when she did wake up to eat she went from having a 5oz bottle to at the very most 2oz and I did the same thing again.

Even though you don't know how many ounces he is getting per feed, if his average time before he is full is 10 minutes, as an example, and he wakes and only nurses for 3 to 5 then it's safe to say he's probably doing it more out of comfort than anything else.  CIO works and we're big fans of it (at the right age of course) but we didn't have to go down that road.

ANJ410

At Nicky's 4 month well visit my pedi informed me to STOP feeding him in the middle of the night.  Her exact words were that a middle-of-the night-feeding at that age was "habit not hunger."

We did straight CIO, not Ferber.  Ferber is when you go in there every few minutes.  That would have never worked for my son.  If he saw us he would cry more.  So we just let him cry until he fell back to sleep.  Honestly at that age they can't go more than 10-15 minutes without totally exausting themselves.  The pedi said it wasokay to let him cry for up to 45 minutes though...any longer than that and he would get too much air in his stomach and have a stomach ache.

What really got him STTN though was food.  I'm not talking a teaspoon once a day though. My Dr instructed me to feed him three solid meals a day as soon as he was used to the spoon.  So we did one meal a day in the beginning (for two weeks I think) and then as soon as I saw that he was willingly opening his mouth to take the spoon, we went straight to a breakfast, lunch and dinner schedule, with bottle feedings inbetween.  The very first night he ate three meals a day, he STTN.

MrsVictoriaB

I did Ferber with Jake at 5 months. He has a schedule in his book of how to wean the feedings.. it's something like 2 ounces less an hour later each night until they are weaned off. You can adjust it to DS's needs. He did great on it and 2 nights later with not as much crying as I thought, he was STTN!

MrsVictoriaB

oops forgot to mention he has a breastfeeding schedule too which he what we did, you just nurse an hour or two later each night if he hasn't fallen back asleep at that point

taxbride

Hey there, sorry for the late reply, but I can't log on at work.

We didn't do Ferber, we did straight CIO, but only for night wakings, not for getting the kids to sleep.  They both went to sleep fairly easily.

Cedric started sttn at 2 months, but he started waking at night again at 6 mos.  I figured he needed to nurse, so I nursed him.  Over time, he started waking more and more.  I had enough at 8 mos.  He was hardly nursing much if any, and I was exhausted from getting up again every 2 hours.  So one night I was so tired I just ignored him when he woke.  I watched the clock, like Mel said, and after 7 minutes, he stopped crying and fell back asleep.  The second night, he woke and cried for 20 minutes.  The third night it was 45 minutes, but that was it.  He stopped waking and crying at night.  If he woke, he got himself back to sleep.  When we moved him to a bed in another room, he had other sleep issues, but that's another story.

Graciela didn't sttn so easily.  From day 1, she had a 5-6 hour stretch from around 7pm - 12am.  But at 5 mos, she was still waking 2 or 3 times a night.  When I told my pediatrician, he said, just ignore her.  I asked how long I should let her cry, and he said, "Until she falls back asleep."  So I did.  She cried.  Oh boy, did she cry.  I think it was an hour and a half.  But it worked.  I didn't go to her to nurse until 4 am or later (the arbitrary time I chose b/c that way, after nursing her, I could still go back to sleep until 6am--it felt better than waking at 5:30 to nurse and not getting back to sleep again).  That worked until she was a year old.  Then I did it again to eliminate the 4am feeding (which was sliding back to 2am sometimes, which sucked).  After one night of crying (again, over an hour), she started sleeping all the way until 6am or even 6:30am.  Aaaaaaahh.  So much better.

For both kids, I used a fan in the room (both for SIDS prevention and for white noise), and some of the nights when she cried, I turned on the a/c or the heat and closed both our doors and covered my ears with my pillows. 

I did try the Ferber-type method of going back in after 5, 10 and 15 minutes with Graciela (more b/c I was feeling like such a jerk that I HAD to check to make sure she wasn't caught in the crib or something--she was fine), but she put up such a scream when I left again that I felt even MORE TERRIBLE, and I went straight back to the CIO.  Now she sleeps from 7pm to 6am no problem.

Hope that's helpful!
Tania