CIO questions

Sarah7305

We have been trying to let our 7 month old cry it out to get used to putting herself back to sleep. Sometimes it works easily, sometimes (last night) she cried for 55 minutes before I finally went in there.

 She will cry for long periods of time like that around 3:30 or 4am which leads me to think that she may be hungry. I do feed her then because after crying that long she is wide awake and it is a struggle to soothe her back to sleep. She usually goes to bed around 7:30pm.

(often she will have a dirty diaper when I go in after she has been crying... I have to change it or she will not go back to sleep w/ poop). 

 Any suggestions? Advice? Book recs? 

Thanks!

kcdollar

Like PP said, don't wait that long to go in to her.  Ferber suggests waiting longer and longer periods of time.  So, Day 1 you'd go in and check her after 3 min of crying, then again after 5 min, then again at 10 min, then every 10 min after that.  Day 2 you extend it to 5, 10, 15, etc.  You don't actually get her out of bed, just pat her back, tell her it's sleepy time, you love her, etc.  The longest (and hardest) time we did this was for 50 min, but she did fall asleep on her own.  And it really does get better.  Amazingly better.  If she wakes up during the night and hasn't eaten, I will feed her.  She'll down a 6 oz bottle, so I know she actually is hungry.  But if she wakes up 2 hours after she goes down at night, we try to let her work it out herself.  She, however, could care less about a wet/poopy diaper!

T_&_A

We tried CIO once and only lasted 5-10 minutes. *sigh*

It sounds like she is needing food or a diaper at 4. I'd be getting in there as soon as she wakes up, change if neccesary, feed, and she should go back to sleep. She's crying for a reason.