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Multiples
Tell me how you sleep trained your babies!
Up until a week ago I had babies that would sleep from 9-6 every night. Last night my DD cried from 2-3:30 last night and both have been waking up quite a bit the last week. Where did my perfect little sleepers go? Tell me how you sleep "trained" your kidos!
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Re: Tell me how you sleep trained your babies!
Most say you can't do a lot of sleep training until 6 months, especially CIO. Mine had a huge growth spurt around 4 months and they woke extra over night for feedings. I think extra waking about this age is totally common and it's more abnormal to have babies sleep all night
We did Ferber at 7 months. Worked like a charm and was so easy on everyone, including DS.
Before that, we followed tips from Secrets of the Baby Whisperer which helped alot with sleep, esp. naps.
For me, sleep training does not mean CIO. When I sleep trained my babies it was to train them to take less and less during their night feedings and they gradually took more during the day and needed to get up less and less at night and then started STTN 12 hours without waking. I started at 12 weeks old adjusted. I used The Baby Sleep Solution by Suzy Giordiano. Part of her plan goes over a modified CIO that you can use on younger babies, this worked great for us because I refused to do full on CIO until the girls were at least 6 months old adjusted and because I was able to get them to STTN 12 hours by 4 1/2 months old adjusted I didn't have to do CIO until the girls were 13 months old and I took the pacis away.
The book goes into much more details, but basically when you put the babies to bed, they should be drowsy but awake. Give them their paci (if they take one) tell them night night, turn off the light and close the door behind you. If they start to cry, you wait 3-5 min. (which ever you are more comfortable with) and then you go back into the room and calm them down, by shhing them, talking quietly to them, but not picking them up. Once they are calm you leave the room again. If they start crying you start the 3-5 min. clock over again. You keep doing this until they put themselves to sleep.
The first 3 nights I had to go into the room about 6 times until they fell asleep. But by the 4th night, I only had to go in about 3 times and by the 1 week mark, I maybe had to go in once if at all. The point of this is to help your babies learn to put themselves to sleep but not by letting them just pass out from all out crying. By being there with them but not picking them up you are telling them that you know it is tough and you are right there for them, but you are not going to do this for them.
Of course if the babies started escalating their crying instead of calming down I picked them up. This only happened once and it was because my one girl wanted more to eat. She had eaten an 8oz. bottle but it wasn't enough that night. She just wouldn't calm down, so I picked her up and after a couple of minutes gave her about 2 more oz. of formula and put her back to bed and she fell right to sleep. You have to use your judgement because you know your babies best.
It took me about 5 weeks to complete the training and like I said above, they were then sleeping 12 hours at night without getting up to eat anymore. It was great, I could put them to bed, watch TV or chat with my DH for a while, sleep 8 hours, get up and get ready for work in the morning before my girls even got up for the day.
The only part I did not follow was the last part which is on naps. She said by the end of completing the plan the child should usually be taking a 1 hour morning nap and a 2 hour afternoon nap. My girls still needed 3 naps a day at this age. The didn't give up the 3rd nap until they were 7 months old adjusted. So I followed my babies on this one because I felt if they needed the sleep then they needed the sleep, because they still slept 12 hours a night even with 3 naps a day. Once we dropped to 2 naps a day, they did a 1 hour morning nap, sometimes 90 min., and a 2 hour afternoon nap.
I will tell you my girls are now almost 21 months old and are wonderful sleepers. They get up at about 8:30AM and take a 2 to 2 1/ 2hour afternoon nap and are in bed lights out every night at 8PM. When I tell them it is time to brush their teeth and get into pj's for story time, I don't get a fuss. They run right to the bathroom and into their rooms for bedtime routine. When it is time to get into bed, they actually crawl up onto the sides of their cribs and hold onto the railing until I pick them up to put them in. My family is amazed by this. I truely believe it is because I worked with them from an early age. When someone else puts them to bed because DH and I are out to dinner, they cannot get over that you just put them to bed and they fall to sleep without crying or fighting going to bed. Now of course this may change down the road when they are no longer in cribs, but I am hoping for an easy transition, since they have being doing their routine from such a young age.