For those who are Anti-CIO
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Would you reconsider trying a gentle CIO method if your baby were 7 months old and has been waking every. single. hour - every single night for months?
I have never considered CIO until now because his sleeping has just gotten ridiculous. I don't know what else to do. My hubs and I alternate getting him every hour but we are tired. It would break my heart to hear him cry, obviously, but at 7 months, he is worse than a newborn.
I guess I am just looking for encouragement to give CIO a try. I have been hoping for weeks it was just teething or a growth spurt, but he is so consistent with waking every hour every night.
Any other suggestions? Oh, and he only naps if he is attached to my boob, and has one long nap in the afternoon, but I need to be laying down with him in bed with him attached for a few hours 
Horrible, I know. He sleeps in his brib at night
Re: For those who are Anti-CIO
It sounds like you need to do some sort of sleep training. I am completely against CIO and EBF, but I can't imagine only napping on the boob, and getting up every hour at night.
I haven't had to do sleep training so I can't recommend any books, but I would suggest researching different sleep training ideas and try to find one that isn't just CIO.
I'd do a lot of research and see what options you have before going to CIO.
Sorry mama, that sounds awful
--Formerly FamiliaGreen--
C&D-05.28.11 Noelle Marie-03.12.12
I agree with PP, I definitely think you need to do some kind of sleep training. I know it's hard, but you also have to think about his long-term needs. He needs sleep (and so do you), and it is extremely important to his health and well-being that he gets into a regular pattern of sleeping. Babies need to cycle through all the sleep stages, and if he is waking up every hour he is not doing this. I know it's hard, but thinking about it from this perspective might help you cope better.
There are a lot of sleep training methods out there, I would recommend doing some research and beginning with the one you are most comfortable. Also, most CIO methods (like Ferber) are not just "leave him in his crib crying for hours", so you might find that you are okay with something like that.
we were anti-CIO, but out situation was almost as bad as yours. We kinda read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and it helped a bit. We put her to bed, and let her cry the first time she woke up. It waas awful, but she eventually went back to sleep onher own. This happened 2 nights, and then she STTN the next 2 nights... we're still working on things, so...
A friend of mine read No Cry Sleep Solution and had good things to say, so you might give that a try too!
We do the pick up/put down method and now can 'ignore' some crying. We have figured out when he's just 'grumbling' and will go back to sleep on his own and when he needs a bit of comfort. Pick up/put down was very helpful for us to help him learn to self soothe. It sounds like your LO is not self soothing, so some sleep training should be very helpful. I read 'healthy sleep habits, happy child' and the baby whisperer and ended up using bits of both methods to sleep train Micah.
Good luck!
We have tried it and are still against CIO. We were in a similar situation, and feeling desperate so we gave it a try. We even shortened the wait times, but found that going into DD's room and shhing and comforting her while in her crib was not enough for her. She continued crying while we were in there and not picking her up.
Anyways, there are alternatives. We have tried progressively having less contact while she is sleeping/trying to get to sleep, like from holding (or nursing), to laying beside, to sitting beside etc. Now, she is still up usually twice a night, but we make it work.
You might also get good suggestions on alternatives to CIO on the attachment parenting board, but don't go there if you want to do CIO.
I hear ya Mama! We tried the Sleep Lady Shuffle and Pick Up/Put Down, neither of those worked. Finally, we tried Easy Sleep Solution, slightly modified.
Basically it's cio, you put lo down drowsy, but awake and he learns to self sooth. They tell you to not go in the room farther than the door and to not touch lo, well this just pissed him off. So we'd lay lo down and wait 5 mins. After 5 mins, you can go in (we would move him back to the middle of the crib and rub his back a lil) but you can only be in about 30 seconds to a minute. Then you go back in 10, then 15. Then it stays at 15.
The first night he cried 28 minutes. After his middle of the night feeding, he cried less than 5. The worst was his first nap, he cried for 43 minutes. Now the most he cries is 10 minutes, usually it's less than 3. I think he squawks more now out of habit than anything. It's been over a week on ESS and now he actually puts himself to sleep when he's tired, even if he's playing (like in the bouncer). It's even working for the middle of the night feeding. He woke up crying last night and by the time I got the bottle ready, he had stopped and was back to sleep. I also want to add we got rid of the paci during this time as well.
You may have to try several different systems to see what works. Good luck Mama!
It seems a lot of us are having sleep issues. I am chalking Asher's waking nightly up to teething. I read the baby whisperer when I only had one child..it was easier to find time:) I just want to say that I co-slept with my children. Some are just better sleepers and have been from the beginning. My four year old is in preschool and wakes up multiple times a night. He hears any little sound, or even just moving around and he's up. I spent nights with him sleeping in a chair because that's how we both got sleep. My seven year old has been a great sleeper since day one, still is, and sleeps through almost anything. It's not something I did. I'm a light sleeper, my Dh will sleep through anything, including crying children. It's just who we are.
Some things that we have used that seem to have worked (most times) are, a noise machine, getting baby to sleep nearby so we moved them very little when laying down. Placing baby on their side with a rolled up blanket behind them giving a sense of not being alone. And a routine is good. Good luck, I've been there. I hope you find a solution that works for your family soon:)
We were anti-CIO, but we found ourselves in a similar situation about two months ago. He was up every hr and needed to be rocked back to sleep, and only put down in the crib when he was completely asleep. Naps were a nightmare, and he would usually take one short nap in his crib (<30min) and one longer nap (~2hrs) being held by our nanny. Nights were horrible, and it usually ended up with a stupid late-night argument between H and I, and thats when I knew we needed to do something. No one was getting sleep in our house.
So, I read Ferber's book - Solve your Childs Sleep Problems - and started implementing some of his recommendations, interval check-ins being one of them. After three nights, it was like we had a different child! For naps and bedtime, we can just put him in the crib after going through our little routine, and he might babble for a few minutes, and in the first few days he might fuss (no outright crying after night #1) and he falls asleep on his own. He usually wakes up 2-3 times a night (that we can hear him) and puts himself back to sleep after babbling for a few minutes. He STTN about 3-4 nights/week, and now I can tell if he is fussing for more than 5 min, he is hungry. So I can go in, nurse, and put him right back in the crib, awake, and I'm back in bed within 10 min. In short, yes there were some tears in the beginning, but it was totally worth it for us.
I really urge you to educate yourself about sleeping training method before trying it, there are a lot of different components to good, healthy sleep habits, and CIO is only one aspect. Ultimately, you are the mom, so you should modify any of the various methods to fit your needs. Just be consistent!
Sleepeasy Solution has worked really well for some friends of mine that are very anti-CIO.
Good luck to you.
We are a week into this method and I love it. DS is already sleeping better. As soon as his eyes stop fighting staying open, I lay him in his crib and he is out. He went from waking every half hour to waking twice a night for his pacifier.
My DD also has the boob problem with sleep. In order for her to have any kind of nap she has to be attached to my boob and I have to lay down with her. For bedtime I nurse her to sleep and she does stay in her crib most of the night. She used to STTN but now she is up once or twice usually. I know it's not as bad as your LO who is up every hour.
I am going back to work next month and my mom will be taking care of DD so I am waiting to see how that goes before I do any kind of sleep training. Our main problem is naps anyway. I am hoping she will do better for my mom since my mom can't nurse her.
Can you have someone else try naps with him? Also, my DH and I have been alternating putting her to bed at night and it has worked out well. This way she doesn't ALWAYS get nursed to sleep.
I did read Ferber, and was surprised how much I got from it. He does stress that the interval checks are the way to address sleep associations, not a fixall ie, if you have a poor or nonexistent schedule, doing CIO w checks won't help that.
Because of my sons temperment, I was worried that it just would not work for him, but it did and honestly it was kind of life changing. He's happy, well rested and just as attached and loving as before maybe even more expressive of it bc he's not so crabby and overtired?. I am a WAY better mom. I am glad that we did it when we did.
Good luck.
This is pretty much what we did, and my DS' sleep was just as bad as the LO in the OP. It sucked SO bad, we were waking up every hour or every 2 hours. We moved him to his own room, let him cry a little and checked in on him in intervals (like every 10-15 minutes). It really only took a few days and he is SUCH a better sleeper now. I wish we had done this sooner. I was so against any sort of CIO when my DD was a baby, but then again she was a great sleeper. It's easy to be against CIO when you have a good sleeper :P
Have you tried a few of the gentler methods - Good Night Sleep Lady solution? Baby Whisperer's Pick up Put Down? If the usual gentle methods aren't working, then I'd try Ferber out. Ferber is actually the gentler of the CIO methods - you start out with only a couple minutes of crying at a time. I'm ok with my baby crying for 2-3 minutes at a time and we've never had to go longer than 5 minutes.
When she was about 8 months old, it was clear she didn't need anything but was just in the habit of getting up, so I continued to do the full bedtime routine, which most nights meant she went to sleep without a problem, but occasionally she cried when I put her down. If I picked her back up & started all over again, it took forever. If I gave her a couple minutes on her own, she usually was asleep within 2 minutes. She's become so much easier to put to sleep since then.
You know what will work for your family best.
It sounds like you need to break a sleep association. Ferber's book describes sleep associations really well, but I hear you on the whole "when can I read this book? I just told you all that I'm exhausted" thing.
I found this website helpful for a short description of many different methods: https://www.mybabysleepguide.com/p/sleep-index.html
Also, there was a study done recently that found that children who completed sleep training (either progressive waiting or "camping out") ended up being totally fine, and possibly even slightly less likely to have a behavioral disorder, at six years of age. Here's a link for that: https://news.yahoo.com/parents-let-sleepless-babies-cry-study-233549733--abc-news-wellness.html
We did CIO and have had pretty good success. I find myself backtracking with nursing-to-sleep because I have a low milk supply, and when I do go back to nursing to sleep, DD's sleep gets way worse. When I'm consistent, she goes to sleep really easily and then only wakes 1-2 times at night.
Good luck!
I agree with Ferber if it's a sleep association issue, all the way. We were anti-CIO with DS ( I mean, isn't everyone? No one says "I really want my baby to cry".) But his sleep and naps were deteriourating to the point where no one was happy or functioning 100%, including DS. That wasn't fair to him or us. We tried Ferber and it worked like a charm!
We'd have some setbacks, mainly teething or if he was sick, where of course you tend to your baby, you don't just let them cry for you. He became the best sleeper. DD only ever needed checks to fall asleep on her own at naps. I wasn't sure we'd get to the same point as DS, but we gave in and did Ferber again and now she's great. No tears. Happy to fall asleep, happy when she wakes up!
Now if only those teeth would finish we'd all be sleeping in this house!
I'm confused. It sounds like you're ok with CIO... and so am I. I re-read what I wrote, and I didn't realize I was unclear. Unless you're anti-CIO, in which case maybe I need more sleep
I am a first time mom. My son is now a year old. When he was younger I started researching different CIO methods because my aim was to prevent sleep issues. Of course when I was pregnant I never dreamed I would be researching such things, but when you're in the trenches and sleep deprived, you begin your education of how in the world do I get this child to sleep like a human???
I considered both sides of the issue over and over. My common sense helped me decide that letting my child cry some in order to help him learn to sleep was NOT going to harm him. Of course it was difficult, of course it took perserverance and total consistency. But to me that was an early lesson of qualities I needed to learn to become good parent for years to come. I am of the belief that the harder way is usually the right way. And any type of "sleep training" is hard! However, I do think letting your child's sleep problems and associations persist for months and months is probably more difficult in this case.
In our case we tackled naps first. When he'd wake up at the 30min mark we decided not to go in for 15 minutes. It took some time to get up to this time limit, but once we did, he started putting himself back to sleep on his own. Once he learned how to do this it transferred to his night sleep. We didn't know this would happen, but it did. He also started sucking his thumb during this time and gave up the paci since we were no longer re plugging it. It took two solid weeks of consistency once we decided not to go in before 15 mins. He never made it that long. It sucked. I'll admit.
Fast forward 7 months. We have the happiest most well adjusted child I could have ever hoped for. When we put him to bed, he knows what to do on his own. He's not scared, he doesn't cry. He's confident in his own abilities. What more could you want?
It may take a bit longer the older they are. But just pick a solid plan. Don't back down, and you will have the sleep you both need.