We are going to bite the bullet ...

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

and Ferberize. We are so exhausted after a month of sleeping about 3 hours a night, we talked to the pedi, and he said that all of the things we described are behavioral and we need to break the cycle. At 3 months he was sleeping 8 hour stretches and now he is down to 3 hour or less.

I hate to do it, but I want him to get past this and be able to sleep well. I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about letting him cry. Even though we will go in and do progressive waiting, I feel so bad for him. Then again, DH and I are so tired that we are starting to fall asleep at work. We can't keep this up.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to share. I know this is going to be a hard few days, or knowing our little guy few weeks, but we want to do what is best for him.

MrsMGR · July 2010

Granted, I know it doesn't work for everyone's baby, but in my experience, hearing the baby cry for 2-3 nights during the CIO process is not as bad as your child crying 3+ times a night everynight because he doesn't know how to soothe himself. Just think of it as one thing on a long list of things you have to do that you don't want to bc it may hurt him like: saying 'No' when he wants something you cannot give him, leaving him at daycare when he has separation anxiety, disciplining him, learning how to riding a bike knowing he is destined to fall a few times.....all those things will be much easier for him to understand and grasp if he knows how to soothe himself. Hang in there!

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

You are right, there is a much bigger picture to consider. I didn't even think about how it will impact so many other things. Thanks! I'll try to keep all of that in mind this evening.

Cajun_gal · July 2010

You can do it, and he'll be fine! All of you getting more sleep will make things so much better. I hope tonight goes well!

Most of my friends did a Ferber type of sleep training with their children. All of them did it at a young age though (less than 3 months probably). Their children are all well-rounded, very sweet, loving, smart kids. I honestly don't think crying a few nights will do lasting damage.

EmmaRae · July 2010

Good luck!

The 4 month growth spurt sucked. That's about where Evan is, right?

L went from sleeping 9-12 hours to being up every 2.5-3 hours. We're back to normal now but it was rough feeling like we had a 4 week old instead of a 4 month old.

For what our experience is worth, we actually attempted and failed Ferber during the 4mo growth spurt. It was an unpleasant experience. She actually readjusted sleeping on her own about a week later. Looking back, I think we just "piled on" during a time when she was going through changes and wasn't old enough to figure out self-soothing.

kat.in.the.hat · July 2010

If you can over the weekend, read his book. He has a lot of good information in there about all kinds of sleep problems, not just the CIO method he's most well known for. He also has a lot of good info on how to properly do CIO if that's what will work for you.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

EmmaRae:

Good luck!

The 4 month growth spurt sucked. That's about where Evan is, right?

L went from sleeping 9-12 hours to being up every 2.5-3 hours. We're back to normal now but it was rough feeling like we had a 4 week old instead of a 4 month old.

For what our experience is worth, we actually attempted and failed Ferber during the 4mo growth spurt. It was an unpleasant experience. She actually readjusted sleeping on her own about a week later. Looking back, I think we just "piled on" during a time when she was going through changes and wasn't old enough to figure out self-soothing.

Yeah, we have been in the middle of the 4 month wakeful for about a month (he started when he was 3 1/2 weeks old). We are also in the process od de-swaddling since he fights so hard when he is swaddled now. But on the other hand he keeps rubbing his head with the back of his hand and forearm and it wakes him up. I don't know if it his attempt at self-soothing or self-stimulation.

How long did you attempt the Ferber method? Just curious to see how long it lasted for you.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

kat.in.the.hat:
If you can over the weekend, read his book. He has a lot of good information in there about all kinds of sleep problems, not just the CIO method he's most well known for. He also has a lot of good info on how to properly do CIO if that's what will work for you.

I'm thinking about buying the book today and then trying this this weekend. I guess we could just feed him twice tonight and see if that does the trick. Last night he was up every hour on the hour and it took us 25 minutes to get him back to sleep. This is almost as bad as when he was a newborn. At least now we don't have to hold him throughout the night.

LisaK2b · July 2010

My only advice is that both of ya'll need to read the book and be on the same page because with all the stress from the crying (not from him going to sleep in the evening time, but also throughout the night for the first few days), ya'll know to be a team and if you're not, can lead to many big arguements in the middle of the night. Also, if you're emotionally connected to your baby and his crying, your husband might have to do it and you might have to leave and go somewhere else for an hour because it can really kill you on the inside. I didn't bf, and just hearing her crying for me would make my bm leak (even though she was over 5 months old).

CIO didn't work for us with Emmy because she was so strong willed and she could get so worked up from crying in just a few minutes that she'll throw up all over herself (she still does it to this day). It's fine when it's day time and we have the time to change her clothes, sheets, etc... But at 2am, forget it. It was exhausting. So we resorted to the rocking and buying a really nice cushion chair rocker so we can fall alseep in together. I'm fortunate that DH is able to fall asleep easily while sitting and is strong and big enough to keep the baby in his arms and lap. In the end she's a good independent sleeper...then we were stupid enough to have #2. JK!

With Ally, we can't even try because it'll wake Emmy up and then we'll have two crying kids!

mom2ll · July 2010

BEST thing we ever did with Luca. He's a crap napper, but his night sleep is 10000% better. Doesn't work so well when the crying wakes up the other kid...

At our house, it took 3 nights. #1 was awful!! However, 2 and 3 were a piece of cake. It's also nice to know that anyone can put them down. We can have a sitter and go out. Totally worth it.

TexasAgMel · July 2010

Oh man, my kid has turned into a sleep horror the past two weeks. I figured it was due to teething. I am a zombie right now. I feel your pain.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

bpaullo:

BEST thing we ever did with Luca. He's a crap napper, but his night sleep is 10000% better. Doesn't work so well when the crying wakes up the other kid...

At our house, it took 3 nights. #1 was awful!! However, 2 and 3 were a piece of cake. It's also nice to know that anyone can put them down. We can have a sitter and go out. Totally worth it.

How old was Luca when you did the sleep training. I worry that we are starting too early. But we have to start sometime.

MrsMGR · July 2010

SigmundsGirl:
bpaullo:

BEST thing we ever did with Luca. He's a crap napper, but his night sleep is 10000% better. Doesn't work so well when the crying wakes up the other kid...

At our house, it took 3 nights. #1 was awful!! However, 2 and 3 were a piece of cake. It's also nice to know that anyone can put them down. We can have a sitter and go out. Totally worth it.

How old was Luca when you did the sleep training. I worry that we are starting too early. But we have to start sometime.

Joe was around 4 months old when we sleep trained him. It took about 2-3 nights as well. I think Luca was around the same age because Brandi trained me ;-)

ginanddavid · July 2010

we started DS when he was way older than 4 months, but less than a year, I believe. I wanted to rock my child to sleep nightly, and did. Then, he started playing us for fools and twisted and turned and "talked" to where we were rocking 1-2 hours a night...

Here's what I did, because I was sooo upset with letting him cry- I would tell myself "I'm not letting him cry more than 10 minutes... 10 minutes of straight crying is just crazy!" so I would put him in his crib, cover him up, kiss him, tell him goodnight, then i'd HAUL BOOTY to the shower and get in there for 10 minutes... I'm not a night time shower-er but I was that week!

Because he was older, it took us closer to a week. Only once was he still crying after 10 minutes. and I took him out and rocked him and he went right to sleep.

Good luck. It really is fabulous once they are able to be put in there and put themselves to sleep. I learned the hard way and now DD goes in her crib wide awake and can put herself to sleep (although, sometimes I still rock her!!!)

LisaK2b · July 2010

Just a little questions/comment...do you have the FP waterfall soother? When Emmy was little and she would wake up, we would just turn on the soother and she would stop crying, stare at it, and then eventually fell to sleep. It didn't work all the time, but it worked for about a month! hahaha

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

We have been putting Evan down drowsy (but not asleep) for a few months now. He is okay about going to sleep when we first put him down, but now that is even getting hard to do. The worst part is when he wakes in the middle of the night.

He goes to bed at 8:00, and then he has started waking up at 11:00, 2:00, 3:30, 4:30, etc. And it takes a good 30-45 minutes to put him back to sleep. The longest we go with out giving him a bottle right now is 6 hours, but I know he can go longer because for a few weeks he was sleeping 8 hours straight.

DH and I take turns getting up with him, but I have trouble getting back to sleep after so I lay there awake waiting for him to cry. I tried letting him cry once last week and I went in his room every 15 minutes for 3 hours until I swaddled him and put him on his side. DH wasn't ready to let him cry at that point, but he is now. But DH rather turn off the monitor and just let him cry the entire night. I can't do that, so DH has given in and said we can try Ferber.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

LisaK2b:
Just a little questions/comment...do you have the FP waterfall soother? When Emmy was little and she would wake up, we would just turn on the soother and she would stop crying, stare at it, and then eventually fell to sleep. It didn't work all the time, but it worked for about a month! hahaha

No, we have a sleep sheep that makes rain sounds. DH and I have a sound machine that we use to sleep and since DS was in our room for the first 2 1/2 months, he got used to it. But if this doesn't do the trick, I may look into it. :-)

LisaK2b · July 2010

The soother isn't just sound, it's something moving and glowing for them to look at and get their eyes tired from staring at it. It worked temporary for us, but it may be the answer for you if CIO doesn't work.

kat.in.the.hat · July 2010

Highly recommend reading the book. Ferber gets a bad rap because a lot of people just go straight to his extinction method without really understanding and using it inappropriately. As big of an AP mom as I am, I got a lot of out his book.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

kat.in.the.hat:
Highly recommend reading the book. Ferber gets a bad rap because a lot of people just go straight to his extinction method without really understanding and using it inappropriately. As big of an AP mom as I am, I got a lot of out his book.

Thanks, Kat. I ordered it through Amazon and it will be here tomorrow. We are going to do the best we can for tonight without making him totally CIO but not give in to every whine and whimper. I guess we will pretty much do what we did last night, which was be up ever hour and try to console him without picking him up or feeding him everytime he cries. I am sure we will have at least one night feeding, but mister man must learn that he isn't always hungry.

Oh, but tonight we are going to feed him in his room instead of bringing him downstairs. He will just have to cry until we get there.

somethingchangd · July 2010

We tried CIO a few times, including once for almost 3 weeks straight, but it just didn't work for Oliver. Or for me, quite frankly. So be warned that it isn't a fix for all children, although I hope it works quickly and easily for you.

I just wanted to quickly mention that just because he's gone without eating for X amount of hours in the past, doesn't mean he doesn't need to eat in a shorter amount of time right now. Growth spurts are very real and their needs change as they hit them. Just a thought.

As the mom of a very bad sleeper (who STTN for only the 2nd time in his life just last night), I feel your pain. I hope it gets better for you, one way or another soon.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

somethingchangd:

We tried CIO a few times, including once for almost 3 weeks straight, but it just didn't work for Oliver. Or for me, quite frankly. So be warned that it isn't a fix for all children, although I hope it works quickly and easily for you.

I just wanted to quickly mention that just because he's gone without eating for X amount of hours in the past, doesn't mean he doesn't need to eat in a shorter amount of time right now. Growth spurts are very real and their needs change as they hit them. Just a thought.

As the mom of a very bad sleeper (who STTN for only the 2nd time in his life just last night), I feel your pain. I hope it gets better for you, one way or another soon.

Ya know, DH and I were just talking about how do we know if Evan is really hungry. And sadly the answer is we don't know. His hungry cry isn't any different than his annoyed cry. He is an intense child. When he is happy he is all out smiles and giggles. When he cries, man does he wail. He does have relaxed times too, but his extremes are really extreme. The pedi mentioned that when we had his 4 month check up. Evan freaked when the pedi was checking his nose and he mentioned that his response was disproportionate.

somethingchangd · July 2010

SigmundsGirl:
somethingchangd:

We tried CIO a few times, including once for almost 3 weeks straight, but it just didn't work for Oliver. Or for me, quite frankly. So be warned that it isn't a fix for all children, although I hope it works quickly and easily for you.

I just wanted to quickly mention that just because he's gone without eating for X amount of hours in the past, doesn't mean he doesn't need to eat in a shorter amount of time right now. Growth spurts are very real and their needs change as they hit them. Just a thought.

As the mom of a very bad sleeper (who STTN for only the 2nd time in his life just last night), I feel your pain. I hope it gets better for you, one way or another soon.

Ya know, DH and I were just talking about how do we know if Evan is really hungry. And sadly the answer is we don't know. His hungry cry isn't any different than his annoyed cry. He is an intense child. When he is happy he is all out smiles and giggles. When he cries, man does he wail. He does have relaxed times too, but his extremes are really extreme. The pedi mentioned that when we had his 4 month check up. Evan freaked when the pedi was checking his nose and he mentioned that his response was disproportionate.

That sounds SO much like Ollie. Thankfully he has calmed down a lot in the past few months, but for ages he had no inbetween - he was either happy or miserable. We would call him the zero to sixty baby because he would go from fine to absolutely insane - like hyperventilating crying - with no warning whatsoever. I once put him in his crib and took a super quick shower and when I came back to him he'd been crying so hard his soft spot had caved in. He was just a very high needs baby (in addition to being colicky). But he's gotten so much better recently.

You need to do what you need to do to get by and in my case it meant trying everything before realizing that nothing worked. Once I knew I'd done everything I could to make things easier on me, I realized that the only thing that would make it easier on me was to make it easier on him. And once I resigned myself to just meeting his needs, no questions asked, life became SO much easier for both of us. But I couldn't have come to that understanding without trying to change him and fail.

If you would've asked me when he was 4 months old if I would survive another 9+ months without once STTN (and not going more than 3 hours at a time until he was almost a year) I would have said absolutely not. I couldn't have fathomed it. But here I am and I'm ok. And finally, in his time, Oliver is improving so much with his sleep. (And he's already improved in his general tempermant SO SO MUCH.)

Maybe Evan will do great with CIO and maybe it will be smooth sailing from here on out. I really do hope so. But I don't want you to think you're alone if you find that your "spirited" child just doesn't do what the books said he'd do. And I want you to know that even if it's really really hard right now, it will get easier and it will be ok.

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

somethingchangd:
SigmundsGirl:
somethingchangd:

We tried CIO a few times, including once for almost 3 weeks straight, but it just didn't work for Oliver. Or for me, quite frankly. So be warned that it isn't a fix for all children, although I hope it works quickly and easily for you.

I just wanted to quickly mention that just because he's gone without eating for X amount of hours in the past, doesn't mean he doesn't need to eat in a shorter amount of time right now. Growth spurts are very real and their needs change as they hit them. Just a thought.

As the mom of a very bad sleeper (who STTN for only the 2nd time in his life just last night), I feel your pain. I hope it gets better for you, one way or another soon.

Ya know, DH and I were just talking about how do we know if Evan is really hungry. And sadly the answer is we don't know. His hungry cry isn't any different than his annoyed cry. He is an intense child. When he is happy he is all out smiles and giggles. When he cries, man does he wail. He does have relaxed times too, but his extremes are really extreme. The pedi mentioned that when we had his 4 month check up. Evan freaked when the pedi was checking his nose and he mentioned that his response was disproportionate.

That sounds SO much like Ollie. Thankfully he has calmed down a lot in the past few months, but for ages he had no inbetween - he was either happy or miserable. We would call him the zero to sixty baby because he would go from fine to absolutely insane - like hyperventilating crying - with no warning whatsoever. I once put him in his crib and took a super quick shower and when I came back to him he'd been crying so hard his soft spot had caved in. He was just a very high needs baby (in addition to being colicky). But he's gotten so much better recently.

You need to do what you need to do to get by and in my case it meant trying everything before realizing that nothing worked. Once I knew I'd done everything I could to make things easier on me, I realized that the only thing that would make it easier on me was to make it easier on him. And once I resigned myself to just meeting his needs, no questions asked, life became SO much easier for both of us. But I couldn't have come to that understanding without trying to change him and fail.

If you would've asked me when he was 4 months old if I would survive another 9+ months without once STTN (and not going more than 3 hours at a time until he was almost a year) I would have said absolutely not. I couldn't have fathomed it. But here I am and I'm ok. And finally, in his time, Oliver is improving so much with his sleep. (And he's already improved in his general tempermant SO SO MUCH.)

Maybe Evan will do great with CIO and maybe it will be smooth sailing from here on out. I really do hope so. But I don't want you to think you're alone if you find that your "spirited" child just doesn't do what the books said he'd do. And I want you to know that even if it's really really hard right now, it will get easier and it will be ok.

Thanks, Amber. That helps more than you know.

ccc'swife · July 2010

Sigmund, I would page KelleyA if I were you and ask her to repost her pedi's CIO recommendation. I know she just had Juliet, but I think she's saved it for future posts because so many people ask about this, and her suggestions are SO HELPFUL. We used it for Charlotte and it worked like a charm. Charlotte has been a great sleeper ever since she was six months old and we used Kelley's pedi's recommendations.

Page her, I promise it will be worth it!

SigmundsGirl · July 2010

ccc'swife:

Sigmund, I would page KelleyA if I were you and ask her to repost her pedi's CIO recommendation. I know she just had Juliet, but I think she's saved it for future posts because so many people ask about this, and her suggestions are SO HELPFUL. We used it for Charlotte and it worked like a charm. Charlotte has been a great sleeper ever since she was six months old and we used Kelley's pedi's recommendations.

Page her, I promise it will be worth it!

Thank you so much! Off to go page Kelly.

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