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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
marcia1108
member
Crying It Out- TONIGHT!! HELP!! advice??!?
marcia1108
member
Our son is 6 months and still up 2 times a night for a botle & diaper change. At his 6 month appt on Friday, his doc strongly suggested the CIO method asap... she said that the first night will be the worst then get better the next few nights until he is sleeping from 8-6ish..when he's crying she said not to let it go longer than an hour ` (which by the way i will be crying right along with him if he crys for a whole hour!! i def wont make it that long!!)...and the doc said in the long run will be best for everyone because we will all get sleep and on a better schedule.
Well tonight is the night we are gong to try. I just gave him a bottle and put him down (around 8:15- which is already later than his usual 7/7:30 bedtime) and I am pretty nervous about tonight!!!
Does anyone have any experience with CIO????? good or bad?? Please share!!
I really hope am doing the right thing...
"There is no friendship, no love, like that of a mother for her child"
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Re: Crying It Out- TONIGHT!! HELP!! advice??!?
When he wakes up at night is he actually eating or just comfort sucking? Does he go right back to sleep after you tend to him? If he's actually hungry and/or wet he needs you. I have no problem with sleep training if it's needed but on top of the fact that he may not be ready to STTN it sounds like you're just winging it. Why not do some research first and come up with a technique; he could do great with a progressive waiting approach and then you both get to avoid him crying for an hour (if it got to that point).
These boards are very anti CIO. I personally am on the fence about it and don't judge people who decide to go with it, but in this circumstance I feel sad since you said LO is still up for a diaper change and a bottle. Those are actual needs. I can see trying a Ferber type CIO if LO is waking for no apparent reason (ex. dry, not wanting to eat, just waking up for fun).
Good luck whatever you decide. Despite what I said, I guess ultimately everyone does what is best for their family.
I'm not trying to be rude, to to get into any CIO debates, but I think your baby still needs to be feed, if he is calling to feed. Is he not going right back to sleep after the bottle and change? I don't really see a problem with getting up once or twice at night. IDK, though, I'm pretty anti CIO.
Sorry if I'm repeating anyone I posted before reading.
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I think you should ask your pediatician about where in med school he/she learned about sleep training. Oh wait, they didn't. Your pediatrician is giving you personal advice under the guise of it being medical advice.
Be an adult, do your own research, and then decide for yourself.
Call me crazy, but only waking up once or twice a night sounds totally normal. CIO should be used when you're desperate for sleep and have exhausted all of your other options. Have you tried other methods, like the No Cry Sleep Solution? If you're really set on getting him on a schedule (which is fine...he's young still, but if you want to, more power to you), I would try ways that didn't involve letting your LO scream for an hour.
Also, if you do decide to CIO, I'd recommend a more gradual approach...after all, he's used to you tending to his needs as soon as he starts crying. Can you imagine how scared and confused he'd be if you suddenly stopped coming? Maybe just let him cry for a couple minutes, come in and comfort him, and step back out. After a few days you can increase the amount of time you wait before going in, until he falls asleep on his own.
We started Ferber a couple nights ago and I feel good about it. You can go in and reassure your LO that you're still there, and they will know they haven't been abandoned. That 5 minutes of crying and fussing feels like an eternity, but it isn't. A child deserves the opportunity to learn how to fall asleep alone. Your job as a parent will involve plenty of other things that might make your child cry--vaccinations, not eating ice cream for dinner, etc.--but you will do them because they are in his best interest. Some children can learn to fall asleep without a whimper, and some can't.
That said, before you just let your child cry for an hour, you'd do well to learn about sleep. Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems (Ferber) and Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child (Weissbluth) are two books written by pediatric sleep experts. Both acknowledge that varying degrees of crying may be necessary (Weissbluth recommends total extinction, which I can't get on board with at this age), but they are written from a knowledgeable perspective. You will learn a ton! Just "doing CIO" with no background knowledge based on a pedi's recommendation is a setup for frustration and failure. Do some reading ASAP--the training can wait a night or two.
LET ME CLARIFY- (and I should have said this in my original post)
we will be trying to FERBER METHOD for the first time tonight. Does anyone have any direct experience in trying this????
Ok, I can type more because I have both hands.
STTN is developmental. If your baby is still waking up during the night to eat, it means they are still not ready to go a whole night without a feeding. Waking up at 6 months old to eat is normal.
Please don't be rude. I wasn't asking for a sarcastic comment, I was asking for someone with experience in this topic to share their experience with me. Thanks anyway!
Sorry, no experience here, however, DH and I are thinking about Ferber also in the near future. DD also gets up twice a night, so we have been reducing her MOTN feedings (from 6 oz down to 4oz and then we will move to 2oz). She hasn't seemed to notice, which makes me think she's just getting up for comfort. Maybe try that and see if your LO really needs those feedings or if it just for comfort.
Just keep in mind that you're doing what's best for your LO. Good luck tonight.
No advice here. I cannot let DS cry. I can let him fuss and whine himself to sleep, but the second he cries, he gets picked up and rocked.
Here's my experience:
I went to my pediatrician. I said, "Hey doc, my kid isn't sleeping". Doc said "You can just let him cry." I went home, and started looking up articles about sleep training in peer-reviewed medical journals. I learned that methods involving CIO (including Ferber) are no more effective than gentler sleep training methods. Also, there have been no studies done that prove that methods such as Ferber or extinction CIO are not harmful.
So here I am, someone with "experience in this topic" and I am sharing my experience with you. Which, I believe, satifies the parameters of your request.
Great! Thanks so much!!
She's not being rude. She's asking you to make the (informed) decisions about your parenting, not your pedi.
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My experience is that my children needed to eat at night until they were about a year old. We gradually got rid of MOTN feedings by waking to feed at about 10:30 (before we went to bed), then offering water during night wakings. If she wouldn't take a sip of water, I'd nurse.
Every kid is different, certainly, but I don't think I'd leave a child to cry (even using Ferber) if they were waking because they were hungry.
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Here is a pro-sleep training thread from yesterday with NO nastiness. I have no clue how to hyper link...
https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/52084582.aspx
You know, sometimes people on TB used to make me feel guilty inside for considering Ferber or other sleep training methods, but honestly, I think if it's in the best interest of your child, you should do it. I fully intend on using Ferber, or maybe another method, on DS probably in another month or so because his sleep is so disrupted and he is not getting enough naps in during the day and I am concerned for his health and well-being (not that I have any particular reason to be at the moment, but I know sleep deprivation is no good in anyone, let alone an infant). Bedtime is a struggle for us because he cannot put himself to sleep, yet is at the point now where he fights even being rocked to sleep, no matter what time we start bedtime. On average, it takes me 2 hours to get my kid into bed for the night for "good" (which is usually just 3-5 hours...though I haven't seen 5 hours in about a month now). I of course don't mind him waking for 1 or 2 feedings, but my kid wakes up like 4x from 3:00-8:00. Right now I end up sleeping with him on the couch for that time and neither one of us sleeps well. Naps are only on me and are frequently way too short, but again, he will not fall asleep on his own and if I try to put him down, he wakes. If a few nights of crying are going to help him learn how to sleep better, I think it's worth it.
I also think as a mom, being chronically sleep deprived can result in negative feelings and frustration toward your child and that's not fair to them, either. I'm not talking about lack of sleep from 1 or 2 night wakings, I'm talking about multiple unnecessary wakings where the baby can't get back to sleep without rocking, etc. My kid came out of the womb not wanting to sleep...on his second day of life, he was awake for 7 hours...so this has been a challenge for 4-months now. I'll wait on sleep training until he's a bit older but I don't think, for both our sakes, that I can let it go for a year or two.
I believe in sleep training!! Everyone has a different situation. Some stay at home and can get up multiple times through the night and others go to work and have to be up at 5:45. I get up at 5:45 everyday. With zero sleep I cannot very well go out there and make a living to pay the bills and buy groceries!!!!
People on these boards don't judge for going to work or staying home all day. So they shouldn't judge for how you get your baby to sleep. My baby has been waking up every 30min. He clearly doesn't need to eat. I tried Ferber for 3 nights and he got worse and worse. The constant mommy interaction increased his desire to wake up and stay up. Last night he woke up one hour after going to sleep. I let him CIO. He cried for 15 and went back to sleep. He slept for 7 hours straight. It was a real miracle.
Look, I definitely get being exhausted and having every fiber of your body BEGGING you to get some good sleep. I also totally support sleep training a kid, when appropriate. I Ferberized my first when she was somewhere around 8-9 months old, and am very happy with that decision. It worked great for us.
HOWEVER....if your child is still waking up to eat a substantial amount at night, he probably needs it. Waking up to eat an ounce and then falling asleep while being snuggled and rocked =/= hunger. Waking up and taking 4+ ounces is, imo.
Try feeding your little guy more during the day, and see what happens. I'll also say that waking up once a night to eat, at 6 months old, is by no means abnormal. Big side-eye to your pedi for pushing a hard-core CIO before suggesting other options/solutions, especially at only 6 months old.
If you have doubts you do not need to CIO. Before you do it you need to figure out the reasons for doing CIO. Are you doing it to keep you and your baby happy and healthy? Are you doing it because your doctor told you to? There is nothing wrong with a 6 month old waking 2 times to eat, but if it is having a negative effect on your health than go ahead and sleep train.
Next you should do some reading. To go into this blindly is not helpful for your family or fair to your child.
Go to the library and get the Ferber book out. It is hundreds of pages long and only 2 of them involve CIO. In fact he does not advocate CIO for night weaning. He has a much more gentle method of night weaning. He also details sleep schedules that reduce night wakings. He even says that CIO does not work for many situations.
Read other books that utilize more gentle methods of training. I liked Good NIght Sleep Tight by Kim West. It worked for my middle child and there were no tears.
Thank you so much for posting this. You have described DD's sleep habits perfectly - she HATES sleep, and she has fought it since we brought her home from the hospital 36 hours after she was born. I'm really struggling with what to do, and the guilt from even thinking about letting her cry is overwhelming. It's nice to know that someone else is in the same boat and feels the same way.