We let J cry it out when he was about Nat's age. He was consistently sleeping through the night, he just had trouble falling asleep initially, without being rocked. He cried for 20 mins then dozed off after 1 night and then has been a perfect sleeper since.
We decided to give it a whirl with Miss Natalie last night. A typical night- she'll be up 3 or 4x. If I give her a paci or a bottle she'll right back to sleep... for like an hour. We put her to bed as usual at 7 but we also set up a pack and play in the living room. She fussed for a few mins at around 9, but fell back to sleep so we went to bed at 11. Sure enough she was up crying at 12:30am. I scooped her up- put her in the p&p with her paci. She was up again at 2:09am and started her normal screaming, screeching cry. The doors to the bedrooms were closed so I just let her CIO... for FIFTY MINUTES- the living room is close to our bedroom so we were up the whole time. At 3 I gave her the paci and she was out til 5:30, then "up for the day"... feet in the air, laughing, babbling. By 7am she was crabby rubbing her eyes and is down for a nap.
I know the 1st night is the worst but omg my patience for this little girl is wearing paper thin. Anyone have any CIO advice?
Re: CIO- night 1 (kinda long)
I'm sorry. My kids are both good criers. With ethan we did cio @ 10 months b/c I couldn't handle not sleeping through the night. It took us 3 days and then he slept through the night. With sophia we have never done CIO. She didn't sleep through the night until 9 months. we still rock her to sleep every night but she sleeps close to 12 hours so I am not messing with it.
We need to do CIO with ethan again. But for whatever reason dh can't stand to listen to ethan cry but has no problem if sophia cries.
Sorry it was another rough night. I'm not sure of advice - Ian always had a problem initially going to sleep, so the crying fits came when we first put him to bed. I'm wondering if the paci is a crutch for her. Does she go to bed with the paci? Maybe try starting out the night without it, then go from there. Hope tonight is better!
Jewels - We had to do it again for Ian when he was 21 months. It actually went a lot easier than we expected. I think the first night he only cried for about 20 minutes, and the next night was about 10, then nothing the third night. A lot better than the first time around, definitely.
This is Natalie EXACTLY. Ok I feel a teeny teeny bit better- I'm not alone