CIO: conflicting ped info

CRooney89 · April 2016

So let me start off by saying I haven't done any sleep training with LO. He wakes up twice a night still at 7 months, first wake up is sometimes just to be rocked back to sleep and sometimes for a bottle at 11PMish, second wake up is around 3-4AM for a bottle.
My pediatrician keeps telling me that I should try CIO with him. She said even if he wants the bottle "he won't starve" and to just let him cry.
There is another doctor who covers at the practice and she told me if he just wants to be soothed to try CIO, but not if he is still eating in the MOTN. Any advice or tips on this? Slowly losing my mind with lack of sleep but on the other hand I don't want to deprive LO of his feedings at night if he really needs it.

kdoak2015 · April 2016

Maybe he's feeding to sooth? You need to do what's best for you and your DS!

Livvyloo87 · April 2016

It's really hard to know! I had the same issue and what I did was hold to soothe initially (resorted to rocking if needed but tried to avoid as didn't want to create a new reliance). Once calm or asleep, place back in cot. If she woke within the hour I assumed it was because she was hungry and would feed her. This helped us to eliminate the 11/12 feeding after about a week.

Another thing that helped initially was I have her a bottle of expressed BM (250ml) at her bedtime (6.30) and so I knew if she woke up before 12 she probably wasn't really hungry. My girl has always been able to drink a lot in one go but this might not work for babies who drink little amounts more frequently.

ForeverEverAfter · April 2016

There are many other methods besides CIO if you're looking for more sleep. You might be able to cut down to just one feeding. Biologically, human babies are designed to eat at night. We are 'carry' mammals. Human milk is most similar to other mammals that feed at steady intervals day and night. Mammals that hide their young up to 12h while they hunt have totally different proportions of fat and protein in their milk. Yes, some babies can make it through overnight without. But the majority wake overnight into toddlerhood. Heck, I don't even know adults that go 12h without food or water. I just had a bowl of pudding, I'll want water around 3am and I'll be starving by morning! I feed my kids when they are hungry, and comfort them as needed. My 3yo kicks me off her bed after her story and reminds me to close the door. She woke every few hours for over a year. It seems hard now, but the time goes so fast.

FatPony · April 2016

I'm struggling with this too atm. We started sleep training a couple days ago. The first night I got him back to sleep without feedin him, but last night he was up for an hour and a half before I caved and fed him.

My my strategy for tonight is to try to get him back to sleep when he wants his feed (I don't think he needs it). If he doesn't go back to sleep within half an hour, then I'm just going to feed him.

LaurenNewph · April 2016

I start with the pacifier... If he wakes I try giving him the pacifier. Usually a few tugs on that he goes back to sleep. If the pacifier doesn't work, I change the diaper and try rocking him back to sleep. And if none of that works we do a quick bottle. I'm really making it all up as I go along!

yellow1daisy · April 2016

My daughter wakes twice a night most nights and I honestly don't find it all that bad? I guess it depends on how long it takes to get them back in bed. She nurses for 10-15 min and is back down so it's easy. I don't feel like it's making me crazy from lack of sleep. But I guess we all have different thresholds.

Everything @ForeverEverAfter said. Your baby likely needs the milk. I know I often wake up thirsty. There are also things besides CIO that can be done.

jen83mn · April 2016

I think your answer depends on how you feel about CIO. My pediatrician also suggested it (to my surprise) when LO was going through his sleep regression from 11-17 weeks old. But I'm just not a fan of CIO so we did what we were comfortable with (even if that meant waking up every few hours to soothe him back to sleep). The only thing I did differently was rather than nurse him back to sleep every time, I would only nurse him at his 2 a.m. or so wake-up, and would rock him back to sleep every other time so he didn't get used to eating so frequently at night. Eventually he just grew out of it and started sleeping better on his own. Since then, he's been sleeping 8-10 hours straight most nights, with an off night every now and then.

He started solids at 6 months and eats 1.5 TBS of oatmeal mixed with a stage 2 jar of fruit around 6:30-7 p.m. I nurse him at 6 p.m. and at 8 p.m., and he goes to bed right after. I think this definitely helps him to not get hungry at night. Then he wakes at 6:30-7:30 a.m. to eat.

Hope you can figure out something that works!

LoveLee85 · April 2016

We fixed our up every few hours issue it putting him in a Moses basket between us, in our bed, and I put my hand I the basket. He holds my fingers while he sleeps. It's great. If he starts to wake, I put my hand on his chest and he falls right back asleep. I wouldn't do CIO because I'm just not wired like that but to each their own!

CRooney89 · April 2016

Thanks for the advice ladies! I didn't really feel it was necessary to have him CIO through his feedings, my ped and a couple of ladies I work with have just been pushing me to do it the last couple of days. Last night he woke at 12 and I changed him/gave him a bottle, it took a little rocking to get him back to sleep but he fell asleep after about 15 mins of rocking. He woke up once I put him down, usually I would just pick him up but I left the room, he fussed for a few minutes but then fell back asleep on his own

@yellow1daisy When he wakes up and goes right back to sleep I say a prayer to the MOTN feeding gods ahah the majority of the time he is up for at least an hour, sometimes up to 3 hours.

rachellegiacco · April 2016

I started the cio method with the day time naps. She only gets a bottle before bed and I put her down before she passes out. If she is crying I let her for about 10 mins before going back and holding her until she is calm and I put her down again. I only do it the first nap of the day until she gets better at falling asleep on her own. Once she got better I did it to the next nap time. We haven't made it to night time yet.

rjanice · April 2016

LO will be 8 months on the 27th and still wakes 1-3 times throughout the night. We still feed him when he gets up. Our ped suggested cutting down the amount he eats during night hours (kind of like weaning) by one ounce two days at a time. We are down to 3 oz formula 1 oz water. Tomorrow will start 2 oz formula 1oz water. His last 2 nights will be 2 oz of water IF he's still getting up. Tonight has been great. He went to bed at 7p and got up at 435a for a bottle. That is sleeping through the night in this house! Shoot I get excited anytime he sleeps past 1a !

We used CIO only for actual bedtime, the initial down. It worked like a champ for naps as well. For midnight wakeups, not a chance. This night weaning method is the closest thing to success

ElleMF728 · April 2016

@CRooney89 the not going back to sleep was what was killing me DS has been up every 5 or 10 minutes for hours at a time, we started Ferber 4 days ago. I used the No Cry Sleep Solution with DS1 and it worked great. With this LO...not so much. We still feed DS2 once a night (that was exactly how much he was eating before so no change) but we do a controlled CIO for MOTN wakes. If having a second child has taught me anything it is that all babies are different, what works for one might not work for another. We were having a lot of "extra" wakes throughout the night despite doing all the correct things (is there really any such thing as correct when it comes to babies?) . DS has been going down awake for months, white noise etc. but his sleep really plateaued around 5 months. With the exception of a few worse weeks here or there due to teeth, sickness and milestones there hasn't been any progress.

I do think the gentle training made Ferber easier. The most he has cried was 15 minutes and that was in pieces after his MOTN feed. Most of the time it has been 3-4 minutes at most. Last night he cried for less than a minute at bedtime, by the time I turned the monitor on he was happy. I don't like to use CIO to get rid of actual feedings because I think it results in a lot more crying, I prefer weaning to deal with those.

apiland · April 2016

I have been told that pedis stress CIO because it's the new recommendation to avoid shaken baby syndrome. I guess they think we'll kill our babies if we don't sleep. I won't do it. My baby is a baby once and if she needs mommy then mommy she gets

imsoexcited915 · April 2016

@ElleMF728 what exactly is the No Cry Sleep Solution you did?

hlb8179 · May 2016

Like others have said, I tried weaning MOTN feeds. Once the two feedings were down to less than 2 oz of formula, I knew she didn't really need the food. At that point I was comfortable sleep training to teach her how to soothe herself back to sleep without needing to eat. It worked in 4 days and she now sleeps 12 hours straight every single night without waking. More importantly she is way less fussy during the day and fights colds quicker. The continuous sleep is just more restorative for her.

ElleMF728 · May 2016

imsoexcited915 said:

@ElleMF728 what exactly is the No Cry Sleep Solution you did?

We prefer our LOs sleeping in their cribs so we used a slow weaning, 5 month process to move from falling asleep eating, laying down asleep in our room to (ideally) going down awake at bedtime in his nursery. We started at 3 months working on eating until drowsy then laying down in our room. Then moved the routine to his nursery around 4.5 months.

At that point I tried to remove eat/sleep associations and moved to soothing in my arms through bouncing/rocking. When that was established we moved to holding without movement and then to soothing in his crib using key phrases, patting and shushing. The is the stage we got stuck in, DS1 transitioned (fairly) easily to the occasional reminder to "lay down and go night night" around 7 months or so or a little shushing, DS2 did not. We had a good week followed by a decent week doing a sort of "whine it out" while we were in his room comforting but it quickly went downhill when he started standing in his crib. This is also the point when he decided that he wanted to be shushed and patted to sleep whenever he woke overnight. A typical night turned into this:

8:00 Bed
10:30 Wake for soothing
11:30 MOTN feed
2-4 am (This was his typical time for our wake, soothe, sleep, wake routine. He was frequently up every 10-15 minutes during this time)
6:30 am He would wake but easily fall back asleep when I gave him his lovey
7:30 am 2 year old wakes

I think our problem stemmed from him having a much harder time with object permanence than my first did. With DS1 it didn't matter if we were in the room or not at bedtime, he could still settle himself overnight. DS2 wanted us (meaning me) in the room with him each time he woke.

Here was my main problem with the process: When we tried to remove the patting and staying in his room to comfort him he cried more than when we used Ferber. This wasn't true with my first who adapted much easier to the change but it was with DS2 who really seemed to struggle with that last transition. I also felt like we really needed to get him falling asleep by himself because it was contributing to a lot of extra waking overnight. I'm genuinely curious to know where I went wrong or if I missed something somewhere because I was pretty discouraged. I would never caution someone away from using this method because it worked so well with my first son and I think it really helped make Ferber easy for both of us, but I am hesitant to think it works for every baby.

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