I should have done that, even though probably there were other factors that screw her sleep up like a loud grandmother who does not believe that baby wakes up for noises.
But I really hope I can make peace with that and not drive my kids nutz with outdated advice. She was patted to sleep. Was that not entirely clear? OK fixed. Still holds up though….
We have done CIO and thankfully never had much crying. However, recently while at the doctor, we found out that our baby had recovered from an ear infection but is cutting 3 teeth at once. I mentioned that I was glad the ear issue was gone and now we can CIO again.
There is always going to be something. Also, we are bad and give a bottle before bed and if not CIO, we give a bottle when she wakes. Is this doing anything at all to step in the right direction? I need some guidance. Thank you. This is similar to our situation but I personally feel if we keep feeding her at night she is going to continue to wake to have the bottle to soothe herself back to sleep.
I agree…. I am totally stumped. I agree. Everything starts AT bedtime. Not giving her a bottle at night if she had one at bedtime is not productive. Consider bedtime like a fork in the road — which path do you want to be on? So separate the bottle from bedtime. No more bottles at bedtime. Then you work on a gentle weaning plan to gradually get out of the 3X feedings a night.
Medicate the teething. Give her a bit of extra love! Thank you! This does help. I totally agree with you. This is very helpful for my confidence. I really wish I did not have a baby monitor. My mom always tells me how good of sleepers we were. Anyway, thank you very much for your help. As I read this comment thread I have a question about bottles at or near bedtime. His night wake up times are all over the place.
He is actually usually pretty easy to put down for naps and bedtime with very minimal to no crying. Once he has a bottle in the night we put him right back in his crib but he is pretty much already asleep because of the bottle.
Have we created a bottle association because it is right before bedtime? He is still awake after his bottle but is sleepy. We can put him into his crib awake and he will fall asleep on his own most of the time. When is the optimal time to give the bottle in the bedtime routine? We typically try to have him in his crib between and 7pm.
What do we do about the bottle association during the night? We figure that if he can make it some nights with only 1 feeding that if he wakes up the next night 2 additional times that he is probably not really needing to eat but just wants the bottle to fall asleep?
Try a bigger time gap at bedtime and see what happens. In the case above scheduled feedings are mentioned — at 11 PM and AM. Does this mean you wake the baby up to feed at this times? My son still wakes twice nightly to eat, but his times vary from night to night. Sometimes babies do well with dream feeds often this is helpful if for example YOU go to bed at 10 PM — you feed him then instead of napping for 1 hour only to get up then, follow me? This article came literally at the moment I needed it!
Anyway, after clearing his stuffy nose which might have been why he woke up and then feeding him, I realized he was still very very tired. So I laid him down again and he began to wail. Then I was really confused. Usually for naps, he whimpers a little bit but goes down easily. I considered picking him back up, except every time I went to, he rubbed his eyes.
Ok, he was really wailing, so I went back in there and kissed his head, replaced his pacifier, tucked him in, and then stared at him. Long and hard…..
I desperately wanted to pick him up because he was not acting like his usual nap-time self! I went back to the email and stared at that heading. And slowly, the wailing turned to crying, turned to whimpering, turned to silence.
And now he is fast asleep. He was tired darn it!!!! I AM watching you. I have nanny cameras hidden all over the place. Funny consistency story funny what we find funny these days newbieparents : Our 14 month old had been sleeping through the night for some time, but surprised us one night around pm with a crying wake-up.
He was completely congested, snotty faced and a total sad story. No fever, but super snots. We had all the cold-interventions going humidifier, snot sucker, etc , but I sat with him in the rocker for a few minutes thinking he needed to be a little vertical.
His seemingly fell asleep immediately in my arms, but the minute I tried to lay him in his crib he Freaked out. Okay, back to the rocker we go. My husband and I tried for an hour and a half. No repeat. No go. He just wailed, and more snot just ran. Finally, in a sleepy snotty state, I had a new idea. My husband and I laughed at our foolishness. Foolish, foolish first timers. Not foolish at all! Foolish would have kept at it.
Great post, Alexis. I think it might work that way… Curious to see what you think. I think it might be worth a try, if they feel really discouraged and worried at the thought of even more crying at this point, to wait a bit and try again after a week or two.
I call this hypervigillance for lack of a better term. And truthfully there is no good way to predict what will happen. And other babies who went the other way. Thanks for this post! We did CIO with our 6. Nights have also vastly improved, with our little guy waking times in a ten-hour stretch as opposed to times. When we started sleep training, he was sleeping for a hour stretch, typically waking for the first time around 3am.
Over the past week, it seems like his first waking is getting earlier and earlier — last night it was around 1am.
By nursing him at 1am, am I encouraging him to continue getting up earlier? Last night he woke at 1am and fussed for about 20 min, with some short hard crying jags. I wound up nursing him and he slept until am. I nursed again at and he slept until am, for a total of Any advice would be much appreciated! I would buy a nice toddler clock and immediately start coaching him on the concept of telling time.
Some babies regulate into a nice predictable pattern of waking up at X and Y hours. This is not your baby. You can go with it or you can try to monkey with the system. Monkeying may or may not work for you.
One idea would be to offer a dream feed when YOU go to bed. Just wanted to throw my support behind the need to bow down to the gods of consistency. Every few months my FIVE year old will start some bedtime schnenagins just to see if I still mean what I say at bedtime. We used your swing method to help our little guy to learn how to soothe himself and he has been falling asleep on his own for naps and bedtime in his crib since about 6 months of age he just turned one.
However, we continue to struggle with nighttime wakings. This is most nights, but sometimes he wakes at other times.
After this post I would say my lack of consistency is probably the cause. For instance, we are about to visit my sister and her new baby, if I let him cry he might wake the baby. Use white noise. See what happens. Thank you for the reply! I will bring our white noise machine and hope for the best! I have been working on my consistency and only responding to his crying for the one feeding around 6 a.
So far so good, just a couple bouts of crying for 15 min or less and most nights waking only for the one morning feeding. All of this while transitioning to one nap too, so not bad! He is sleeping through the night regardless, but gosh I thought there would be less crying by now. Last night after an hour of screaming I went in to reposition him because I could hear his head bumping against the crib.
The second I picked him up he calmed down, and he was asleep a couple minutes after I left the room. No more self-flagellating! Look at the nap schedule — maybe a tweak is needed? Or UP? Anything that is a high level of activity or bright light no outside play could work against you. Yup, bedtime too early was the problem! We had been doing bedtime about 2. Yesterday, the fever completely broke and she has rash all over her body, thus the roseola diagnosis.
UNTIL last night. When I went to get her she was thrashing around in the crib, and seemed to be writhing in pain. Turns out she was fecally impacted and needed an enema…so I guess it was a good thing that I used my spidey mama sense and grabbed her. But she definitely did not have the discomfort like she did last night.
She is also cutting 4 molars, but teething has never affected her before other than a low grade fever. I guess my question is — when after a sickness do you need to go back to regular routine? Do you still CIO throughout the sickness? If we did help her sleep during her sickness for naps and night wakings is it to be expected that she will need to CIO again now? Are we back at the beginning like where we were when we first decided to CIO at 8 months?
I think that sleep not just baby sleep is essential in having a happy, content life, and I think that you have given us so much happy, fulfilling time with our daughter because of our families ability to sleep well at night — you have truly helped to make this first year of her life an amazing, memorable, and well-rested event.
Myself and my husband are so appreciative for that! And probably with the illness, the ER trip, everything she accrued a bit of a sleep debt. When kiddos built up a sleep debt they have a hard time sleeping sleep is illogical like that. HUGE fan of your blog and your post ironically came the third night into sleep training…and the first night of inconsistency.
Our 5 mo old is a champ at putting herself to sleep. Same for naps. Goes down fully awake. For the longest time, she would go to sleep between , wake once to feed and be back down until we woke her again for the day. However then she started waking up earlier and earlier for that feed. Not good.
So we tried the Sleepeasy Solution, which recommends finding their earliest wake time, set your alarm and feed an hour before that. Her earliest wake time being 1 AM, we set the alarm for 12 AM, she could barely get down the 4oz she normally sucks down when she wake on her own. Too tired. But at she was up for 20 min the first night. On the third night, we also decided that setting an alarm for midnight sucked when my hubby could stay up until 11 PM.
So he fed her the dream feed at 11 PM instead of 12 inconsistency 1. She again woke at , but was up for nearly 2 hours and was hysterical at the end. Last night I thought she had settled, but she threw me for a loop when she started hysterical crying.
So where do we go from here? Feeding when she woke up and hoping it was 2 AM or later Do I go back to the 12 AM feeding and stick it out with the wake ups? She was waking at 1 AM, drinking 4 oz, then sleeping through right? My first thought is what if you just reset the clock and go back to letting her wake up and feeding her then.
But for whatever reason probably 1 of the ones I listed above it got messy real quick. Alternate plan — what if you ignore the wakings until and THEN go in?
What happens then — does she suck down 4 oz and happily go back to sleep till morning? I feel like a bit of experimentation is in order even if you risk flouting the Consistency Goddess a little bit. If it was before 2? But, for better or for worse, I continued to honor the Goddess of Consistency. We decided to go all in with the Sleepeasy Solution and follow their weaning plan which called for reducing the bottle an ounce each night. Two of the seven were 12 hour sleep nights one was a 2oz bottle, the other was no bottle - YAY.
In those 5 days, we had roughly 10 min total of crying and maybe one check in required. And they all resolved in her eventually putting herself back to sleep. She tosses her head back and forth, seemingly settles and the monitor goes dark.
The pattern repeats until she eventually falls asleep. She does still seem to fall asleep quickly after her last bottle some nights. Would this be the habitual waking thing? Or is it just that her terribly unpredictable daycare naps equate to terribly unpredictable night sleep? Habitual waking for 1. Could be due to crap naps at daycare. Bed time between which I was worried was too late beyond her last nap usually ending around , but maybe I should try 8?
The hour long wake times in motn are slowly killing me. Especially since last night was 2 hrs until I finally buckled and fed her to calm her. I also know I became inconsistent by doing this. I feel completely stuck between rock and hard place. I have been consistent with my daughters bedtime routine since she was 2months old….
She is now 10 months old and was going down easy at bedtime with a little bit of protests at night after I did CIO around 7mnths.. AND she learnt to pull herself to standing in the crib and screams bloody murder.. Now my mom is visiting and more changes to the usual bedtime. I will have to come up with a new plan for bedtime after my mom leaves…and be consistent.. Hi, Can you comment on CIO with older kids?
CIO seems much harder when they can talk, try to crawl out of their cribs etc. So my question is: is sleep training perpetual? Do you have to be consistent forever?
It was shockingly easy -at bed time we never had to do more than three intervals, amounting to 8 min of crying. But just doing bed time decreased the wake ups to three or four within twrlve gra. Two of which are feeding. Sometimes she puts herself back to sleep without it, sometimes its only a one replacement sometimes two intervals. Then after a wk of this she was only waking twice. Then this wk she randomly woke up at so instead of waiting I went right in, the next night more wake ups etc etc.
So are you essentially always sleep training? And therein forevermore consistent? I thought I would at least be able to laugh during sleep training. Well, this. I am throwing up my hands and asking for HELP! Our 8. This is night 7 of Ferber method and the cry time has not reduced at all. We have a consistent bedtime routine, she nurses before we start the bedtime routine, she is very sleepy when put down, etc. I want to give up, but then what comes next?? She is so smart and busy, we knew she would be determined, but jeeeeeesh this is heartbreaking.
Is it the right thing to do to continue? What can we change? I am at a loss, please help. Thanks for all you do. Nobody has tested ferber vs. Hi again, Thanks for your reply! We stopped with checks and we are now on what will be night 7 of plain Jane CIO. We are still working on our schedule, but we are making progress!! Crying at bedtime ranges from 25 to 45 minutes, and I see it becoming less and less dramatic every night, and our LO is sleeping hours straight before I go in for a feeding huge progress compared to waking 40 min.
We are still putting her to bed pretty late at night, but we figured out that an early bedtime, even following a hours awake rule, only led to almost 3 hrs of crying and I felt like a cold-hearted B! We think she is just used to going to bed later right now, and still needs a 3rd catnap in the very early evening.
We are bumping up bedtime by about 20 minutes every night and hope to be able to drop that 3rd nap in favor of the earlier bedtime soonish. Thank you so much for your support!! There is a light at the end of this tunnel…although it still feels far away! Ok, help! We are on Night 5 of CIO with our 6 month old. Hence, sleep training. CIO has been working well at bedtime so far… very little active crying after the first couple nights and now only some mild fussin on and off for about half an hour.
The problem is the night wakings. This happened the first night: she slept until , at which point I nursed her and put her back down. No drama. When she woke up at , I nursed her, and she went back to sleep. In subsequent nights, she has not only increased her night wakings last night she woke at , , , and 5, with my nursing her at 5 , but she has had increasing difficulty putting herself back to sleep when she wakes. No more 10 minutes and then done. Tonight is the worst.
She slept until then woke up and has been fussing on and off for an hour. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to just quit cold turkey?
So sometimes they wake up and you go nurse, other times no nursing. It can create a bit of an intermittent reward system. Generally speaking once an older kiddo demonstrates the ability to go X hours without food I would advocate not going in prior to X hours. But I suspect they will! Keep calm and carry on. I have a 3 month old son, and your advice has been so helpful at helping me navigate the first 3 months!
I have a question about nap schedules — at what age should I be concerned about my son having a regular nap schedule? Right now, it is hard to set a regular nap schedule because he sleeps for different lengths with every nap… It is also hard to set a regular bed time because his last nap of the day starts and ends at different times every day… Do you have any advice about how to begin to regularize his napping?
Should I even ben concerned about that at 3 months? Thank you!! At 3 months my son was awake for about 1. Dear Ashby Channeling Alexis : Thank you!! Hi Alexis — Another nap question!! My son is 3 months old. Our biggest challenge had been with his naps.
His last nap starts around How do I handle this situation? Alternatively, he sometimes sleeps for hours at that nap. How to break up the nap so as not to have too late a bedtime without causing him to be over tired? I would think about locking in a bedtime go with what you think is good for him based on your experience and being consistent about that. This consistent bedtime is a good first step towards a slightly better nap pattern too.
Just trying to make this point to my husband and silently to myself when I came across your page. Great site! With the new environment and the in-laws doing a lot of the bedtimes, things got all mixed up.
We also hit separation anxiety hard and learned how to crawl. I thought it was a short phase while he got used to moving in the crib, but its been about a month… so I knew sleep re-training was coming. We started this week with a nanny, and she leaves him to cry because she also watches a 2yo and cannot sit at the crib the whole time. The first nap he cried 20 minutes for the nanny, but then on Night 1 he was fantastic but also super-tired and only cried about 6 minutes.
Next morning nap was 12 minutes, afternoon only about 2 minutes. Night 2 was rough, he screamed 15 minutes and I went in to check on him patted him enough to calm him down but went out again and then he took another minutes.
This morning was great again, about 4 minutes, and afternoon was apparently good said nanny , but now Night 3 was a disaster. He screamed 15 min then I checked on him , then another 15 and dad checked and then about 5 before he was asleep. Sorry for the long post. Is the checking on him sabotaging things? Or do you think its just a bad idea to sleep train during the first week with a nanny cus of separation anxiety?
Are we actually making progress, just two steps forward, one step back? He was an excellent sleeper for months, so I know he can do it. I should say, he sleeps through the night himself.
And he does use a pacifier, but never complains when it falls out. I just let my nine-month-old cry herself to sleep for the first time. After months of agonising about it, months of broken sleep and a bedtime routine that was getting more rather than less difficult. And it was bad, but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Anyway, just needed to share! Roll on Night 2…. Well you might consider not hanging round I know I know — it feels super mean.
But regardless I hope things are on a far better path for all of you! Thanks Alexis! The support really helps. Tonight went well — twenty minutes of crying followed by five minutes of lying there calmly before drifting off to sleep.
So a vast improvement on last night. When I was a nanny parents used to ask me for advice, I know right?! It is difficult sometimes to take a step back as a parent and see some of the habits you are creating. So ask lots of people for advice! It is my experience that mothers and sisters love to give advice and I love to listen. It has been so helpful in my parenting journey.
More specifically, a few weeks back I posted about my adventure into CIO round 2 due to hospitalization, etc. I am happy to say that BOTH times have been successful. Round 2 was harder and longer BUT it is better this time. Consistency has been a major factor in getting this to work again.
We stuck to our plan and never deviated. It was tough because the crying was long and hard for a few weeks. Some days it would be 40 minutes and others 10 minutes. At night, it was easier. He went from 15 minutes to less than 5 in only a few days.
Currently: My son who is 15 months old takes two naps a day for hours each and sleeps through the night 11 hours. He still takes a bottle before his nap no more boob to sleep and is put in the crib awake.
He would go into hysterics, refusing to sit down in the bath or to let me out of his sight. This was unusual as he always loved the bath and reading books. He never had attachment issues. This was probably the most difficult part for us and consistency was most important here. We worked through it together in a loving and nurturing way which means singing and other calming methods, showing him we love him.
Out of some random thought this time, I stuck a blanket in his crib and discovered he is a blanket guy. Who knew? For our family this has been the best scenario breastfeeding on demand, sleep schedule set by his clock, start solids when he expressed interest, weaning, etc.
We have tried to change his sleep schedule reduce a nap, time change twice now and both times it has been terrible! We are happy to stick with what makes him the best person he can be and work around that. He has naturally dropped naps, weaned himself, etc. Thanks Alexis for your wonderful insights! Looking forward to the book. I would say that 4 months is often a time for a HUGE sleep regression which is often pretty awful.
Sadly however CIO during a sleep regression is often unpleasant for all involved. Also at 4 months you have a lot of other tools at your disposal. Hey there! Ok so-my 13month old boy is great at going to bed on his own. My question really is- how would you suggest I correct this?? How would that work? When he sees momma he wants boobs. CIO has yet to work with our 10 month old daughter. She continually gets more worked up. We need to get her sleeping through the night in her crib!
Right now she wakes times and sleeps in our bed. Reflux definitely makes everything harder. So my first thought is — is the reflux under control? This is a tricky thing as kids are always outgrowing their meds and what not. How exactly does she fall asleep? Her reflux is a thing of the past now; since about 5 months. Now, we bathe her, she nurses, and falls asleep shortly after around Then we place her in her crib. When she wakes, she wont fall asleep without nursing first.
Bryan, your post sounds exactly like my situation. Nothing yet. And self-soothing may lead to solid and more independent sleep skills over time. In this method, Marc Weissbluth, MD, explains that babies may still wake up to two times a night at 8 months old.
However, he says parents should start predictable bedtime routines — letting babies cry 10 to 20 minutes to sleep —- with infants as young as 5 to 6 weeks of age. Heidi Murkoff explains that by 4 months of age 11 pounds , babies no longer need night feeds.
This also means they can sleep through the night — and that night waking after 5 months old is a habit. Sleep training — graduated extinction, scheduled awakening, reinforcement of sleep rhythms — begins after 4 months old as chosen by the parents. Ezzo and Bucknam say that babies between 7 and 9 weeks of age are capable of sleeping up to 8 hours a night.
By 12 weeks, this increases up to 11 hours. The CIO method here involves allowing 15 to 20 minutes of crying before sleep. That said, they recommend cluster feeding in the evenings and doing a dream feed. Parents tend to give in during that second peak. In this method, parents are permitted to respond — but encouraged to leave again immediately after baby settles.
After that, you may extend the time between responses by 5- or fewer minute increments. Suzy Giordano and Lisa Abidin believe babies are capable of sleeping 12 hours at a time without a night feed by 12 weeks of age.
Once a baby reaches 8 weeks old, this method allows crying at night for 3 to 5 minutes before you respond. Instead of night feeds, the authors encourage parents to feed babies every 3 hours during the day. Many parenting experts agree that before CIO, you should get your child into a bedtime rhythm.
This might involve things like:. If you have a video or audio baby monitor , tune in to see what your child is up to. In some cases, they may go to sleep. In others, there could be some fussing. This is where your specific method comes in as to how you respond:. Your visit should be 1 to 2 minutes, tops.
So, there are times when your baby is more likely to cry and actually needs you. If your little one is really having a hard time, take a step back and evaluate the bigger picture:. Eventually, your baby should get the idea.
Responding at certain times and not others can be confusing to your baby. I want to walk you through what crying and sleep training really means. If you buy any of my courses I am not going to tell you to close the door for 12 hours with no intervention. While we definitely want your baby to learn quickly how to sleep who has six months to dedicate?!
There are of course outliers! Some children get in the crib, whine for a few minutes, roll over, and fall asleep within five minutes for the first time ever. There are then children who can take up to two and a half hours to choose sleep. Night one is the hardest, I will never sugar coat that.
Making change on night one is difficult. Within three nights you have to be seeing hope, success, light at the end of the tunnel, progress!
Sleep is complex! And my job as a Pediatric Sleep Consultant is to help you navigate the complexity of sleep training. Your child is in a loving home. A protected environment. Protesting change happens at any age. My favorite study on crying is from the American Academy of Pediatrics. This study talks about how after a 5-year study of children who had been sleep trained, there were no negative effects from their sleep training.
But guess what? Broken sleep is the worst. Broken sleep causes so many issues to your health, to your marriages, to the way you feel day in and day out.
I want you to know that YES, we can make sleep a thing, sleep is possible.
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