Decided to try again last night. Went down no problem at first, only to wake at 9pm and cry straight through until …dozed off for a half hour then cried from 11pm am…again, I cracked. This is an insane amount of crying! Need support. Push on with CIO or give up? What are you doing for soothing?
Are you using loud white noise also? Still swaddle? What sleep associations does she have left to work with? Also is this her first exposure to the pack and play? Do you feel that your presence there is part of the issue?
How would you feel about her sleeping in the swing at night temporarily? Has she been nursing a ton at night? What if you feed her when she wakes up and THEN put her down awake.
Does that change the amount of crying any? Thanks so much for your thoughtful response. And enough! I will eventually come get you. Last night she went down, cooed to herself for ten mintues then cried for two hours.
Then I read your post and felt okay putting this CIO on hold until we troubleshoot some more. Pulled her into bed. Not hungry, except for comfort. We broke the swaddle habit a month ago in preparation for this. Maybe do motionless swing for a bit, then crib…. Question about binkie weaning, do we have to break the habit all together in order to break it at night?
She falls asleep in the swing, I bring her into bed when we go and she wakes once to nurse typically, no biggie. Then if she wants to wake to nurse at 4am and snuggle in bed until we all get up, great! But my older daughter turned my boob into a pacifier and the bedtime routine took two hours every night and she still only makes it through the night with out some kind of reassurance 2 out of 3 nights…. Was hoping to not make some of the same mistakes the second time around.
But in the end, god bless these strong-willed girls of mine. They will run the world someday! If I could go back in time I would have encouraged you to ditch the paci and keep the swaddle. How are you using the binkie? Or just happy to co-sleep and NOT nurse? Ditch the paci, keep the swaddle. The godfather. I feel like I am going to the mattresses with this sleep thing! Day 7 of CIO and she is still crying. At 11 mons? Can it happen? At all.
It makes me want to stab my eyes out. A lot. This is becoming taxing at night time to say the least. What about putting him down on his tummy and doing a little tom tom drum on his back to settle him in on this position? Also give him TONS of opportunities to practice sitting up and laying down during the day.
On the floor all the time! It has been two months of CIO with my…. And she now goes to bd by herself with only a few minutes of crying, only to wake up 45 mins later to cry for atleast an hour…. Good luck weaning off the AM feeding!
Baby can do it — I promise! Alexis I could kiss you! Pervious to this he slept through the night from 2 months old. Then at 6 months was waking through the night. I stumbled on your website and I followed your CIO method. As for CIO being cruel and bad for your baby I say rubbish!! The fact that his mum gets a whole nights sleep makes all the difference. Hi Alexis, Reading your posts has been very interesting. After having done CIO with my son 2 years ago with great success and with minimal pain,I was excited to start it with my 6 month old daughter.
Her naps are good- roughly 1 — 1. She cries only a few minutes before settling down for the night. But at around or she wakes and cries on and off for up to 3 hours. She will stop and we will think she is sleeping,but 3 mins later she is up and wailing again. We have tried not going in there at all, and we have tried going in there to pat her on the back to get back to sleep that way.
That did not work. We even tried feeding her once. Now I feel terrible having had her cry so long for 2 weeks just to give up now. Lots of babies go through a 6 month growth spurt where they legitimately need extra food, even if they were fine without it previously.
I know you said you tried offering to feed her one time but am wondering if maybe she was so worked up at that point that she was TOO upset to eat? I would continue to put her down awake with LOUD white noise. If she wakes up tonight at I would offer her food, check diaper, etc. If before she gets worked up she refuses any food I would probably work to calm her with patting, etc. Possibly consider going back to the use of the swaddle. Oh please oh please help! We did CIO with my daughter when she was about 12 weeks old.
I know it was early for her but it was the best thing for the family as I was so sleep deprived. Well after the initial week things went really well but now at 18 weeks old she has recently started 2 weeks ago maybe? I tried to not go to her until 2am for her feed but started second guessing myself and CIO so I ended up doing check and console at 15 minutes intervals until she went to sleep. Sorry for the rambling but I guess I have a couple questions. How long do we give CIO at night awakenings for?
And 2. So what would I do? I would feed her! And her tummy is tiny so it may not be possible to get all the calories she needs during daylight hours.
So I would feed her. This will pass. Ive hit rock bottom. Im really sick and my 9 month old went from sleeping 6hrs straight to 1hr. Im frustrated ive tried cio. Ive cut his naps to max 3 hrs aday to see if it helped. Ya right nothing lol. I dont know what the problem is. We have routines. Hes not sick. I dont get it. Few things to consider: 1 Run it by the pediatrician. Maybe he snuck an ear infection by you? You never know so it always pays to check.
He might genuinely be hungry? It may be better for HIM to have you not come in? It turned out an ear infection that a doctor missed in all her smartness. His bedtime is 6pm since hes up by 3 pm at the latest. He still stands in his crib screaming at night. I go in change feed and check his temp and such. Based on the pitch of his cry if its just a mad cry cause I wont pick him up ive had to shut his door and let him go at it.
Last night it lasted maybe 10 mins before he fell over asleep no joke. Its hard cause hes sick right now but getting better. He hates sleeping though lol. He generally sleeps maybe 8 hrs a night and if im lucky 2hr total naps during the day. I cant do cio at naps he actually harms himself in his crib cause hes had temper tantrum since 7 months old. Im talking real temper tantrums he pulls my hair bites intentionally hurts himself kicks and everything.
Even throws himself on the floor like a toddler. Oh well no one has solutions to that lol. But thanks for your help your sites amazing! We newly committed to CIO Ferber style for our 6 month old daughter this week after we had to lose the swaddle a week and a half ago.
First night, she woke at 11, cried until , then woke again at 4 and cried for 20 minutes. Second night, she woke at , cried until Tonight, she started at That sounds pretty miserable. Hungry babies are more than capable of crying A LOT.
What happens if you go in, offer her some food, and then put her back into the crib? I would play around with that as I wonder if that is the root problem. That sounds reasonable. Unfortunately, this led to her eating too little during the day, which disrupted her naps. Two follow-up questions: 1. More convenient for us, obviously, but also I know sleep is shallower in the early morning, so it might be harder for her and probably us to settle at that point.
When do you think that would be safe? Most 6 month olds ARE capable of a 12 hour fast but sometimes they need 1 feed to happily make it through the night for another month or two. Hi Alexis, First of all, thank you so much for your website and for your thoughtful and caring advice.
I agree wholeheartedly with your advice. I sleep trained my first two children following healthy sleep habits, happy child. My problem is my third child. Aubrey is a happy healthy 6 month old. He is my most easygoing child and generally naps well and sleeps well. But we have a few areas that need tweaking and I am at m y absolute wits end. New problem. After hours after his 6pm bedtime he wakes up and cries for me to come and soothe him back to sleep.
This is consistent. It is not due to hunger, it is a lack of self soothing. This is the one time of the day where he is NOT easygoing. He loses his mind screaming for me, for an hour and a half. He used to only cry for minutes.
Now he really gives her. He is over 18 pounds. I wake him at 8am. Where, oh where am I going wrong? Say midnight? We are consistent. I have almost never gone in, except when we decided to try check and console for one night that was a bust, he just got madder , or a couple of times when I lost my mind and went in sobbing.
I just need some consistency. That first wake up might be at 9, or at 1, and it has even been as late as 3 many times in the past. It is driving me absolutely crazy, second guessing, shaking and crying when I hear my last baby cry, he hits me in all the mommy buttons. This all sounds so familiar—the age, the long screaming fits, the unpredictable wakeup times in the night, the teething complicating things.
Some of the screaming is clearly not from hunger, but frustration about being awake or separation anxiety or something. Thanks man. Good luck with your move….
At this time we are just ignoring him until a reasonable time, say after if he goes down at 6. Two night ago he woke after 3 hours and cried for an hour and a half and last night he woke and grumbled for a few minutes and put himself back to sleep until after 1.
If it makes you feel better get them some starbucks cards and a nice note of apology. Also we had company here a few weeks ago who had a baby who cried for 45 minutes at night. For us? Not such a big deal. Three nights in, and the CIO plus feeding seems to be doing the trick aside from some settling unpleasantness last night after a Thanksgiving trip home that ran too late—although we think the exhaustion also led to her sleeping straight through to Thanks for the idea!
And the neighbors turned out to be completely cool about it; their last downstairs neighbor had a much louder baby, it turns out. My gut says he is waking up surprised. Other possibilities would be any timed devices mobiles, music, etc. Hi Alexis, Thanks for responding!
There are no timed devices that change. Sometimes he is fully awake and sometimes semi-sleeping. He still does it… Three nights ago he screamed for an hour and a half, then the last two nights woke up, grumbled, then soothed himself back to sleep until after midnight. The only thing that has changed is that 4 nights ago he figured out how to roll onto his tummy at night. So, as for your advice, my question is, should we just continue to ignore him if he wakes before midnightish to allow him to soothe himself?
Our daughter is We are doing full extinction and have followed your awesome 14 step plan. Night 1: she cried for 45 mins before falling asleep. She then woke 2 hours later and cried on and off for an hour. I fed her when she woke at one and again at 5. Night 2: only 10 mins of crying before she fell asleep! Woke at 1 fed her. Up at 2 and 5 for feeds. Night 4: no crying when she fell asleep. Woke at 11 and cried for an hour before falling asleep. Night 5: no crying at bedtime.
Same wake ups for feeds. Night 6: no crying at bedtime. Up at 11 cried for 20 mins. Which brings us to night 7: I had my husband do the bedtime routine instead of me. She cried really hard for half an hour after he put her down. He was so upset! I told him it was probably an extinction burst but he is convinced that the change in routine him vs me has set us back. What are your thoughts on this? Should I be worried about the random 11pm wakings?
Thank you! Then it passes. We are on our 5th night of CIO with our 6 month old son. He has consistently been crying for 30 minutes each night before falling asleep.
That does happen sometimes. Another possibility is that bedtime is slightly off too early or too late. Or has baby been up TOO long? I think we got a strong willed one! The good news is that tonight was our 9th night and our son only cried for around ten minutes, so it finally feels like we are making some progress. That said, by pm he can hardly keep his eyes open. Hmmmmm, will have a good, long think about timings. Hi I have a 6 month old and am dealing with this same issue.
My whole plan was to have an 8pm bedtime tonight, but when she started acting so sleepy I thought I had better get her in bed. I think the issue was his being stubborn, rather than timings being wrong. We have always worked with a 7pm bedtime, and the late afternoon nap continues even now he is 11 months. At 11 months, he has two naps a day, and the second one is around the 4pm mark. So, to answer your question, we did a few more days of CIO and it then all seemed to click into place.
Hi- My daughter is 5 months old. Since the day we brought her home from the hospital she was swaddled and bounced to sleep both on a yoga ball and in a bouncing hammock. It got to the point that she also needed to be bounced to stay asleep, which was more work than I could handle day and night. Also, when she hit 4 months her naps shortened to minutes and she stopped eating during the day.
She was constantly overtired and a cranky mess by 4pm. She began waking additional times per night to eat. We decided on the extinction method for both naps and night sleep. We also moved her into her own room, switched her from sleeping in her hammock to sleeping in her crib, and stopped swaddling her. A lot at once, and we knew it was going to be a rough road. But we figured if we were breaking one habit, why not break them all.
I quickly gave up on nap training because she was getting zero sleep during the day, just hours of crying, and decided to only focus on night sleep for the time being. I have been holding and nursing her during her naps now. We aim for a 6pm bedtime, but most nights we put her down sooner because she starts showing signs of being overtired rubbing eyes, very fussy, yawning.
We have a pretty solid bedtime routine, although it does end in nursing and sometimes she gets really angry when I pull her off to put her in her crib. She wakes pretty consistently between 6 and each morning.
Her times for crying herself to sleep the past 8 nights include: 1 hour 8 minutes, 43 minutes, 1 hour 30 minutes, 33 minutes, 33 minutes, 34 minutes, 42 minutes, 1 hour 10 minutes. She wakes one or two times per night to nurse. Half the time I put her in her crib when she finishes nursing and she falls right to sleep. The other times she cries for 40 minutes to an hour and a half.
When I go in to nurse her at night she always has a poopy diaper. I fear that she poops before fall asleep and this might be why she is having so much trouble getting to sleep. Did we try to break too many habits at once? Can I nurse as the final step to her bedtime routine, or is this just a recipe for disaster? Should I check her diaper if she is still crying after a certain amount of time, even though this goes against the extinction method?
Is it normal that after 8 nights of CIO that she still cries over an hour? How would you feel about going back to the swaddle? The pooping thing is a challenge. Do you have a night vision monitor? Or what I would do is to check to see if she has poop once she is asleep. Hi Alexis, thank you SO much for your site! He is now 7.
He puts himself to sleep usually within minutes. Problem is, he still waking up numerous times each night. The wakings seem habitual. Then he wakes usually twice more between and and 3 and 4 and is up for the day around or 6. It all seems like such a crapshoot after midnight, like one night he went from an feeding all the way until almost 4 a. Another day he woke at , and 4 and we only fed him at and 4 and left him to cry at He has reflux and takes Prilosec twice a day.
Because we have to wait 30 minutes after Prilosec to nurse and because we have to hold him upright after eating, he often nurses as close to 10 minutes before bed. We then read stories, pray and sing songs before head to bed. In his book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems revised and expanded in , pediatrician Richard Ferber presented one method of getting children to sleep that has become virtually synonymous with cry it out — so much so that you may hear parents refer to cry it out as "Ferberizing.
Ferber himself never uses the phrase "cry it out. Most pediatricians agree that crying is normal and cry it out methods work well for many families. The cry it out approach assumes that falling asleep on your own is a skill your baby can master if you give him the opportunity. The idea is that if your child gets used to having you rock or nurse him to sleep, he won't learn to fall asleep on his own.
When he wakes up during the night — as all children and adults do as part of the natural sleep cycle — he'll become alarmed and cry for you instead of being able to go back to sleep. By contrast, if your baby learns to soothe himself to sleep at bedtime, he can use the same skill when he wakes up at night or during a nap.
Crying isn't the goal of this sleep training method, but advocates say it's often an inevitable side effect as your baby adjusts to sleeping on his own.
They say the short-term pain of a few tears is far outweighed by the long-term advantages: A child who goes to sleep easily and happily on his own, and parents who can count on a good night's rest.
Ferber is perhaps the most well known expert who advocates a cry it out-style sleep training method, but he's not alone. Pediatrician Marc Weissbluth, author of the popular book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child , says that crying may be a necessary part of helping some children develop healthy sleep habits. Her "basic bedtime method" is a variation on Ferber's classic progressive-waiting technique.
Also on the far end of the cry it out spectrum is the Baby Wise approach by pediatrician Robert Bucknam and co-author Gary Ezzo. In their book On Becoming Baby Wise , they advise against feeding babies on demand around the clock and instead advocate a parent-led feeding, wake, and sleep schedule.
Their method involves following a strict nap and sleep schedule and putting your baby down awake so she can learn to soothe herself to sleep. This means there will be some crying, especially at first, as your baby adjusts to your schedule. Both the Cohen and Baby Wise techniques are controversial and have drawn criticism from child care experts and many parents. Their approaches contradict advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics on feeding and sleep training.
First, wait until your baby is physically and emotionally ready to sleep through the night , usually between 4 and 6 months of age. Ferber doesn't designate a precise age at which to begin his technique, since it can vary so much depending on the child. If you're not sure whether your baby's ready, you can always give it a try or discuss it with your child's doctor.
If you encounter too much resistance, wait a few weeks and try again. Step 2 Say goodnight to your child and leave the room. If he cries when you leave, let him cry for a predetermined amount of time. See "How long should I leave my child alone? Step 3 Go back into the room for no more than a minute or two to pat and reassure your baby. Leave the light off and keep your voice quiet and soothing.
Don't pick him up. Leave again while he's still awake, even if he's crying. Step 4 Stay out of the room for a little bit longer than the first time and follow the same routine, staying out of the room for gradually longer intervals, each time returning for only a minute or two to pat and reassure him, and leaving while he's still awake.
Step 5 Follow this routine until your child falls asleep when you're out of the room. Step 6 If your child wakes up again later, follow the same routine, beginning with the minimum waiting time for that night and gradually increasing the intervals between visits until you reach the maximum for that night.
Step 7 Increase the amount of time between visits to the nursery each night. In most cases, according to Ferber, your baby will be going to sleep on his own by the third or fourth night — a week at the most. When to let your baby cry it out depends on your baby and your comfort with the method. Babies are generally developmentally ready to be sleep trained at 4 to 6 months.
By about 5 to 6 months, they can sleep through the night without needing to eat, making it a good time to try the CIO method. Keep in mind that your older baby may have already trained you to respond to her nocturnal tears with feedings, cuddling and even a visit to your bed. By 6 months, babies are wise to the fact that crying often results in being picked up, rocked or fed — pretty good motivation to keep on doing it.
If that's the case, sleep training will require some changes for both baby and you. After about a week of nighttime sleep training, naptimes should get easier. And she will have discovered the self-soothing methods pacifier, thumb-sucking, etc. Ready to try sleep training with your child, but looking for a gentler option that involves slightly fewer tears than the CIO method?
The Ferber method might be for you. The cry it out or extinction method of sleep training involves putting your baby in bed and letting her cry until she falls asleep without any comfort or help from you. As long as you know your baby is in a safe sleep environment i. A video baby monitor can be reassuring. Try to give the CIO method enough time to see if it makes a difference. Stick to a consistent routine for a full two weeks before giving up on it altogether.
Wait a few weeks until things have gone back to normal before attempting sleep training. And that's perfectly okay. You may want to start with another form of sleep training, like the Ferber method of graduated extinction, to see if it works better for you. Why is that? Some of them will throw a pretty epic tantrum if allowed to cry themselves to sleep. In many cases, these kids will totally trash their bedroom as a way of expressing their outrage.
There are actionable steps you can use today to make progress immediately. Not all cries are created equally. Some cries may need to be attended to immediately, while others can wait. The hungry kiddo can wait five minutes. If you need a break, please put the baby down and walk away. Calm down, get help, and remember that not every cry requires immediate attention.
Go through all of the usual needs and see if any of those were what your baby wanted. Sometimes you may have to go through things a couple of time.
Trust your instinct and do what feels right. It can be tempting to trust a book or the internet as the be-all, end-all expert. So if a particular cry is new or worrisome, go with that gut feeling. Contact your pediatrician if you need to. Just remember that you are the best resource on your child. Now, not every baby was able to complete cry it out in hours. There were some babies who took longer, although they were in the very vocal minority.
There have been a few babies that did cry for longer — the longest one reported was just shy of 3 hours. However, that particular parent reported that they did do timed checks on their baby. And then they decided that doing timed checks was a horrible idea that prolonged the crying. They reported things went much better the next nights without the in-person checks on their baby. Instead, they kept track via a video monitor. It just depends on what you choose to do.
In this study click here to read the abstract on PubMed via the US National Library of Medicine , researchers found that letting 25 babies cry it out caused a significant increase in their stress hormone levels. However, there are a few issues with the study that warrant further research. First, they used a sample size of 25 babies.
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