When CIO Doesn't Work...

[Anonymous]

My almost 8 month old sleeps terribly. We have always had to feed him to sleep and then transfer him to the crib, even for most naps. Sometimes we have to feed him to sleep and then he will wake up in an hour or so and then we have to rock him. His long stretch was between 2 to 4 hours. He is also high needs and suffered from reflux until about 5 months.

At six months my husband started on insisting on sleep training. I sleep in the nursery with the baby and my husband sleeps in the bedroom alone. I was against sleep training but my husband is suffering from male post-partum depression and he felt that he needed me back in the bedroom with him instead of getting up with the baby all night.

I followed the book Precious Little Sleep and started with softer sleep training techniques. None of it helped. After that we tried extinction. The first night he literally cried for three hours. It was better some nights in that he only cried for an hour or so. The crying did not get progressively shorter though. Even when he cried it out he would only go down for a four hour stretch at most. Some nights he’d be up 40 minutes after he fell asleep. We did this for two weeks but overall there was no improvement in his sleep habits. It was torture for me to listen to him cry. My husband wants the baby to cry it out indefinitely which I think is cruel.

Since then, I have gone back to feeding my son to sleep. Right now, he has no long stretch at the beginnig of the night but has sometimes gone three hours or so in the middle of the night. I will admit that sometimes if he has no long stretches by 3 or 4 am I take him into bed with me and he will sleep in bed next to me. He sleeps really well that way but I stay awake to watch him and keep him safe. I know this is not sustainable! Has anyone else had this experience? Where do I go from here?!

[Anonymous]

Stop feeding him to sleep. It's a sleep crutch. If you absolutely need a sleep crutch, choose a pacifier. And stop co-sleeping, seriously -- not because of safety (your kid can roll over at that age) but because it builds sleep dependency that will ruin your family's sleep health.

I would have postpartum depression too if my spouse was sleeping in the nursery, not our marital bed, with an *8-month-old* - closer to a year old than a newborn. That is insane, OP, sorry. I know you love your baby and maybe you can't see this clearly, but you need to balance your life and prioritize your marriage. Ask the pediatrician for advice in addition to this forum.

I did Ferber (timed intervals) and I followed it to the letter. It takes about a week to see results sometimes. I would try it. And try feeding more (including solids) during the day to cut the night feeding out.

[Anonymous]

OP when you did cry it out and he fell asleep, he woke up a few hours later. What did you do when he woke up?

[Anonymous]

Hi op, I’m so sorry. This kind of stuff can be so so hard. I would really recommend a sleep consultant. I used one from the peaceful sleeper. She has all sorts of options for consultation ranging from just a 30 minute consultation to group sleep training where they are actually on zoom with you looking at the monitor with you. I did the group sleep training and it is expensive but it was worth.every.cent. This was my second and I knew it would be worth it but probably wouldn’t have been willing to pay for it with my first. Doing an individual consultation with them is a more affordable way so definitely a good option, but having the group sleep training was amazing. They will individualize it completely to you, do it as gentle as you need or adjust to your bay and are really responsive to your babies need and trying to figure out what’s going on with YOUR baby. And they don’t just do extinction, you do checks where you actually soothe and they again adjust how often you do the checks based on your babies needs (and your comfort level). I sound like an ad right now but I just really found it so much better than sleep training on my own like I did with my first which made me sooo anxious. And it felt soo much more responsive and gentle while still being effective. Anyway just wanted to share in case it helps. Fwiw my husband was hesitant and afterwards said he would have paid double

https://thepeacefulsleeper.com/group-sleep-training/

She’s active on Instagram so you can get a sense of her style. I did the group training with Ashley, one of her consultants so it’s a little cheaper than the main woman but she was great

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP when you did cry it out and he fell asleep, he woke up a few hours later. What did you do when he woke up?

She went in his room. Duh. It’s why he doesn’t sleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop feeding him to sleep. It's a sleep crutch. If you absolutely need a sleep crutch, choose a pacifier. And stop co-sleeping, seriously -- not because of safety (your kid can roll over at that age) but because it builds sleep dependency that will ruin your family's sleep health.

I would have postpartum depression too if my spouse was sleeping in the nursery, not our marital bed, with an *8-month-old* - closer to a year old than a newborn. That is insane, OP, sorry. I know you love your baby and maybe you can't see this clearly, but you need to balance your life and prioritize your marriage. Ask the pediatrician for advice in addition to this forum.

I did Ferber (timed intervals) and I followed it to the letter. It takes about a week to see results sometimes. I would try it. And try feeding more (including solids) during the day to cut the night feeding out.

Good advice. No more feeding to sleep, try the paci instead.

[Anonymous]

OP, I was in your shoes with my second child. People who say you just need to follow Ferber “to the letter” don’t get it. I really regret making my child cry that much when it was clearly not working, but everyone (books, dcum, pediatrician) just told me to keep trying.

We finally tried camping out in his room and that helped somewhat, but what finally worked was…. putting a sippy cup of water in his crib! All this fine, he really was thirsty - the nursing wasn’t “a crutch.” I found out at his 2 year appt that he had some allergies that inflamed his nasal passages but had no other symptoms, but I put that together with the fact that he had a tendency to mouth breath, and now it makes a ton of sense to me why he was waking up thirsty.

To me, if your child doesn’t respond to CIO pretty easily, there’s something else going on. The answer is not more crying.

[Anonymous]

PP above. Wanted to add: if he sleeps well with you cosleeping, just do it! You can still be in bed with your husband that way. People on dcum are so anti cosleeping, but with an 8 month old it is very very low risk. Put up a bed rail if you’re worried about rolling. You do not need to stay up watching him making sure he’s safe. You could even just put his crib in your room. That way he’s comforted by being in a room with you but you can have your bed to you and your husband.

[Anonymous]

I almost stopped reading at “my husband has postpartum depression” because no he does not. Your husband didn’t experience pregnancy and does not have a hormonal imbalance. What bullshit. He’s just a dude struggling with parenting or regular depression like the rest of us.

Anyway, I have a seven month old who still won’t fall asleep independently and whose crib is still in our room. We also sleep in separate bedrooms because we do shifts to deal with our terrible sleeper. It’s horrible but you aren’t alone.

[Anonymous]

Agree with getting rid of all sleep crutches, and it’s also very important to have a good, strict schedule during the day while he’s learning. I’d work with a sleep coach to come up with a schedule and plan. I was having problems with my relatively good sleeper and consulted a sleep coach and it was literally just an issue of changing nap times during the day, and not rocking before bed anymore. Has slept 12 hours through the night since.

[Anonymous]

Nursing to sleep is not "a crutch". It's totally fine. I nursed to sleep until my kid was 1. She's 4 now, and a great sleeper. She moved naturally from falling asleep while nursing to staying awake but drowsy before falling asleep on her own, to not nursing at all.

OP, to me the main problem you are having is that your DH is making a lot of demands based on his needs and they disagree with both what your baby seems to prefer and what you are instinctively gravitating towards. I understand your spouse has mental health concerns, but that does not entitle him to make these sorts of demands.

I think you need to have a conversation with him that accounts for everyone's needs (yours, his, AND the baby's) and come up with an approach that works for all of you. That will mean some compromising for both of you. You are obviously not going to do strict CIO because you are clearly not committed to that. But also cosleeping in the baby's room isn't working either if it means you don't sleep. Your baby is looking for extra comfort and assistance with sleep but also needs some help facilitating self-soothing and learning to fall asleep on his own. Come up with your own method that enables you to sleep, get time with your DH, and help your baby.

One thing we did during this phase was develop some rules about going in the baby's room at night. We always let her cry for 1-3 minutes to see if she'd fall back asleep. After that, we could go in but our first move was to comfort without picking her up -- offer pacifier, rub her back, etc. If that didn't work, we could pick up and rock. If that didn't work, I'd nurse. It took time (a few weeks) but eventually most wakeups could be handled without picking her up, and she'd reduced the number of overall wakeups. Within 6 weeks she was STTN. But well before that, our sleep greatly improved and we also relaxed a bit because we had clear gameplan and were both totally on board. No middle of the night arguments, no recriminations about who was right.

[Anonymous]

That’s so hard OP and months of sleep deprivation or broken sleep make it so much harder. I’m sorry.

I don’t have any suggestions for your particular situation but I will say if it doesn’t feel right to you in your gut, then don’t do it. There are plenty of things you’ll do as a parent that you don’t enjoy, things your kid doesn’t like and will let you know it. But you have to believe in what you’re doing. If you think in your gut that letting your baby cry is the right thing to do, then take that approach. If you know it’s not the right thing - not that it is hard or you don’t like it, but I’d it feels wrong - then don’t do it and figure out something else. People are going to give you all kinds of advice and call you too soft or too hard, or that you’re damaging your kid or your marriage. Listen to the ideas. There are a lot of good ideas. Take what works. Trust yourself.

[Anonymous]

I feel your pain , we are using a sleep consultant at the moment and so far it’s been very helpful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s so hard OP and months of sleep deprivation or broken sleep make it so much harder. I’m sorry.

I don’t have any suggestions for your particular situation but I will say if it doesn’t feel right to you in your gut, then don’t do it. There are plenty of things you’ll do as a parent that you don’t enjoy, things your kid doesn’t like and will let you know it. But you have to believe in what you’re doing. If you think in your gut that letting your baby cry is the right thing to do, then take that approach. If you know it’s not the right thing - not that it is hard or you don’t like it, but I’d it feels wrong - then don’t do it and figure out something else. People are going to give you all kinds of advice and call you too soft or too hard, or that you’re damaging your kid or your marriage. Listen to the ideas. There are a lot of good ideas. Take what works. Trust yourself.

The problem is that moms like OP often have a hard time with boundaries and base a lot of what they do on their emotions. So if she reads this she will immediately go with - crying feels wrong, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and hope it gets better.

[Anonymous]

Your title is misleading. You didn’t do CIO and you’re not doing it now. You’ve failed at sleep training and you’ve put allowing your child to keep you up over your marriage. There is no benefit to being awake throughout the night with your kid!! Seriously put your child to bed and go back in the next morning. I do not understand women like you.