Why I'm not CIOing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

My only wish was that we were in a society that would reward us for doing what's natural and not what's convenient. We need sleep because we have other priorities other than carrying for our children and the little ones are the main sufferers with the consequences.

They spend all day away from us and at night, when they need a little snuggle or a comfy place to fall sleep on we teach them to get attached to a piece of fabric and suck on a silicone nipple to fall asleep (so WE can get sleep).

Um, people need sleep, period. What happens when a stay at home parent whose main priority IS caring for their children doesn't get sleep? Maybe they drop their baby. Forget to close the cleaning supply cabinet. Leave a plastic bag on the floor. Get in a car accident on the way to the pediatrician. Etc. They don't magically win a "get out of sleep free" pass just because their primary role is caring for their children.

And as others have already mentioned, children need sleep too! You are doing your child no favors if you let them stay up and NOT sleep when nothing else is wrong. You can't make a child sleep, but you can take care of their actual needs, teach them good sleep habits, give them a healthy sleep environment, and then let them get themselves to sleep.

And unrelated to the above quoted post, I don't understand the folks who say you have to pick up your child to know if something is wrong. No, you don't. I had zero experience with babies before having my first, and I could tell the difference between different cries at 2 months old. There's the pain cry (needs attention), the hungry cry (needs attention), and the fear cry (needs attention). And then there's the "I'm not getting what I want" cry--if he could talk, he'd be saying "But mommy I [yawn] don't WANT to [eye rub] go to bed! [yawn]". Are you really saying I should go in there and pick him up when he's saying that?

I'm a SAHP and I sleep whenever my child sleeps. We both get plenty of sleep even though DC eats 3x per night.

Good for you for being blessed with the gift of interpreting newborn's language but not all of us are this way and I bet the mother whose child died in the crib crying for help is still not sleeping well at night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids forced to CIO simply learn that their parents will not respond to their cries. They're not learing to self-soothe. My husband and I adopted two children from Kazakhstan. We spent a month there and visited the orphanage daily. The children and babies rarely cry because they've learned that no one will respond. That's what CIO reminds me of. Dramatic? Yes, but what's the difference?

OK, I'm one of the reasonable people who have been involved in this thread, and I have a great baby who doesn't need to CIO.

1. I'm so happy you adopted! I want to adopt #2 & #3 - hurray for you, your husband and your kids!
2. CIO here is not like what you saw over there. A friend of mine has a baby the same age as mine, and she would not go to be before midnight if it were up to her. She's on the bratty side, and her parents have to let her CIO. It hurts my friend, but if that baby were my child, I would do the same thing. I totally get why some parents do it. It seems that the parents who are against it don't really need to do it that often.

You have a tough job; you have to show your kids that you love them so much every moment of every day because that's not what they've known since the moment they were born. You are a hero.

[Anonymous]

I happen to agree with the author of the blog. I, too, thought I would let my baby CIO, if and when it became necessary. Now, I can't imagine doing so, and my DD is a year and a half. Sure, illness and teething sometimes interferes with her sleeping, and she wakes up, needing a little extra cuddling. And when she's sick, she sometimes needs to be held while sleeping in our bed. When she's feeling better, she always returns to sleeping through the night in her crib. She needs her parents to help her on occasion, and we're happy to do it.

That's great, and that's exactly what i do. Now. But when our child was up every night, every hour, screaming, no matter what we did and never slept more than 1.5 hours at a time (usually woke up on the 40 min mark, all day, all night, crying) it's a different situation than needing a little extra cuddling on occasion. After trying everything else, after watching our son become a miserable wreck, after my husband nearly getting into an accident while driving at 4 am with the kid in the back seat because it was the only way he might, possibly, fall asleep again, we sleep trained and now whenever DS wakes up for whatever reason--teething, illness, thirsty-we go right to him, just like you do, figure out what he needs and deal with it. And when he's had his needsmet, he returns to sleeping in his crib. Just like your daughter. But what we didn't know is that his biggest need was for sleep, and none of us could figure out how that could happen. If rocking, walking nursing singing driving swaddling white noise swings zantac etc etc etc don't work and your kid does.not.sleep, you begin to feel incredibly desperate. Since you haven't experience what I or other parents have, you don't really know what you would do in this situation. I feel the same way about breastfeeding. I EBF, worked through multiple ronds of mastitis, clogged ducts, poor latch, etc, it wasn't easy, but would never judge another woman for deciding it wasn't right for her and her family. Because parenting is humbling, and I know that in general most parents do whatever it takes to raise their kids as best they can, and that often entails making hard decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I happen to agree with the author of the blog. I, too, thought I would let my baby CIO, if and when it became necessary. Now, I can't imagine doing so, and my DD is a year and a half. Sure, illness and teething sometimes interferes with her sleeping, and she wakes up, needing a little extra cuddling. And when she's sick, she sometimes needs to be held while sleeping in our bed. When she's feeling better, she always returns to sleeping through the night in her crib. She needs her parents to help her on occasion, and we're happy to do it.

That's great, and that's exactly what i do. Now. But when our child was up every night, every hour, screaming, no matter what we did and never slept more than 1.5 hours at a time (usually woke up on the 40 min mark, all day, all night, crying) it's a different situation than needing a little extra cuddling on occasion. After trying everything else, after watching our son become a miserable wreck, after my husband nearly getting into an accident while driving at 4 am with the kid in the back seat because it was the only way he might, possibly, fall asleep again, we sleep trained and now whenever DS wakes up for whatever reason--teething, illness, thirsty-we go right to him, just like you do, figure out what he needs and deal with it. And when he's had his needsmet, he returns to sleeping in his crib. Just like your daughter. But what we didn't know is that his biggest need was for sleep, and none of us could figure out how that could happen. If rocking, walking nursing singing driving swaddling white noise swings zantac etc etc etc don't work and your kid does.not.sleep, you begin to feel incredibly desperate. Since you haven't experience what I or other parents have, you don't really know what you would do in this situation. I feel the same way about breastfeeding. I EBF, worked through multiple ronds of mastitis, clogged ducts, poor latch, etc, it wasn't easy, but would never judge another woman for deciding it wasn't right for her and her family. Because parenting is humbling, and I know that in general most parents do whatever it takes to raise their kids as best they can, and that often entails making hard decisions.

Nicely put. I think this sums up the problem. I think a lot of moms opposed to CIO haven't experienced the baby that refuses to sleep even when their needs are all met - a baby that sleeps worse when mom and dad are trying to attend to his/her needs.