CIO at 9 months?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did a form of CIO with our first and plan to do the same with the second. He is pretty much a happy sleeper most days.

Cio definately works but I think to many moms try it for a day or two and than decides it doesn't work. THe crying will be there for the first week or two. Be patient. If you go in the third night and assume you have tried CIO you haven't given it a real chance. After the first couple nights, the baby will still assume that by crying you'll be right in. HE will get used to you not sprinting in but it will take a couple of weeks. Be strong.

[Anonymous]

At about 9 months I moved her into her crib in the nursery and slept in there with her until she was used to it and eventually she started sleeping thru the night, like 1-2 weeks and I moved back to my room. We've had our ups and downs since then and now at 18 months she sleeps just fine. And BTW, we coslept until then.

[Anonymous]

My son is 9 months old, too, and we had tried it all. He coslept with us until a couple of weeks ago, with several stints in his crib at night (beginning at around 6 months) as we tested out several of the methods. I read Ferber, Pantley, Kim West, and Weissbluth. I could write a dissertation on sleep after reading about and trying all of the methods! I was very hesitant to leave my son in the room to let him cry, so I wanted to try out every other option before attempting the extinction method. With many of the soothing options, I ended up sleeping on the floor in his room to help "shhhh" him, rub his back, etc., but it got to the point that I actually felt like I was making it a lot harder on him. He would just stare at me in the dark to make sure I was still there.

So a couple of weeks ago we tried the extinction method. We had really nice cuddle time, followed by bf. Then I put him in his crib, drowsy but awake. I patted his back, and shhhed him a bit when he began to cry. Most times he would fall asleep within a minute or two, and then I would leave the room. The first two nights, he cried for about 10-15 minutes. My husband and I watched him on the video monitor to make sure he was okay. It was very, very sad because he was upset, and we wanted to go in, but we decided to stick it out. Eventually, he fell asleep.

The first few nights he woke up a couple of times ruing the night, but we did not go in (just watched on the monitor). He cried for about 5-10 minutes and eventually fell asleep. The second/third nights were probably the worst. There was one night when he actually fell asleep in a sitting position---I think he was waiting for us to come in.

We're on week two, and things are much better. He's slept through the night with no wake ups for the past five or six days, and he no longer cries when I put him down at the beginning of the night. It is amazing for me to be able to sleep for 7 straight hours a night. I haven't done that since I was six months pregnant. It is fantastic!!!

Good luck to you, whatever you decide.

[Anonymous]

PP here again---I forgot to mention that I was terrified that my son was going to hate us the next morning. Strangely enough, he actually woke up in a much better mood than he normally did, and he was a lot happier during the day. I wasn't the only one who noticed it, either, so I wasn't just projecting this onto him!

[Anonymous]

Our son is almost 7 months and we are seeing success but it is taking a long time (which is OK by me if it works and he doesn't have to cry to much). We first are working on the nursing and are seeing progress. I'll describe what we are doing to cut out night nursings below if you are interested (sorry if it is a long answer :wink and then what we are doing to get him to fall alseep by himself. Oh, and writing our plan down helped me and my DH to remember what to do!

While I don't want to do the CIO Ferber approach, he has some really good info (as does Weissbluth) on sleep. Ferber explains that night nursings not only contribute to night waking because of sleep associations but also because of the increased wetting (our DS was leaking through 2 diapers a night) and the increased activity of digestive system. He suggests not going cold turkey on the nursing if they are actually taking in a substantial amount (which is evident in my DS wet diapers and the frequency of wakings). So the plan is to nightly increase the time between nursings. So we started out with 2.5 hours. If our son woke after an hour, we would just comfort him and I would not nurse (he would not be happy but would eventually fall back to sleep). If it had been 2.5 hours, I would let him nurse. The next night, we did 3 hours. The next night 3.5... In just a few nights his longest stretch of sleep has increased from 2.5 hours to 4, which is real progress in my view!

Next is the issue of falling asleep on his own. We co-slept for a while, but it was more out of necessity so we could all get sleep. But his wakings were starting to get more frequent and I was sleeping so lightly that I decided we just had to get him in his crib. This is how we are working on this issue: right now if he falls asleep nursing that is OK, but if he does not fall asleep or wakes up when we move him, then I don't let him nurse again. We sit beside his crib and pat him and whisper shhh. We stay there until he falls asleep. If he still gets really upset, we will pick him up and sometimes I will lay down with him in the bed (no nursing though) and he will fall asleep beside me and then we move him to the crib. The next step is to get rid of the laying down in bed with him, then the picking up. We are taking it REALLY slow, but we are seeing progress here too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you could make up your own version of CIO. That's kind of what we're doing with 6-mo-old DD right now. We leave her to her own devices when trying to fall asleep, but if she gets too worked up for more than a few minutes, we do whatever is necessary to soothe her (holding, nursing, etc.) Usually she just fusses and whines without breaking into a full on cry - but even then it's been hard for me to adjust to the idea of letting her figure it out on her own. She does seem to be getting better at falling asleep initially at night, and we're hoping it rubs off on the night wakings too. I drew inspiration, so to speak, from reading the No Cry Sleep Solution and the Baby Whisperer Solves all Your Problems.

This method worked for us. I sat in the rocker in her room until she fell asleep, sometimes up to an hour. I would allow her to stand up, whine, throw things out of her crib, play, etc. When she started to truly cry, I would go to her and give her a hug/kiss and lay her back down. During the first week, it took her between 15min to an hour to fall asleep. After the first weeek, it averaged about 20 minutes, many times much less. After about 3 weeks of this, we were able to lay her down in her crib and walk away. Once in awhile, she would start crying and we would go back in, but more often, we hear her "talking" for a few minutes and then she is out. Also, in the beginning stages, if I thought she just wasn't that tired, i would take her out to play a little more and then try again in about 20 minutes. That trick worked many times. We started this process when she was about 1 yr. old. She is now 15 months and still doing great.
Naps took a little longer since she was transitioning from 2 naps to 1 nap, but now we have that sorted out and she is doing better.

[Anonymous]

My son was an absolutely terrible sleeper - often waking as frequently as every 45 minutes, never sleeping longer than 3 hours in a row - until we did a modified CIO at 10 months. He's much much better rested and happier now, though still not a perfect sleeper. We followed Ferber as a guide and found it extremely helpful. (Read about 7 different books, and thought that Ferber was by far the best. For us.)

[Anonymous]

Maybe your daughter needs to get more exercise during the day? Our daughter didn't sleep through the night until about 10 months. She is now 5 and she has always been the type of baby and then kid that has to be moving and playing all day.

[Anonymous]

I think different babies respond to different things. For my son, CIO worked like a charm. But I don't think I followed all the rules, I just did what worked for us. For my son, it was the getting to sleep thing that was the problem. He would wail! Then just fall asleep. During the night, I would ignore soft crying out, or even just "I want attention" crying. But I would go in for the "there is something wrong" crying. Then I would comfort of only a few minutes, makes sure nothing was really wrong, and leave, and then let him cry it out.

For him, it didn't take long at all. So maybe if CIO is going to work, it works quickly.