Anonymous wrote:22:00 here--- and despite what the books say, teaching your child to fall asleep on his or her own is NOT a golden ticket to a good night's sleep. My child was great at going to sleep... but he still woke up every 2-3 hours until I weaned him at 13 months.

YES YES YES.

Yes.

When women from non western cultures see babies being left to cry in the ferber fashion they think western s are crazy and cruel. I have seen this a bit. Interestingly in many non western cultures there are a lot more adults around in a household, someone would be rocking that baby in its crib or in a hammock for as long as necessary.

OP, try the double bed on the floor suggestion, this is exactly what I did, made it so easy just to sneak away. Is that level of crying stressing out your other child too?

CIO teaches your child that you're not going to respond to their needs. They cannot trust you. If they cry, they need something. Even if its love and comfort.
Some children are better sleepers than others. I have one that sleeps like a dream and the older one that sleeps with me and dh most nights. They were treated the same.

Do other countries worry about"sleep training" their babies like we do in America? Or are we just so worried about getting our own privacy and space back that we insist on trying to control and perfect our babies' sleep routines so they become as little of an "inconvenience" to us as possible? I don't know the answer to that question, but it sure seems like we put an awful lot of energy into how to train our babies to sleep on their own rather than just following our parenting instincts and babies' cues. If your baby needs you, he/she will cry. Go to the baby and meet her needs. Seems pretty simple to me. Yes, I am a little sleep deprived with my 3 month old who still wakes up needing me at night, but that's part of becoming a parent. I wish people would stop obsessing about training methods and letting babies CIO when their instincts tell them otherwise. It seems like a lot of intellectualizing of a fairly basic issue.

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - had to highlight this as I myself nearly choked when reading it. It's called ASPIRATION pneumonia, not aspirationAL - which sounds like some sort of pneumonia one hopes to develop in order to achieve some lofty goal.

Dude! 8-11 months is the worst time to sleep train. Read 'Bedtiming'

I have heard of a book/cd called the happiest baby on the block it includes Dr Karp's five step method.

Anonymous wrote:Ferber worked for us. We "Ferberized" both of them and it worked.

Vomiting must be avoided. My son was crying and some of it, via a cough, went down into his lungs. We spent more than a week in the hospital battling pneumonia. He almost died. It's called aspirational penumonia

Sorry - had to highlight this as I myself nearly choked when reading it. It's called ASPIRATION pneumonia, not aspirationAL - which sounds like some sort of pneumonia one hopes to develop in order to achieve some lofty goal.

(Sorry that your child had that experience PP.)

Anonymous wrote:20:55 here: OP - How did you do CIO without causing baby to vomit? My DS is approaching that 6 month window soon. And since he is still not STTN, I may have to do some type of sleeping training. However, I couldn't bear any method that involves lots of crying as DS will likely vomit.

OP here. Honestly hard for me to remember completely since I was so sleep deprived, but IIRC after the vomiting episodes we moved from Ferber/straight CIO to a sort of sleep lady shuffle, where after I nursed DH would sit in DS's room until he fell asleep. SLS has you start by rubbing their back til they fall asleep, then touching them, and slowly backing away and eventually out the door. DS would fuss and cry a bit with that, but not the full on screaming that came with the first CIO attempt. DH got as far as sitting against the wall but could never actually make it out of the room - as soon as he touched the door the real crying started. Then he went away for a few days, and I wasn't going to ask my MIL to do that, and BTW I have another child so I couldn't do it... so I just walked out. And as I mentioned, he cried for about 15 mins and then went to sleep.

In hindsight, the difference probably was that in doing the 'shuffle' for a while, we allowed DS to learn how to put himself to sleep. He wasn't happy to be left alone to do it, but we also weren't asking him to do something he just didn't know how to do. Whereas, when I tried the first time after months of nursing him to sleep, he probably just had no idea how to settle down in his crib by himself and go to sleep.

I think that sleep training and specifically the Ferber method is not for every child. You should read the books and decide what you want to do but, just like in every life circumstance, you also have to use your own best judgement. You can't follow "instructions" with your child so if a certain approach doesn't seem to be working you need to modify it.

We did sleep training with our son around 7 months old and modified the Ferber approach. It worked but not the way the books says it should have. And I definitely wouldn't leave a kid to cry so hard he/she vomits.

Use some common sense and good judgement and you'll get the results you want eventually. There's no complete instruction manual for parenting.

Anonymous wrote:Ferber worked for us. We "Ferberized" both of them and it worked.

Vomiting must be avoided. My son was crying and some of it, via a cough, went down into his lungs. We spent more than a week in the hospital battling pneumonia. He almost died. It's called aspirational penumonia

Did this happen WHILE you were ferberizing? If yes, GOOD LORD!!!! Why would you think it "worked?"

20:55 here: OP - How did you do CIO without causing baby to vomit? My DS is approaching that 6 month window soon. And since he is still not STTN, I may have to do some type of sleeping training. However, I couldn't bear any method that involves lots of crying as DS will likely vomit.

OP we are also using Ferber to sleep train our 10 mo son and it has taken 4 days but he he finally reached for the crib last night. If it is taking a long time and you are getting a severe reaction, please take a step back and evaluate other methods. Ferber is not the only way and the measurable improvements should be there if it is the right thing for you and baby.

Ferber worked for us. We "Ferberized" both of them and it worked.

Vomiting must be avoided. My son was crying and some of it, via a cough, went down into his lungs. We spent more than a week in the hospital battling pneumonia. He almost died. It's called aspirational penumonia

Ferber is sick. Doesn't work. Just traumatized parents and child