Crying it out

hi clowe77, just got yr sms and tried calling u.....how old is yr baby? why don;t u try shifting his sleep time ...make it 30 mins later than normal so that he can feed a little late and that way does not get up hungry in the morning.... 5.45 am wake up is not so bad....and i think u can easily push it a bit,,.also i know its the most difficult to ignore a 5.45 am call since u always feel that he is hungry.....my baby wakes up at 6.15 am sometimes....once i picked him up tried to settle him down but he wanted to play after that so he never went back to sleep....once i ignored him and let him for 20 mins ...ii.e. he cried for 10 mins ...then silence and then again for 10 mins by which time it was 6.45 am in any case so i picked him up.....once i just let him be for 10 mins and he fell off to sleep again and woke up at 7.15 am.....so it is trial and error and u will learn this way.....try to differntiate this cry from the late night cry and judge what it means? i would in yr place wait for 15-20 mins of crying and if u maintain complete silence he would go abck to sleep........but do try a diff sleep time like i mentioned earlier to help him sleep till late.,....call me if u need to talk
 
I did CIO for daytime naps. You need a week where you don't have any scheduled activities so you can focus on the naps. If your baby cries for 1hr before a 40min nap, try putting him down 10mins earlier. I swear it works!! there is a window, right when they get tired and before they get over tired (each child is different so you will need some time to learn his cues. eye rubbing is a late sign of tired already. for me, it's as soon as he yawns - just once, and within the next 5mins i will put him down.) Trust that he will not cry 1hr every day before nap time, he will get used to your routine. i think the crying is because they don't know what to expect and are confused.

I don't follow the clock. I used to, but now that I am better at reading my baby's cues, we have a slightly different schedule everyday but we always follow the same sequence. wake up/feed/play/water/sleep. now, as soon as i offer the water bottle, he is ready to doze off (this only works during the day) at night we are still at crying for 30-45mins every other night. i still haven't worked out why he cries on some nights and doesn't on other nights...what am i doing that's different??? haha need to figure that one out.
 
I also do what NYCMel does and wait for a lull in the crying to go in. If my elder son (22mths) wakes up crying, it usually means he needs more sleep and if i wait 10mins, he will fall back to sleep and the next time he wakes up babbling and happy. for my 6mth old, it's the same, if he's had enough sleep he will gurgle and be quite content to hang out on his own, if he is up crying it's bc he soiled his diaper or hasn't had enough sleep yet so i will let him cry and he will fall back asleep. if he doesn't go back to sleep or cries like he's hungry, then i will get him and try again at the next cycle.

babies are funny, you work so hard to get them onto a schedule and within a month or 2 they are onto something new and require a slightly different schedule. my elder son didn't fully settle into a 2 naps/day and 12-13hr nights until he was 11 or 12mths. i dont know if that was because i did CIO late at 10mths or because that is when they slow down and get more settled. my 6mth old doesn't nap at exactly the same time every day and he eats a slightly different amount everyday too. some days it's 3 solid meal and on others it's 4 solid meals along with his milk.

try not to get too stressed out. the crying is really tough to listen to but one day, the crying will stop and you will have a happy and well rested baby. hang in there!!
 
I found that by starting CIO at night, by morning we were over the worst of it and the naps didn't go too badly the next day. She had a pretty regular nap schedule in the day (despite a huge amount of time spent 'getting' her to sleep).

I was told if they cry for the length of the nap you get them up and continue at the next nap - or if they fall asleep at the end, let them sleep for a bit but get them up as close as possible to the wake up time. To be honest, it never happened that she cried for the length of the nap - the next day it was max 20 mins, then less and less - 10 mins at the end of the day.

E.g. her first day time nap the next day was 45 mins, she cried for 20, I let her sleep for 25 and got her up. For her longer lunch time nap she had become a classic 'wake up after 45 mins e.g. one sleep cycle' bub prior to CIO, after a few days she would do a full 2 hrs at lunch time.

We were as consistent with the day time naps as we were at night and it seemed to work well this way.

hope that helps.
 
one way i try to get my mind off is loggin on to geobaby in the middle of the night....like now...it os 3.39 am!!....my baby woke up and i waited for just 2 mins to realise it was a very diff cry....like he was in trouble...true enough his leg had got sstuck in the cot rods....i pulled it out and picked him up only to find out that he had poo=pooed....so nappy change brought a fresh volley of tears...then i held him intending to rock him back to sleep since he was quite shaken....bu then he thought it was playtime and got fully awake so then i left him in his cot and firmly left the room.....he has been crying since the last 10 mins now with a 2 mins gap and i waiting for him to stop....hope he does soon but being on geobaby sure helps!........clowe hope u r getting luckier toninght and u finally realised that it is not gas pain crying.
 
Gosh its 6.15 am and he is up! any ideas on how to make him sleep longer at this time....i have waited and let him cry for 20 mins after that i give up.....he goes to bed by 7.00 - 7.30 pm.
 
We seem to have mastered sleeping through the night, but I too wish she would sleep longer in the morning. At the moment she is waking up at 5.30am and won't go back to sleep. At this time she rolls over onto her tummy and then can't settle herself back and all I can do is go in and pick her up - if I go in and put her onto her back and leave again she gets really upset, and I don't want her to wake her sister so I don't have any choice but to get her. I have been leaving her for 15 - 20 mins hoping she'll understand that it's too early. I even opened the curtains for her and told her it was still dark and all happy babies are asleep now - it didn't work!!!
 
ha, there must be something in the air!!! thanks to all of your wonderful responses and advice, this has been my 4rd successful night using CIO and it has gotten better and better every night BUT baby is always waking up bet 5:30-6am! yesterday morning i let him be for 15min and he went back to sleep til after 7am but this morning i let him cry for almost half an hour and by 6:30am i felt like the world's worst mother and picked him up and felt even more awful because he suffered through the 30 of crying only to be picked up again - that must send out an awfully confusing message. or does he realize it is morning?? maybe the latter...

mushi, you are so funny. hope you managed to get some shut-eye last night. i don't think my baby is waking up early due to hunger because he is happy to play after he is picked up and when i give him the bottle at 7am he doesn't even necessarily finish it (less than 7oz). so i think he just wakes up because he's been in bed for over 10 hours and he wants UP!! understandable, right?
 
some kids are like that they cant lie down for too long. Our son for long time gets up everyday between 6-6.30 , we dont even try to put him to sleep again because he will not as he is ready to play.

if your normal time is 7.00 and the child wakes up at 6-6.30 i think it makes no sense to make them cry , But that is my opinion. Our son is 2 years old and we didnt follow the CIO ( we probably should have) but could not bear for him to cry for 30 minutes( too soft)
 
In the end takes what works for you. I do what NYCMel does and wait for a lull in the crying before going in for a cuddle or a pick up. This way, my son knows that crying does not get rewarded. We tried so many different sleeping training methods, but in the end, this one did work the best. Do what is comfortable for you and it will be the best for your baby.
 
*sigh* after waking up at 8am for the last week, my 6mth old woke up crying at 615am with a fever...both my kids are sick so I think I will have to CIO again once everyone is all better.
 
i have an idea....why don;t we all log on at 6.oo am tomorrow morning and give each other solace??? :) just joking!
today i have made him sleep in a grobag just so that his legs don;t get stuck in the cot bars again...but i have a feeling he is going to poo-poo again in the night and that means one more layer to uncover!! help me God!

ok another piece of advice i need form u all....i am going on a holiday for 3 weeks to my home country and despite all my brave efforts here....i am worried that due to the "caring" methods of my family my baby would be back to pre-CIO....anyone who has travelled home before and faced this problem? how can i tell my mom...don;t pick him up and let him cry?
 
Oh dear, that is REALLY hard. We went home in October and had to explain to my Mum that she could not go to my daughter immediately and pick her up if she cried. She hated the method, but understood eventually that it was all for the better.

By the time you go, your bub may be quite good with sleeping. Ours was, but we found with the time difference and change in environment, she needed to CIO a little at the beginning.

I found that that a really, quiet gentle bedtime routine as close as possible to the style at home, with lots of familiar objects all around helped her settle better.
 
Mushi, you've given me such a lift - nice to know there's other mum's out there who have forgotten what sleep feels like!
I swore I was going to do pat pat shush the whole way with my 7 month old , and it was going sort of ok until about a month ago when he realised that he quite liked me spending hours on end patting him . A few days ago, he was sick, so I nursed him on demand and took him into bed with me. Now he's decided that the cot is evil and has been waking up every 2 hours. Falls asleep with a big grin on his face the moment I pick him up and then screams blue murder the moment I put him down.
Probably going to do CIO next month (did it with my other one in desparation at 10 months and it worked in 3 days) Like you Mushi, I'm off home for Christmas and there'll be jet lag and sharing a room with my other daughter to deal with, so I'm going to wait as any sleep training will go out the window then. Depending on where you are going, the time difference and change of location can throw them out completely for a few days. (Did with my eldest anyway) So.. wonder how many hours of precious shut eye we'll get tonight!
 
wow this is turning into a helpline for CIO mommies! it really gives me a lot of reassurance to hear your stories. last night was great for me personally - little baby slept 11.5 hours with a short 5min cry at 4am during which he settled himself. am stilll waiting for a relapse, but so far so good. poor milkmonster - your little ones sound like they are suffering and you too as a result. at least you know CIO works and can try again when they are better.

mushi, we are going back to north american for 3 weeks in a few weeks and we are not planning to do CIO as the time diff will be too much for him to bear anyway so it doesn't make any sense. where is your home country - similar time zone as hk?
 
Leah, you tried CIO while back in your home country? Wow, good for you that you could and it worked. With a 13 hr time diff, I'm thinkin it's not even worth it to try because baby will be so thrown off by jetlag anyway and it would be cruel to let him cry in the middle of the night when he thinks it's day time and is honestly hungry and his whole body just feels out of synch. Only to reverse everything on him again when we're back in HK after a few weeks! That seems unreasonable on mommy's part. plus, i'd feel horrid about keeping everyone up all night with his crying and ruining their days. I'll do CiO again when we're back here if need be.
 
mushi have you tried lining your cot with a bumper? ours is a lifesaver cuz our baby moves around so much in the night - does at least 2 or 3 full circles around the bed in the course of 10 hours! sounds like a bumper might help your situation too?
 
Clowe - With 13 hours time diff you may be ok when you arrive especially if it's a night flight and you arrive in the AM. From here to Europe was fine for us and once there we didn't really need to CIO at all. Coming back was a killer though, we didn't CIO when we got home for exactly the reasons you list above, it took around 5 nights for her to get back into her routine fully.

We used a little CIO when we went to NZ which is only a 5 hr diff and it was really to get her 'to' sleep when she really was tired, not when she woke in the night because of jetlag. It wasn't too bad actually, just a bit traumatic at first for my mum!
 
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