You cio or your child wakes up forever

Yep, we just bought the biggest bed we could fit in the room and all slept together. Gradually the kids decided to sleep in their own beds. Sometimes, even then, they came in during the night - but it’s just not that disruptive if you have space and enough pillows.

On the whole, teenagers don’t want to sleep with their parents!

I can only speak about what I'd do (and have done) in this situation. Personally, I'd put a mattress in the corner of my room for the 6yo and tell him it's up to him, he can sleep there, but he can't wake me up. And a travel cot for toddler. But my bedroom is quite big.

I didn’t sleep train, and can comfortably say I wouldn’t have, for this child. Who magically went from waking every 2 hours to sleeping through… overnight. Aged 2. Would I have resorted to sleep training with a different baby who didn’t just suddenly get it? I don’t know

I don't know what the answer is. I think it's largely luck. Very easy for me to say I'd never sleep train my child when my child has always slept well.
It does feel wrong to me to let then cry for sustained lengths of time but I can see the place for some types of sleep training for babies that don't sleep well.

I have twins and did CIO by accident:
When they were around 3-4mo (I think…) they would cry to be rocked/cuddled when put down for a nap. I tried doing it to both at once, didn’t work, switching between them didn’t work either, so I thought I would take care of the one who was almost settled and then move on to the other baby.
So here I am, rocking/patting baby 1 while baby 2 cries. But of course after a few minutes baby 2 was asleep.
After that I always let a bit of time pass before coming to settle them when they cried, and honestly most of the time they self settled very quickly.

He decided one day, when he was about 4 and a half, that he wanted to sleep in his own bed. He had always had his own room with a bed, clothes and toys he’d just never slept in it.

My 18 year old did the same, as did my 11 year old. All around the same age, my 11 year old it was the week after her 5th birthday as her cousin wanted to sleep over. They slept in her room and she just continued.

My youngest is 5 at the weekend and hasn’t said she wants to go to her own room, and that’s fine, it will come soon. She won’t be in our bed when she’s 15, I can guarantee it. She’s the bad sleeper though, but so am I these days to be fair, so it’s not too bad.

I think it depends on the baby. And on you. With DD I was OBSESSED with sleep. When she was a baby she never slept longer than 20 minutes at a time and developed insomnia. It was awful. But I didn't want to let her cry herself to sleep, partly because when we tried to leave her she would just escalate and become more and more hysterical. She didn't "fuss" and go to sleep. So we kept breastfeeding or rocking her to sleep and she got there. She's the best sleeper ever now, if she's asleep you could pick her up and throw her in a pool and she'd barely stir.

With DS I decided my sleep was most important and the way we got there was to cosleep. It meant that wake ups (for me) were just rolling over and getting a boob out. This meant I didn't' have to get up and really wake up, so I didn't get the same insomnia issues. He woke up at night till he was about 6, but just gets into our bed and goes right to sleep. This didnt' bother us (we barely woke up) and he didn't do it if staying with others, so it wasn't an issue. Now he's older and sleeps in his own bed all night.

I actually felt (for me) the biggest change to the stress about sleeping was trying not to think about it all the time. Accepting that there would be a while where sleep was hard to come by and just do what I could to keep myself rested. With DS I did not want to be back where I was with DD and actually although he probably woke more I overall felt more relaxed and rested.

Bear in mind OP that if your oldest is autistic then it's quite possible your youngest is ND too. DS was still waking every hour or two at night till just gone 2, turned out he was autistic - but not diagnosed till nearly secondary school age. It did stop though and by three he was sleeping through. Night weaning and him eating more made the difference I think, as well as just being older.

Crying it out doesn't teach them anything apart from to give up crying because no one is coming.

Yeah, somehow, my 23 year old manages to sleep in his own bed, and for a period of a year, in a bed in a different country to me!

Which is baffling as everyone told me that I would NEVER get him out of our bed when he was little and we co slept. I was planning on him being in with us until he married.

I think the NHS now recommends the moving chair method, so you stay but move further away. There are lots of similar methods to that.

With DD we tried, very gently, to encourage self soothing (putting down while drowsy, etc) and she got there around 2. With DS I coslept and found I got more sleep that way.

Weaning worked for my eldest almost immediately she slept through after I weaned her. I weaned my youngest at 14 months and it didn’t help at all with sleep- she was teething and had nursery illnesses though!

Of course they wake up forever if you don't do CIO? How many 40 year olds do you see breastfeeding to sleep?

Do what you need to do, but there are other methods that are far more gentle than CIO (by which I assume you mean controlled crying, not just shutting the door at 7pm and ignoring all cries all night). Even the NHS doesn't recommend controlled crying anymore.

Sorry things are rough OP!

I have a 10 month old so very early days - I breastfeed and bedshare, it’s great. Breastfeeding at night without bedsharing would be sooo hard I think.

I was only sleep deprived for the (very) short period I tried to make my baby sleep separately as everyone tells you to do - that sucked big time.

To all the PPs saying sleep training somehow “teaches” a child to sleep and without it they don’t “learn” to sleep - how in heck did hundreds of generations of humans manage to sleep before some male scientists and Instagram sleep consultants came along then 😂

It depends on the child- I responded to my 4 year old multiple times a night until all of a sudden two weeks before her second birthday she started sleeping through the night now she rarely wakes and puts herself to sleep.
My younger daughter has just started sometimes sleeping through at just turned two but still needs cuddles to get to sleep.

It was much harder with my eldest(ASD) and he was older but we used a reward system. So initially quite a high blue reward for staying in bed, then they need to do a couple of nights, lower the value etc until it is just habit. With DS2 I started just popping out for a wee, then for 5 minutes, then 10 etc. The important thing is that you come back and they see that you will return. After a little while, I’d pop out and see if they were quiet and just wait. Or doing the hoovering worked as they could see me and the noise helps as well. My bedroom was so well hoovered for a week or two!

I am just really lazy. All of my 4 have slept with me from birth until they were 4 or 5 years old and decided to sleep in their own beds (age gaps, so I’ve only ever had one in with me at a time).

My just turned 5 year old is still in with us, but she’s a bad sleeper sometimes. The others all slept like the dead. She also shows no signs of wanting to go her own room.

This time it’s okay now as I’m in my 40s and I don't bloody sleep myself these days, so I’m fairly unbothered.

They are only little for such a short amount of time though, I love co sleeping and every nap all of them had as babies and toddlers, they were on me.

I did not believe that CIO was the right thing to do. My children now sleep brilliantly. One has SN, one does not. Yes, we had some interrupted sleep for a while. However, for my family not leaving my children to cry was the best option. I think you have to do what feels right to you.

Sleep training began on the first day of life for my DC. Not leaving them to cry but putting them down awake to fall asleep in their cribs. We probably did have the odd period of poor sleep due to illness etc but I can honestly say that by 5 weeks my eldest slept through 11-6 and was a good sleeper thereafter.

As they got older we did occasionally have to be firm at bedtime but generally they were independent sleepers from the off.