To try CIO?

[Babymeanswashing]

I know it’s a contentious issue on here, but AIBU to try CIO on a nine month old?

Attitudes are variable. I don’t believe it will have her growing up like a child in a Romanian orphanage but my main worry is that it just won’t work and she’ll end up completely hysterical and still sleeping badly.

I’m eager to avoid her growing up a poor sleeper tbh.

Bear in mind I haven’t done it yet so don’t totally flame me!

If Gina says ‘nap at 930 for 45 minutes’ and she won’t go down, then eventually she goes to sleep at 10 but wakes for thirty minutes, what do you do?

I don’t recall saying it’s a lot of effort in regard to night weaning, and if I did I didn’t mean it as in I couldn’t be bothered. She will scream. Like most parents I don’t actually enjoy hearing my child in distress. So it’s a lot of effort as in emotional effort.

I think it is fairly apparent I haven’t been ‘lazy’ at all. I have read the books and tried the gentler sleep methods and I’m still nowhere near a decent night. I’m not actually arsed about not sleeping through but maybe two wake ups?

Co sleeping doesn’t work. If it does for you great. It doesn’t for us. I’m really sorry if I sound a bit sharp there but it always gets said on here and it isn’t the catch all solution. Maybe there is no solution. But the things 1940s has said to me over something ive thought of and haven’t done, are awful.

That’s true of all books though. DD hasn’t read Gina Ford but she hasn’t read Sarah Ockwell Smith either.

@Babymeanswashing what time is her bedtime? This is a really tricky stage with sleep as their not quite old enough to drop to 2 naps but 3 means they're not tired enough to sleep at night. If shes sleeping til 330/4 then bedtime should be around 630/7

If shes waking up at 7 then nap at 10 is great.

Afternoon nap should then be 3 hours max after wake up.

How long is the bath and bedtime routine? If too long it can cause over stimulation and cause sleep issues?

I know, I go off her wake windows. The best days are late bedtime. So she’s due a nap now, so I’m hoping today will be

930-1030

230-330

630-650

Bed at 950.

If her second nap is longer, and so she only has two naps, she ends up going to bed early but waking up all night. Whereas if she goes to bed late she only wakes up once/twice. No idea why.

I just found gf had a very typical of most babies routine - it'll take a bit of time to implement but it really helped me especially in the older baby phase - it does restrict you to home and certain times but does work well
My babies were not easy either but would sleep at those times- the afternoon nap after lunch was always the key one ...I had to start off 'co napping ' as the sleep cycle meant they would stir around 45 mins into the nap and if I was there I could settle them back and they'd have another hour ...then did the same but in the cot ...I think you'll find nights easier if you can try and sort the daytime naps first

YANBU. Sleep is so important and teaching your baby good sleeping skills sets them up for a lifetime of great sleep!

Personally I didn't feel comfortable with extinction (CIO) but we used Ferber at six months. Extinction is just as effective and safe though so it depends what you feel you'll be able to stick to.

Don't listen to the people who say it's harmful, that's not backed up by any evidence and sleep training has been well researched. There's a good chapter exploring the evidence in the book Crib Sheet by Emily Oster if you're interested.

Best thing we've ever done as parents tbh. DS became so much happier once he was getting good quality, restful sleep. He's 20m now, goes to bed at 6.15pm, gets up at 7am, and has two scheduled naps in the day. He hasn't cried going to sleep for a year. Just goes down, waves goodnight and nods off before we've managed to turn the monitor on!

I think you need to increase the afternoon nap and ditch the teatime nap and bring bedtime forward to 630/7 ...then you can have your evenings back to yourself
Still keep the morning nap but make sure no more than an hour (I can't remember exactly hence why I d check one of the well known sleep routine books)

It really doesn’t work.

If you are getting a lot of crying at night anyway, then honestly just sleep train. You will all be better for it.

@Thirtyrock39 usually I recommend keeping the morning nap as the big nap as this is the sleep that wil naturally become the 1 afternoon nap when the child is older

@Babymeanswashing what time does shw go to bed if she only has 2 naps

My babies sleep turned horrendous around 8 months - and it was never good - she woke at least every half hour if not more. This lasted for about a month before it stretched to every hour, then every two... now at 16months she wakes once or twice a night.

We did nothing that helped. When we tried all the different methods she just cried more, and it made her upset and clingy the next day. It also stressed us out and it made us miserable to leave her upset. She improved herself over time, we just gave her the space to do it.

What helped me was that I went back to work when she was a year old, so it had improved enough that we could cope with work schedules. So I get what it's like to be worried about how your going to cope when you return to work, but just remember that childrens sleep changes all the time and what you're experiencing now will not be what you are experiencing in a few months.

Its important to remember that its not just mum/the parents suffering from sleep deprivation when their baby doesn't sleep, the baby suffers too, so waiting it out can be cruel as well. If gentle methods don't work, and the baby needs to sleep better for their own well-being, then other methods should be tried.

OP - night weaning should be the first step for sure, as she might start sleeping better without any intervention once she is night weaned. With DS I pushed back the time I would feed him further and further back, so for instance to begin with I decided no feeds until after 10pm and did my best to settle him without feeding (he was breastfed, but same concept with bottlefed) and then the first wake up after 10 I fed him. Each night I pushed that first feed back further until it wasn't until the early morning and so became the first morning feed (and some months later I cut that out too but not straight away).
I also did CC when needed later on, I didn't stick to any specific timings but went by the sound of his cry, if he sounded distressed (after initial few minutes of angry protesting) I went in but if it was a grumbly kind of cry I let him be. I decided to sleep train him because I didn't sleep train DD,we both suffered bad sleep deprivation for years, bedtime was a horrible source of stress for both of us, and she still suffers from poor sleep at 10 years old. Meanwhile DS goes to bed happy, knowing he will soon fall asleep, and there's no stress. A few nights of increased stress is much better healthwise than years of increased stress.

@Natsku

Its important to remember that its not just mum/the parents suffering from sleep deprivation when their baby doesn't sleep, the baby suffers too, so waiting it out can be cruel as well. If gentle methods don't work, and the baby needs to sleep better for their own well-being, then other methods should be tried.

OP - night weaning should be the first step for sure, as she might start sleeping better without any intervention once she is night weaned. With DS I pushed back the time I would feed him further and further back, so for instance to begin with I decided no feeds until after 10pm and did my best to settle him without feeding (he was breastfed, but same concept with bottlefed) and then the first wake up after 10 I fed him. Each night I pushed that first feed back further until it wasn't until the early morning and so became the first morning feed (and some months later I cut that out too but not straight away).
I also did CC when needed later on, I didn't stick to any specific timings but went by the sound of his cry, if he sounded distressed (after initial few minutes of angry protesting) I went in but if it was a grumbly kind of cry I let him be. I decided to sleep train him because I didn't sleep train DD,we both suffered bad sleep deprivation for years, bedtime was a horrible source of stress for both of us, and she still suffers from poor sleep at 10 years old. Meanwhile DS goes to bed happy, knowing he will soon fall asleep, and there's no stress. A few nights of increased stress is much better healthwise than years of increased stress.

All of this. It can be really cruel to wait it out. Not just on parents but baby too.

What @Natsku wrote. I know a couple of families who have chosen to let the child get there in their own time. The result seems to be literally years of poor sleep for 2/3 people, adult and child. One had an 18m old who unilaterally decided to stop napping, lots of shenanigans until 10pm most nights with taking off nappy (and sometimes smearing shit around), all sorts. He was like a zombie during the day.

Nobody is denying sleep training can help.

But I truly don't believe OP has out enough actual effort into gentle sleep training and CIO extinction method is absolutely barbaric

Our oldest DD had a really bad patch at 9 months, and I was so tired I started to have dissociations (not great when you have a pre-existing mental health problems. The clinical psychiatric nurse told me there were studies showing Ferber and CIO led to some emotional issues, but that me ending up in hospital and not bonding with her would lead to far greater emotional deficits and stress in her body and life. She cried (just a bit whingey not full on hysterics) for no more than 30 minutes the first night. 2nd night she got too upset, so my DH patted her when she got really upset but then left when she calmed. Went to sleep a bit later. Third night onwards, she slept and so did I. It saved our relationship, and she still sleeps 13 hours a night at 10. Sometimes the ends justify the means.

Except you didn’t ask, did you?

I’ve looked at and tried Ferber, Lucy Wolfe, Ockwell-Smith, and got nowhere. I’m fully open to suggestions but answering me in the way you did actually just meant I hid the thread and I cried. Whereas if you cared about my child - who has never once been left to cry - you’d have tried to help. If your concern was actually barbaric treatment of babies you’d want to prevent this happening.

You don’t give a shit about babies. You just wanted for someone you don’t know to feel as bad as possible. For a thought, not even an action. So don’t act as if you are a superior person to me. You’re not.

Apologies @Confrontayshunme that was obviously a cross post.

I was feeling a bit desperate last night!

I don't give a shot about babies? Says you who opened a post on extinction CIO and slurring Romanian orphanages.... sure

@1940s

Nobody is denying sleep training can help.

But I truly don't believe OP has out enough actual effort into gentle sleep training and CIO extinction method is absolutely barbaric

OP doesn’t have to prove she has ‘tried hard enough’ at a method you deem suitable before she is allowed to move onto extinction.

You speak with a lot of confidence for someone who knows so little. Here’s some info to educate you.

No peer-reviewed research has reported detrimental effects from sleep training.

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/4/643

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/05/21/peds.2015-1486

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/3/e621

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/e203

Here's a look at the Middlemiss study, which is usually cited by people against sleep training or extinction (CIO): expectingscience.com/2016/04/21/the-middlemiss-study-tells-us-nothing-about-sleep-training-cry-it-out-or-infant-stress/

And here are the authors of some of the studies on child abuse and neglect say that anti-sleep-training people are mis-citing their work: ideas.time.com/2012/05/10/the-science-behind-dr-sears-does-it-stand-up/

A little information on the "cortisol" fear.

"In terms of their effects, the difference between short-term and chronic stress is one not of degree, but of kind. Short-term stress enhances memory; chronic stress impairs it. Short-term stress boosts the immune system; chronic stress weakens it.
So where does that leave us? A little stress, even in infancy, is fine, if not beneficial, but too much for too long is very, very bad.

Do we know exactly where sleep training fits in this spectrum? Just how much stress does a baby experience during cry-it-out?

The short answer is that we don’t know for certain. Everything we do know, however, suggests that this amount of stress, in the context of a warm, loving family, is just fine.

I believe that sleep training is not only not harmful, it is beneficial. Successful sleep training can decrease depression and chronic stress in the parents, and this benefits parents and their babies. Unlike sleep training, having a depressed mother during early childhood has been shown, repeatedly, to be linked with worse long-term outcomes for children."

expectingscience.com/2016/04/12/critics-of-cry-it-out-fundamentally-misunderstand-how-stress-affects-the-brain/

" To measure the effects on the babies, the researchers did something interesting: they measured the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, in the babies’ saliva. They also asked the mothers about their levels of stress. Twelve months later, they looked for any emotional or behavioral problems in the babies, and they also did testing to see how attached the babies were to their mothers.

Here’s what they found. The babies in the graduated extinction group and the bedtime fading group both fell asleep faster and had less stress than the control group — and not only that, their mothers were less stressed than the control group mothers. Of the three groups, the extinction group babies were less likely to wake up again during the night. And when it came to emotional or behavioral problems, or attachment, all three groups were the same.

This means that it’s okay to let your baby cry a little. It’s not only okay, it may lead to more sleep all around. Which makes everyone happier."

www.health.harvard.edu/blog/new-study-says-okay-let-babies-cry-night-201605319774

I don't need peer reviewed information to know that leaving a baby to scream themselves to sleep until they learn their parents aren't coming to help them is a good idea. It's horrific and goes against every instinct I have as a mother. You will never show me studies to change my mind and nor would the absolute majority of Mothers

I don't know what your bedtime routine is but friends of ours had some success with warm bath in low lit bathroom, straight into warmed pyjamas, into cot with patting and handholding, comfort toy weighted blanket or light sleeping bag type thing, but before tucking in they did story time and used magnesium butter to massage into feet and legs, they don't actually know if this was effective but seemed to help as part of the routine, then it was tuck in and say goodnight leaving a story on audio stroking face for a while but not sleeping then sitting away from the cot when they started to look sleepy, if he woke and cried they would go back to the stroking / patting but no noise rinse and repeat until he got to know the routine then they moved to sitting outside the bedroom , they seem to have finally cracked it but he was around 2 i think. Good luck, all i can say in support is it is hell but honestly will not go on forever.

@1940s

I don't need peer reviewed information to know that leaving a baby to scream themselves to sleep until they learn their parents aren't coming to help them is a good idea. It's horrific and goes against every instinct I have as a mother. You will never show me studies to change my mind and nor would the absolute majority of Mothers

At least you’re honest about your ignorance. You’re not interested in evidence or information. You purely want to judge and shame.

You say ignorant... I say loving kind protective instinctive mother who also happens to have well balanced children who sleep wonderfully after I put the effort in for gentle sleep training.

I will carry that label with pride if that's what you want to call me.

If lazy parents want to reassure themselves with that information that's fine (not to mention there's tonnes of information online advising it's a terrible and damaging practice) then they can go ahead.