So when did non CIO babies actually sleep independently?

[Newsenmum]

I know loads of people do ferber/cio and I really don’t want to get into this discussion here. Im genuinely curious when your babies started sleeping at least semi independently and how?

I bedshared and breast-fed to sleep for both of mine. Both night weaned at 13 months, and in the day at 13 months for my son (he chose then) and 19 months for my daughter (I chose that). My son slept through the night and went to sleep by himself after cuddles at 15 months, my daughter about 24 months. They just gradually woke less at night, and then needed less support getting to sleep. I didn't do anything other than wait for them to get older.

Both at about 8 weeks, I didn’t do anything, I just put them in their cots after a last cuddle and they went to sleep. At 10 weeks DS was sleeping 7-11, I woke him for a feed and then 11:20-6:45 virtually every night. I dropped the 11pm feed around 6 months as he showed little interest in it once he’d started weaning. DD woke once or twice a night for a feed until she started weaning at 6 months, she took about 10 minutes feeding and then I’d put her back down in the cot and leave and she went off to sleep. Once she was weaned she stopped waking up for feeds and slept all through. No sleep training was needed. And yes I was lucky.

I formula fed. My DD was one of those unicorn babies that self settled in her next to me at 12 weeks old and slept 7-7 solidly. My DS was a different story. Wanted to be held all the time for sleep but from around 5 months I’d put him to sleep in the next to me on his front patting his bum until he fell asleep. Each night I’d shorten the patting time. He also had a dummy and a comfort toy that he really took to. He woke screaming every couple of hours until he was nearly 3 but he could fall asleep independently once I fully stopped the bum patting at around nine months or so

I had a terrible sleeper and frequent waker who would only feed to sleep. After cosleeping and bfing every 1.5hrs through the night until 18 months, I stopped feeding, and she moved rooms.

She woke 14-17 times per night for the next few nights, so we did have to do some sleep training and she was a sleeping through within a week.

That's not a recommendation to sleep train, just sharing what happened.

The sleep training was very different and less distressing at 18 months Vs younger when we tried it a couple of times out of pure desperation (and hated it and stopped quickly).

dd1 was 2.5, years old dd2 was 6 years old, we go slept until they wanted to sleep in their own rooms

First one was 3. Second was 3 months.

DD1 slept through from 7 weeks old and DD2 from 9 weeks old. Both EBF.
DD1 only woke up at night if she was ill and DD 2 would have a disturbed night about once a month.

Ds1 slept through from 10 months. DS2 was nearly three before he ever slept through the night and then it wasn't consistent. By the time DS2 was 4, he was sleeping through almost every night, but by then I had a newborn DD... She slept through at about a year, I think.
I felt very tired for many years 😂

DC1 was 6 months. DC2 is 2 and still doesn’t sleep through.

I sleep trained without CC or CIO.

They were self settling from about 9 months and two slept through about 9-12 months onwards, one was still waking occasionally til 2.5 years.

both breastfed babies slept through 8-8 from 12 weeks ish.

DC1 slept through the first time when she started nursery. It was not consistent though until around 2.5y.

DC2 asks every night if someone will sleep in her bed. She's 10! I genuinely cannot remember when she stopped wandering into our room every single night but I am sure she had started school. It sounds worse than it is 😅

DS1 was about 4 and DS2 had patches of sleeping through from about 4 months. Don’t geometry wrong he also had patches of terrible sleep. Reliably sleeping through from 2 but before that it was not every night he woke. DS1 has ASD and is still a terrible sleeper.

breastfed, from just after 1 year. We tried gentle sleep training on and off but it was always awful.

I didn’t really pay much attention. We co-slept to 9 months and own room at 15 months. Sometimes she slept well and sometimes she didn’t. She’s almost 6 now and mostly sleeps well and occasionally doesn’t. I think that sometime after 2 it became really consistently good but was mostly good about 18 months.

I think it’s really weird how hung up on it people are! Babies and children are designed to wake, it’s not a “problem” that needs fixing (despite what all the parenting guff tries to tell people in order to part them from cash).

None of it matters at all. Just letting them be is far less stressful than consulting apps and worrying about it all.

DD only started sleeping through when she went to school (so nearly 5). We bribed her with the offer of a high bed if she could get to sleep by herself when she was 8.

You did ask for real experiences!

Our daughter is 5 and still not slept through.

Eldest not breastfed, sleep trained gently (not CIO) at 9m, worked for a month, then I realised what a load of crap it was and coslept on and off until he slept through at 2.5.
Youngest breastfed, cosleeping to date at 18m, definitely not sleeping through currently, though have had phases here and there of it.

What does Ferber/cio mean?

Ferber is a type of sleep training and CIO is cry it out.

A couple of months but with two of them it changed when they got mobile with ds2 throwing himself out the cot at two am ds1 and ds2 were (are) sleepwalkers so while they were technically asleep no-one else was

Ferber/controlled crying is where you leave them to cry for 5 minutes before going in to comfort, then 10 minutes, then 15 etc

CIO/cry it out is where you put them to bed and leave them to cry to sleep without going back in.

I never did sleep training Dd1 slept through the night from 1. Dd2 woke up hourly until she was 4.

DC1 woke every hour, co slept. Longer stretches 6 months +. Sleeping in own cot by 1 and through the night between 18/24 months

DC2 one wake a night 6 months +. Sleeping through the night by 12 months

DC3 is 10 weeks old and has been sleeping through the night since 7 weeks basically (at the moment…..!!!) but has never woken more than once a night maybe twice since birth

all ebf and flexi co sleeping eg in crib part night and in bed with me part of the night

here is a sample of 3, all broadly brought up in the same kind of environment.

kid 1, female, allergic, breastfed, to the exclusion of any solid food really until around 18 months … slept through with some light persuasion at 11 months.

kid 2, male, extremely allergic, formula fed, loved solids, no persuasion needed but in parental bed till 3, slept through by 9 months.

kid 3, female, breastfed, quite likes solids, didn’t sleep through until 6 years old.

kid 4, formula fed, high energy, ended up with diagnosis of ADHD. A bloody nightmare to get down and prone to middle of the night bursts of energy but slept through generally from 18m.

Conclusion, it is very little to do with training and lots to do with temperament.

gentle sleep training is great. I don’t think having a baby cry a bit is the worst thing in the world particularly if you’re there in the room to comfort them. Friends with multiples are very realistic about this - you can’t always attend to each infant instantly when there is more than one of them.

Ferber is a bit too weirdly Victorian and cruel for my liking….