Crying it out

[wanfamily]

Welcome back Mushi and Milkmonster!
I'm just back from the most knackering Christmas ever and have now have major sleep problems. My MIL is having Chemo for breast cancer at the mo, so we couldn't have any crying at all. (In fact if he so much as snorted, we'd get a knock on our door. Can't really argue about it given the circumstances). Anyway the result was me nursing most of the night to keep him quiet- ahhh (It's a race between the bags under my eyes and my boobs as to which will reach my knees first!)
Anyway, now back with 2 jet lagged kids I have a plan of action which is keeping me sane:
1) Get them over the jet lag.
2) Use the 'pick up put down'/ pat pat shush to get him used to sleeping in his cot again.
3) The same but move him into his own room
4) If need be CIO

He's 8 months now, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping to be breaking out the bubbly by the time he's 9? 10?....(months not years I hope)
I'll keep you posted!

 

[MilkMonster]

Hope your MIL is ok...

you must be really tired!! for us, going over to Canada was always much easier than coming home. jet lag sucks and i am one of those who turns into a dragon when i'm tired so it's hell for hubby as well. babies scream at me, i scream at hubby...

there was another thread about getting baby to sleep in the cot. That mom just spent some time playing with the baby while baby was in the cot so the baby got used to being in there and it worked for her. the baby didn't fight being in the cot at sleep times.

good luck! looking forward to hearing all about it!!

 

[peainpod]

Hi everyone,

After what seemed like a miracle start, we had an all-out relapse - and on New Year's Eve (of all nights!) and we ended up having to cancell our NY Eve plans with our friends. We had optimistically thought we would have bubs in bed and asleep by 8:30 p.m. (at least that was what had been happening for the past week or so) and we had arranged to join our friend's house party at around 9'ish.

Well, we ended up hanging around outside bub's room for close on 100 minutes, with him crying and screaming for the large part. He finally quieted down at around 11 p.m. But then he woke up intermittently throughout the rest of the night - with me nursing him to keep him quiet.

The next few days, daytime naps became a nightmare as he would actively resist it (whenever he wasn't dead out tired.) Hubbie's position was that if he really wasn't that tired at naps, we shouldn't force him to stay in bed - hence, we have picked him up a few times after fierce crying, which makes me worried that this may reinforce bad behavior and will have repercussions for night-time.

Now, I'm not sure where we are at. Nights tend to be easier - although for the most part, I am nursing him to sleep and then gingerly putting him (rather than confidently expecting him to sleep on his own.) Some nights/naps, he will cry and then sleep. A few times we've failed miserably and picked him up after prolonged heavy crying.
:crib


I am still clinging onto the hope that we are ahead with our sleep training - as in he is learning to sleep on his own (even if he won't do it all the time) and that one day, there will be eventually be no need to pick up.

But we just booked flights for a week in Langkawi (leaving next Fri) and I am very worried about what this will do to his sleep routine. :-(

 

[pooch]

i'm just not sure sleep training ever works when you nurse them to sleep to start with. If they require your help to fall asleep in the first place then it would seem reasonable to need help in the night when they come into light sleep during sleep cycles.

I am a big believer in always putting baby down wide awake.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone has had success with sleep training and getting baby to sleep thru the night while also aiding them to sleep.

 

[mushi]

how to break the 6.30 start

althought my CIO is quite successful i can;t manage to break the 6.30 am wake-up time for my baby/....it is so cold nowadays and quite dark at that hour too ... how can i get him to wake up at 7..00 am instead? he sleeps at 7.00-7.00pm everyday.

 

[mushi]

hi aussie mum, just read yr comment.....i aid my baby to sleep every night either thru bottle or a gently pat-pat....and he sleeps thru teh night...sometimes he does wake up once in teh night but then cries himeslef to sleep after 5 mins.....only if he really struggles to go to sleep even after the aids do i put him down on some nights and let me cry himself to sleep....but CIO works in both cases.....in fact i aid him to sleep during his nap times too....his naps are extremely short due to this i guess just 40 mins...but i have tried CIO in daytime and it is too stressful with everyone hearing him ....that is his brother and my helper.....it stresses me out a lot so i do this way.

 

[southside852]

I agree with aussie mum - putting your baby down totally awake is the best thing to do so that your baby can learn how to put him/herself to sleep which in turns helps them figure it out during the night and during the day. My son who is 12 months, goes down like clockwork at 7pm and wakes up at 4:30am usually for a quick nappy change and then goes right back down until 6:30am - 6:45am. When he is teething, we give him the soother at the 4:30am wake-up which seems to help him. If he wakes up any earlier than 4am, we usually let hiim cry it out. it lasts no longer than 10 minutes.

 

[lesliefu]

hi peainthepod, are you solely nursing him? how old is your baby? it would appear that the last meal you give him should be real filling - perhaps if you are nursing him, give him EBM so that you can gage how much he should drink in order for him to sleep longer stretches during the night. waking up is normally due to hunger i'd say. my daughter is on formula and she sleep trained herself basically because her last feeding i gave her enough and she was full enough to last 10 hours.

as for the naps - i'm not very regimented in any sense of the word - she naps whenever and for as long / short as she wants BEFORE 6pm (bed time is 9pm) and for the past month she has been able to sleep for 10hours straight. sometimes the excessive crying is because they are over exhausted - you will have to observe your son to which category he falls into though...

initially my daughter would wake up around 4am, but i let her cry for 3/4 days in a row (the length of crying time will gradually decrease- i did pat her but did not talk nor pick her up - put on the lullabies a couple times as that is part of the bedtime routine) ...by the 5th she didn't wake up to cry anymore at 4am.

good luck! patience is the key!

 

[peainpod]

hi lesliefu, our son is 10 mths. We used to give him EBM for the last feed but now since it's getting harder for me to pump at work, I am only producing enough for his daytime feeds and i nurse him during all the times i am home.

actually the situation is not that dire. while we still use some sleep aids (nursing him before bedtime), some nights he is awake and will cry for literally 5-10 secs as we are putting him down but then stop immediately after we leave the room. he is however, still waking up in the middle of the night for a feed - but he seems so hungry (drinks from both sides) that i don't have the heart not to feed him. Also, these middle-of-the-night feeds help keep up my milk supply.

I'm not there for the daytime naps but my helper doesn't have much problem getting him to nap (for 2-3 times a day from anywhere between 40 mins to 1-1/2 hrs).

So I guess the situation is copeable right now for us. Sometimes I think about waking him during the times when he falls asleep on my breast during the night-time feed but then it's just hard to do that, isn't it?

 

[MilkMonster]

hi everyone : )

If my son falls asleep on the bottle before bed we don't wake him up either. we make every effort to put him down awake but sometimes he's just too tired and even if i change his diaper and put him into the grobag, he still is fast asleep. it's been working for us, so i am thinking it's ok. my older son used to do this as well.

mushi, regarding early morning wake ups, both my kids used to wake up between 5-6am but we never went in. if they stayed awake they would babble to themselves and fall back to sleep so that was ok, if they cried then we would wait 15mins before going in. wait 20mins the following morning, 25mins the morning after, until the desired time. eventually both of them got the idea that neither mum or dad were early risers and now both sleep in until 8 or 830am. I am thankful that we did this and don't have to get up at 6am everyday...

i agree that hungry babies don't sleep as well. If your baby is genuinely hungry at night or early in the morning, it means they could take in more food during day time hours. especially at this age, they could be having a growth spurt so i definitely wouldn't let a child go hungry in hopes to sleep train. i would however increase the meals/milk during the day. even a few more spoonfuls for solid meals or 30ml of milk will make a huge difference. my 8mth old just added another solid meal to his day because he was going to bed at 7pm and then waking up at 8pm crying and taking a full bottle of milk. tonight he went to bed at 7 and hasn't woken up so i am hoping he had enough to eat today!!

i usually serve the fruits earlier on in the day and make sure dinner is something hearty like sweet potato or squash mixed with cereal + formula.

hope the babies sleep soon : )

peainpod - sorry to read about your NYE plans!! the first few times we tried to leave a sleeping baby resulted in us getting in a cab, almost reaching our destination, receiving the phone call that baby is crying, asking the cab driver to loop back around, coming home and calling it a night!! haha we've had a few of these drive around hk never make it there nights!!!

if it's working for you and you need the baby to help keep your supply up, then don't worry about it. i think it's awesome that you're making so much effort to breast feed your baby!!! How was your trip to langkawi?