how long was the crying when CIO first used?

Started at 8 months, 1st night was the longest cry for 20+ minutes. Routine all in place now.

1sttimemum. Your sleeping routine sounds right and your baby is sleeping well from 8.30 - 6 so i won't be too worried. My guess is that one of the reasons your extinction method did not work well could be because when you put him down to sleep, he was not tired as he just woke up not too long ago from his evening nap at 7.30pm. You should have ~3 hr gap between last nap and sleeping time.

It's very impt to manage the time between last nap and sleeping time. When we started the sleep training, we were advised to have a slightly 'later' sleeping time to take advantage of the fact that the baby was actually tired when we put her to sleep. All have worked very well for us.

Good luck!!
 
instead of going cold turkey why don't you try going in every 5/10/15/20 minutes or so and giving him some cuddles/reassurance, so that he doesn't get too overwrought? i think that before they reach 6-7 months of age, they simply cannot "handle" cold turkey CIO, psychologically, or physically.
 
i am going to do it in 2 or 3 wks and will let everyone know how it goes.... hoping that its not as bad as I imagine.
 
to be perfectly honest, i could NEVER do CIO with a baby under the age of 1-ish. to me, it's just too young.

at least by the age of 1 or so, you know your baby better, your baby knows you and understands that you will be back.

i have no problem doing it with my older kids 3&5 yrs, as i know that they are crying purely out of anger/frustration at not getting what they want.

to me, crying is a baby's only form of communication. whenever i left a baby to CIO, i felt like i wasn't listening to what the baby was trying to tell me. i believe that to a baby so young, cuddles and closeness are as important, if not more important, than the clean nappy/hunger etc.
 
carang, while i do understand and respect your point, i think it really depends on the individual situation. perhaps you were one of the lucky ones - a parent blessed with kids who didn't have big sleep issues when they were infants. but for parents whose babies have issues, who keep themselves and their parents up all night, i do believe CIO is necessary - it is important to teach your little ones how to fall asleep on their own IF they have problems. i think any age under 6 months is too young, that said.
 
of course every piece of advice given in these forums is subjective and is based on invidiviual needs. we can only share our own opinion and speak from personal experience with our own child/children.

babies are all unique and everyone parents differently. what's nice about these forums is that you can ask a question and get a wide range of answers and experiences.

CIO is always a personal choice and people will always have both positive and negative feedback on it. In the end the parent makes the final decision on what course of action to take as they know their child best.
 
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zac, i agree with you. that's why i said, "to me" and "for me" and things like that....

it is a VERY personal decision. and YES, i did have issues with kids waking up. only in the past 4 months have i been able to sleep through the night and as i said, my kids are 3 & 5 YEARS, not months, old.

the way i looked at it was that it was a short (ish) period of time in my life and FOR ME, i did not want small babies to CIO. FOR ME, anything younger than 1 year was too young.
 
I started when my baby was 3/4 months but focused on the daytime nap first before nighttime. I followed the Gina Ford method, and her view is that a good daytime sleep pattern usually improves nighttime sleep. My baby's lunchtime nap was 2.5 hours, and I let him cry for as long as 1.5 hour for a few days. After 1.5 hour, instead of trying to put him to sleep, I just opened the curtain and keep the day going. Then I let him take a quick nap in the afternoon so that he wouldn't get overtired by bedtime.

Within less than one week, my baby slept very well during both lunchtime nap and nighttime. He can fall asleep by himself and resettle himself back to sleep easily without any help. He did wake up in the middle of night twice when he was 7M but I just let him cry on and off for one hour as I was sure that he wasn't sick or hungry. He's 8M now and sleeping 12+ hours straight in the evening and 2-3 hours during the day all by himself and is a very healthy baby!

CIO is a very personal decision but you definitely have to make sure that your baby isn't hungry or sick when you try to implement it. It was hard for me to hear him cry but I do believe that teaching my baby to learn to fall asleep by himself and resettle is something good for him and the whole family!
 
My almost 12 month old is a better sleeper now. It's partly thanks to CIO and partly because he is older and can sleep for a longer stretch.

We did CIO when he was 7 month. We were prepared that he would cry for one hour at the most. But in the first two nights, he cried for about twenty minutes and went to sleep. Checking on him did not work for us. He would just get more upset when he saw me.

He was a terrible sleeper before he was 5 month old. We would have to rock him for close to an hour just to get a 30 to 40 minutes nap from him. It was worse when he tried to fight sleep. He would arch and fuss when we try to rock him to sleep. He woke 3 to 4 times for feed in the night and he sometimes would not go back to sleep after feeding and just played by himself or looked around. When he played enough, he sometimes needed assistance like rocking and dummy to go back to sleep.

I think the best thing we've done for him is sleep training. He is still not a very good sleeper but he has improved a lot.

I was very apprehensive about starting CIO. I got lots support from Mums in this forum and I found this thread from baby center very useful.
How to SUCCESSFULLY teach a baby to sleep - 3rd ed. - Teaching Your Baby & Toddler To Sleep - BabyCenter.

Good luck.
 
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