CIO (cry it out)?

The most popular methods on the internet are some form of crying it out (CIO). If you’re feeling hesitant, you can use the Ferber method which allows you to check on the baby at several intervals. Or you can just leave baby until she falls asleep. I haven’t read the actual books, and I don’t plan on buying them (the library has them permanently checked out). DH decided that we needed to sleep train our daughter, and he figured I am too soft to do it and decided to take it upon himself to implement it.

The first night, she took 18 min to fall asleep, but the wailing hurt my conscience (I opted to stay for the session, promising not to interfere). The second night, she took the same amount of time, and the wailing got to me. I think it had to do with guilt from the first night, and then going through the same thing again. It just wasn’t right.

Baby is anxious about being left alone

There is one thing I did not mention about our daughter that happened in the last months – she does not like being left alone. If I step into the kitchen to get a drink and leave her in the living room, she starts crying immediately. I don’t know if the sleep training books discuss this, but IMO, it’s a bit too much for my daughter to have to deal with being alone on top of putting herself to sleep. I wanted to deal with only one issue at a time. Even though DH was against stopping the CIO method the second night when I did interfere, he was open to trying something different the next day.

After reading up a little more, we decided that the crucial part of sleep training was putting our daughter into the crib awake. We will then try to teach her to go to sleep on her own slowly. Some people refer to this as Fading Out, and warn that it could take a while. I wanted to let my daughter put herself to sleep knowing that she was not left alone.

Adjusting sleep training for baby’s personality

The 3^rd night, we put her into the crib awake after nursing and putting on her sleeping sack. DD was happy and lay there for 30 min smiling at me. Then she started whining, and eventually crying. We tried to implement it like a CIO, refusing to pick her up, and telling her that she needs to go to sleep at intervals. It was a disaster: she cried furiously for 30 min, and was more awake and upset than ever. I think it’s her stubborn personality. This humane version of CIO was way worse than the turn off the lights and leave the room version. She knew we were there and leaving her alone, and she was absolutely furious.

I was at a loss at what to do, and DH stepped in to coo at her to get her to calm down. He was having a throat issue, so I took over and defaulted to singing Rock-a-bye Baby. She instantly calmed down…whew. And after another 20 min of singing, patting her belly and holding her hand, she fell asleep. I kept singing for another 10 min just in case, gradually stopping the patting and hand holding. It was a disaster, but we learned.

Finding a sleep training method that works for you

The 4^th night, we went with the routine, then putting her into the crib and then music to soothe her. She started fussing so we started the Rock-a-bye Baby, and she fell asleep after 20 min. Since we bypassed the 30 min of silence and the 30 min of crying, she went to bed an hour earlier.

One thing I didn’t mention before is that letting her fall asleep in the crib had a giant advantage, CIO or the fading method – she didn’t wake after falling asleep, unlike when I nursed her and put her into the crib.

Tonight is the 5^th night, and she fell asleep after 10 min of Rock-a-bye Baby. We have definitely made progress, and honestly, I am happy to sing her lullabies for 10 min while she falls asleep feeling secure. But we will keep working at it: the goal is to be able to leave her in the crib and let her fall asleep on her own. I am hoping that we will be able to skip the lullaby at some point, and just sit and smile at her while she puts herself to sleep.

Drawing on my own childhood experience

I feel very strongly about letting children fall asleep feeling safe because of my childhood. My parents went with the bedsharing route when I was 5 months old because I fell asleep instantly that way. I would not sleep well in the crib even when room sharing. All throughout growing up and to this day, I still sleep better when I share a room. I don’t remember my childhood much, but I do remember how my parents tried to get me to sleep independently by the time I was 4 or 5. I was able to put myself to bed sleeping in their bed, and they would transfer me to my own bed in my own room afterwards. But when I woke up in the dark, I was terrified and I would cry outside their bedroom door, unwilling to disturb them. Fortunately for me, my little sister arrived soon after and I had another person to share the room with, even if it was a tinier person than me.

For as long as she needs me, my daughter will always be welcome in my room.

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I read a blogpost that was on the sidebar link on the sleeptraining sub-Reddit on how to transition from the RnP, and I’ve seen other posters describe their experience. We only adopted one of the modifications suggested for the transition, the U-shaped towel to make the crib more cosy and less open.

We made one other change prior to the transition: we stopped swaddling her, and started putting her in a sleeping sack. She’s been escaping her swaddle for a long time now, but the RnP is a rather warm bassinet so we haven’t been too bothered by it. But she would be completely exposed in the crib when she escapes her swaddle. We put her in a sleeping sack for a couple of nights, and she was fine with it.

The first night, we let her sleep in the RnP for 30 min before shifting her to the crib. She slept for a long time till she started fussing at 8am from hungar, and couldn’t go back to sleep after the dreamfeed. We wanted to sleep longer so we put her back in the RnP, and she fell right back to sleep. The second night, we put her directly into the crib after she fell asleep, and she slept till 9am with a 4:30am dreamfeed. The same happened the 3^rd night. So far so good.

She is waking up earlier than before, at 9am instead of 11am, but she is also compensating by taking more naps during the day. While I think the transition went okay, we’re going to keep the RnP for a while longer in case we have to deal with the dreaded 4 month sleep regression.

I regret not taking more pictures of her when she was a newborn in the RnP. My little girl is growing up.

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We were recently concerned with the amount of sleep that our baby is getting, and decided to track it (for some reason, we didn’t track her sleep the first 7 weeks). After only a couple of days, it became clear that she had a distinct day and night pattern: she sleeps from ~midnight to ~noon every day (I have to wake her up for feeds), and only naps between noon and midnight. Wow, we seem to have accidentally sleep trained her.

Sleeping through the night is not night weaning

I didn’t know that there was a difference, but it’s obvious now. This means someone else out there is confused as well. Sleeping through the night is well, sleeping through the night. Like from 9pm to 6am. Night weaning is when the baby doesn’t eat at night anymore. Babies are strange creatures who can eat half asleep, so just because they are sleeping through the night doesn’t mean that they are night weaned.

When I first heard about sleeping through the night at 2 months, I thought yay! We can get good sleep after 2 months if we do the French method. We have hit the 2 month mark, and while baby is sleeping through the night, she should not go through the night without feeding. Currently, we wake her up to feed every 4-5 hours if she doesn’t wake up on her own. She sleeps from about midnight to almost noon. She kind of sleeps from 7pm to 10pm, and has a brief period of activity before we put her back to bed at midnight. Given that we didn’t have to very actively get her on the schedule, I am happy with the outcome.

Setting up the easiest sleep training ever

From the start, I set out to help the baby develop a sense of time. We had dark curtains, and used only a small dim light in the bedroom, and made sure the living room is awash in light during the day (and we make it dark at night too) – all the better to make sure that her wake-sleep cycle follows daylight cycles ASAP.

I tried to make sure she sleeps better at night. We had a daytime sleeping area, and a night time sleeping area – we have the crib in the living room, where the adults are around all day, and the Rock and Play in the bedroom, where she will be spending the night. For the uninitiated, the Rock and Play is a bassinet from Fisher Price that you will see pop up everywhere over the internet where people discuss baby sleep. For whatever reason, babies sleep for longer in them (from 30 min to 9 hours! It’s a miracle!). It’s a little warm, so we use it only in the bedroom, which is cooled by A/C at night.

From the Rock and Play to 4 hour intervals at 2 weeks

From day 1, she sleeps in the Rock and Play at night, and takes daytime naps in the crib. The newborn baby is very sleepy, so it may not make much of a difference initially. We did notice that she naturally wakes after 1-3 hours in the crib, but can sleep for longer in the Rock and Play (I always have to wake her up after 3 hours, she doesn’t stir). At 2 weeks when we knew she was gaining weight fine, we stretched it out to 4 hours between feedings at night. That made such a difference.

We started out with 3 hour intervals because that is what the hospital was doing from day 1. I was managing with 3 hour intervals, but it made such a difference when we started 4 hour intervals at night. Going from 3 to 4 hours between feedings may not seem like a big deal but it is. Diapering and feeding, and putting the baby back to sleep can take 45 min to 1 hour, leaving you 2 or 3 hours to sleep. We continued with the schedule – poorer crib sleeping during the day, and more sound sleep in the RnP at night – and magically at 7 weeks when I finally tracked her sleep, I noticed that she had developed a decent sleeping schedule.

Transition from Rock and Play

Maybe I got lucky with a unicorn baby. I think we maximized our chances of “sleep training” by making sure that day and night are distinct, and making sure she sleeps better at night in the RnP than during the day. I recently read that my habit of only feeding from one boob is helpful too – she gets the hindmilk, which is fattier and can last her for longer.

We will have to transition from the RnP to a real crib, but others before me have worked out how to do it. It’s a little awkward that she sleeps at midnight, but I’ll take it. I hear that she will sleep earlier as she gets older.

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