CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

Ugh. What a night. And its hot.

We have been doing Controlled Crying for 2 weeks now and have had fantastic success, its gone from 25 minutes, to 10 minutes to anywhere between 4-6 minutes. Except for tonight.

What happened was that Rosemary came round to give me my birthday present early for tomorrow and we missed Noah's regular slot for sleeping, we usually bath him at 6.30 and he is in bed by 7, asleep by 7.15. So tonight he didn't get his bath until just after 7. So we missed his slot. He cried for about 2 hours tonight and we went in to him every 10-15 minutes as we normally do. So this does have a question...how long is too long to let him cry? He fell asleep eventually after Daddy went to see him, but it was VERY hard to let the crying go on for so long....

My other quesion is thus...what is the real goal of CIO? So am I trying to get to a point where I put him in his crib and he doesn't cry at all? I don't see that happening, I always see him grumbling when he goes down...

So...yeah, thats the question.

Message edited 7/22/2006 4:56:06 PM.

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

I think the goal of CIO is that the child learns that mommy and daddy are still there for him and for him to learn to put himself to sleep either by crying so much they exhaust themselves or by passivly going to sleep.

I think by missing his normal bedtime threw him completely. That is killer for some babies....they rely on their routine.

We did controlled crying as recommended by Dr Weissbluth and did great with it. It got down to her crying for 3 minutes or some ridiculously small amount of time (even though it seems like they cry forever). And now for the most part, she takes her bottle, plays with her hair, and fades out and we put her down and that's it.

We've had a few rough nights with teething, she's been fighting going to sleep even though she's tired, rolling around, screeching. One night I SWEAR it was because she had the apples & cherries combo and the apples did it to her. No more apples at night in this house.

Give Noah his 3 days to get back into the routine.

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

What is Controlled Crying?? We are definitely struggling with sleep at our house and I need to try something!!!!

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

The routine definately has a lot to do with it. We never did CIO -- she would humm herself to sleep but except for recently she never really cried much --- but I've always been so proud of her for being a good sleeper -- and now I'm off of work and doing all these things during the day, and her routine is OFF! We left the house at noon-ish today and didn't c ome home until 7pm and tonight was ROUGH.

Hopefully after a few days of his normal routine he'll be back to normal. It is so hard to see your SLEEPY baby crying and resisting sleep at night.

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

When we first did it with my first, I could not see her ever going down without crying either, but after about a week, that's what she did. She went from like an hour, to thirty minutes, to ten minutes for like a week, then she would just go to bed and lie down. I was shocked. She still has bad nights once in a while where she cries for a while, but it's never too bad.

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

I definitely think 2 hours is way too long but that's just my opinon.
I think the goal with moms who use CIO is to teach the baby to sleep on their own and for it not to take a long time to fall asleep. We never did CIO with Miranda but she does go through periods where she does cry at bedtime and what I do is usually give her a minute or two and see if she settles herself down. If she does I leave her be even if she's awake but if she continues crying I go in and try to calm her. After 20 min or so if she's not going to sleep I just take her out, let her play more and try again in a little while.
I have to say that routine is important here though and we can suffer if we break from that but now that she's getting older we are realizing we have to adjust times a little because she seems to be able to stay awake for longer periods without getting cranky.

Message edited 7/23/2006 12:15:07 AM.

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

Re: CIO Ladies, I have a few quick questions...not so much a long post, more a rambling post

Wow!! Thanks, I am definitely going to try it!!!!