Hellobee Boards

For us, yes. We did extinction with checks at around 5 months, after something like 6 weeks of trying more "gentle" methods. She went from waking 8-10 times per night (and having trouble getting back to sleep) to waking 2-3 times per night to nurse and then immediately going back to sleep. I want to say it was effective within 2 or 3 days, but we saw a difference even on the first night.

Good luck and hugs! I know how hard this is. It will get better.

For us, no. My daughter's poor nights have to do with illness, severe teething (she cut 4 teeth at once) and wonder weeks. She can cry indefinitely and it would always make it worse than just soothing her. I also found that she has a habit of night-pooping so full extinction is a recipe for disaster. Once her leap was over, she went back to normal.

I personally think CIO is quite cruel and selfish, particularly with certain children's temperments. There have been studies that show that children made to CIO have elevated stress hormone levels even days after they stop crying at night

@Peasinapod: your desperation doesn't make it any less traumatic on your child. Just because they're not crying anymore doesn't mean they're ok. Learned helplessness is a documented phenomenon.

I also acknowledge a difference between letting your child fuss on and off, vs 3hrs of hysteria. My objection is to the latter.

For us it depended on the age. If it was during a growth spurt or a true sleep regression (like 4 months, 9 months, 12 months and now 18 months), it didn't work. I just had to deal with it and wait for the switch that signaled the end of the regression/growth spurt. If it was inbetween times, I found even waiting 5-10 min before going in worked wonders. Sometimes she'd fall asleep before I got to the 10 min mark and it's as if she realised going back to sleep on her own wasn't so bad/hard. Good luck on the training! Take a look at Troublesome Tots website if you need encouragement. There's a lot of good, common-sense stuff on sleep training there.

Yep. Stopped them all! For E, she still had a startle reflex and she basically had to get used to not having a tight swaddle around her. She just didn't get it. She wanted that swaddle so bad! She was 5 months and 3 weeks and after a few days, she just stopped waking up, or if she did, she'd kind of roll around, whine a little, find a comfy new place to chill, and go back to sleep easily!

@mrsrugbee: hysteria for 3 hours is not standard CIO. There's also plenty of research to show that CIO is safe and non damaging. Anyways, commenting on a post ABOUT sleep training in which you tell the mother it is cruel and selfish is a dick move.

http://www.troublesometots.com/is-sleep-training-child-abuse/

@blackbird: YES.

Yes. Once she was sleep trained for bedtime she immediately (same night we started sleep training) stopped requiring to be rocked at night. Before sleep training I would have to rock her to sleep then at the end of EVERY single sleep cycle (so every 30-90 min all night long) I'd have to rock her to sleep then try to set her down without her waking up, only to have her wake up again an hour or so later and have to do it again. And thats if I could even set her down. The first night we did sleep training and she fell asleep on her own at night (we did do checks and they worked for us) she still woke a few times overnight but I popped her paci in and she went right back to sleep.

Since we sleep trained there have been a few times where she has refused to go back to sleep after I pop the paci and I've rocked her-- they seem to correspond to illness or being in a weird environment. Just last week we were at my mom's house and I sort of had to rock her all night because she wouldn't sleep and I was worried I'd ruined sleep training because I'd rocked her when she cried at night... but our first night back at home and ever since she is back to sleeping totally normally (i.e. maybe waking up a few times but not needing more than a paci).

@mrsrugbee: I think the fact that you say she "went back to normal" after a leap ended speaks volumes - if your normal was manageable, then great and no need to sleep train by CIO. If your normal involves endless nights of repeated wakings and an inability to soothe your child back to sleep, then I personally think its cruel to let a child get 7-8 hours of broken sleep a night for weeks on end rather than have a couple of nights of elevated stress hormone levels (which by the way, can be caused by any number of things, including strange surroundings, new people, and sleeplessness of all things!!) which could result in a full night's sleep and an ability to self soothe.

To the OP - for us CIO was magical. It was life changing for us and for our son. There have been no ill effects and it was definitely the right decision for us! Night wakings went from 4-5 a night to 1 just to eat and go straight back to sleep, to none at 6.5 months.

@ScarletBegonia: well said.