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We did CIO at 7 months old and LO has been sleeping through the night ever since (now 2.5) without food or milk between at least 8 pm and 6 am. Typically he sleeps until 7, but we decided that 6 am was our bare minimum. If he wakes any earlier than 6, we let him hang in his crib. Sometimes he might whine a bit, but he generally lays down and goes back to sleep.

I'd say pick a more doable, perhaps earlier time at first and then push it later by 15 minutes if you want to get to 7 am. Also, if you have to wake him any earlier regularly (like for daycare for example), then we found that we couldn't really expect later on the weekends but need earlier during the week. Our guy is all about consistency.

We dos cio at 11.5 months with our daughter who was waking 3 ish times a night and staying awake for hours. I still nursed her overnight before we tried cio. After one night she sttn 7p-7a from then on! It was a life changer!

I would probably accept morning after 10-11 hours if he just won't go back to sleep and is awake at that time, but maybe he will surprise you!

For us, it was 5 a.m. cutoff. My LO went through a similar stage around 22 months (kill me now) and we were up every day at 5 a.m. I would attempt to bring him into bed and see if he would snooze a bit longer with us at that time, but usually we were up for the day. At 24 months, we are now at 6:30 a.m. cutoff.

Is he night weaned? I might try that first personally...

Otherwise, I would start giving a snack 30 minutes for bed. DD wakes up between 530-730 and usually wants to eat right away, but since we have been giving her a snack before bed she hasn't been demanding food right from her crib. She's a bit older at almost 2, but I think around 16 months I would probably have been inclined to feed around that 5am mark, too. A lot is trial and error to figure out what works.

Oh and I don't know if it has helped or not, but we don't get up and go downstairs until a more acceptable hour (7 at the earliest). She hangs out in bed with us and I usually just let her have a snack in our bed. I didn't want her to full on wake up and expect to get right to lights on and playing bright and early! Plus, it gives us a chance to rest a little more too.

Good luck, hope you get some more sleep soon!

@Mrs tartan: I hope you had s better night! My DD2 is almost 17m and only started STTN a few nights ago. Sometimes she has a bad night of being sick or teething where she wakes up multiple times. But then the next few nights she will do the same wakeups. And I just have to let her cry because she had gotten used again to me coming to her when she cries. Just last week she woke up 2 hours after bedtime. I let her CIO for just over 3 minutes. She was not sick and I was fairly certain she wasn't cutting another tooth.

She eats very well during the day on milk, breastmilk. She eats 3 full meals a day and probably snacks 4-5x a day. I'm pretty sure she's not hungry.

The needing to eat thing is a little tricky to me. Obviously they don't need to eat, but if they are used to it it's gonna be a hard adjustment. It will take time. If there was any way for you to help your toddler through the transition of not eating at night first, they probably might start sleeping on their own without the habit of eating. Take all I am saying with a grain of salt, I have a 1 year old who still eats throughout the night. But all these people who are sharing how their babies don't eat at night, and physically your baby can of course go 11 hours, are just answering for their babies experiences and facts.

Worth mentioning that our pediatrician says that a baby over 12 lbs doesn't need to eat at night. I think that's extreme and I certainly don't adhere to that with my 14 lb 2 month old but I do think that babies and toddlers will adjust to eat more calories during the day (even if they had previously been getting a lot of calories at night). At a certain age and weight, I think overnight eating is more habit than caloric need.

My son is 16 months. He has dinner around 5pm and only gets water after dinner. Bedtime is at 730pm and he doesn't eat breakfast until sometime around 730am-8am the next day. So he's going like 14 hours without food? He gets 3 meals and 2-3 snacks a day, plus 8-12oz of milk and 8-12oz of water a day.

He actually doesn't need to eat at all at this age. Granted feeding is a quick way to get them back down (and I do it at times too!) but you shouldn't think of hunger as a reason to not CIO, if you are ready for it on other levels. I would try a no feeding before 5 rule and see how that goes! My kids only sleep 10-11 hours straight when they sleep through so 7-5 or 730-530 is a win for me.

6am is morning in our house!

This is just my opinion but I think I would try and push back each feeding (starting with the midnight one) to gradually get baby used to going longer stretches without food. You might also want to look at your daytime routine (naps, meals, activity levels etc) to see if that will make a difference to the night sleep. I think it's a bit tough to expect a baby to suddenly go from multiple night feeds to no feeding or contact but I certainly think it is doable with a bit of work and persistence.

FWIW my big girl needed a night feed until around 16-18 months old (she took awhile to find her balance between calories from solids and calories from breastmilk) and she was just a kid that needed a bit of extra attention at night.