The second day I stuck to her routine with her morning & lunch time naps (I’ve been following Gina Ford’s routine for 9 to 12 month olds for the last 2 weeks) and again we had a bit of fuss at bedtime. It was worth it as she slept until 4am and again put herself back to sleep until 6.00.

It’s now the morning of day 3 and we are celebrating as she slept 7pm to 7am. I have no idea if she woke up during the night or not, she certainly didn’t wake me up and was asleep when I woke up my usual 3 times a night!

I think my top tips are (a) making sure I you gave her as much food as possible during the last couple of hours before bed and (b) putting her down for her day time naps awake so she practiced falling asleep on her own during the day.

Fingers crossed this continues. Now can anyone tell me how I can train myself to sleep through?!

I am on my first night of CIO and she has been crying on and off for 2 hours, it’s now 5am. When I go in and pat her she settles quickly and falls asleep but unfortunately doesn’t remain sleeping once I have snuck out of her room. She has also managed to settle herself a few times but it doesn’t last and she wakes up again a few minutes later. Is this normal? It seems to me that she is trying to settle herself and is getting frustrated but how do I know whether I am on the right track? Could she genuinely be hungry or do you think that by now she should be able to get through the night without milk?
She is a good eater and had plenty of milk and solids throughout the day.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Emily

I have been reading a lot about sleep training and your posts have helped me think through it, but what happened was surprising.

For some perspective about us, my wife and I have not let our son cry for more than 5 minutes ever, and he is almost 2 years old. B

To accomplish what seems like a miracle, we did stroll him to sleep for almost a year until that did not work for the last 4 months he has been co-sleeping with my wife. Instead of sleeping he is “playing in the room” for hours, and sometimes he will be up at 1am or 2am, and sometimes we carry him to the car for daycare still asleep in the morning. Something had to be done for his sleep and our sanity.

We have been discussing sleep training options and after some delays I started tonight.

So after dinner, I did his usual routine, bath, moisturizer, and low key hanging out in his room. He came to be with like 6 books which we read, and then I got a bottle of warm milk and gave it to him and he asked to be placed in the crib (wow!). Now previous to today we had the crib in the master bedroom, and he was able to get in and out and play in the crib. So he took the bottle and layed on the pillow and I sat in the nursing rocker which was still there. He drank the milk and jumped around and I responded low-key when he talked to me. After about 20 mins he was asking to get out and I said “it’s sleepytime, let’s go to sleep” a few times. Quite soon he started fussing and lightly crying, and asking me to lift him out. I got up once and layed him on the pillow and tucked him in and as he understood that I wanted him to sleep there he started crying harder. He threw everything out of the bed and his crying got intense. Every few minutes I would say “it’s sleepytime…”. I did give him water and wipe his face with a cool damp cloth. After about 20 minutes I saw him watching me and stopped reading my iPhone and put it on a “fireworks app”. He was interested and immediately stopped crying. After about a minute I wiped his face and looked at him and said “it’s sleepytime son, and dada is tired”. He went over to the pillow and layed himself down, and I covered him. (Wow!) He did not cry again but was awake for another 15 minutes, he was bouncing one leg on the mattress. I did respond low-key when once in a while when he said “baba”. I had to use the bathroom, so I said I was going to do that, and he said “bye-bye baba”, so I closed the door and I never went back in, but quite often listened and realized he was awake for another 20 minutes plus because he was bouncing one leg.

Now this is not how I expected it to happen. I did sit in the room for over an hour, but he only cried for 20 mins. He is strong willed, but I think the preparations such as having him help move all his books to his room and also staying in the room with him helped him cope with this new situation.

I feel positive that it will not take more than a few days before there is no crying. Tomorrow I intend to put up glowing stars on the ceiling with him. I think if we continue to do some fun activities in his room, he will want to sleep there.

She is only 4 months so I am not comfortable letting her CIO yet. We didn’t do that with our older daughter till closer to 8 months. And I don’t mind getting up 1-2 times at night to nurse her. But 6-7 is excessive. She goes down for the night around 6:30 or 7 and is up for the day around 6am. Any ideas? I’m so tired!