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With crying it out, your baby can be fully sleep trained in as little as just a few days. On average, it takes a week. Most other methods take at least a few weeks to see improvement — and a month to see more lasting results. Go for it. However, there are different levels of not liking our children to cry.
If their cry changes, check on them in person or via a monitor to see if they need to be picked up and comforted. Example: My boys were amazing at finding ways to get their arms and legs stuck in their crib during crying it out. We quickly discovered that preventing more stuck limbs was crucial to their safety and ability to cry it out. Quitting can be a temporary thing where you try it again later. Or it can be a more permanent thing where you change to a different, tears-free sleep training method.
I mean crying. Because, that first little bit, the crying seems like it will never end. Read my full article on when you should quit sleep training right here. So we used a cry it out method — and it was rough. Checking on him in person made the crying worse. So we checked in via a monitor and he cried for almost 2 hours the first night. Within about 5 days, he was sleeping so much better — and so were we. Example 2: with our daughter, we tried a controlled cry it out as we moved her to her crib.
She needed regular check-ins and comforting to ease the transition. It took about a week. Example 3: our second boy also ended up not sleep training well except with a variation on cry it out.
He only cried for minutes that first night. Then, he settled right down. Which was good, because his older brother and he share a room. Figuring out how long you can let your child cry it out takes practice and experimentation. And how long does it actually take? Pediatrician Noah Schwartz, MD offers sleep training advice for exhausted new parents. Night weaning is perfectly safe as long as your baby is healthy and at an appropriate weight.
You can sleep train and night wean at the same time. In fact, sleep training will sometimes lead to a drop off in overnight feedings simply because your baby will learn to fall back asleep on their own.
But sometimes, if your baby is underweight or has other medical conditions, you might need to continue night feeding, even during or after sleep training. Schwartz recommends to begin sleeping training when your baby is about four months old. At this age, babies are typically old enough to learn to self soothe, and may no longer require night feedings. Some babies can start sleep training earlier and some do better a little later, around the six month mark.
The amount of time it takes to successfully sleep train your baby will depend on what method you choose. But generally speaking, it should take about three to four nights. Some methods may take longer than others, but Dr. Schwartz says most of it comes down to parents having a plan and being consistent with their chosen sleep training method.
There has been ample long-term research studying sleep training, and there is no evidence that sleep training is physically or psychologically damaging to babies and children. As long as your baby is old enough and is in a safe environment, sleep training no matter which method you choose is perfectly safe and healthy.
BTW- I have never figured out how to co-sleep. Where do you put the baby? How do you keep the baby from crawling all over the bed and disrupting the co-sleeping dog? Some things will forever remain a mystery in our house. I also never figured out how to co-sleep.
Plus I insisted on taking off all the blankets to really nobody was comfortable sleeping that way. Many people actually have SEX with a sleeping baby IN their bed and I have never managed to wrap my head around that one not judging just perplexed! White noise, lovey, dark room. Her naps are still all over the place, so sometimes she wakes up from her last nap at and is up till 7 refuses to take a nap other times she can only last for 1.
So her bed time, subsequently is kind of all over. Anywhere from to We did CIO 2 weeks ago. Some nights she goes down easy, some nights with 5 minutes fussing, some nights like tonight, its 30 minutes. It is totally different every single night. Without fail, she wakes up within 1 hour of us putting her down. We put her down fully awake, nurse her twice within the two hours that she is awake before bed. She wakes up and is only able to go back down after nursing. Then she wakes again around 12 and then between She is 6 months, Clearly tonight I was way off.
But whenever she does go down, you can bet your bottom dollar she will be up again in an hour or less. What do I do? What am I doing wrong? Hey Stephanie, Consistency can be a challenging goal.
Everybody WANTS to be consistent but when naps are still staggering around like a drunken sorority girl, what are you going to do?
At 6 months I would do this: — Dial in bedtime. It can move about a tiny bit maybe 30 minutes? Also I have some bad news for you. Then she wakes UP from her nap in 1 hour and demands to be nursed to sleep, which you do. So when she wakes up 1 hour of you putting her down, no more nursing. But I would take nursing off the table at the 1 hour wakeup.
Hi Alexis. She cried ten minutes the first night then only this short complaining since. The problem is that she is down by 7, then wakes every hours for the rest of the night. Her bedtime routine is bath, massage, books, nurse then bed awake. She will only nap for half an hour on her own after cryin for 10min. Is the nursing my problem? Do I have to stop nursing her after dinner to solve this association? Thanks for any suggestions! Hey Jackie, So is the problem that she wakes up and cries for 10 minutes here and there at night?
Babies wake up ALL night long and often fall back asleep quietly. As for the weaning, check the post I liked to below which talks about weaning challenges. Hope it helps! I need help!! My 5 month old has reflux and has recently started to try to roll back to front. He was previously swaddled with loud white noise. After he started not sleeping as well read:up more at night then during the day to eat I decided to CIO.
The first week went fairy well! No more then 30 min of crying and sleeping hrs!! Then he started waking up a lot!! Every 2 hrs! Fast fwrd a couple of days and little sleep and we had to go out of town for a funeral. So in an effort to keep the whole hotel from hearing my lo cry, we went back to the swaddle for a night or two. We are now back to night one of no swaddle. It took him 30 min to fall asleep and last night he woke up once after he was just fed an hour previously.
I guess my question is, should I let him CIO in the middle of the night? How long should I wait before going in to nurse him??? Please help!!!!! And as you know when kids have reflux, sleeping flat on their backs is generally a bit of a mess. So at this point you have two options….
Refluxing kids often need swaddling for EVER. This has the benefit of holding him somewhat upright and preventing him from rolling over. Tummy sleeping is actually a great position for refluxing kids.
Also he may be so lost without the swaddle arms flapping about and such that the benefit of tummy sleeping is lost on him. So maybe the answer is 1 month of swaddle, strapped in swing, and THEN move on to tummy sleeping? Thanks for the fast reply!! So 3 min after woombie-ing him, he fell asleep. Suck it hubs!! Yay on sleep! But wait…. Hi Alexis, you are doing great work on behalf of parents everywhere. I hope you can help me out too. He is now 7 months old so I fear he is not going to outgrow it on his own.
Do I let him cry it out afterwards? For how long? Since he has just had a nap, I fear he will be not tired enough to go back down on his own. You should test the waters a little bit. Give him minutes — what happens? Sometimes babies cry out for 5 and then sleep for another 40 which is a nap win.
Testing the waters is almost always a good thing to dabble with here and there. I dig your work. Hoping you may be able to help us with our babe. Our daughter is 5 months old, and is now able to put herself to sleep after CIO sleep training but it has not stopped the frequent waking and crying, which still keeps everyone up. Sick of it. Is this random response to blame? Her naps suck too. We can depend on a 9am nap that may go for an hour but then she cat naps about every 2 hrs after that for about 30 mins.
Any thoughts? Check post I link to below for more deets on that. But my gut says she needs more soothing. This is not hunger — so what does she need? At 5 months I would consider loud white noise and a swaddle even if you thought she was done.
So early AM crying almost never has a positive outcome much as you might wish it to. Thanks so much for replying, Alexis. I wanted to post progress in case anyone else had similar problems. My baby never fit any model described in all the books I read Babywise- forget about it. What started to work was bottle feeding almost exclusively. I am permanently attached to a pump but- she eats more and is less distracted during the day if bottle fed, which means she eats more period.
I want to note that this is the first time in 5 months that I have been sleeping for 3 hours at a time! For the last month I also had to work under these conditions.
I say this because it was this unsustainable stuff that made be decide that letting her cry is ok, and supplementing with formula is ok.
Since this change she goes to sleep with just babbles, and wakes dependably at 11, 2, and 5 to be fed. She is WAY less crabby, her naps have been hour long for a week now, and I sleep for 3 hour stretches. This is progress!
And I think this puts us in a better spot for night weaning in the future. There are so many things I have had to let go of in being a new mama- the un-induced birth, the emergency c section, wanting to breast feed ONLY etc. With everything I remind myself that 1 I put SO MUCH effort into trying to accomplish these things or make them happen- things happen that are just out of our control. I am so grateful for that.
Thanks for not assuming the choices we make as parents are for convenience. Many for me have been last resort. I am so glad I found this website. Thank you. My situation is this — My 9 month old is a true challenge in every way. Does she like her buggy — nope, always hated it. What about a baby carrier? Nope, always hated it. Riding in the car must be fun, right? What about being carried? Loves it. Can she entertain herself for more than a couple minutes without someone being right there with her?
Not really. Hates it. What about drinking from a bottle? Oh, well maybe she likes yummy pureed baby foods. Nope — only wants finger food that she can feed herself with she has 6 teeth. You see now what I mean when I say that she is a challenge. What does this have to do with CIO you ask? We do the good old dinner, quiet play, change into jammies and brush teeth, read books, and then bed routine. It mostly works great.
She is then up for the day around ish. If I go in and feed her, she feeds for around 5 to 7 minutes and falls straight back asleep every time. Dad is not good enough. Mom is not good enough. Only boob is good enough.
After 9 months of never really getting more than 4 straight hours of sleep, I am slowly losing my marbles. The catch to this situation is that she is not breastfeeding at all anymore during the day.
She only gets boob in the middle of the night. She eats lots during the day not just baby food, but the same food that mom and dad eat, pretty much , so I have no idea why she should be hungry or if she is really hungry at all.
I think she just habitually wakes and wants the boob to comfort herself back to sleep. I feel like if she was hungry, she would wake less and it would be more random, but it is the total opposite. She has always been very needy, so maybe it is also separation anxiety.
What do you think? Hey Katie, Have you seen the post below night weaning? I think she is too distracted to nurse during the day and really solid food has far less calories than BM and is probably legitimately hungry.
I think you need to gradually wean, try to get her to nurse more during the day, and all the other stuff the weaning post talks about. I would start working on the feed and maybe consider a dream feed at before she wakes up. Maybe another dream feed at Thank you so much for this post.
Last night marked the start of the third week of trying CIO with our 9 month old. The first week was rough, the second week was not so bad but last night was like we were repeating the first night all over again.
It used to be that when he would wake, I would nurse him in our bed and then my husband would bring him back to his own bed after he was drowsy and almost asleep.
Abruptly, that stopped working around 8 months. I think it was a whole host of factors… we went on a trip for the holidays, he got a cold, that turned into an ear infection, he got four top teeth at once and separation anxiety went into high gear. The most he cried for was the first night of CIO — 2 hours.
The next night was an hour and a half. Then 45 minutes, then 30, etc…the second week he averaged minutes of crying about Should we keep doing CIO? My parents live about 5 minutes away and I could stay there while my husband is at our house. Separating boob from bedtime and having him fall asleep sans-boob is really key for most babies. So I would assume that after 4 hours he is actually hungry and go feed him. But I would also read the post below as well as others I link to in THAT post to come up with a gentle night weaning plan.
I was feeling so out of it when I wrote my original comment so kudos to you for making any sense of it haha. I was about ready to throw in the towel and accept chronic sleep deprivation on my part… but we had a night where he woke at pm and was screaming so I brought him to bed with us.
It was really bad. The next night, he slept in his crib for the most part until am at which point I brought him back again and the same thing… just constant up and down, really restless. He was more sleepy than awake when I would lay him down. So, we implemented your suggested bedtime routine but I do still nurse before laying him down. However, I now keep the light on. Monday he cried 49 minutes. Tuesday night he cried 0 minutes.
Tonight he cried 0 minutes. I messed up Monday night by nursing him in bed with us. That resulted in a 3. Tuesday night, I nursed him then laid him down, he cried… after 15 minutes, my husband went in. My husband had to go in 3 times but on the third time, Ezra my son gave up and decided sleep was better than seeing daddy over and over — haha!
This is the only nighttime feeding we have so I feel really confident that within in the next 2 weeks or so, he should be sleeping his full 12 hours at night.
Thank you again for the response and for writing all of this out — you have helped us SO much. I wish I could hug you!!! I do enjoy reading your blog, lots of great information. Crying it out is not necesary by any means. Elizabeth Pantley wrote a great book on it called the no cry sleep solution. The gentle way of helping your lo sleep through the night. It takes work though, instead of hardening your heart to a helpless babies crys. That they are in some fundamental way, ignorant or too lazy to consider other options.
Everybody is happy you found a cry-free way. My GOAL is to help people find a cry-free way. Your proactive approach in explaining your methods while gently reminding us to negate from making assumptions is so classy. It was a last resort effort in my household and has made all the difference in the world! Are you a product of cry-it-out from your parents?
And I am a perfectly functional adult who has a loving relationship with her parents. Cry it out is not a death sentence to the parent-child relationship. Just wanted to offer some comfort to those who are at the end of thier rope as I surely was!!
It does get better! Alexis has an amazing site here and quite honeslty if I never found it, I would have surely been committed! So grateful for this place. First off I love your site! It was going smoothly, only one time of a long cry session. Then yesterday happened. After finally getting to sleep, she did sleep well.
Now today, morning nap only slept for 45 minutes. And now we are doing the same for afternoon nap, slept for 45 minutes. Do I take the 45 minute nap and go get her or let her cry and go back to sleep?
Please give me some of your sage advice. So it may or may not be that. Again — not enough info to say. Hi Alexis, Thank you so much for this site, I have read every line and feel that it is helping me so much through this process. The first night was great, 15 minutes of crying, then slept for 11 hours !
Second night even better, 5 minutes of crying then another 11 hours. We thought we found the miracle cure. Third night he cried 20 minutes and we thought it was a fluke, he would go back to the easy times, but he has continued to cry for 20 minutes every night, his wake up times have been getting earlier and earlier, and this morning he woke at and would not go back to sleep even with nursing.
I know after reading others posts that 20 minutes is not a long time to cry, but I am concerned about this continued trend. It feels like we have hit a brick wall. Naps have never been great, but he naps in the carrier for an average of 4 hours a day sometimes 3 naps a day, sometimes 4. I am at a loss, any advice would be greatly appreciated. This feels really sleep regressiony to me and thus unrelated to the CIO bedtime stuff. So I think you have 2 separate issues — the 20 minutes at bedtime and the AM start the day thing, yes?
The bedtime stuff is hard. The AM thing sounds sleep regression to me. I would offer more soothing — swaddle, nurse, white noise, and maybe a swing. Also be on the lookout for separation anxiety to start rearing up on you. So your efforts to help at AM might be actually rewarding him staying awake follow me there? Something to be mindful of.
First off your blog is great. My lil one has just turned 6 months old. Following the information on your site and other research we have done, our lil one is sleeping through the nite and has been since 2 months old. We trained for naps and eventually that came too. He can go from 5 minutes to an hour plus. We have white noise blaring in his room which helped for a week, then he just started crying again. He sleeps from approx 7 — 7am and has 3 naps during the day.
He naps 1. If I go in there he freaks out even worse than he did when we first put him in so I just leave him there.
I do not know what is causing this or what I can do to fix this. His routine is the same everynight. So why is this happening? Hi Alexis..
After 14 months off hell and having third of selling the baby to the neighbours! I finally booked a week of work to train my 14 month old, who never slept through the night, would scream even looking at the cot and was feeding ever three hours at night and being so over tired that she would actually fight sleep and act delirious… So I did the cio and tonight was the fourth night… She has amazingly surprised me.
First night she cried 45 mins and went to sleep, second night 2 mins and third nyt only grumbled while I put her in the cot as soon as I shut the door she went quiet n just lied down… I have taken her dummies off her, I just leave a couple in the cot tht glow in the dark n she finds them n puts em in her mouth or even plays with them while she puts herself to sleep.
Today however she woke up at 9am and fought the nap All the way through, so I brought bedtime earlier from 8pm to 7. Will she ever smile and say ny ny mama…? And in the Morning she stays in her cot but wen she sees me come for her she cries… I get no smiles till I pik her up and reassure her… Is she thinkin she gets abandoned every night….? But last three nyts she has slept hours every nyt and we both feel human agen!
Intact she screams when she comes outa the bath n stops when I put her in the cot n goes to sleep… I am so confused what an I doin wrong? She cries even goin into the room coz she knows she will have to go sleep..
But then she sleeps through the night without a fuss.. I know you want her to look lovingly at you, smile, and toddle off to sleep. But this is rarely what you get with babies. So then her naps are going to be late too. Hi Alexis, thank you for your reply and sorry about all the autocorrect!
So great, however the nap is still an issue.
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