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Claire Petersky
January 7th 04, 04:30 AM
"Mary Hewitt" > wrote in message
...
> Has anyone here let there baby cry it out at night? Does it really
> work, and what are any suggestions on the "right" way to do it...part of
> me wants to do it to my 7 month old because he wakes up about 3 times a
> night, and part of me can't bear to listen to him cry

When my daughter was 8 months old, we used a Ferber method (not, "*the*
Ferber method") to deal with her night time waking.

Under a method suggested in the book, I decreased the time for the nursing
every night. He had a relatively quick method of reduction that would have
ended the night feedings in about a week or so. If I remember right (this
was about 8 years ago now), I did it at half the rate suggested, such that
it took several weeks to complete. This is what I felt comfortable with.

There was no crying. The very first night she sort of whimpered in
surprise:
"What! I'm only nursing for 10 minutes instead of 20!" but that her only
response to the program for the weeks we implemented it. By the end of the
implementation period, she was no longer waking for night time feedings. She
never noticeably suffered, and my life brightened immeasurably by getting a
genuine night's sleep for the first time in months.

Conclusions:
A. "Ferber" does not equal "Crying it out".
B. You can't judge Ferber by what other people say is his method. He has
lots of different methods in the book, and someone can use his ideas without
using one of the methods that is the most highly criticized.
C. A Ferber method can be modified by the parent and still be effective.

I hope this is helpful to you in your quest for everyone to get a good
night's sleep.

Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
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http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky

Rosalie B.
January 7th 04, 02:39 PM
"Claire Petersky" > wrote:

>"Mary Hewitt" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Has anyone here let there baby cry it out at night? Does it really
>> work, and what are any suggestions on the "right" way to do it...part of
>> me wants to do it to my 7 month old because he wakes up about 3 times a
>> night, and part of me can't bear to listen to him cry
>
> When my daughter was 8 months old, we used a Ferber method (not, "*the*
> Ferber method") to deal with her night time waking.
>
> Under a method suggested in the book, I decreased the time for the nursing
>every night. He had a relatively quick method of reduction that would have
>ended the night feedings in about a week or so. If I remember right (this
>was about 8 years ago now), I did it at half the rate suggested, such that
>it took several weeks to complete. This is what I felt comfortable with.
>
> There was no crying. The very first night she sort of whimpered in
>surprise:
>"What! I'm only nursing for 10 minutes instead of 20!" but that her only
>response to the program for the weeks we implemented it. By the end of the
>implementation period, she was no longer waking for night time feedings. She
>never noticeably suffered, and my life brightened immeasurably by getting a
>genuine night's sleep for the first time in months.
>
> Conclusions:
>A. "Ferber" does not equal "Crying it out".
>B. You can't judge Ferber by what other people say is his method. He has
>lots of different methods in the book, and someone can use his ideas without
>using one of the methods that is the most highly criticized.
>C. A Ferber method can be modified by the parent and still be effective.
>
> I hope this is helpful to you in your quest for everyone to get a good
>night's sleep.

Ferber was way after my time, so I have no opinion on Ferber as I have
never read his book. However, I did somewhat the same thing as Claire
in that I didn't get up right away at the first whimper of the baby,
and I spent as little time as possible interacting with the baby at
night. This is a bit different than 'cry it out'.

As I've posted before somewhere, my mom did a form of cry it out with
me, but I was older than 7 months I think - maybe 8 or 9 months. She
was living with my dad and me at a rooming house, and another roomer
was a bachelor who would come in late at night, at which time I would
wake up and cry whereas normally I slept through the night. My mom
would go to shush me so I wouldn't disturb the other folks. Finally
the owner of the house suggested that she NOT go to me, but just let
me cry myself back to sleep. So my mom did that. She said the first
night I cried a fairly long time (I don't remember whether it was 15
minutes or half an hour), the next night it was much less, and the
third night I just kind of whimpered and went back to sleep. Of
course the bachelor may have stopped making so much noise too.

I had a similar circumstance with dd#3 when she was about 8 months and
was sleeping through the night. We moved to a row house with garages
in the basement, and the man next door worked 2nd shift. He'd come
home about 1 or 2 in the morning and put his car in the garage and
slam down the garage door. That would wake dd#3. I didn't want her
to wake up the two older girls, or bother the folks on the other side
of us (who were childless), so I'd bring her back to bed with me and
nurse her back to sleep. She'd usually spend the rest of the night
with us. That's also the closest I've ever come to family bed.


grandma Rosalie

Kevin Karplus
January 8th 04, 02:46 AM
In article >, Rosalie B. wrote:
>>"Mary Hewitt" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Has anyone here let there baby cry it out at night? Does it really
>>> work, and what are any suggestions on the "right" way to do it...part of
>>> me wants to do it to my 7 month old because he wakes up about 3 times a
>>> night, and part of me can't bear to listen to him cry

> ... so I'd bring her back to bed with me and
> nurse her back to sleep. She'd usually spend the rest of the night
> with us. That's also the closest I've ever come to family bed.

We did the family bed for about 18 months with our son.
Waking up to nurse was not a problem was not a problem for us---my
wife often fell asleep with him still nursing. This doesn't mean we
had uninterrupted sleep though---he often had trouble getting to sleep
or staying asleep when the problem was not solvable by feeding him.
(He was nursing about 40 hours a week.)

Often one of us would walk around with him in a sling or rock him on a
lap trying to get him to settle down (it seemed like it was usually
me, but more likely we were alternating nights). We tried a couple
times leaving him alone when he cried, but it was too difficult for us
and for him. He did NOT settle down when left alone, and "visiting"
him did not help.

We took to alternating nights for who got to sleep. The person caring
for him got some sleep, but it was often interrupted.

He did not start sleeping through the night until about 18 months, and
was not a sound sleeper until he was about 2.5 years. Now (at almost
8 years) he is an extremely sound sleeper, once he actually falls
asleep. We have to go into his room every 20 minutes or so and take
away whatever book he is now trying to read surreptitiously.

On New Year's Eve, we had an extremely full schedule (we walked
downtown in the early afternoon, saw 8 half-hour performances and a
parade in Santa Cruz's First Night celebration, then walked the
mile-and-a-half home). My wife and I fell asleep soon after midnight,
but (based on how many pages were read), we think he stayed up until
about 1:30 a.m.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.