Sleeping through the night and CIO

A couple of people have asked me how it is going with sleeping through the night and our crying it out lately, so I figured I'd fill you all in.

Sleeping through the night: All of the books say to wait to put your child on a 4 hr. feeding schedule until he can sleep through the night. Well, we did this backwards. The triplets were put on a 4 hr. feeding schedule before leaving the NICU (at 3.5 wks), so I figured if the preemies can do it than so should the full-term baby. We started the 4 hr. feeding schedule around week 3 with giving Charlie around 4 oz. every 4 hrs. When we took out the 2am feeding (around week 6), I slowly decreased his oz. for that feeding while increasing his oz at all of the other feedings. We are now giving Charlie 6 oz every 4 hrs 5 x's per day. In addition, we are slowly backing up his 10pm feeding to whenever we want his bedtime to be (I think our goal is 7:30pm). I'm doing this by feeding him at 9:45pm for 3 nights, then 9:30pm for 3 nights, etc. Last night he slept from 9:30pm to 6:30am! 9 hr. stretches are great!

CIO- In the week that we have been letting Charlie cry it out he has pretty consistently been crying for 30 min. before losing steam and going to sleep. He has done this 4 out of 6 nights. Thursday night my mom was in town and since she is not on board with crying it out, we didn't do it for that one night (no reason to make company feel uncomfortable). Last night he didn't make a peep when I put him down! No crying at all! I figure that it will be a roller coaster ride every night. But, I now know that he can make himself go to sleep without our help, so I think that the CIO is totally worth it!