Please tell me how you successfully did the Ferber Method.

DS will fall asleep on his own after some crying.

When he wakes I should leave him there for say 5 minutes? then go in rub his hand once he falls back asleep wait 10 minutes the next time? Is this correct?

Thanks for your help

Re: Please tell me how you successfully did the Ferber Method.

Honestly, you can really do anything, whatever you are comfortable with, just pick a method and stick with it.

What we did was go to DD after short intervals. We went in the room, said something like 'shhhh' and rubbed her belly a little, then left when she had calmed down a little. I think we did really short intervals - 3 mins, 5 mins, etc.

ETA: I just noticed that you mentioned staying in there until he falls asleep. We didn't do that since one of the things that we wanted to help show DD was that she could fall asleep alone. We left once she was 'calm'.

Message edited 4/25/2012 10:23:45 AM.

Re: Please tell me how you successfully did the Ferber Method.

Re: Please tell me how you successfully did the Ferber Method.

omg, it took too long, maybe 2 weeks? but it wasn't like she was screaming her head off every night. she would cry for 2 nights, then have 1-2 nights with no crying, then cry again and so on, etc.

i was losing my mind, but we also wanted to take away her paci but at first gave it to her and would only give it back twice or something ridiculous like that, then gave it to her at first and didn't put it back in, etc. And we kept changing the methods that we used (intervals, long intervals, extinction).

If i could go back i would just do short intervals from the beginning, since that is what worked for us in the end.


ETA: At this point DD had gone from being an amazingly wonderful sleeper since 3 weeks old, to waking up 5-11x/night for her paci. She was just starting to break out of her swaddle too and we had just moved her from the crib in our room to her own room since she was so much more aware of everything around her. I think she was like 5 months. Up until this point she had always gone to sleep easily, either falling asleep while I nursed her at night or happily sucking on her paci wrapped up in the swaddle.

The real reason we did CIO was to help with the night wakings for her paci, and the way we did that was to take the paci away, so I think that's why it took so long. I don't want to scare you away from CIO, b/c it isn't normal for it to take so long!

Message edited 4/25/2012 10:39:51 AM.