To all Cecile's clients.... just wanted to hear your experiences with the sleep training

Karen Blixen, I see that you have deleted your comment...generalizing the actions of a few billion people based on the few families living in a building is quite unfair imo. I would also like to add here.. I dont agree with jumeirajaneindubai but well what she decides to do with her kids is her decision and great if it works for them... but I dont think I would follow her advise for mine. Kcinthecity, I am glad that you have made the decision to seek professional help and It is nice to see that your DD is responding so well to it :) Although I did not have to do sleep training with my DS but he has always been on a strict routine from 6 weeks where I am very careful about his sleep associations, bedtimes and wakeup time. He is only 7 months but in case things change in the future and he starts waking up in the night, I'll not think twice before taking Cecile's help and getting things back on track.

Dubaicat replied : He was only 7 or 8 months at the time . Does sleep training affect a successfull breastfeeding as the baby is left couple a hours without any feed ? Two of my babies slept through the night (12+ hours) from 10 and 12 weeks, both exclusively breastfed and both without anything in particular that I did. The other slept through the night from 17 weeks, four days after we instigated a version of 'sleep training'. If the baby goes to bed comfortable, well-fed, dry and relaxed, there is no need to feed them every couple of hours.

Thanks DC - we have tried that - in fact, I mostly feed her lying down in my bedroom but she's a cheeky little monkey and does get distracted easily. I will have to keep working on it though as it would be nice if she could feed more during the day and less at night. Well we tried again tonight and unfortunately it took longer tonight and she cried a lot more :( BUT she did go to sleep in her crib in the end (instead of being rocked by us). One hour and 10 minutes tonight. Am REALLY hoping she follows in your DS's footsteps DC and tomorrow night is only 15 minutes... DH and I both felt terrible with her crying tonight but had to keep reminding ourselves that it is only a matter of a couple of days hopefully and then she'll be able to put herself to sleep which is so important for her...

GreenQueen, if your LO isn't taking good feeds during the day maybe it might help to change the surroundings so she can relax and concentrate on her feed, and take more? My mum said DS needed to have lots of little feeds and top-ups in the run-up to bedtime and that was totally and utterly the wrong thing for him, but I didn't have the confidence to disagree with her. She brought up three babies and I'm on my first, so I thought she couldn't be wrong, but I wish I'd just had the balls to say 'no'! It definitely contributed to him needing lots of little nips throughout the night rather than one solid feed. When I started taking him away from stimulation and feeding him in a quiet location with nothing to distract him, he began taking more. kc, it sounds like you're on the right track. I'd love to visit your place and slap your MIL around a bit, though! It must be hard if you're facing hurdles with DH but if what you're doing is benefiting your DD, tough luck on him. Keep at it and I'm sure you'll be where you want to be in no time.

Apologies in advance if I am on the wrong track here... but a new poster posting such a 'sensitive' suggestion... hmmmm!!! What do you mean ? I am trying to help the OP. It has worked for me. I give extra cash to my Nanny. I was so sleep deprived , my husband also ... my baby needs attention on night also. We found a solution . Everybody' s happy so what is the problem ?

Apologies in advance if I am on the wrong track here... but a new poster posting such a 'sensitive' suggestion... hmmmm!!!

yes exactly ! why not ? It is not worse than to leave him to CIO , isnt it ?

Went to Cecile yesterday. Lovely lady. She wants to me to do the dont pick up but soothe approach for DD who is 16 months and needs to be rocked to sleep and needs to be soothed back to sleep multiple times a night. Last night was awful where she cried the whole 45 mins of the 'dont pick up' approach. I was instructed to abandon if she cried for 45 mins. Today at nap time (which has always been a struggle), she was ok but did not sleep in the 45 mins so we had to pick her up and rock her again. I just wanted to hear your experiences. Obviously I know this is not going to just work the first time, but how long did it take for you ladies to see success using her methods? And I need the encouragement too. I was surprisingly not as upset with the yelling asi thought I would be and the wonderful Ashc basically told me "She is not hurt, she is not hungry, she is not cold, she is crying because she wants you to pick her up" and that made me feel better. Note: I am not leaving her in her crib to CIO. Why dont you ask your maid/ nanny to handle that ? At least the emotiona/ physicall needs of your baby are met, you wont listen to him crying , and you can have a good night sleep ?

DubaiCat and the rest of you who managed successfully to implement the sleep training, were your babies already not feeding at night when you started the training, or did you just find that the sleep training helped them to sleep longer, thereby naturally eliminating those extra feeds at night? At four months, DS was feeding right before he went to bed (around 8ish as we were in the UK and it was summer, so very light outside) and then having one feed in the night, anywhere from 1am to 4am, before waking up around 7ish. I have a feeling that if we'd been doing a dream-feed then, he may well have stopped waking in the night (after the dream-feed) of his own accord but that's just speculation now :D. This all went pear-shaped when we got back to Dubai at the beginning of September and our a/c was broken upstairs. We all had to sleep on a mattress down in the lounge and he ended up all over the place. We tried to be as quiet as we could but obviously we were disturbing him, as he started waking several times after he'd gone down. And here, perhaps, I made a rod for my own back. I began feeding him to get him to go back to sleep (what baby is going to say no to a nice, warm boob?!) and soon he was waking anywhere up to every 45 minutes. He'd only ever have the tiniest suckle, though, and drop back off to sleep - he never had a proper full feed at these wakings unless it was a time he'd normally have a feed, and then only one suckle of the many would be a proper feed. This was compounded when we went back to the UK a month or so later, and he was still waking God knows how many times throughout the night. I didn't want him to wake Mum up - she teaches, even though she should be retired :D - so again, I was feeding him to get him to go back to sleep. Again, just little nips for comfort. Once we saw Cecile, we initially got him back to a feed at bedtime, a dream-feed at 10.30/11ish, then one feed around 4ish, then within a couple of days he dropped the 4am feed and was down to just the dream-feed. At ten months he stopped that of his own accord. Thanks DC that makes me feel better. As DD is so distracted during the day, she really takes mini bm feeds through the day so I really was not keen to stop the night feeds outright. Last night she had her bed time feed at 6pm, then a feed at 10:30pm (which should have been a dream feed but she woke up before we could get to her!), and then she only woke up once at 3:30am for a feed before her morning feed at 6:30am so that really is not too bad - I really don't even mind feeding her at night if she just goes right back to sleep - but every now and then she wants to get up and 'chat' and play and that's difficult! KCinthecity - I decided to give it a go tonight (we were told to do 20-5-20 and to stay in the room and touch, shush and do anything but pick up during the 20 mins) - it took us an hour but she finally went to sleep!! She only cried for the last 5 mins so it wasn't too hard on me even though I was tempted to pick her up several times!! So let's hang in there and hopefully this will get better!!!

Hi kcinthecity I am sorry to hear you are still having sleep problems with your LO. DS is now 1 and has never been the best sleeper and still wakes between 1-2 times a night probably 3-4 times a week. The waking is usually at 8.30-9.30pm and 12.30-1.30am. I find that DS suffers from wind quite a bit so if he doesn't get a good burp up before I put him to sleep at 7.30 then he wakes the first time... (or if he is over tired). Then we dream feed at 10-11pm and then again the same thing happens - people (including cecile) have said to leave DS in his cot when we give him this DF (as he is bottle fed), my issue is if I do this a) he doesn't get a burp up and b) he always leaks through his nappy by 4am (so at dreamfeed I always have to change his nappy). The last time I went to see cecile I told her that I could not leave DS unattended for 45 mins of him crying without me going in. For me, I felt the 45 mins was too long. She suggested the 20/5/20 approach, leave him to cry for 20 mins go in for 5 mins patt on bottom etc (don't pick up), then leave after the 5 mins if he cries then leave him for 20 mins. We have found this to work on most occasions by the 2nd 20 mins. There has only been 2 nights in the past 3 months were he has kept going for a 2nd round of 20/5/20... but usually this has meant he wasn't feeling well and the only thing that seemed to settle him was some panadol. Usually if he wakes up now, he cries for about 7-15 mins of the very first 20 mins and ends up back asleep by himself. Generally I can tell by his cry when there is something wrong or if he is just wanting our attention. I find this makes it easier for me to leave him when I know he is just "putting it on" so to speak. If the 45 mins is too long for you then adjust it to 20 or 30 mins. I think too less than 20 mins though is long enough. I hope you can find something that works for you and you get some well deserved sleep soon!

I think DC makes an important point, as parents we do have to prioritize sometimes. Think of it this way, you have ten dollars to buy your baby lunch. An organic papaya costs 9 dollars or you can buy the non organic one as well as spinach and eggs. We all know organic is healty, it's as nature intended :) but in this case a balanced diet might be better. Likewise parents need to able to meet their childs emotional needs by day and might not be able to do that if picking them up and rocking them to sleep hourly all night. DC mine slept the same as yours at 4 months and I will also always wonder if I hadn't gone on vacation right then if we would have escaped the 4 month sleep regression but it seems pretty common regardless. As far as breastfeeding, I think you do need to be mindful that your child might truly be hungry (and keep a very close eye on their weight if denying them night feeds) but for many infants night nursing is more about comfort and sleep associations. I did choose to wait longer to attempt to cut back night feeds as mine is very disractable by day and nurses well by night. You can still work on removing associations in the meantime and very slowly try to reduce the number of feedings if you feel it is safe and desirable. I am sure as a professional Cecile would be able to tailor a plan for you that could allow for some night feeding if you think it is necessary. <em>edited by kiwispiers on 04/07/2011</em>

Hang in there KC! Hopefully everyday will keep getting better and A will become a champion sleeper soon :)

KB, I wanted to post this separately so I didn't get myself confused (easily done these days!). I see what you mean re emotional comfort; no parent wants to think they're not responding to their child's needs. But I think here, as parents, we need to decide what 'need' is a priority. For us, DS not sleeping at night was making him cranky and miserable during the day. He found it next to impossible to nap for longer than half an hour, he couldn't concentrate on anything, he was tetchy and intolerant and rarely enjoyed anything much, he was so ridiculously overtired. By waking in the night and not being able to get himself back to sleep, he was ruining his days as well (obviously not intentionally). While he may have thought he needed to be picked up in the night - and clearly, in his mind because of what I'd taught him with feeding him to sleep, he did - what he actually needed was to be able to get himself back to sleep when he woke up one of the many times babies do wake up throughout the night (as do we as adults). By previously picking him up and nursing him, I'd taught him he could get himself into a fully-awake state and he could rely on me to get him back to sleep, if you like, and instead of him being in just a light sleep at the end of a sleep cycle and drifting back off, he was getting into a fully-awake state and that was it. No boob = no sleep. Constantly picking him up and nursing him would have just reinforced, for him, that he needed me and a boob to get back to sleep and that was ruining his sleep for him. That it only took a couple of days for him to learn how to get to sleep by himself gave us confidence that we'd done the best thing possible for him. I know it's a hard decision to make and for many lucky parents, not one they ever need to consider. I often wonder what would have happened had we stayed in the UK after that summer, or had our a/c not been broken when we got back. I'm pretty sure if he'd stayed with the routine we had for those weeks he'd have gradually dropped feeding at night altogether by himself and would have been a great sleeper, and we never would have had to consider sleep training (however mild). But we did, and we had to find a solution to the problem we created. One of the midwives said to me as we were leaving the hospital, "Make sure he's awake when you put him in the cot so he learns to put himself to sleep. That's the most important thing." Oh, how I wish I'd listened!

DubaiCat and the rest of you who managed successfully to implement the sleep training, were your babies already not feeding at night when you started the training, or did you just find that the sleep training helped them to sleep longer, thereby naturally eliminating those extra feeds at night? At four months, DS was feeding right before he went to bed (around 8ish as we were in the UK and it was summer, so very light outside) and then having one feed in the night, anywhere from 1am to 4am, before waking up around 7ish. I have a feeling that if we'd been doing a dream-feed then, he may well have stopped waking in the night (after the dream-feed) of his own accord but that's just speculation now :D. This all went pear-shaped when we got back to Dubai at the beginning of September and our a/c was broken upstairs. We all had to sleep on a mattress down in the lounge and he ended up all over the place. We tried to be as quiet as we could but obviously we were disturbing him, as he started waking several times after he'd gone down. And here, perhaps, I made a rod for my own back. I began feeding him to get him to go back to sleep (what baby is going to say no to a nice, warm boob?!) and soon he was waking anywhere up to every 45 minutes. He'd only ever have the tiniest suckle, though, and drop back off to sleep - he never had a proper full feed at these wakings unless it was a time he'd normally have a feed, and then only one suckle of the many would be a proper feed. This was compounded when we went back to the UK a month or so later, and he was still waking God knows how many times throughout the night. I didn't want him to wake Mum up - she teaches, even though she should be retired :D - so again, I was feeding him to get him to go back to sleep. Again, just little nips for comfort. Once we saw Cecile, we initially got him back to a feed at bedtime, a dream-feed at 10.30/11ish, then one feed around 4ish, then within a couple of days he dropped the 4am feed and was down to just the dream-feed. At ten months he stopped that of his own accord.

Hi kcinthecity Sorry to hear that you feel you need to seek professional advice to get your lo off to sleep. I can imagine that you must be quite tired if you are doing this. Everyone is different, and I think every mother should do what is right for her. Ashc is right in saying that "She is not hurt, she is not hungry, she is not cold, she is crying because she wants you to pick her up". BUT imho this is one more reason to pick her up. What it means is that she has emotional needs as opposed to her physical ones... if you feel comfortable with this, then so be it. But remember that it is perfectly normal and natural for babies and toddlers to want to be held. You are not doing anything wrong by offering comfort. CIO/CC is an emotive topic and I do not want anyone to feel that I am judging them. But personally letting a baby cry for 45 mins would be sheer agony for me. I realize that it must be tiring for you to have to rock your lo to sleep several times a night though. Have you tried co-sleeping or having her sleep in your room? Research shows that children who sleep near their parents wake up and cry less because they are comforted by the fact that their parents are nearby. And believe me it's far less tiring for mummy and daddy too :-) Hope you find a solution that works for you. KB x <em>edited by KarenBlixen on 01/07/2011</em>

Sorry to hijack this thread, but can someone tell me how much Cecile charges at her Saturday weigh ins? We saw her two days back and have been asked to go again on saturday for a weigh in, just want to know if it's gonna be another 350? We haven't even started sleep training yet, just getting bf on track

Am glad to see this thread as we too went to Cecile a while ago but have not yet started implementing what she said. I am happy to give the 45 minute don't pick up but soothe approach a go, but she also wanted me to completely stop breastfeeding at night. DD is just over 7 months old and while I do agree that she does not need to feed so often at night, I am worried about my supply going down if I just stop bf at night (she said no feeds after the 11pm dream feed until 6am). DubaiCat and the rest of you who managed successfully to implement the sleep training, were your babies already not feeding at night when you started the training, or did you just find that the sleep training helped them to sleep longer, thereby naturally eliminating those extra feeds at night? Problem is DD is such an active child that she is very distracted during day feeds so is naturally feeding more at night to compensate - I know that has to change, but am not keen to introduce the sleep training and stop feeding her 'cold turkey' all in one go. Would love to hear your experiences with this. KCinthecity - I hope tonight was a little easier and I hope your DD manages to sleep better soon!

Dubaicat replied : He was only 7 or 8 months at the time . Does sleep training affect a successfull breastfeeding as the baby is left couple a hours without any feed ? I know quite a few mothers who's LO's sleep through the night (not necessarily all have been sleep trained) and who have managed to breastfeed for two years. BF doesn't mean having to feed continuously day and night. If that were the case, I think alot of us breastfeeding mums would have given up a long time ago! Feeding every two/three hours around the clock is only necessary in the early months to establish supply. Once that is done and the baby is taking in most of his nutrition during the day, night feeds can be safely dropped.

It works - its not easy but after 2 weeks of waking every 45 min I was desperate so I went to see cecile and she advised us to put him in his own room and not respond for 10min - he was 7 months at the time and exclusively breastfed so i was a bit hesitant to leave him the whole night - thinking with the a/c he might be getting a dry throat ..in dubai its hot ....but in the end we did it ..we added an air purifier to his room...and I did alot of praying and crying and praying after putting him in his cot and leaving him all alone in his room..... it took 3 days and now at 17 months he still goes into his cot awake and goes to sleep on his own .... and i still take the time to pray for him .... we dont follow his routine strictly now - but his bedtime routine and associating his cot as the place he sleeps has become so ingrained now that it doesn't matter, life with a little guy that sleeps 3 hours during the day and 11hours at night ...is really just brilliant ...the best thing actually......so when he is awake he is happy, smiley and inquisitive ....when he wasnt sleeping well he was more of a cranky touchy baby ......so just think about that .... think about life with that happy rested baby ..... its soooo good when everybody gets sleep.......life chaning actualy!!! :) Oh one more thing - I also read a book called - The baby whisperer answers all your questions....and the sleep easy solution...both very good, with lots of good practical advice or problem solving techniques to tackle amongst others....sleep problems.....and they very similar to what cecile would tell you ....except when you starting to panick and doubt what your doing ...you cant call them up (on the second day my son statyed quite but after 9 minutes started crying and cried for about 6 minutes....i was home alone ...so every min was looooong ... I called cecile and she stayed on the phone with for 10 min!

I feel your pain...I have taken advice from Cecile on sleep training and I assure you it does work, hang in there. 16 months is not an easy age to be doing this as he will have a lot more awareness but it is doable. I think you need to be persistent and do it for at least 3 days. When I put down my DS, I always made sure he was fed, changed and not crying. If he started to cry, I would leave him for at least 10 minutes. Generally after 5 minutes he would stop crying only to start again a little later. I knew that was his way of trying to fall asleep. If after 10 min he still cried and I picked him and he stopped then I knew there was nothing "wrong" with him and he just wanted to be picked up !! Only once did I pick him up and he just wouldn't stop crying and then i figured something was wrong and sure enough, he had a really dirty diaper!! Look - just keep at it. I know a few other mums who have followed this method, it works and the joy of being able to put your little one down without the rocking, holding, patting ect once he's sleep trained, will make it well worth the effort. Good luck.

I'm not sure I fully understand your question so let me know if this doesn't answer it :). I successfully breastfed him until 8 months, when we gradually switched over to formula one feed at a time. When he was EBF he was fed every three hours or so during the day - on demand, but he usually wanted feeding around every three hours - and then night-times varied. Some nights he would go seven or eight hours without waking, other nights he woke every 45 minutes before we saw Cecile. His position on the weight charts never wavered throughout this time. He's always been around the 75th and maintained this when he dropped to just a dreamfeed and then stopped feeding at night altogether at ten months. It was my choice entirely to stop BF at eight months.

Dubaicat replied : He was only 7 or 8 months at the time . Does sleep training affect a successfull breastfeeding as the baby is left couple a hours without any feed ?

It took us three nights, using the same don't-pick-up approach. We sat with him, patted him, sang to him etc. The first night it took us an hour and 20 minutes to get him to sleep, during which time he would cry for a minute (just angry crying, no tears), calm down, then start up again, then calm down, and so on. The second night it took 20 minutes, and the third barely a minute. From then on he went to sleep by himself, daytime and night-time, no problem. Cecile did say it was OK to abandon it after 45 minutes if it wasn't working (only if we wanted to) but I felt that because there were no tears and he kept calming himself down, for longer periods each time, it was better to just carry on. He was only 7 or 8 months at the time, so I should imagine it's a lot easier at that age than 16 months. Hopefully someone else will have experience with a baby your DD's age but in the meantime, I just wanted to let you know that in our experience, it's so, so worth it even if it's hard and frustrating at the time. Like you, I didn't find the yelling as bad as I thought I would, because after so many nights of such awful sleep deprivation I felt like we actually had a plan and could sort it out. ashc is absolutely right in everything she says - my sister said the same to me. And you're right beside her, so she's not abandoned either. Keep at it and I hope it works for you soon :).