Resist the temptation of CIO

We've hit the seven month marker and while there's a lot of fun and discovery at this age, many old patterns still remain. Despite claims in my birth-mom community that their babies are sleeping through the night, my little guy is still waking up like clockwork wanting to breastfeed. Other moms in the same position as me have asked what the "secret" is to having babies that sleep through the night, and once again the term CIO has come up.

CIO is short for Cry-It-Out. It is a theory of parenting based on 'tough-love' practices and while there may be some instant results to common perceived problems like getting your baby to sleep through the night, this approach has never felt right to me.

These discussions in my group did have me wondering if I was doing the right thing by indulging my baby in his feed-on-demand schedule overnight, and out of sheer frustration I even considered trying CIO after a marathon of sleepless nights this past week. Rather than act on my frustration, I decided to get a book from a source I felt I could trust.

While I've always known that my natural method of parenting has been loosely based on theories presented by Dr.s William and Martha Sears, I didn't buy The Baby Book until this week, along with The Baby Sleep Book. I jumped right to Chapter 3 in The Baby Sleep Book which discusses how and why babies sleep the way that they do, and everything started to make sense... including why some babies will naturally sleep through the night even though mine does not.

Bottom line is that this book has reinforced by gut instinct to nurture on-demand and avoid sleep training methods like CIO. The long-term effects of training a baby to do something they aren't ready for can have some very negative long-term effects that will make later childhood more difficult. So while my baby may not be sleeping through the night at seven months of age, I know he'll get there in his own good time when he's developmentally ready for it and he won't develop any confidence or trust issues along the way.

If you are frustrated by lack of sleep because your little one isn't letting you get much shuteye, please read this book. It takes a different approach to helping you teach baby to do things... more than I can explain in a simple blog post. Best part of all is that the practices described make sense, and neither you or baby willwon't shed a single tear while employing the methods outlined within them.