My Sleep Training Experience in Bangkok: Cry It Out Followed By No-Cry Method 

I’ve been wanting to share my experience with sleep training for a while now. Not because I’m an expert or that I’ve been wildly successful but mainly to help anyone else who might be considering sleep training to know what to expect and to be prepared for the unexpected. I’d also like to preface this post by saying I am totally aware each child is different and each parent has a different opinion about sleep training. What worked for me may not work for you and I am by no means saying what I did was right — I am just sharing my own experience.

Why We Chose The Cry It Out Method

When my son turned 10-11 months I felt it was the right time for my husband and I to try sleep training for two main reasons: my son always needed to be held and rocked to sleep in his crib (before naps, at bedtime and every single time he woke up at night) and he was waking up two to three times every night for milk, which in my opinion was too much. Nobody was getting a good night’s sleep and we needed to fix it. So after much reading and research, we decided to do the cry it out (CIO) method because we believed it was the only way for him to learn to self-soothe and eventually drop his night feeds.

I attended a sleep training seminar to understand the right way to sleep train (regardless of the method chosen) and I got some very useful tips:

• Establish a solid bedtime routine and start it at around the same time every day
• Ensure baby is full at bedtime to prevent frequent nighttime wakings out of hunger
• Follow the chosen sleep training method for daytime naps too

What Actually Happened Using CIO To Sleep Train

So we embarked on our sleep training journey following the tips learned from our research and seminar. After finishing my son’s bedtime routine we said goodnight with a little song we made up for him and put him in his cot to sleep. I think it’s important to clarify here that my son sleeps in his own room and we keep a baby monitor on whenever he is asleep there. The first three to four nights he cried for an average of 15-20 minutes and then one of us would go in and soothe him without picking him up and leave the room. It was so hard listening to him cry but my husband and I made a pact to do the training together and keep each other strong in our many moments of wanting to give up. Some nights he would cry even louder and longer if we went in to reassure him and then left. So we would wait another 15-20 minutes and he would eventually fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.

The Things We Didn’t Expect or Hear About CIO

Here is where my experience with CIO differed a lot from all the YouTube videos and blogs by other moms and even sleep training experts claiming that babies can be completely sleep trained within in a week and that every night the length of the crying gets less and less and by night seven baby is basically asleep the moment he is down in the crib.

First, we had a few incidences where my son cried so hard that he vomited his dinner.This happened because he was crying so hard and gasping for air at the same time that the vomit would repeatedly lodge and dislodge in his throat causing him to choke. We had to rush in take him out of the crib and turn him at a 45-degree angle (like Superman) over the sink and then tap between his shoulder blades to ensure all the vomit came out and he was breathing fine. It was the scariest and most heartbreaking thing I have ever witnessed; I was ready to give up after the second incidence. But my husband convinced me to simply feed my son dinner much earlier so he had enough time to digest food and try again. We moved his dinner time to ensure a minimum of a 1.5 hour gap until bedtime. This worked and we did not have any more vomiting / choking incidences.

Second, sleep training means with the CIO method for every daytime nap as well to ensure consistency. This meant that for about 2 weeks I had to be home for every single nap time and go through the sleep training. I would sit with the baby monitor in my hand and just pray he wouldn’t cry for too long. There were days where he cried for almost 40 minutes straight before falling asleep. So it was definitely an endurance test of my willpower and emotional strength. After about 10 days, I saw a significant improvement in his daytime naps — he would go to sleep without crying too much and some days no tears were shed.

Third, sleep training (at least with a 10-month old baby) is not a quick and easy process. After I adjusted all of my son’s meal and snack times and proceeded with the sleep training, I think it took about 10 days to two weeks for the length of crying to reduce to below 10 minutes for most nights. But I have to admit he was sleeping for much longer stretches after the initial weeks and he managed to reduce his night feeds to just 1 around midnight before we went to bed. I would say I considered the CIO method a proper success after about 4 or 5 weeks when my son said “bye-bye” to me instead of protesting and crying for a few days in a row when I put him in the crib to sleep. So the whole process does take much longer than “advertised”.

Fourth, while CIO worked for the most part, it’s not a perfect solution in my opinion. My son fell off his sleep training wagon and would cry and protest if there were any changes to his routine. It happened a lot whenever we traveled or if for some reason he had to sleep in the same room as us in his cot and he could see us, he would wake up frequently and cry. So there were nights where I laid like a corpse if I heard him stirring and waited for him to fall back to sleep in effort to not distract him with any movement. Maybe it was the way we chose to do the CIO method and keeping my son in his own room to sleep — it made it nearly impossible to be sleep or do anything in the same room where my son slept.

Overall, my son started sleeping for longer periods and reduced his night feeds and our sleep quality also improved. It was going great…until he turned 16 months! I know there’s a pretty bad 18-month sleep regression for most toddlers but I had NO idea what he was going through at 16 months. One night he woke up every 2-3 hours and cried in his crib and following the CIO method if he does wake up unexpectedly, we don’t go to see him because he usually self-soothes and goes back to sleep in a few minutes. So we followed the CIO method for a few nights and didn’t go in to soothe him but the night wakings and crying spells didn’t end, they just kept happening and lasted for 15-20 minutes at a time. So after two nights  I ended up going in to soothe him and left the room as I usually would but it didn’t work. He cried even louder and I could instantly tell it was different to his usual cries. This cry was telling me that he’s scared and he needed comforting; he was calling for his mama and papa.

When Dropping Naps, Separation Anxiety, Sleep Regression Happens All At Once

During this phase my son’s daytime nap schedule was also completely haywire. Some days he was napping once a day, some days twice like normal, some days he napped at the normal times and some days he didn’t. After a few days it was clear he was trying to drop his second nap but I’ve read it can be a long process for some toddlers. So between the frequent night wakings, heart-wrenching crying, and unpredictable nap schedule I was totally lost about how to maintain his sleep training. It just didn’t make sense to me to add more stress to a situation that’s already tense all around. I went with my gut and started sleeping in my son’s room to give him comfort that he’s not alone so he wouldn’t cry. But it didn’t work. The moment he saw me he would stand up in his crib, cry and demand to be taken out and the moment I put him on the bed beside me he fell asleep. I wouldn’t have to rock him or anything. He dozed off in seconds! So I figured he’s having major separation anxiety and since we were due to travel for almost a month around the same time I threw all my sleep training out the window and I co-slept with my son. Many people would tell me what I did was absolutely wrong but I knew it was what my son needed to move past his anxiety.

Resorting to Co-Sleeping To Ease Anxiety

After we returned from our travels, the co-sleeping had totally changed the way my son fell asleep. After his bedtime routine, he would just roll around, play and talk to himself in the bed and I had to lie there and wait until he exhausted himself and fell asleep. Some nights it took up to an hour! My son at 17/18 months is also much bigger and co-sleeping with a sideways toddler meant I got little sleep. So now I had to do two things: retrain my son to at least sleep in his own crib and manage his separation anxiety. Doing the CIO method for sleep training at this stage in my son’s life given all the facts just didn’t make sense to me. He needed the comfort and reassurance of my presence, not my touch. That was an important difference I noticed.

Trying Sleep Training Again With A No-Cry Approach To Manage Separation Anxiety

I decided to try my version of the no-cry method and was 100% sure it wasn’t going to work. But I had no choice, my son had to at least learn to sleep in his crib again for his safety and my sanity. So I decided to give it a shot for a few days and if it failed, then co-sleeping it was going to be. What I did for my no-cry approach was I did his whole nighttime routine and then put my son in his crib and then lay down on the bed right next to him (a mattress on the floor is an easy alternative if you want to try this). As expected, he stood up and cried very loudly for almost 10-15 minutes demanding to be taken out and sleep on the bed; I simply talked to him in hushed tones saying “Don’t worry, mama is here. You’re a big boy and that’s your bed. That’s where you do “nunu” (Hindi baby talk for sleep). Mama is right here. Don’t cry. Mama is right here. Don’t cry.” And I just kept repeating myself through his tears for almost 10 minutes when I noticed he suddenly quietened and listened. He slowly lay his head back down and watched me for another 10 to 15 minutes with his eyes open, I’m guessing to make sure I wasn’t going anywhere. Once he was satisfied, he closed and opened his eyes a few more times to make sure I was still there and then he fell asleep.

I stuck to this hushed talking routine and within four to five days my son quickly remembered that his crib was the safe, happy place he always slept in and understood that we weren’t going to leave him alone to sleep. So he’s falling asleep much faster and without tears. Of course, my son sleeps much earlier than we do so once he’s asleep, we do leave the room and keep the monitor on. He definitely still has separation anxiety so he will wake up about two to three times a night to check we’re around and cries if we’re not. All we do is go in, pick him up and carry him for a few minutes, give him a hug and he feels reassured and comforted he’s not alone and happily goes right back to sleep in the crib. I call it the “I need a hug” cry when he does do it.

With the no-cry approach, there are still a few tears and I do find some nights I have to sleep on the bed in my son’s room if he’s waking up too much or just generally more anxious. And other nights have been just the same as when we used the CIO method — he wakes up once for milk and sleeps fine the rest of the night. So while I’m still waking up a few times a night I do feel so much better knowing I can give him the comfort and reassurance he needs right now to be able to fall back to sleep relatively unassisted, which I think is the key with sleep training at the end of the day.

Lessons Learned About Sleep Training, Regardless of the Method

Looking back I definitely feel the CIO method was necessary for us to effectively break my son’s bad sleep tendencies and teach him skills to achieve better quality sleep. At 10 months, I think it was very doable because he was younger, not as aware and generally easier to train. So using CIO helped to set a solid foundation of sleep skills for my son, which honestly I thought he had forgotten during the sudden onset of the 16-18 month sleep regression. But I was proved wrong when I trained him using the no-cry method. He remembered how to sleep in his crib like before when I put him in. At 18 months he wasn’t crying about how he was being asked to sleep, he was crying because he didn’t like sleeping alone but could go to sleep on his own if someone was present to alleviate his anxiety.

So in effect, the CIO method helped to set the foundation and solve his physical need for better sleep when he was a baby and the no-cry / co-sleep method has worked pretty well to solve for his emotional need for comfort while he sleeps.

Let me know if you had a similar or different experience. And feel free to shoot me an email or DM on Instagram if you have any questions or want more information about anything I have mentioned in this post.