To think cry it out is kinder than gentler methods

@Mummyoflittledragon I'm curious as to how this woman's expertise in anorexia relates to CIO? As a scientist myself these things seem quite far apart but I'm obviously missing some connection?

Lack of sleep is so damaging, both to babies and to adults. Our bodies and minds heal and repair themselves while we sleep.

My eldest was a champion sleeper, 12 hours a night from an early age and huge naps he didn't drop until he was almost 5. He was the happiest little kid but he never, ever went to sleep without screaming himself purple first - he just didn't want to let go. Any attempts to settle him made him angrier, so when he was a little older I gave him a kiss and a pat and left him to it, only ever took a couple of minutes for him to drift off.

Now he's all grown up into a strapping young man and we couldn't be any closer.

This made me laugh 🤣🤣 You're absolutely right.

And I know this is a slightly tangential point, but however 'left wing'/'hippy' gentle methods of parenting are, as your comment about none of the women sleeping since 2016 reveals, I think they are another way to push total sacrifice on the part of the mother and are sexist in their own way.

I think often trends move like a pendulum, and actually 'gentle' sleep training is on its way out. It moved from Gina Ford to gentle. When I had DC1 5 years ago every time someone posted gentle parenting wasn't working for them there would be an onslaught of 'you're cruel' 'haven't you read the Romanian orphanage study' 'you can't expect to sleep before the child is 2' blah blah and almost no dissenting voices. The few that did dare to suggest CIO wasn't that bad were often accused of child abuse.

Whereas look at this thread! Lots of people saying 'it didn't work for me and I did CIO' when clearly that wasn't an acceptable thing to admit even 5 years ago.

So hopefully in a couple of years people will get more balanced advice

Although it's more likely there will be someone else along to replace Sarah Ockwell-Smith as the 'right' way of getting your baby to sleep

It's very clear you are a loving mum who wants to help her dc learn to sleep. Sleep deprivation is used to torture for a reason. Do what you need to so you all have proper amounts of sleep. It that's cio so be it. Yes I believe in orphanages it is incredibly damaging. A child in a loving family is not going to be harmed by it.

Just to say OP that I have a psychological aversion to cry it out for all the reasons previously described and I’m not sure that I could’ve done it with my DS.

BUT as an alternative perspective, I’m awake at 5am having not slept since 3am because my now 4-year-old hasn’t got the sleeping memo, and can’t do it, and we don’t know how best to help him.

I’m permanently tired, extremely grumpy and any ‘free’ time I have is spent catching up on sleep rather than doing the things that make me a better, well-rounded person.

i don’t have a Time Machine but if I did, I might tell myself that a week of cry it out might make me a better mum than the shell of the human being I am now.

So honestly, you do you OP.

Honestly depends on the baby. The only way to know is to try it and see. I will say that 15 months is tricky regardless.

Sarah Ockwell-Smith really tainted my first year of motherhood, I find her brand really toxic. Those books made me feel like such a terrible mother, like my DC was broken because they didn't like co-sleeping or even cuddling particularly.

Her acolytes on here didn't help either. Between them they really undermined my confidence even in my bond with my DC.

My paediatrician (who was an amazing man) spoke in hugely disparaging terms about her methods in an appointment when DC was around five months and it really helped me let go of that and do what felt best for DC.

Oh ok. I misread what you were saying. Bad headache here.

Completely up to you

Yes, that was the point that I was making. You are agreeing with me.

Nah, we shouldn't sleep train a baby

This is a totally different scenario. Cry it out under these circumstances would have been cruel. Your ds was suffering from the effects of food, which his little body couldn’t tolerate and isn’t the same at all as the circumstances under which I left my dd to cry. My dd wasn’t ill or in pain. She’d been fed. Her nappy was clean. She just needed to sleep.

This was completely true for my DC. “Gentle” methods felt like they just confused her, ie, why was I in the room but not picking her up. Why did I keep coming in and leaving etc. Nap trained her and she cried for a total of 20 minutes over 2 days and then started taking 1:30 naps and was a much better rested and happier child.

My DS was a terrible sleeper. He sleeps through fairly consistently now he’s 3. We didn’t do anything to sleep train, there were a few gradual transitions like night weaning, him falling asleep in his cot rather than on a person and into a bed but overall it did happen on its own.

The difference was that me and DH shared the night wake ups so it wasn’t all on me.

My second naturally sleeps better.

If you’ve decided you want to sleep train that’s completely fine especially as it made such a difference with you’re first but unless there is neurodivergence like the PP mentioned sleep will get better on its own over time. By over time I mean years/months not a few weeks.

Sorry I wrote the above not having seen all the later replies ...

I am also another one that co-sleeping didn't work for. Partly because I can't sleep but also one of my babies absolutely hated it.

As PP said, the babies have all read different books. You as the parent have to kind of feel what approach is best for yours.

I had twins and had a hard time trying to settle one and then the other. I’d try to get one fully settled and the other would start crying before I managed it, so I’d try to settle the other and the first would start crying harder. It felt like and endless cycle. Eventually I decided to try and settle one of them properly and just leave the other until the first was fully asleep, then I settled the second. It was a revelation when the second one, who I wasn’t trying to comfort in any way fell asleep without me before the first.

I realised that, for my babies, the attention - me responding to their crying - kept them awake when they really needed to sleep. They were pretty young at that stage so they were in the room with me. But I didn’t try to settle them if they cried from tiredness, I just let them get to sleep themselves. They got a lot more sleep that way and cried a lot less than when I’d tried responding to them.

All of that is to say that YANBU. I agree that some forms of sleep training can be frustrating for some babies. Attention, of even the mildest form, doesn’t necessarily help, it can interrupt the process of getting back to sleep.

• Resettle child. Say goodnight and leave. Don't do a lot. Focus is it's nighttime and not a lot of service offered. Mine have never been left to cry.*

I think what comments like this don't understand is that some babies cannot be resettled without picking them up, which just resets the cycle. Like the OP, I had two babies that would just drive themselves into a frenzy if I was there and didn't pick them up. And if I did, they'd be screaming as soon as they touched the cot when I put them back down again, so resettling actually achieved nothing because every time I went in I actually upset them more.

Some babies are Sarah Ockwell-Smith babies and some babies aren't 🤷🏻‍♀️

Like OP I found Lucy Wolfe helpful (especially with wake windows and generally making me feel more confident with my sleep approach), but actually used something closer to CIO in the end. We two hard nights and then brilliant sleepers. Didn't affect our bond blah blah blah.

People can say I'm cruel as they like but they didn't have my babies. I think part of being a parent is teaching your child to sleep.

And of course I tried gentle methods first! Consistently ...

@Mummyoflittledragon
That really doesn't chime with my experience at all unfortunately. My DS has a very obvious underlying illness in which eating the wrong food causes him all sorts of physical/emotional symptoms. If I had left him to cry it out, he would have been in real trouble.

My own conclusion has been that only the mother/parent/carer can really judge what is going on with the child because (s)he is right there on the spot. I think that generalisations by "experts" who do not have eyes on your own situation can really cause a lot of harm.

I think this is one where "know your own child" is the rule that matters. I kind of suspect that the OP knows what she needs to do and just needs a chat to get her ginger up to do it, so to speak.

In my situation, the opposite was the answer, and I knew my own child and also did what I had to do.

Before you think I’m posting on the wrong thread, please read on. This is about controlled crying vs cry it out.

I am doing a course at the moment led by a woman, who has extensively researched anorexia and whose research helped write the NICE guidelines. So highly respected. On the course we were discussing something called The Reassurance Trap. This concept is the more you reassure the person, the more their anxiety will grow leading you to having to reassure them less it works, escalating the problem.

The course leader brought up controlled crying for babies as an example of The Reassurance Trap. If you scroll down past some of the writing you will see the model of The Reassurance Trap in the book she co-wrote, which is used in the corse. https://newmaudsleycarers-kent.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Worksheet-5.3.pdf

She asked us for experiences and I spoke of mine with cry it out, which was accidental when my dd was about 2 weeks old. Dd fell asleep and I transferred her to her Moses basket and I went for a very quick shower. She awoke whilst I was covered in shampoo. I sped up and was just getting out of the shower when she went back to sleep. Thereafter I was able to put her down whilst awake. She self soothed for a few seconds and less than a minute before going to sleep.

The course leader’s comment was ‘thank goodness you were in the shower’. I know she’s not a paediatrician. But I’m very pleased I was too. When my dd was older, maybe 17 months she woke in the night as she was ill. When she was better and thereafter, she decided to wake up at the same time every night. Once dd was awake, she’d want to play for hours so this was forming a habit. I couldn’t get her to go to sleep and in the end just went through cry it out. It took 3 nights. Shorter each time. I felt terribly guilty especially as it was thought harmful at the time.

Opinion has now shifted. There is no evidence that cry it out is harmful. https://huckleberrycare.com/blog/cry-it-out-method-aka-extinction-method-is-it-right-for-your-baby So yes, if this is what you want to do, please don’t think you’re harming your baby.

Hi OP,

I'm really sorry you are struggling with this.

FWIW, my DS was like this and he didn't sleep alone until 7 years old, and it's still a struggle now he's a teen. He's diagnosed with special ed needs and is home schooling with EBSA.

Tbh, I don't think there is necessarily an easy answer, but I hear you on how hard it is.

Can you set the bed up differently? We co-slept in a big bed with a mobile bed guard on his side. DH moved to another bedroom for a while, but it was worth it.