You cio or your child wakes up forever

Great for you but my child would never have slept for long stretches in her own bed, and I wasn’t prepared to put up with endless sleep deprivation, (or to leave her to cry, which I think is wrong ) so cosleeping was the natural solution.

I had the exact same approach as you with mine. Breastfed him to sleep, fed him in the night, fed for comfort etc. he’s now nearly 8 and is an excellent sleeper and a very confident and resilient kid. Far from making him ‘too reliant’ on me, it’s had the opposite effect it seems!
Although obviously I can’t account for his personality and that he may just be that way inclined!

There’s definitely an inbetween. Mine has never been left crying but has also never slept in our bed. She’s happy and confident, plus sleeps well. We’re also happy as we’ve slept well too!

She slept in our room for the first six months and that was very difficult as we’d all wake each other up moving around, coughing, snoring/grunts etc.

Sometimes it isn’t even what suits you, but what the new baby needs. You can do two things at once in some situations but there are plenty that you can’t.

I think it is important to say there is no right way to do this. I never left my babies to cry but as they got older it was important for my own well being not to be upstairs putting them to bed for ages. It’s not going to permanently damage them whatsoever. But I think you should do the thing that suits you. I wanted a couple of hours to myself in the evening. Do what ever suits you.

My son woke a lot as a baby, he was breast fed to sleep. Basically you need to teach your child to fall asleep so if they wake up they can put themselves back to sleep. I stopped offering feeds first then I started to lay him down partly awake and cuddle him. Then lay with hand on chest, sit with hand on Chest. And basically over 3 weeks just kept moving further away from him until I was leaving the room

And for those who think I must have been exhausted the last 2 years - nope. A child waking once in the night to be breastfed takes about 5 mins, you do it basically in your sleep if you cosleep and you get chunks of sleep either side so no one suffers. It’s not ‘parent v baby’, you can be attentive to your child and still healthy and happy as kids naturally wake much less as they get older. Western sleep training culture just tells us otherwise- we have to ‘train’ our kids to sleep? Nonsense.

I am not saying this is the case for everyone as obviously OP has a more extreme scenario and it sounds incredibly tough, but all the replies making out you’ve ‘got’ to sleep train are nonsense.

tbh in your situation I’d cosleep OP especially with the youngest. They will likely sleep through then

Totally. You know someone is a harsh parent when they say ‘only a comfort feed’ as if providing comfort isn’t important to our babies. My 2 year old started reliably sleeping through at 20 months when SHE was ready, but I’m so glad I was there fo breastfeed her and cuddle her at night when she was teething or woke in the night etc. It’s a short time in the grand scheme of things and I’m delighted that, as her mother, I’ve done my utmost to make sure my child has never been distressed unnecessarily in her short life, and that includes never leaving her to cry.

I just spent time cuddling my babies until they knew they were safe and were able to fall asleep on their play mats. It took about 4 months with both where I had to hold them all the time. All. The. Time. So, 0.44% of their lives and 0.88% of mine I held a baby non stop.

And then never had any issues with them being able to fall asleep independently. So totally worth it.

I completely agree. What a load of shit that poster put. A 9 month old is not developmentally ready to settle themselves FFS.

Absolute nonsense ‘cause problems into adulthood’ 🤣🤣 it’s only in the western world we even countenance leaving babies to cry. In the rest of the world infants and children are comforted at night, often sleeping in the same room as parents. Are they all going to have problematic adulthoods?

Lots of us manage to parent our children without ever leaving them to cry - because we believe it’s wrong.

You’re very ignorant of history, aren’t you?

Some breastfed babies do sleep through the night! So you don't always have to bedshare. I did at some parts but mostly didn't.

For most of history, the whole family slept in one room, so no, they didn't sleep train their babies.

Not sleep train, let them develop naturally and bed share.

Or maybe parents have been horribly sleep deprived for centuries and resort to some kind of sleep training, without any books telling them to do that or without having a name for it.

Mumsnet is very anti sleep training but in real life most mums at my work and my mum & baby group have done some sort of sleep training (I know because it comes up in conversation when we're commiserating about our kids waking at 6am).

Never once left my daughter to cry, coslept till 2, always stay with her till she falls asleep in the evening (still now at 5 - to be fair it takes no time at all) and will get up to her if she needs me (or DH will) in the night. Which is fairly often though we do get more undisturbed nights these days - that’s a recent thing.

I’ve been known to moan that Sarah Ockwell Smith and her ilk have ruined our bloody lives, I definitely wonder if we were too gentle. Though on balance I think she’s just a terrible sleeper - DH and I are crap sleepers who wake at the slightest thing and struggle to go back off, I need eye masks and black out blinds and to listen to certain podcasts or apps in order to drop off again. DH is so restless too. Guarantee we were both left to CIO from pretty young and clearly it didn’t teach us anything! I don’t actually think you can teach a baby to sleep - it’s nonsensical.

To all the PPs saying sleep training somehow “teaches” a child to sleep and without it they don’t “learn” to sleep - how in heck did hundreds of generations of humans manage to sleep before some male scientists and Instagram sleep consultants came along then 😂

Agree with this!

This is 100% a mess of your own making, especially with the younger one. The older one I can’t comment on as I haven’t a child with SEN.

Nutritionally a child does not need feeding in the night past 9 months, anything else is a simply a comfort feed. You need to be firmer and drop the night feed for a start, then focus on them self settling. It’s so so short sighted to say it’s cruel to let them cry it out for a couple of nights but what’s crueler is not teaching your child basic skills like self settling that could cause problems into adulthood

Yes, because a bunch of books were published in the 1900s telling people to do that because it's inconvenient to have your workers tired from looking after their baby.

For centuries, humans knew that the way you care for a baby is to keep them close at all times, including at night.

Most of the world still does that.

Mine slept through reliably from four and five months. Stopped bf, own room, never ever ever came into our bed, they never even knew it was an option! Absolutely that was done for me. I needed that space and was going back to work. Also wasn’t afraid to leave them to whinge.
i honestly cannot remember ever being up and down with them at night after that, barring illness.
Midnight milky snuggles might suit some but nothing beats several undisturbed hours kip in your own bed.

Well that’s absolutely horrible. It can have all sorts of negative long term consequences on attachment etc but even if it doesn’t — like in this case — it does not justify leaving a baby to feel abandoned and alone in the dark. I could never do this. It would be going against all my natural instincts. Selfish.

SEN is a totally different ballgame OP and your 2 year old may have them too.

We sleep trained at 5.5 months but it all went to shit when teething and illnesses started. We abandoned sleep training as he was teething or ill ALL THE TIME between 7-11months.

He's 12 months now and has suddenly decided to sleep through the night without any sleep training at all (he has 12 teeth and 2 molars which is a lot for his age so I think we just got teething done early in one big go).

So I think sleep training helps short term but long term they do whatever they want anyway.

My FIL said they closed the door until morning unless the crying went on for too long. It wasn't called sleep training but that's exactly what it was. They didn't even a baby monitor back then.

He has 4 well adjusted children who all love him (and MIL when she was alive) so their bonding was not affected.

And I still mostly sit with my kids til they fall asleep although occasionally I can say I need to work or do something and they are ok with that as they get older. I really value that connection time now as they grow bigger and more independent from me.

From the age of 2, I moved them into their own bed and they start the night there. When they woke up, they'd come in with me. They would rarely wake up again. This meant max 1 wake-up per night for me. My 6 year old does not have SEN and is starting to not come through any more. I didn't bother with a cot as bedshared til 2 and then they could toddle in to me. The first couple of years were hard as I bedshared and breastfeeding frequently at night and also got insomnia with my first, sleep deprivation is so so hard and I felt it but it's now a distant memory.