Why do I have to sleep train my baby?!

Except that there’s absolutely 0 evidence for that!
It makes me sad that gradually and gently teaching babies to learn how to sleep independently has become such a loaded and emotional topic.
If they don’t like food the first time they try no one would just stop, same with learning to walk and they fall and cry you wouldn’t just tell them to give up. Babies and kids benefit from sleeping well.

OP your updates I think change things a bit given the responses you’re getting.

It’s amazing you’re getting a 2 year maternity leave, truly amazing (I’d have loved that!) and you don’t seem to be affected by the broken nights either. The thing is, everyone is different. I had twins, and 10 months of maternity leave (that was with tagging on my AL - it was as far as it could possibly stretch for us). I was utterly broken from them always being awake (one or the other) all the time; when they were almost 4 months old I clocked I’d been basically awake for almost 30 hours and I had developed incredibly bad PPD. Can you see why I sleep trained?
And as others have said, it wasn’t leaving them to cry, ever. It was keeping an eye on wake windows, putting them down in the cot awake but calm, when they woke giving it a few mins to just see what happened - a slight whimper? Let’s leave and see. Crying? Picked up straight away.
It saved my sanity. And I still find it cruel to read comments suggesting doing so caused any harm to them; it didn’t, in fact I’d argue keeping their mother in that sleep deprived state much longer would’ve been much more detrimental.

I just want to share my experience. How you parent is your choice only. Ignore any comments that come along as trust me over the years there are so many more to come. Take the advice you need and ignore the rest. But please, always remember there is no one ‘right’ way and most Mums are just doing their bloody best.

It's obviously totally up to you how you deal with your child's sleep. What I will say is there are many different ways to 'sleep train' - you don't have to leave baby to cry alone.

😁

You don’t. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But people do like to justify their own decisions to make themselves feel better about it.

Never sleep trained either of mine. They slept with me til 1 and a bit full time, until probably 3-4 for part of most nights. And then they just slept in their own rooms. Youngest did still come in some nights and sleep on a floor bed in our room until maybe 6, only a couple nights a week if that.

The great thing was, I got lots of sleep! I was back to work with a long commute and 5:30am starts and it meant I slept well and nights were no fuss. Both mine are excellent sleepers now and bedtimes have generally always been low stress.

I think sleep is one of those things that everyone has a different experience of and thus a different opinion on.

the best advice is nobody else in the world has ever had your baby, or tried what you have.

I have four, two age six, a four year old and a two year old.

one six year old has never slept. And I mean never. The twins were adopted, I say this for completeness. Co sleeping was not recommended. After. Bad bout of croup age two I gave up with the night wake ups and she sleeps in a super king with me. She sleeps. So that’s a win. She chats now about one day having her own room and bed, it’s set yo ready but she has no interest in it and I have three other children to parent so cannot be up all night.

her sister sleeps beautifully and always has. even if she is sick she likes her own bed with me going along to her.

My four year old is in with us. She does start the night on her own. Loves that routine. Lasts maybe twenty minutes.

My little one has slept like a dream from day dot. No idea why. Nothing different.

with the eldest, we went two years without sleep, or I did as DH did have to work. It broke me, then eventually I thought what is the point here.

everyone now sleeps in this house, albeit a case of musical beds.

we now have a DH with one broken leg and one broken knee on the other leg so it’s even more fun. He wakes more times than they do!

Nah, thanks. The patio got built in 1993 and the next kid was a doddle to deal with once there wasn't a twat in the vicinity keeping both of us awake.

I respect others’ views on it, so wouldn’t have tried to talk you into it if I knew you IRL. Although I wish the anti-sleep trainers had offered me the same courtesy!
But having had one friend crash on the motorway thanks to sleep deprivation, and others still up multiple times per night with primary age kids, I do sometimes question their decisions to myself. Especially if they’re complaining about it a lot. OK if you can cope with that, but they look so chronically tired, as do the children.

If you can manage it without it harming the rest of your life, then fine. I’ve got one friend who has coped with it by being in bed for 12 out of every 24 hours herself, so she’s had enough rest. That’s been going on for over ten years now (two children, biggish age gap). But she isn’t working so can manage it. There’s no way I could do the same!

So you need an alibi? 😂

As long as it’s not all you ever talk about with people then I don’t see why people care? How else would they know to care? You just say your night was so so and move on?

Of course you don't 'have to'. But don't go around complaining about how tired you are/broken sleep/petty arguments with DH further down the line unless you are prepared to do something about it.

Yes you are very fortunate to have extended maternity leave so you don’t need to prioritise your own sleep.

Others who are not so fortunate may not have that luxury and may need to sleep train.

You’re making it sound like you’ve carried out extensive randomised controlled clinical trials for your “extensive research” which I suspect really means reading some papers which support what you think.

Gazillions of babies have been successfully sleep trained and they are not walking around with brain issues because of the “impact of cortisol”.

This is perhaps the most impressive PFB post I’ve seen on here. Well done 🏆

MN is very pro sleep training. Sleep training is nothing new and I tried it many times with DS1. It was awful, DH and I both hated it, but we were not confident new parents and believed the experts knew better than us. Thank goodness we didn't have the entire internet telling us we were doing it wrong.
It never worked and we ended up with a system a bit like yours. We all got sleep, albeit not always in the right bed. We had DS2 two years later and just went with the flow.

No sleep training here.
Co-sleep as well.
2 dc ages 4 & 22m.
4 y/o just started going to bed to sleep on own, but I did spend the summer "training" that. It was a bit rough, but I think it was necessary. Now will tell me when ready to go to bed. 🤗 And arguments are rare when I say time for bed. Just gets into bed, gets a kiss and goes to sleep.
Baby sleeps in cot, then with me usually half-way through the night.
Works for us.
Do what works for your family.

There's many, many ways to sleep train. ''Sleep training'' is an umbrella term and it rarely means walking away and leaving your baby to cry.

Even sleep training that involves some crying also involves a parent going in to comfort them.

and it doesn't explain the sleep trained babies who do cry in the night if they are teething, ill etc and are responded to because parents will know that is unusual for them so will go in to check on them.

Depends upon what you mean by sleep training.

If you mean that they are shut in a room alone for ten hours every night, no matter how much they cry and are at most told from the doorway 'go to sleep', than that's obviously wrong.

However, if they mean that they're safely in a cot and, rather than instantly rushing at the slightest movement, you wait a few moments after the first whimpers to see if it's actual crying or you put them down before they're fully asleep so that the sensation of being laid down gently is part of the going to sleep cues, that isn't. Same way that if a child is still crying after everything you've done has failed to soothe, it's going through your skull like a screwdriver and you haven't had more than 20 minutes' sleep in four months (and your husband has thoughtfully informed you that his Mum says a proper mother's baby would never cry and not attending at the first fart means the baby will be best off taken to live with her), it's absolutely fine to put them down safely in the cot and walk away for five minutes to plan your divorce uninterrupted whilst they continue to cry, as you aren't doing them permanent physical or emotional damage by giving yourself a moment to compose yourself.

How rude to tell someone to shut up because they don’t agree with them. This poster wasn’t directly talking to you and just posting their own post. Yet you think it’s okay to quote them and slam them down. It does wonder why you find what they wrote so offensive and have taken it so personally…?!

But sleep training isn't just leaving a baby to cry until it falls asleep. No wonder people are so against if if that's the story pushed

The sensitive thing is a real thing!! I could feel it as a first time mum, even though people thought it was clueless.
my first child is my orchid child. My second is a dandelion. Look it up. Orchids are often very clever but very sensitive. Dandelions are tough and thrive anywhere.
Love them all equally.
You shouldn’t sleep train any baby IMO but especially not a sensitive child. It won’t work and it makes them more clingy and doubtful.
Tell people to FO. Plus you are allowed to be tired.

have you joined Beyond Sleep Training group on Facebook, it saved my sanity. Lots of like minded mums

Oh do shut up, this is false information, did you get that from the Romanian orphanages encyclopaedia? My sleep trained children cry in the night if they need anything ( water, cuddles, lost a toy) they are not neglected in any way. The only difference is they don’t need me to get them back to sleep, they can roll over happily and go off themselves. Bonus is, they sleep well and are getting restorative sleep (which, if you wake frequently in the night, you will not be getting enough of).