Why do I have to sleep train my baby?!

If you’ve done a lot of research to justify your decision.

why do you then need to come to mumsnet to talk about it?

Ooops sorry!

Ok. So the only really reliable anecdata is that your crap sleeper is in no way attributable to anything you did or didn't do. Got it.

Baby sleep books are generally all pretty similar in their recommended wake windows etc. Based on observation of signs of tiredness in MOST babies and things which we know - from research - help establish and maintain circadian rhythm etc. No human is an exact science, but combining some guidance based on fairly easily obtained data with some mothers intuition probably ends up working for a majority if you're minded to stick to it.

You don’t have to.

@Squirrel81 i was a very attachment parent and when mine was a toddler I did use the book The Toddler No-Cry Sleep Solution (there is one for babies as well). Worked great. Sat well with me. Nobody HAS to CIO with their baby. But if you want more sleep you can get it without that cortisol spike and possible attachment issue for your child.

I think you’re massively over thinking this !!! You do what you want it’s your child . For me I know sleep and having enough of it was important for me .. from the day I came home from hospital I put my child to bed upstairs after there evening feed 7 ish and came down stairs and left them asleep until they woke 2/3 hours later . Obviously got up with them through the night but didn’t have them next to me down stairs till I went to bed. My friends thought I was mad but guess what no sleep training needed even now at 11 and 9 they go to bed perfectly. You do what you want to do but I would t complain your tired in front of them. You’ve only done 11 months what till your 2/3 years in and wish you had listened x

Sorry - that was exactly my point! You can’t just look at a handful of examples and draw a conclusion!

Some babies are sleepers others are not - I got two of the not kind. I also don't believe in CIO or gradual withdrawl or whatever claptrap people told themselves to leave a crying baby. No other animal would leave their babies to cry…. It would attract predators!

I too had a husband who worked as a team with me to manage nights to allow everyone to get enough sleep.

i ended up like you getting fed up with others preaching their views, I ended up telling MIL milk teeth are called milk teeth because you’d still be having milk from your mum, gorillas feed up to 7 years, as that is when they get their adult teeth. Humans are the same age for milk teeth loss there is nothing abnormal at breastfeeding at 18months. She kept her opinions to herself about parenting after then.

I think they are trying to give you the benefit of their experience, but if you don’t want it then just smile, nod and avoid the subject.

It sounds as though you don’t need to sleep train as you have a nice long mat leave and it sounds as though your partner can work on very little sleep too. But most people don’t have this luxury so for them sleep training is invaluable.

If you don’t want to do it then don’t, but I’d still listen to their experience if they are older than you and have children who sleep well.

That’s

Not

Meaningful

Data

FFS I swear everyone should be Clockwork Oranged into learning statistics.

I was sleep trained (pretty close to ferberised) I am not in any way anxious, can sleep anywhere but I do have high sleep needs. My sister was not, she keeps insane hours, has terrible sleep with just a handful of an hour a night, awake to the early hours, huge anxiety/mental health issues.

With just that subset of data, sleep training is a no brainer.

I am currently taking an advanced course with statistics, looking at human behaviour. Lots of discussion about how small effect sizes are, confusing correlation with causation, biases of various kinds, fallacies of various kinds. It’s pretty obvious how a book telling parents to do any random collection of things will result in some of them doing the thing it says will happen. If I tell someone flipping a coin while standing on one leg singing God Save The King causes heads, 50% of the time I will be right. Which I’m willing to bet is a better hit rate than those books.

And you can’t do research on babies. RCT would be both ineffective, and unethical. But what a lot of actual research says is that sleep is heritable, genetic and therefore hard-wired. Of course you can’t believe ruin a good sleeper but you can’t make a good sleeper out of a bad one in 6 weeks.

But you can believe in any number of unscientifically nonsensical theories. Homeopathy, flat earth and anti-vaxxing are all the same X = Y because I reckon so thinking. Anecdata and my mate thinks stuff.

Yes, but that was likely because you had easy babies. I had one too. I’m just not foolish enough to believe that it was my doing. She was born that way and slept through from 6 weeks old.

I had the exact same routine with my second. It took him 6 months to sleep through. Still not bad going but now where near as easy as my first.

I can’t comment too much on the sleep training as I also did not do it with either of mine! But I do have sympathy for the sensitive child and the eye rolls. I have 2 boys. My first DS was and still is a sensitive child and I used to think am I just doing something wrong when people used to judge and comment. But now I have my second DS who is not sensitive I know that it’s nothing I was doing they are just different and that’s ok!!

Basically ignore the eye rolling because you know your child and you’re doing a great job.

I don’t know, I haven’t done it nor am I sleep consultant - but I hear things like linking sleep cycles and teaching how to self soothe. Like how you teach a baby to hold their wee until they are at a toilet - I’ve got no idea how you do it, but invariably parents seem to.

Maybe like I did with the dog, which was sleeping close to her and moving further away until she was fine with me out of the room - at first she wouldn’t settle if I wasn’t touching her, within a few days she went 12 hours overnight without a peep.

I sleep trained at 7 months to save my marriage and my sanity. I still had PND but I’m now recovered and still married.

I doubt many people are telling you you must do this - most aren’t that judgmental. By all means carry on as you are without training if you can manage it.

Be aware though that the people I know with bad sleepers who didn’t do any form of training (even gently) have terrible sleepers many years on…great if you don’t have to work or can manage it. I couldn’t.

Agreed. I just found it interesting that both of mine did precisely what the gentle sleep training books said they would, at precisely the same time. It's almost as if the advice is based on some kind of research and testing of lots of babies 🤔

No, I completely disagree with your luck statement. BiL and SiL called us "lucky" for having good sleepers, when we actually had consistent routines and were a team. It was hard work but we battled through it together.

Of course I'm aware that there are high needs babies that need much more than that but there is also a lot of exhausted parents that understandably co sleep and don't use routines because it is easier but this doesn't help the babies to self soothe.

Sounds you were quite unlucky to have a DC that wouldn't follow the usual sleep training routines.

I'm sorry, were you at the family gatherings? My SIL was absolutely smug.

Of course I was struggling, my son woke hourly for 18 months. But as I said sleep training doesn't align with my values so I put up with the struggle. So having SIL say things like 'Oh you know he doesn't need milk after 6 months old, he's just using you as a dummy... He wakes so often because he knows you'll just give him what he wants... I could never wake up before 7am and my daughter knows not leave her room because we trained her that way... If you don't sleep train he'll never know how to sleep alone etc.'

Like I said I get on great with my SIL, we're both fantastic mothers who do things differently. However, it absolutely feels like an I told you so moment now that she's experiencing it for herself as she has acknowledged that. I would never make her feel like what she is doing is wrong but I can't help feeling smug when she talks about it.

Sleep duration and quality are heritable so no, three of your (related) children being similar is entirely consistent with genetics, not training.

Well either do the other stuff, which is what most people do, and is not CIO, or just resign yourself to broken sleep for 2 years? Maybe stop 'researching' /obsessively googling to reaffirm your own position cortisol and think about something else?! Not sure why you need reassurance if you're so commited to your own view. Heaven help when your kid has bigger problems (that you'll be better equipped to deal with if you've had some sleep).

Very similar here too.

I feel like it would be a coincidence if it was just one child but it worked with all three of mine. They were sleeping 7-7 by 8 weeks, 6 weeks & 6 weeks.

why is 11 months old the magic number?

as adults we often choose to sleep next to someone for comfort, and wake during the night due to any number of reasons, so why are babies/young children expected to sleep through and not need any reassurance of comfort during the night?

Pretty sure I wasn’t replying to you, MrsTP, and pretty sure the scenario you describe isn’t the scenario of the person I was replying to. And it wasn’t me seeing her as being smug, she said she was smug, twice.

I never did, but DD was 12 when she left my bed!

Hard agree.

Sleep is essential for the development of the brain. I can’t help but notice poor sleepers are usually angry, highly strung children who cry a lot and lag behind their peers. Which shouldn’t be a surprise - they’re exhausted.