Why do I have to sleep train my baby?!

Why are they telling you to sleep train. Is it because you are saying how exhausted you are? It surely can't be for no reason. My ds1 did not sleep through the night until he was around 5( except once when he was 1 and we thought something might be wrong so couldn't relax!) Ds2 was total opposite.Slept well,ate anything etc etc

I don’t think you’re lying. I think you believe it was caused by one set of things when it was likely caused by another. You can’t lie about causation, because unless you did a double blind randomised control test, you don’t know what caused it.

When people say what they did to ‘cause’ their babies to sleep through very early, it’s invariably things the non-sleeper parents tried as well. It just didn’t work. People were full of helpful tips I’d tried before. Yes consistently, yes over time, yes repeatedly.

Think of it like this, my DD eats everything, never fussy, brilliantly varied and healthy in her eating. So I know the square root of nothing about helping a fussy eater eat. If I wander around telling AFRID parents to just leave the plate there, or sneak vegetables in, or try a new food regularly, they will rightly think I’m a stupid idiot. DD eats well because she was probably always going to, and did. I could have ruined her eating, feeding her crap. But she came a a good eater.

Yours came as a good sleeper. You are lucky. Have the humility to feel lucky and not attribute all of it to your excellent parenting.

A thumbs up at the end always looks so defensive and pass agg, doesn’t it?

And that is fine but constant interrupted sleep is not good for your dc's development or anyone's health and wellbeing. Nevermind your relationship if one of you is up half the night.

Good quality sleep for everyone is important.

I started our nap/ feed/ awake routines around 3weeks and DD1 slept from 11pm to 6am from 11wks, DD2 was a bit later. There was a bit of regression with teething at 4m but both slept all night from v young.

I'm not at all bothered if you think I'm lying, you are free to believe as you wish.

Mine also slept through from 11 weeks. I know they're naturally good sleepers but it was 11 weeks of making the cot a nice, calming place for them to be. Being relatively insistent that that was the place they slept (i.e not giving up and bringing them into bed with me at 3am after a feed when I was exhausted), lots of patting, singing and reassurance etc. Structuring days around their sleep schedule so there was no overtiredness. It was intensive for the parent for long term gains. No CIO. I think this is what people mean when they talk about modern sleep training. The cot was right next to me in bed, I was holding their hand for much of the time, so there was no being left alone. I saw it as teaching healthy sleep habits, which have paid dividends. I am also an excellent sleeper, however, and I'm always surprised at how many adults have bad sleep/bad sleep habits.

I don't think people can argue one way or the other very convincingly tbh, because all the measurable outcomes - future rates of depression, quality of sleep as an adult, levels of anxiety later in life etc - are so multifactorial.
I didn't sleep train either of my DC. They both coslept and breastfed until they were ready to stop. One has a very calm, placid temperament, and one has the temperament of a box of fireworks.
I wasn't sleep trained, and now I can fall asleep anywhere, at any time. But I have what a PP may have been referring to upthread by a "stressful temperament" 😬 But I also have quite low sleep needs and don't feel especially tired if my kids wake me multiple times during the night (also if you cosleep and BF, you don't really need to wake every time the baby wakes).
My sister wasn't sleep trained and has an (outwardly at least) lovely, calm temperament, but lies awake ruminating for hours every night.
DH was sleep trained and is crippled by anxiety day and night, and takes hours to silence his brain and fall asleep.
There's just so much more to it than whether you sleep train / breastfeed / play classical music to your baby / let them watch Paw Patrol. But people love to share their opinions and justify their own choices.
You do what works for you and your family, OP - it's nothing to do with anyone else!

For my son, it was that he doesn't need to fall asleep in my arms/boob then be transferred to the cot.

You lie down in the cot, you say night night, you fall asleep there.

It may help you to remember that babies don't know anything.

Sorry but you didn’t train your baby to sleep through from 11 weeks.

You’ve assumed that your good sleepers were made not born. They were born. The baby Jesus and all the little angels couldn’t have made DD sleep through at 11 weeks. She was subsequently diagnosed with ADHD which explains it. You were lucky.

I believe people who say they sleep trained a one-year-old. But 11 weeks? Nope.

I don't care if you sleep train your baby.

I will always however share my experience of sleep training at 14m, which I think is about as good as sleep training can be expected to go.

Night 1 - 25m. This includes my husband going in at a few minutes intervals and hugging him for half of the time. He woke twice during the night, quick cuddle, put down again and fell asleep.
Night 2 - 5m. One visit and long cuddle, small whine when he was out down. Two quick wakes and put downs in the night.
Three nights of straight down waving bye bye, one wake a night. Then 12h through, unless he needs us.

I find it very hard to believe that 15m of fussing over 2 nights followed by happily waving and asking for his cot.

People spout the "they don't cry because they know no one's coming" (usually with this emoji 😢).

I have never had someone explain why when my son is ill or teething or has a nightmare, he DOES cry out for us.

To me it's fairly conclusive that he just learned something that has helped him sleep, which is so important for development.

I have a friend who had her child in a separate room from birth, told me not to BF; when I did, told me to stop, told me to let DD cry it out, told me so so many things. I was insane with rage, honestly. And very tired so it all felt terrible. She was incredibly judgy. They are both teenagers now. Hers is overweight, anxious, depressed and a HORRIBLE eater. Think Monster drinks instead of breakfast. Mine is great so far, fingers crossed.

Am I happy her child struggles? Of course not, she’s still a friend of DD’s and I love her. Do I believe my choices were right? Yes, I do. You can see that as being smug. I see it as being vindicated in my choices. For my child.

There’s quite a wide range of choices that are great. All the way from bed-sharing at 2 to shush-pat. But there are choices I don’t think are great; separate rooms from birth and CIO, all the way to bed-sharing at 15. And it’s OK to have an opinion. The people going on at OP are judging a perfectly normal and acceptable choice. Repeatedly.

You sound the judgy one about sleep training tbh. Both my kids are sleep trained and I couldn’t give two hoots whether anyone else chooses to sleep train their baby or not, it really wouldn’t matter to me and I certainly would only give my opinion if I was asked for it. But you clearly aren’t managing the night wakes if you’re speaking about it to the point sleep training is suggested.

I respond to my children’s needs too btw, parents who sleep train aren’t monsters who ignore their child and it’s really insulting to suggest that is so.

"Teaching your baby the skills to sleep through the night" - What skills and how do you teach them?

I would never leave my baby to cry but I trained my babies early on to self soothe and my kids slept through from around 11 weeks. I kept a routine that worked for us all and DH worked with me as a team, our DC often had sleepovers at GPs with no issue from 2yrs.

BiL and SIL decided not to sleep train and allowed DNs to sleep on them and later with them, as a result they have had interrupted sleep for the last 7yrs and their DC cannot sleep without their parents. They are in a cycle of permanent exhaustion with no nights off.

OP, you should parent exactly that works best for your family. I personally cannot function well on broken sleep, I don't see how it good for kids either.

Sleep training isn't about forcing your kids to cry all night, that is neglect and abuse. It is about creating the right circumstances that allows your baby to fall asleep without needing Mum and Dad.

No, you don't have to sleep train at all. It might click for your DS, in fact, given all the time he needs it certainly will and it sounds like you have a brilliant set up to manage his needs.
Just anecdotally: I refused to sleep train my DD until just after her 2nd birthday when I was running on fumes and just couldn't bear co-sleeping anymore. I feared the worst, but nursery reassured me, and it took us less than a week to manage it. We did our own variation (I couldn't leave her to cry, but I was pretty strict on "kiss, cuddle, I love you, goodnight") and I won't lie, I was up and down, up and down, the first three nights and it was awful, but then on the fourth night, for the first time ever, she slept through the night and it was bliss. It wasn't perfect all the time, but it was so much better. She's nearly 3 now and a brilliant sleeper.
I suppose I'm sharing this to say, hang in there and also, it's okay if a year from now, you change your mind if you need to.
Sending love and luck OP x

Not unreasonable not to sleep train - some people do, some don't.

I coslept for a while with both my boys as they breastfed all night. Now they are 1 and 3 they have their own (shared) room but still need me with them to fall asleep, wake in the evenings and at night and either come through to our bed or we sleep on their floor. It's broken sleep and one of the hardest parts of parenting for me but it's just what we have to get through for now.

In my desperate times I have tried some forms of 'sleep training' and after a few nights of being awake for hours on end, kids waking each other up, everyone in an awful mood and barely being able to function, I decided to just accept how things are at the moment and muddle through each night. Sometimes it's just not that easy.

My 3 year old is much easier to manage than my 1 year old so it does get easier even if we are taking the long way.

Isn’t sleep training about teaching your baby the skills to sleep through the night rather than ferberising? I’ve not actually been through this process but from friends who have it has seemed to be this, not uncontrolled endless crying. In which case, I can see why your friends are bamboozled you wouldn’t be interested, because then it sounds the same as you saying “I’m not going to toilet train little Johnny as it’s important for his emotions that he feels comfortable enough to urinate wherever he thinks is best”.

As per usual, you don’t understand what sleep training is in the 21st century and have harked back to some kind of Victorian era. Honestly, I’ve been on MN for well over 10 years and this kind of sleep training (cry it out) was incredibly rare back then and parents who sleep trained were forever having to tell those who wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole the facts of the matter.

I think parents like this consider themselves to be far more educated than the rest of us mere mortals - and then display their ignorance like this.

No, they probably reacted to your implicit and sanctimonious suggestion that you're the only person who made sacrifices. Everyone just makes DIFFERENT sacrifices

You've just described the most extreme form of sleep training which I can't imagine many people do nowadays.

Especially when there's a billion other sleep training options, some may involve small amounts of crying but some don't require leaving a child to cry at all.

I didn’t sleep train mine. At some random point that I have absolutely no explanation for they just started sleeping through. I assume it’s just a development point that they pass when they pass. I think if I had sleep trained I would have attributed this natural phase to the sleep training.

Everyone has their own ideas on parenting. If it’s not this it’ll be something else so just get used to ignoring advice and opinions if not helpful.

Sleep training, as in learning your child to cry until they fall asleep is literally over of the cruelest thing you can do to a child and their developing brain and nervous system. All they learn is that no one's coming. Just don't discuss your child's sleep with anyone, I don't.
My 1 year old still has the odd contract nap on me and needs cuddles in the night sometimes... I'm so happy to oblige knowing that I'm building our attachment, meeting his needs and helping his brain develop. Be kind to yourself and know that what you decide is right for you and your family. No one else matters

We did this.

Couldn’t bring myself to sleep train. Even if I’d wanted to let DC cry it out I was too worried we’d piss the neighbours off as we live in a mid-terrace with paper thin walls. But we did night wean over the course of a week by letting DH deal with wake ups when I’d really had enough of disturbed sleep around 14 months.

After that it got so much better by itself. She’s two now and whilst she still needs company falling asleep she does sleep through most nights.

OP mine was a contact napper as well and I was very conscious that between that and the bad nights people must be thinking I was doing something wrong. They probably thought I was far too soft. If anyone mentioned just letting her cry by herself or sleep training I’d always acknowledge it could work but say something like but I don’t think I could face all that crying with a what am I like sort of face. Which is the truth really. We’re through it now though and I just hope if we have any more they’re less needy sleepers!