To leave 5 1/2 month old to cry?

[Ghostie]

I'm feeling really stressed about this, so please be gentle!! Basically we were getting no sleep at all I was up and down every 30mins to an hour and it was driving me crazy, as well as leaving me just totally exhausted! DD kept pulling her dummy out all night and she wasn't crying, just shouting out and once we put her in bed with us she would go to sleep, so I figured she just wanted attention.

She is a big strong baby, so in the end we got in a night nanny to get us some rest and give us a break and more than that we wanted to get some help to sleep train her and were told that she would sleep within a week.

It all seemed to be going well and we had the night nanny for 4 nights, she got us to get rid of her dummy and doing a split feed before bed, to try and get more calories into her before she goes to sleep. Now, she is still waking up 2/3 times a night and crying for long periods from 5am. All the books and the advice we've been given say that leaving them to cry works, that they're not upset, but getting out of bad habbits and that it takes a few days. But, she still seems to be crying after nearly two weeks and I am finding it really distressing and wonder if I am doing the right thing? She is also crying for quite a long time before she goes to sleep for her naps.

Sorry if this is a bit long winded. Please let me know if you have had similar experiences/this has worked for you?

don't leave her to cry because its potentially damaging to her brain.

meanwhile i read a sleep tactic once i always meant to try but never needed to. i read somewhere that if you get a blanket or a muslin or a teddy or whatever and take it to bed with YOU for a night, shoved down your top so it smells of mummy to your dc and then you give it to them to take to bed with them it can help them put themselves back to sleep because the smell comforts them :-)

if you MUST do letting her cry then at least use the prescribed method of Controlled Crying (going in at timed intervals and stretching them out so it teaches the baby that you will come back) which is quite the opposite of leaving them to cry or Cry It Out (look up ferber method on google)

make an informed choice

Lady Biscuit - it's because they can feed on tap (certainly the kids I know who've had teeth problems after co-sleeping) - so can snack throughout the night.

My first two slept through (7-4am) from 6 and 10 weeks respectively. Both were breastfed and hardly ever cried, obviously this was because I was the world's most perfect mother! Then dc3 and 4 came along to shatter any illusions I had on that score!!

Well last night, ds3 finally settled at 1am, woke at 2:15, cried/fed until 5, settled, woke at 5:30 and finally went to sleep at 6:30. I am done in.

For what its worth, I think the potentially damaging to her brain school of thought is a bit ridiculous. As I mentioned in my previous post, I went in to my DD to reassure at regular intervals, but she was still crying and we had to let her cry until she slept. Pick her up and feed her at 5/6 months and she will just keep doing it, she may simply never stop (I have a 5 yr old niece who still wont sleep through)

Weigh up the pros and cons, for me sleep was/is important. Not enough to hurt or damage your child of course but enough to ensure that I try to help her learn behaviour that allows me to get sleep and her to settle herself

Personally it is cruel calling a mum at her wits end with tirdeness cruel . You could try hungry babymilk for the last feed , it works with my five
month ds we have started weaning too and he sleeps right through. I don't think it is cruel to let a baby cry a bit, whenever ds gets put down for a sleep normally
straight after a feed he will
cry for a little bit but we never pick him up
if we know it's a whingy cry and he will put his thumb in and drop off to sleep within. Five to ten mins we had to do this as he would only settle if he was being cuddled . Good luck hope it gets better for you soon
l

feed her!!!

coccyx, it's all very well aying that, last night I fed ds3 basically from 10-6. Didn't help him sleep, and i am totally exhausted today.

saying, not aying

whitethorn - its not a 'school of thought' its an evidence/study supported fact.

you can chuck in this 'trust your instincts' and 'cc never hurt my kids' argument but the facts are you don't really know.

best advice i had re babies sleep was from sil. i asked her when her dc started 'sleeping through', they are now 19/24/25. she replied 'i don't automatically assume that they will even now!' and then explained that this is part of having children - disrupted sleep and its true. just because we can get our babies to sleep for the night now is no gurantee that they won't wake up for a myriad of reasons during the night for years to come yet!

My last one (why there is no number 5 child) didn't sleep. I mean, never ever slept. An hour at a time and during the night, perhaps two hours on the trot. I seriously contemplated smothering him at times. I'd do anything to get him to sleep including a bottle in his mouth, the video on (he didnt sleep a full night until he was 3.7) So - don't leave your child to cry, bung a dummy/bottle/breast/Thomas the Tank Engine/ on/in - do whatever you need to do to get your sleep. None of mine stay awake at night now and in fact, I can rarely get them out of bed or awake before 7am. Chin up - in the old days, before the "holier than thou" mother who had children who slept (I was one of those for the first three) we used to give them gin or whisky to ensure sleep.

Suntangirl We just won't agree so lets leave it at that.

LilyBolero someone mentioned hungry formula, which I tried for my DD when she started waking, worked well for me.

And before anyone mentions it, she is a long, stringy 2 and a half year old who eats well but is not chubby and doesnt have a weight problem.

whitethorn, ds3 doesn't have any formula, still b/fed

I never fail to be surprised/amused by threads like these

toffee it's not necessarily formula, I know ff babies who don't sleep through and bf ones who do, it's just the baby.

Wow,can't believe this is still going! Really opened a can or worms here! Thanks to posters who have given more reasoned posts. It is fine to disagree with someone, but is emotive language really necessary? From some of the posts I thought social services would need to come and take mine and some of the other babies away!

My DD is doing so much better. I have in fact gone for the half way house. Letting her cry a bit (5 mins ish) and then if she doesn't settle going in to her. It means that she is getting a feed around 2ish and 5ish and then sleeping through to 7, in fact yesterday I had to go in and wake her up at 7.30! My DP does the first feed with hungry milk and I do the second BF.

Thanks for all the tips, although we did try most of these before the crying. She is in a grow bag, she has hungry milk before her bath and then again before bed. She had been weaned and we cluster feed in the evening, the crying really was a last resort to break a habbit she had gotten herself into. Anyway we are now up once a night each and getting some decent blocks of sleep, so we are all, including my DD much happier!

LilyBolero good luck!!

emotive perhaps. i like the term 'evidence based parenting' though. nicked from here which provides some supporting evidence why leaving babies to cry might not be very good for them.

whitethorn, there are now studies that prove that CC does have an impact on cerebral development. You are also recommending hungry baby formula which is not proven to work at all and can cause constipation in young babies. You may not believe that you have harmed your children in any way but you should not pass of your experiences as facts - they aren't and there is proper research out there that disagrees with your ideas.

Ghostie, I'm glad you are getting more sleep although I do disagree with the methods you have used to get it. I would never leave my young baby to cry. They are crying to communicate that they need you - for whatever reason and you are ignoring that. Some of the ideas that people have about having to 'teach' babies at an early age are absolutely ridiculous and very sad. It's not entirely your fault, unfortunately we live in a culture that has unrealistic expectations about getting babies to sleep through, eat certain amounts at certain times and basically cause as little fuss as possible so they fit into the parents' pre-baby life. It is ridiculous to think that a child will not to sleep through by itself without being 'trained'. I wonder if people who are so keen to force their babies to sleep pressure them to walk/talk/read before they are ready too...I doubt it but for some reason it is acceptable to try to force a baby to sleep through alone before it is ready.

pass off

bubbleymummy, although I'm not a great controlled-crying fan, I do think it's a bit crass to say that mothers want their babies to 'sleep through to fit into their pre-baby life'.

Fwiw, ds3 is my 4th child, there is no pre-baby life to fit into, and my aim is not to get him to sleep through, it is to get some sleep, any sleep, ever. Because you cannot survive on no sleep at all, and with 3 older children you can't sleep during the day when the baby seems to want to sleep. It's not being some controlling mother who is trying to force a routine on a baby, just to be at desperation and breaking point and NEED to sleep.

bubbleymummy - thanks for your post - i totally agree. this is a thorny issue but what scares me is that the pro cc etc lobby base their arguments on well no facts apart from more sleep. i think we should all strive to make parenting decisions which are informed choices and understand what that means.

Bubbleymummy
I am not recommending anything, just saying what worked for me and I have a healthy happy, bright, fun 2 year old.
Is it the case that only an opinion that matches yours can be mentioned, otherwise its dangerous. Give me and other mums a break and get over yourself

oh fgs - look at the evidence! are your kids just guinea pigs to experiment on?

sungirltan - I'm presuming you're referring to the Penelope Leach report about controlled crying and cortisol (interesting though to note that she has a new book out). However, the Guardian in reporting her findings say;
"However, research published last month found no ill effects on children whose parents had used "controlled crying" when they were babies. The study by the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Australia followed up 225 six-year-old children who had received behavioural sleep intervention as babies to assess their health ? including emotional wellbeing, behaviour and child-parent relationship. It found techniques such as "controlled crying" had no adverse affects on the emotional and behavioural development of children or on their relationship with parents. "

I don't think the evidence is clear cut. I'm not actually an advocate of controlled crying per se, but you can't just pick and choose your studies, it's important to get a rounded picture.

Study here