Is it just me or do most people in rl let their babies cry to teach them to sleep?

[plasticspoon]

Really, tell me. I just have no clue anymore. Mn would have me believe that CIO or even cc would be damaging to my ds, who is only 4 months old. And yet everyone, just everyone in rl is telling me to get tough - from midwives to health visitor to dh to my mum, and today the paediatrician who said he would only "cry for a few hours the first few days".

I'm just so tired that it's starting to feel tempting (well almost) and the message I'm getting loud and clear is that everyone does it! Less an AIBU than an AIBD (am I being dense)?!

Zombie thread.

Scaring me as I was the OP and DS2 is due on Thursday! Hope it's not a sign .

There are an awful lot of martyr mums on mumsnet.

Unless babies learn to self settle they will just wake up during their normal/heavy sleep cycles. The best thing to do when they are very little is to not disturb them when they first wake - often they will just settle themselves down again. They will obviously still keep going if hungry.

I had one very very bad sleeper and was determined not to have another, not having a decent sleep affects you, your husband, other children and its not fair or even good parenting to let another little being rule the roost. Everyone in my family is equally imprortant.
My second two children probably never cried for more than 5/10 minutes before settling. They both slept through the night at 4/5 months, from 6.30-7.30 and are now normal happy little children.

Most of us will have had parents who let us cry a little before going to sleep and are not emotionally scarred.

I think they do, OP. in rl, most people I know happily admit to it, and say how well it worked for them.

I just smile and nod, but it's not something I could ever do.

It is different sorts of crying - I did CC with my LO at 5 months. He would moan and 'whinge', and I'd leave him, but if he was actually crying like his world was self-imploding I'd be there like a shot. I did it because I was suffering both PND and having psychotic episodes. Sleep deprivation is used a form of torture for a reason!
Pre-CC, I was rocking him to sleep for up to 2 hours at a time and being woken several times in the night (not for food, he just woke). After the CC worked (took about 4 days, doing both naps and bedtime) he slept a lot better, waking only once at night and then co-sleep while he BF.

You really have to listen and learn the baby's cries when doing something like CC so you know when they are in distress, and when they are just gently crying themselves to sleep. At 10 months, LO still can moan for about 1 minute before falling asleep.

Guys, it's ok, he's 2.4 now! He sleeps :o.

I read the book 'French kids don't throw food' which talks about the science of sleep. There's a theory that French women leave a baby to grumble for a little while to assess whether they really are upset or not. Apparently they believe that babies are like adults & can stir and go back down by themselves. My french sister in law has told me this is exactly how they parent in france, and babies are known to sleep through by 3 months.

Initially I ran to dd when I heard a peep out of her as I worried that HD would loose sleep with having to get up for work. But i noticed when I left a minute or two to settle herself she usually did. Theory seemed to work for me when i started it at about 4 months. Wish I'd read the book sooner! Mind you think I would still have worried about dehydration!

I also noticed that dd really responds to relaxing music, and I stick it on every night for about half hour. I'd say 90% of the time she's happy to drift off to it. I saw a programme on bbc a few months ago about music 'how music makes us feel'. They talked about how the beats possibly make the baby think of their mothers heart beat or being walked around while in your tummy. I could be wrong, but really think theres something to this. I take dd to a music class every week, and all the babies are transfixed when the teacher starts playing her cello, its really quite something to watch. Anyway, found this clip if you want to watch it:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p011v9kn

(to reiterate - I started this thread. Two years ago!)

Everyone in my RL is the same. I am not doing it though. My DD is only 5 months old.

Ginaed all 3 of mine,they never cry that is the whole point.Nobody I know in RL jumps up at the first sign of a cry(only on MN)!

Spaghettibologneighs - I guess it's just one of those topics that recurs for mums over & over. Glad your 2 year old is sleeping well :)

We have an acronym in our house: EPOTI.

Everyone Is Perfect On The Internet.

This thread reminds me of it...

Blimey! You think by adding what you've read/experienced and discussing it you might just possibly help another mum with a difficult situation, but you get accused of being EPOTI. Oh well, guess I won't bother next time. FYI certainly not perfect, we're all just trying to be good mums

I have done controlled crying BUT at 4 months would be very sympathetic to the baby being hungry! ie I would fed a 4 month old every 3 hours if they cried. After 7-8 months esp once eating protein might try and feed water in night to break night time feeding habit.

I think if it looks like sleep regression/teething/growth spurt then it would be useless trying out new sleep training.

I would be tempted to try Co sleeping - ds and I sleep on a double mattress on the floor and it saved my life :) also look at no cry sleep solution. Whatever you try needs consistency so I would try gentler techniques first.

Yup I did it. It took a week or so to set the routine but 13 years on he still sticks to the routine of sleep (granted bedtime has got later) of his own volition. At first he slept in my bed and fed on demand but once he started sleeping through at about 6 weeks he moved into his own bed, we chose a routine and stuck to it. It worked for mine but it might not for every baby.

Haha! I answered the op and then scrolled back through comments. Sorry op! It's obviously a common one!

I think it works with some DC and not others my first DS would barely cry for 5 minutes and that was only for 3 days and hes slept through the night since 3.5months old. With my DD now 10months old, it wont work for her cry is heartbreakin, so i'll have to find a different way to get her to settle on her own, i couldnt leave them for hours, isnt that just teaching them that nobody cares if they're unhappy

Maybe other babies cry differently?

No, not really. Just that other parents seem to be able to ignore that cry, or are so determined that they just brave it.

4 months is really too young (to me) to be forced to sleep unaided. She barely even knows you are not part of her yet. I get the tiredness, but that is part of being a parent I'm afraid.

SpaghettiBologneighs it'd be interesting to hear, what worked in the end?

Congratulations for DC2 btw, wishing you an easy labour and happy baby who has no interest in hysterical crying :)

Doctors talk a load of utter cobblers about other people's babies. My family's GPs (husband and wife GP couple) when I was growing up used to preach about letting babies cry to settle, blah blah and etc. Then they had their own first baby, who cried and cried and cried and cried and never once settled. Never. They lived on our road and we used to see them walking Baby E round and round the block in her pram up to about 8 pm and then driving round and round the block for a few hours trying to get Baby E to settle. In the end they coslept and though Baby was still quite wakeful they weren't deafened by the cries for hours and they could get by with the half awake and half asleep nights they had instead of the tense sleeping with one ear alert thing they had done. Both GPs confessed this to my mum who could have told them a thing or two about their ideas if they had asked.

It's very easy to get fixated on the tiredness you feel and to get really desperate about sleep. It's very hard to imagine that it will ever happen when you can't remember the last time you managed to get through the night. But it will happen.

It is also easy for some parents (maybe dads in particular) to feel their nicely ordered world has spiralled completely out of their control and to feel upset that someone so small is now calling the shots with nobody else's wishes taken into account. Some parents (maybe again dads) are fixers and see baby crying as a problem requiring some fixing (get tough, etc) or they see the baby as a frustrating household object that doesn't respond to them the way they imagined they would - not one bit like getting a new TV or something else with a remote control. None of those attitudes are really helpful. Many grandparents are from the generation that bottle fed their babies and do not understand that breastfed babies are going to wake more frequently for feeding, 24 hours a day.

Babies are going to grow no matter how little sleep they get. None of mine were good sleepers and all had steady growth, above the 50th percentile in weight and height.

Dr Sears on baby sleep patterns and 'nighttime parenting'. Maybe your DH would like to read this?

Interesting article on cultural background to 'babies should sleep through the night and separately from parents' theory and also on studies suggesting co-sleeping may be the best way to ensure good development.

HVs and GPs and so on are often limited in what they can suggest so they default to this because they have to say something. It's horrible, I can't bear to think about it - the times my children DO cry is so so upsetting and sad, and I want to help them - I cannot imagine leaving them to it. I really honestly can't abide it.

ds3 is 7 weeks, on my lap now and not crying at all - but he will if I put him down - and it's real tears now, not just panic or shrieking because he's so new.

How anyone can leave a baby to this is beyond me. Even if I can't solve it for him the least I can do is be there.

I may be flamed for this but there is such immense pressure for everyone to work, and not stay at home, from the government mainly, that people are really struggling if their child doesn't sleep through - parents need more time to be allowed to let their kids learn to sleep without resorting to CC because they need to function in a FT job.

Of course if it feels right to you then by all means. But I often hear people say 'well I had to go back to work when he was 6 months so I had no choice'. That makes me sad because they didn't want to do it.

I'm not even sure that the method is as important as consistency. CIO is tough as is cc, co sleeping has pros and cons as does any teaching method.

Just pick one and stick to it. You'll soon know if its working.

'Everyone in my family is equally imprortant.'

Yeah - of course they are. But babies are just more urgent. It's how they are. Of course they wake a lot. They have tiny sleep cycles, tiny stomachs, they have totally different needs to a larger child or an adult.

They're not programmed to wait and trying to make them wait, and fit in with larger people, cannot do any good. It's like trying to make them wear adult sized clothes, or eat adult food in the same way we do.

It's bonkers. (talking generally, not just at you Karoleann)

But I disagree fundamentally withthe phrase 'martyr mummies'. I would suffer far more if I let my babies cry it out. FAR more painful to me than getting up/rolling over to feed a few times a night.

Oh and I think every HV I've ever had (over 10 years, three children) has syggested letting them cry for a bit, trying CC, etc etc and I've always smiled and nodded and completely ignored them.

There's just no way it's happening, not deliberately anyway - yes it'll be inevitable my child will cry in the car sometimes and if I can't pull over, I'll have to let them. But this isn't a deliberately organised thing. It's occasional and accidental and horrible when it happens. I think that's quite enough of an opportunity for my baby to learn to wait.

Auf, we did nothing in the end :o. Continued feeding on demand through the night, got used to sharing the bed. At some point he started to go down for DH and sleeping for longer stretches.