To get wound up about MN and sleep advice

[LittleMilla]

I love MN and will often come on to get advice...can normally count on it for sensible pointers for everything except for sleep.

AIBU to wonder why noone on MN seems to want their children to sleep through the night? I no of noone in RL who co-sleeps - but everyone on MN seems to? And people seem to think it's entorely normal for a 8 month old baby to wake repeatedly through the night.

I just don't get it. So much valuable advice...yet everyone on here seems to go madly soft when it comes to sleep.

Am I the only one?

Slightly, is that working on an assumption of no reflux, eating issues, or general temperament that makes many forms of sleep training utterly futile? Or is just a general blanket statement based on... I don't know? Your gut feeling?

I was full of smuggery about what a good (nighttime) sleeper I had until DS was six or seven months. Then it all went to utter shit and we tried all manner of strategies - committing to each in turn until it became obvious that it was pointless - until we cracked it. The fact that cracking it coincided with several other things vastly improving was of course not coincidental at all.

I am the bloody queen of organisation, routine and need for time for myself. My children still didn't bloody sleep until they were 18 months.

My ds (five months) woke every 45 minutes last night. If he had been lying flat in a cot, even propped up, he simply wouldn't have slept. Co sleeping is the only way I get any sleep AT ALL. Not co sleeping would be the act of a masochist.

too many bloodys
i am a bit tired

I agree with the poster who pointed out that of course all children wake up during the night. The difference is what they do when they wake up - do they lie there and talk to themselves until they go back to sleep like DD1 or do they yell for mummy like DS1. All I know is that I was much more strict with DD1 as I was still working and needed my sleep and much more indulgent with DS1, so I have made a rod for my own back with his waking and not being able to self-settle. DD1 is a heavy sleeper though and DS1 is a very light sleeper, but I still put some of that down to me rather than him. Still I would never co-sleep, I would never feed during the night once they were weaned and I would never ever let them come downstairs once they had had their bath and pyjamas on. I would also never let them come out of their rooms once they had been put to bed unless they needed to go to the toilet and even then it is straight there, straight back, no talking. I also do not let them come out of their room before 7am in the morning. My DD1 wakes up between 6am and 6:30am, but she knows the rules. No getting up until 7am.

I think a huge amount of it is luck. We were pretty slapdash with DS1 - no bedtime routine, and just letting him get on with what he seemed to want to do - and he slept through from 6 weeks and has never regressed once.

With DS2, we were probably slightly more routine-based, just because DS2 had more of a routine by then, but we still co-slept, fed whenever, and made no attempts to sleep train. He was more of a "normal" sleeper, but still pretty good - so sleeping in quite long stretches by about 4 months, but still waking once a night until about 8 or 9 months, and then waking sporadically until fairly recently - he's now 2.

A friend of mine whose DCs are almost exactly the same age as my two did pretty much the same thing and they both woke multiple times a night and are still poor sleepers.

Some babies might respond better to one approach or another, but I think some are just naturally inclined to sleep for long stretches.

We can't claim any credit for any of it - we just got lucky.

train there was no such advice on room sharing to help avoid SIDS when my children were babies. We were still dealing with the MMR fallout. Given the major risk factors for SIDS (maternal age, smoking, baby birth weight etc) I would still be comfortable to move them into their own room at 4 months.

My kids were both terrible sleepers as babies. But they both went from waking up 8-10 times a night to sleeping through most nights in the space of a couple of weeks when they tray in much the same way that they started walking. In their case, sleeping through was something that they started doing when they were developmentally ready at the age of 2 (DD) and 3 (DS).

DS is 4 and sometimes still climbs into bed with us at 5am if he wakes up and feels lonely. The visits are getting fewer and fewer. DD is 7 and comes into bed with us of she has s nightmare about twice a year. Her only sleep problem is trying to read after lights out, which I have to be strict about.

So non sleeping children are not doomed to a lifetime of insomnia. Mine just weren't ready to sleep through the night until they were toddlers.

I know over a dozen families who co sleep. Maybe it's the circles you mix in.

Everything I think is of course based on healthy babies who eat well. Not babies with reflux/low birth weight/feeding issues/poor eaters.

I am just of the opinion that there is a lot more than luck involved in healthy children that can sleep through a fair chunk of the night after a few months, with the right encouragement. I don't think BF or FF has an awful lot to do with it.

I completely agree that all children wake in the night and this is biologically normal, but as a previous poster said it is what they do when they wake.

I know people with two or more children whom they have treated differently over sleep for varying reasons. The ones that they were a bit stricter with after a certain point are, with no exceptions, better sleepers than the ones that co-slept and got milk feeds into their second year.

My opinion is based on what I think yes, just like everybody else on here. If people think it is down to luck then that is their completely valid opinion, but I disagree based on personal exprerience and the experience of friends and family.

Traininthedistance, I can't believe you're citing SIDS as a reason TO co-sleep.

Co-sleeping although only praticed by around 21% of the population is associated with 57% of the SIDS deaths
www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3666

If you follow the numbers through, around 100 excess infant deaths per year can be attributed to co-sleeping.

For comparison, 24 under 1s died in accidents in 2012 (all accidents and not just motor accidents are included in this number)
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/mortality-statistics--deaths-registered-in-england-and-wales--series-dr-/2012/dr-table5-2012.xls

These numbers are still pretty small overall and there are safer & less safe ways to co-sleep but the SIDs risk is still massively increased not decreased.

I always find it odd the way MN obsesses about extended rear facing car seats and ignores the risks of co-sleeping.

Train was talking about keeping children in your room, not co-sleeping, unless I've missed something.

Slightly - any evidence, or just gut feeling/anecdote? Particularly on the FF/BF divide or non-divide?

Jassy I guess I was just thinking of the original post, but in terms of SIDS advice I think that people have to make their own decisions on this. My DD slept on her back, in a smoke free home and was a very healthy birthweight so we chose to have her in her own room with a video recorder after 10 weeks. This incidentally, helped to to stop waking everytime we coughed or moved. In terms of co-sleeping, I'm pretty sure SIDS advice is not to anyway!? My HV was very keen to discourage when my DD was a newborn as I'm sure there is a lot of evidence pointing at this being unsafe.

No I don't have official evidence, only personal experience and a lot of friends and family with babies. The only difference I can see with BF/FF is that breast feeding mothers often co-sleep because it is easier to organise the feed (I get this) and then babies seem to have milk on tap all night. I can't imagine that this encourages children to sleep through the night when they are past newborn/little baby stage.

If you read my post properly I was writing about the current NHS guidelines to keep babies in the same room as you during all sleeps until 6 months. Seeing as many posters on thus thread have cited putting their babies in their own rooms earlier than that to encourage "sleeping through".

Your reading of the research on cosleeping deaths is flawed, though, for a variety of reasons, no less than at least 50% of the population regularly or occasionally cosleep according to most studies. Even the most recent big metastudy only found a tiny potential increase in SIDS rush due to cosleeping in the lowest risk infants and that only under 3 months.

And that study also suggested that the elevated risk factor of baby in separate room was higher than the risk attributed to cosleeping in the lowest-risk groups (healthy bf non smokers), who tend to be the people who do cosleep. Unsafe cosleeping by high risk groups is not the same thing at all. There is also an elevated risk associated with parents having drunk large amounts of alcohol even if not cosleeping and baby in separate room.

I completely understand why you would want your 8 month old baby to sleep through the night. If you are returning to work around the nine month mark you probably need to try and find a way to get your 8 month old baby to sleep through the night if you are going to function at work. This does not mean that 8 month old babies can or will sleep through the night! My first DD slept for 10 hours a night (except during bouts of teething) from the age of 5 months. Second DD rarely slept an entire night until she was three. Both were treated identically

The study compared a control group for a random night and a group of SIDs victims for the night the infant died.

21% of controls co-slept and 57% of the infants that died co-slept.

The proportion occasionally co-sleeping is higher than 21% I agree but this isn't relevant to the risks assessed here.

The study also agrees that in a cot in the same room is the best option. On a sofa is by far the worst and the survey noted the risk of recommending avoidance of co-sleeping
could lead to accidental sofa co-sleeping.

Please let me know if there was anything else I've misread about the survey and give a link to the meta-study as this is important stuff to know.

It is fine to co sleep if you want Train or anyone else for that matter, people can do whatever they like with their babies! You don't need to get worked up about it, it's just that the OP said this is the advice she always gets when asking about sleep advice and she doesn't find it helpful. Safe or not, babies are not likely to sleep through while they share beds with their parents, and some parents don't really like co-sleeping. My DD slept in her own room because that was our choice, just like co-sleeping is yours. This was not to 'make' her sleep through - it was so she was not disturbed my me and my DH who are fidgety sleepers. Incidentally, I expect it helped her sleep through but this was not the only reason. I think we have established my children only sleep through because I am lucky, and luck is an established sleep training technique on MN.

Perhaps someone should write a book on how to get lucky

well, my two older children sleep well now so perhaps I should back off and stop being annoyed by smug people, remembering that ds2 is only 5 months old with reflux

Megrim I think it would look an awful lot like some of the existing sleep training books.

I'm going to run for cover now

Refluxy and ill babies obviously are clearly a different case entirely.

well you are lucky if your child doesn't have reflux

x post

God, this thread is giving me such a rage. And if you think about it, both my older children slept well by 18 months. So I could be smug and judgemental about other parents. But do you know, I am not because I can imagine that not all children are the same, and that having experienced lack of sleep on a daily basis I assume that people WILL be trying their best to get their child to sleep?

perhaps we should write a book on how to avoid being a smug git

see how annoying that is?