Tell me your honest to god experiences with your newborn

[Mitsufishi]

I am going through hell for the third time around with a newborn.

Everyone says 'sleep when they skeep'. But how? Mine would never sleep, in bed, on me, maybe in a buggy or sling if in constant motion. They all went on to be horrific sleepers so 'this too' did not pass.

My mother says 'all newborns are like that, people who say otherwise are lying'. So it's just me who can't cope then?

Honestly tell me, what was your experience with a newborn. Because I have friends who seem to have had it easy and have seen evidence of it. My mother insists people are lying to show off. But I don't think there's such a fashion for that any more and that actually if anything people often tend to make things sound worse than they are these days rather than the other way around. In any case I've seen friends newborns and babies that effortlessly doze off and wonder a thousand times over what I'm doing wrong.

So, pistol just to summarise your advice so far, for problem free sleep we must:

• do exactly as GF says unless some aspect of the advice, like the afternoon sleep, doesn't fit in in which case ignore it
• follow rules strictly unless as an autonomous individual you don't like them in which case SIDS guidelines be damned
• rely on evidence but only if this comes from the GF book, anything to do with the natural rhythms of bf should be ignored as you are doing ff.
• crying down is completely different from CC because it involves self-settling rather than self-soothing and because you put the baby down and leave it even if it cries rather than letting it cry when it cries (see I did do my research from the GF website but to be honest I am still a bit confused about which method of crying is acceptable).

How do you know your child won't be harmed by being left to cry without consolation? Does this tie in with your experience as a human being? If you are sad, depressed, scared, etc do you do better left to your own devices or do your get support and solace when those who love you are near you. Anecdotal but still relevant: my mother used these kinds of sleep training methods one me, I had sleep problems well into my adult years, unable to sleep alone, fear of the dark, night terrors, etc.

Is there any time of day when you could lay baby on pillow next to you and feed it then you both doze off together? Eg if older kids are at school? You will get some rest this way

So crying down is a one off period of up to 7 minutes? What do you do if they are still going at the end of it? I tried that with DD1. 7 minutes up. Erm, what now?

Also, don't know what the M1 has to do with anything. Babies cry in cars if bored, even sleep trained ones.

BooBoo, what would you have liked me to do regarding my baby's refusal to nap for 2.5 hrs at lunchtime? Throw the book away and declare it as bullshit and join the cult Attachment Parenting forum? We didn't succeed with one solitary aspect of the Contented Little Baby routine. So what? We still have out contented little baby.

'SIDS guidelines be damned'? Dunno, did you ever co-sleep?

I relied on evidence from various sources, one of which was the genius Dr. M Weissbluth and another being my eminently sensible HV. I cannot comment on the 'natural rhythms of bf' beyond my tortuous two weeks of hell. Sorry.

I am not entirely sure whether you are being deliberately disingenuous but I will repeat: we did not practice CC. I wanted my baby to not be six months old before having to hear her cry for any prolonged period of time when her developmental leaps had rendered her far more aware of separation and her surroundings.

My baby isn't - nor has ever been - sad or depressed. She is occasionally scared when I put my hands in front of my eyes and then shout 'Boo!' (but then she laughs her head off). Sorry to burst your fantasy bubble featuring my daughter vomiting with wretchedness in her cot

..and with that I must leave this discussion to go and put my baby to bed. I will then be spending the entire evening in peace with my DP unencumbered by a tot screaming for me to go and rock it to sleep after having woken for the umpteenth time

So again, you haven't answered. It's a question the OP asked you as well.

Crying down is all very well, if your baby does drift off within 7 minutes. But what if they don't?

pistol I don't have any views on what you should do with your baby. I think you should do what you think best and I am glad you have found something that works as going without sleep is really difficult. However I would like you to be less absolute in your views and rethink the way you post as it comes across as patronising and upsetting for other people who are struggling or have chosen other paths than you have. Your self-belief in your choices seems to rely on misconstruing what other people are saying and on putting them down, all of which seems to suggest that maybe you are not that content with the way you have approached the sleeping problem.

Being I encumbered by your child is surely at the heart of all good parenting ambitions!

"Unencumbered" even!

Mine weren't good.

DS2 I was tougher with as I didn't want to go through the difficulties I went through with DS1.....

What I found with DS2 was, that he was a good sleeper - once he could be on his front.

i think that is possibly the difficulty.....(he would slam his head up and down in his crib trying to get to sleep!) He would sleep the bare minimum in his pram (on his back), carseat.....(on his back).....

Babies want to snuggle down on their fronts all warm and cosy...we don't let them for safety reasons.....we deliberately make them less like to settle....

that's the dilemma...

Ds didn't sleep as a baby for more than 30 minutes at a time and only when rocked / driven etc. didn't sleep through until he was 3.

Dd came home from hospital and self settled from day one, didn't want rocked or cuddled, fell asleep anywhere, for ages. Never had a middle of the night feed after a couple of weeks, never cried in the night.

Op you're doing nothing wrong. Babies are different and some break us

My ds broke me at 8 weeks old. I had a spectacular nervous breakdown (in a coffee shop) because i'd been trying to all the right things for weeks and it meant i would only sleep for 30 minutes here and there. I decided i had to change basically everything i was doing and all the things i did worked for us

Interestingly it was the complete opposite of what my best friend did after a similar breakdown. She went down the Gina route but that worked for them

I hope it gets better soon OP

Penguins, I have answered your question. I told you that, during tricky growth spurts, when my baby was not 'crying down' but 'crying up', I took Gina's advice and tried the 'assisting to sleep' method. It took us a whole week and then we were successful. She has never, ever cried since from merely being placed in her cot.

However I would like you to be less absolute in your views and rethink the way you post as it comes across as patronising.. Honestly, I am howling at the irony here!

On the contrary, BooBoo, I am thrilled with how CLB has given us such an easy baby. To see our daughter actually grin when I lean her over the cot and she spots Larry the Lamb (her hero) and her muslin. She learned from a very early age that her nursery and cot were not to be feared and I am so glad I ignored the SIDS guidelines (I actually believe the biggest risk to a baby's safety is co-sleeping with a large mum who's had a glass or two). If I seem dogmatic to you it is because I am zealous about the power of routines and I despair at the misery some women succumb to when their babies should be bringing them joy.

I have no idea what 'assisting to sleep' is. it isn't in the index of the Gina sleep book I have in front of me at the library. (Though page 40 does says crying down is up to 30 mins. 10 minutes. Soothe. 10 - 15 minutes).

It actually doesn't matter. I don't care that you sort of do Gina. Everyone finds what works. It is your weird refusal to believe it isn't right for every baby.

But this is going nowhere. So I shall bow out of the side track.

OP - how are you doing?

Penguins, don't say I never give you owt..

Pistol, the thing is, that does not work for every baby.

Mine did not do 'crying down', not from day 1. If she wasn't picked up, her cries always, always, escalated to red-faced, tearful, vomiting screaming in a couple of minutes. Now at 6 months she's a super happy baby who does an occasional grizzle-grump protest before naps and that's it, but as a newborn she was hard bloody work. Attachment parenting approaches ('stick her in a sling and get on with life') saved my sanity when other suggestions - soothing without picking up, shush-pat, pitch-black room, etc etc - weren't doing a thing.

Newborns are different. There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach, and there's a big difference between "X worked well for us, give it a shot" and "X is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and if you can't get it to work you're just not as good a parent as I am." Looking after a newborn is hard enough without having that kind of pressure piled on you.

When you have had two (or more) completely different babies, you realise what a load of cock and bull all of these parenting guides really are. What might work for one may well be utterly useless for another.

Gavel.

Gina Ford isn't 'one size'; there are ten routines to fit developing babies throughout the first twelve months.

Pterodactyl, extol your sling as much as you like

I still maintain that, barring illness, SEN, tongue tie or some other obstructive condition making a successful routine unlikely, most babies can be sleep trained.

'Guys lets stop with the sleep training debate. We are talking about newborns here. And almost everyone agrees you can't leaving a few week old baby to cry it out.'

Another common misonception. Sleep training doesn't mean leaving a baby to 'cry it out'. It's probably not helpful to tell sleep deprived mothers that it does. It doesn't have to be severe sleep deprivation or leaving your baby to cry for hours, there are other options.

Agree, some babies don't cry down. Mine would escalate and escalate until she was seriously distressed and throwing up. Needless to say we never did sleep training!

Why on Earth would you let your baby scream to the point where it vomits?

In my case: once because I was two miles away from home with the pram and a c-section too recent to let me carry her home, once because various well-meaning relatives we were out walking with (sodding pram again) told me not to pick her up because she'd surely settle down in a minute, once because I tried to shush/pat her in her Moses basket, once because I put her down long enough to get myself dressed when she was having a really velcro day, and a few times in the car because you can't exactly pick them up in a moving car.

And she could go from zero to screaming vomiting awfulness in about 90 seconds. (It doesn't take me that long to get dressed!)

So now I am one of those mothers you disapprove of for picking the baby up as soon as it starts to cry, instead of one of those mothers you disapprove of for letting the baby cry until it vomits

Ok so how do I sleep train my three week old? Seriously would like To give it a go.

Pistol in answer to your question I started thread to ask people for their honest experiences with their newborn.

I'm so confused by your insistent responses. Im not against Gina at all. I wish her routines had worked for me. Im not against crying down, CIO or CC either.

It is a bit weird how vehement you are being. I've got three children who are for example, really good unfussy eaters. The whole 'French' approach thing worked for me but I would never dream of insisting that that would work for everyone. I made an effort with it yes, but largely I just got lucky.

Of course I'm insistent with my responses, and that's because women are suffering needlessly.

Can I just be clear here. I did do CIO with my other two.

Your argument has a bit stopped having relevance because we are talking about my three week old. I wasn't being sarcastic when I asked what you did in terms of sorting out a routine/sleep training when your baby was three weeks old like mine. I am genuinely interested. Because I dont see how I can make it work when my baby wont sleep in her own bed in the day time, won't wait more than two hours for a feed etc.

Also do take heed of what I said before. It is genuinely brilliant that you have found something that has worked so well for you but your baby is still young and there are people out there with ten children and twenty years of
Experience who still wouldn't claim to know it all as you do.