To ask if anyone has ever successfully sleep trained a 10 month old. Really???

[tinymeteor]

I've always had massive reservations about sleep training, but am finally knackered enough to be considering letting DD cry it out. She's gorgeous all day but I bloody dread nighttimes. Multiple wakings, can't self settle any more, and bedtimes, which have been in a smooth routine since 4 months, are starting to go to hell too. We are entering "something must be done" territory.

But does CIO work when you try it on a strong willed 10mo whose favoured position in the cot is vertical screaming? Or am I going to go through a week of hell that only serves to reinforce her hatred of being put to bed?

Oh and also stopped feeding at night (well between 10pm and 5am anyway) would occasionally offer water and change nappy, dd has a few sensory issues though and can't cope with the feeling of wet against her skin.

We sleep trained DS at about 10 months.

It only took a couple of nights (Though they were HARD - be prepared)

We did the 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes etc gaps.

It was hard but totally worth it and he was a different child for actually getting some sleep.

Yes almost - an 8-month old, not 10 month. Baby Whisperer technique - pick-up put-down. Read up about it on their website. You don't leave them to cry alone, but teach them to fall back to sleep in their cot when they half-wake, as all babies do. The books are not just about sleep, but about reading your baby's cues and getting into a good rhythm with naps etc. Very useful. Mine went from waking every 2 hours for bf, to sleeping from about 8pm to 5am. First did it after 3 nights, did it consistently after 2 weeks.

So grateful to get so many responses, thank you.

Looks like the consensus is that it's time to bin the night feeds, and I think you're probably right, but have been cautious about that for a reason. DD is tiny for her age - 2nd centile down from 25th at birth, and has cows milk protein allergy, so solids have been a little complicated and she's only just accepting bottles of her non dairy formula. I've generally taken the view that if she needs an extra feed at night she can have it. Which is not to say she gets fed to sleep every time, she mostly just wants to be held. Basically BF is part of the picture but not the whole thing I don't think.

I'm not reading the other posts on this thread as skimming them my blood has begun to boil.
You have a baby who doesn't sleep well- my heart goes out to you, I know how it feels to be sleep deprived and then start questioning everything.
With my firstborn we did controlled crying - in at 4,6,8,10 min at six months and then again at 15 months or so. Worked really well the first time and he cried less than when I was in there patting and sssshing and generally irritating him. It was a revelation . Second time we got a night nanny to advise as I felt cc was too difficult now he was calling for me etc. she met him and took a detailed history and asked what we had tried ( everything) and then said for his temperament we had to try using cc again! We did and it worked and he is a wonderful non- scarred two year old.
Last week I had a different night nanny come and help me with my ten month old who was waking at least twice in the night and needing to be stroked to sleep. We had tried cc a few times but he got far more upset than my first born and cried for ages - he is much more sensitive than his boisterous brother. She helped me find a way that works for us and it has been amazing! We let him cry but start timing from when we hear a huge cry that gets straight to your heart. She taught me to listen for his self soothing cry and if he didn't self south for two min after the heart piercing one to go in. Then come out and wait until the next one pierced your heart and wait four min. Most of the time you hear them try and settle themselves and if left will fall asleep. It worked amazingly and he now sleeps
For much longer periods of time as he is self settling. I feel better because I know he is not constantly distressed. Good luck you can do it!

Oh and I know lots of people use other methods but I really think you have to choose what will suit your baby- both mine either just want to be in my arms if I am in the room and scream blue murder until I pick them up- it's like j am antagonizing them by being in there but not holding them or they want to play and chat despite no eye contact etc! Staying in the room did not suit by bright, nosy, inquisitive active playful babies!!!

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201301/baby-sleep-training-mistakes-experts-and-parents-make

dosappointedone, no doubt hat was intended to be constructive but a.) psychology today can be a hotbed of quackery alongside the good stuff, and b.) a professor of 'morality' who cites no published evidence is not my idea of an scientific evidence base. But thanks.

No time to RTFT, but have skimmed what you have to say. No night feeds, she doesn't need them. Change your routine so that you open up a space between feed and sleep. Bath, feed, stories, bed. You don't need to leave her alone to cry - you just need to maintain the expectation that she will sleep. You can comfort her - you just can't help her to sleep.

I night weaned / sleep trained at 10 / 11 months. I took a long time over it (more than a month) because I wanted to gently reduce her feeds. But it worked like clockwork.

My GP recommended Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems to me, and I'm recommending it to you. I never intended to use the method (and nor did I) - but the information about sleep cycles and associations saved my sanity.

Also please understand the logic of controlled crying (a Ferber method). The idea of the increased intervals - as he himself explains - is to increase the mathematical likelihood of your child falling asleep alone, while you also check on / comfort them.

It's my humble opinion that all you teach the child is that they need to cry for longer and longer intervals for you to come. We always stayed with DD, and went to her right away if she was crying. Two reasons: 1, so she wasn't alone in distress. 2, so she never had any reason to cry for prolonged periods. The CIO logic is predicated on the idea that unless your child falls asleep alone, they will rely on your presence to fall asleep (when the rouse naturally in the night). Not in my experience. And if it is the case, gradual retreat is a better approach.

Absolutely everything Pterodactyl said at 15:50-something yesterday. Nothing like a poster with a baby who has slept through from six weeks saying it happened because they did everything right because 'I really need my seven hours of sleep' to make me hit. The fucking. Roof. You think I exist on ten wake ups a night for fun?! I hope you have another baby who is a confirmed non-sleeper to whack you straight off your fucking high-horse.

Sleep is most definitely 100% luck - you have the luck to have a baby who sleeps, the luck to have a baby who responds to sleep training methods, or the bad luck to have a baby who does neither. I have had two of the latter, and hand on my heart I have done everything consistently and 'right' since they were born. DS2 does not feed to sleep, falls asleep from wide awake in his cot every night, I have gradually retreated in every conceivable way from birth and he is still awake every fucking hour of the night.

OP - I did CC and CIO with DS1 several times. He was still awake a minimum of six times a night, but usually eight to ten, when I went back to work full time when he was eight months. Both CC and CIO made him far worse and pushed him into complete cot refusal and made him even clingier during the day. The reason I tried them more than once was because people on here convinced me they were a 'guaranteed fix' once he was developmentally ready. They are not and I have no intention of trying them with DS2.

I would never judge anyone for trying, though, as I understand what desperate lengths sleep deprivation will push you to. And you never know - your might be one of the ones for whom it works.

elphaba, thanks for the sympathy! I am currently reading your post to DD in soothing tones as she stands in her cot (Grobag and all). She is laughing out loud

I'm going to sit down with DH this weekend and do some strategising. Not sure yet whether any of the 'methods' are right for us, but at least we can put on a united front as we figure out what's the best bet for our particular baby. I will also be restocking the booze cupboard.

We sleep trained all 3 of us - 6 months, 7 months and 6 months. it has bugger all to do with luck. I love posts that say she is a strong will 10 mo. No she isn't. she is just normal. You have to change your routine at bedtime and night time if you want her to change hers. if you keep doing the same old stuff - feeding, constantly going in then she will keep on doing her thing - waking up and screaming. it took a few nights max a week to crack it with each one of ours but you have to follow the pattern that you set yourself and you have to stick to it otherwise it doesn't work.

People with 1 child who sleeps should be wary of smugly judging their friends with "high needs babies' and blaming the friends parenting. All babies are different and some are more challenging than others.

Yes bubalou I am talking to you.

I didn't do CIO w ds1 but I did stop going in to feed/settle him at 10 mo and sent dh in with a bottle of water instead. Dh stayed with him and tried to sooth him but there was no mummy and no milk and quite a bit of crying for 3 nights.

After that, he stopped waking up and has slept through ever since. It was hard to do but I'm so glad we did.

Same approach did not work as well with ds2 though.

Try this one then tinymeteor. Plenty of scientific links.

sciencemommy.weebly.com/blog/the-science-behind-cry-it-out-sleep-training

(Seriously, why have a baby if you don't want it to behave like a baby? They wake at night for reasons other than to
piss off their parents!)

"contrary to popular myth, babies are unable to soothe themselves from extreme distress; they don’t have the brain function to do this, so extinction “teaches” them to self-soothe like tossing them in the ocean teaches them to swim. When they are tossed into extreme distress and comfort is withheld, the stress hormone cortisol actually destroys nerve connections in critical portions of an infant’s developing brain. It seems clear that extreme prolonged and repeated distress is cause for concern during the time the brain is growing and wiring exponentially more than it ever will again."

Is it not possible that good sleep is partially luck and partially environmental factors that you as parents are in control of? Does it have tone one or the other?! I know I can't calculate the exact percentages but surely there's element of both?...

OP, I think at this stage it's just trial and error, really. All we can say with any certainty is that a lot of children respond well to a good bedtime routine such as bath, story, bed with comforter but that this doesn't always make for repeated sleeping-through, and if this is the case then maybe it's time to try a form of sleep training. I can also tell you some children do absolutely just suddenly start sleeping through for no apparent reason, although in our case (at 8 months), who's to say it wasn't just a delayed result of the half-hearted attempts we'd made at sleep training, or some kind of chemical change in his brain, or him just realising it was nicer to be asleep than sitting up in his cot screaming? I guess my point is, if there was one solution/right way of doing it, we'd all be doing it.

You have my absolute sympathy, though - sleep deprivation is utterly, utterly horrendous :(

Some people have more than 1 child and one sleeps and one doesn't despite being treated exactly the same. Smugness is really annoying on these threads. And not taking it personally. .DD has an actual sleep disorder. She is 8 and hasn't slept for 8 years. Fun times.

I would agree, it's part luck and part environmental. But sometimes one leads to the other.

Back when I was a ftm, or even second time, I used to despair at the smug mums and dads who'd say "oh, we expected them to sleep" and "oh, always put them down drowsy but awake" and "I made sure from birth that she would go to other people".

Take DD2. If you put her down awake in any way then, from birth, that would result in agonised 'I think I might die' screams. Which would escalate and escalate (I know, because sometimes it had to happen in the car, or because I had to leave her for a few minutes to deal with putting DD1 to bed or whatever). From birth, you couldn't pass her to anyone else (even DH, which was hard) without her becoming a screaming mess. As soon as she could cry tears, there would be big fat sobbing tears.

So you don't very often. Because having a baby who has worked themselves up to the point off sweaty, swollen eyed, coughing desperation is no fun for anyone. (DS on the other hand, is a model baby for being happy to hang out with anyone. And has been from birth).

And people say "oh, don't feed them when they wake". And yes, feeding them back to sleep each time might be reinforcing associations you'll have to break later. But take DD1, she wouldn't settle without a feed (believe me, we tried everything). She just wouldn't. We did everything 'right' with her, and still ended up with a baby we ended up doing CCing with at 11 months, after three long months of trying to get her to settle without a feed. With DD2, I couldn't spend 2-5am every night for three months patting her as I had with DD1. I had to parent the next day.

I think a bad sleeper can often be improved. I think a bad sleeper can probably be made worse (though sometimes out of necessity). I don't think a bad sleeper miraculously becomes a good one because you are somehow a good parent. The mere fact that you can implement strategies like 'drowsy but awake' means you didn't have that bad a sleeper before you started.

Now I'm on my third child, I shrug off all the smugness. Parenting is a long game, and the smug parent will normally have their own challenge somewhere down the line with something you find easy.

My sympathies OP. Sorry if you've said this, but are all the night feeds bottle? If so, you might want to think about night weaning as a first step (much easier to do with a bottle as you can reduce the amount, or water down the feed). You may find that, by the time it's a tiny amount, or mostly water, she stops bothering waking up.

If you'd like a non hysterical take on CIO/CC, there is a website called Troublesome Tots which is pretty good.

Fanjo - ouch!

rootypig - I think my experience has been the polar opposite of yours. The more we went in, the more frequently dd woke and cried and the longer it took for her to go back to sleep. The less we went in, the more she slept, the less she woke.

We were lucky that she never cried for longer than around 10 mins max at any one time. It was just luck. I really feel for those who have had babies who cry for hours at a time, making sleep training so much harder.

The only real conclusion anyone can draw is babies are different and need different approaches. Another poster used a night nanny I think, I'd second that, if only for emotional reassurance.

OP I suggest you also need to stand back and figure out what kind of person you DD is.

Mine was a middle of the road baby. Not a high needs / won't be put down clinger. Equally not an easy routine you can set your clock by, sleeping through early number either. On the Happiest Baby on the Block scale she was / is sensitive.

She feels every developmental leap (Wonder Weeks) in a big way, and each one distrupted her sleep. She is also a fast and early developer. So when she started pulling herself up (7 months) for a while (weeks) she would do that in her sleep, and leap to her feet every time she woke up. Ditto walking (1 year), talking (14 months, two languages. Now at 20 months talking in whole sentances, knows a tonne of colours, shapes and objects and is starting to count!). She also teethed fast and early. She cut 16 teeth between 8 months and 15 months. Her sleep was distrupted more often than not during that time, but mostly it was her teeth. I would never leave a child in pain to cry on their own. When the teething stopped, her sleep got much better.

What I'm saying is:

1. Figure out: who is your baby? What are her traits? How fast is she developing? Does she feel things keenly, or not? Is she teething? All these things affect sleep (DD had a phase of sleeping much better once she could walk - she was tiring herself out physically). They are not robots, and someone who's baby slept through consistently from 3 months has no helpful advice for me, or probably, you. I would google a specific discription of DD's behaviour and found v helpful articles (e.g. one on duracell bunny babies - DD was definitely one of those. She often displayed no signs of tiredness and went straight to overtired meltdown).

1. Ignore all the stuff about habits. It's bullshit. DD had loads of 'good' habits when little (feel asleep on her own, would sleep on her own, happy to be passed around to other people, slept through 11pm-7am from 4-6 months. didn't prevent rough times later on (though we came through them).Vice versa 'bad' (though in my view, the best) habits (co-sleeping, being loving and responsive, night feeding) were easy to drop when the time was right. I wish I'd worried about this less.

1. I 100% disagree with 'no baby needs to feed in the night at 10 months'. DD did. But then, me and DH and both tall and skinny with v fast metabolisms (I can never skip a meal and had ot eat in the night when pregnant). And DD was a decent sized baby (9lbs at birth). Also when she was teething she'd eat less (her mouth hurt).

1. Babies are not robots. At 20 months, the amount of sleep DD needs varies a lot. recently for a couple of weeks she was sleeping 12.5 hours at night + a 2.5 - 3 hr nap in the day. For several months before we'd be lucky to get 10.5 hours at night and 2 hours in the day.

1. For some babies, there is no sliver bullet. I hated people who told me 'just do shush and pat / controlled crying / gradual retreat / feed and cosleep'. We did lots of things at different points we started off 100% co sleeping and then did a mix (we've got a double bed in her room so from 7 months she'd start on her own and I'd sleep next to her from whenever she woke for a feed). Many of them (no Cry Sleep Solutions, Gradual retreat, very gentle controlled crying) improved things at various points. However there was no one perfect fix for her. Rather it's been evolutions and negotiations.

1. Know that it is never a mistake to be there for your baby. All this 'don't talk, minimal interaction stuff' is not just bullshit in my view, it would have been cruel for DD. She needed my help to calm down. When we did controlled crying I would always pick her up and cuddle her when I went in. I'd pat and sing to help calm her down. I tell her I loved her often, especially when she was very cross and upset. Now, she often asks for a cuddle to help her calm down.

We only really made changes when our responsive approach stopped working. NOw she mostly sleeps on her own (I miss co-sleeping!) I know she is getting better from an illness when I'm sleeping with her and she wants to play: I pop her back in her bed and she drops straight off.

1. It's hard, but it's worth it in the long run. Now, at 21 months she is a dream toddler at an age many say is 'difficult'. I know this is because we have alwasy been there for her, supported her, loved her. She is calm and confident. The first 18 months were tough but for us an investment that was well worth it. Some babies are dream babies that sleep from long periods early. Some have been trained to, and that doesn't mean they are not scared / lonely / in pain sometimes in the night, just that they have been taught to stay quiet about it. The long term affects of that bother me a lot.

That said, I don't know how i would have coped with a high needs, long term multiple night waking baby. Part of the motivation to night wean was when my insomnia really took hold (which was maybe also keeping DD awake). It is a negotiation between you and your baby. So ask other's views by all means, but ultimately you need to do what you feel in your heart to be the best for them and you.

Also I never, ever thought at 6 months that I'd be able to say this 'I pop her back in her bed and she drops straight off.'

he didn't have a 'drowsy but awake' phase until about 10 months, and even now it comes and goes. We can be doing bedtime stories, with her giving me a run down on the differnces between planes and helicopters (really) and asking to do more running games, and 5 mins later she can be out like a light (sometimes). Equally sometime now she asks to go to bed. I could have cried tears of gratitude if someone could have promised me at 10 months that this would happen one day.

Time is the biggest factor in things getting better.

Very wise words, Elphaba.