Aibu to think that attachment/ gentle/ natural parents minimise how dangerous sleep deprivation is

[ScrumpyBetty]

I have thought about writing this post for a while, and I want to write it in a respectful way, this is in no way about 'bashing' anyone for the parenting choices that they identify with or choose to make,

If you are an AP and you co- sleep, breastfeed on demand, choose gentle sleep training- I think brilliant! You are very lucky and well done for making it work for you.

When I was an anxious new mother, I identified very much with some of the things I read on AP websites and wanted to AP.
However after 18 months of waking up every night 6 or more times, I was at breaking point. Seriously sleep deprived, crying every day, anxious, depressed- I could go on. I reached out to the AP community for help and advice and was told to continue to use gentle sleep training methods such as the No Cry Sleep Solution, continue to Wait It Out, and definitely not to do controlled crying or CIO. But by this point we had been using the NO Cry Sleep Solution for months, gentle methods were not working!
I read loads of stuff on AP blogs and was given advice such as: let the housework slide and sleep when your baby sleeps! Try yoga or meditation to relax a bit more! Etc. loads of articles warned me about the perils of sleep training.

Eventually we did do controlled crying, and it wasn't that brutal, it was 3 nights of leaving DS to cry for no more than 5 mins at a time. He was 18 months and it was the best thing we ever did. I cannot stress how much of a better mum I am now that I am getting regular sleep!

I know I will be told I was silly to listen to AP advice when it quite clearly wasn't working for me, but I know loads of new mums who do AP and who do treat it like gospel, and who think that controlled crying is abhorrent.
I think that sleep deprivation is abhorrent, and if I hadn't done CC I may well have had a nervous breakdown, so what good would all that gentle parenting do then?
AIBu to think that AP/ natural parenting etc websites minimise the dangers of sleep deprivation- which are depression, mood swings, memory loss, a whole host of health problems? I agree that sleep training methods such as CC should be a last resort but if they need to be used then they need to be used surely?

Brodicea - do you mean Controlled crying(CC)? Cry it out is just leaving a baby to cry. I don't think anyone recommends that.

Scrumpy - I was one of the people saying that we didn't do controlled crying - what we did to cope with the frequent wakings was co-sleep. That's where we ended up to deal with the 'lack of sleep' issue. I'm not saying it works for everyone but if you're asking what we did to deal with constant waking instead of CC it was co sleeping.

Would you have had me carry on waking up countless times a night, surviving on 4 broken hours of sleep and reaching near breakdown just for the sake of some attachment ideal

No, that's what you decided to do to yourself.

Do what works with parenting, it's the only way to stay sane on what is a very long and challenging journey. If something is causing you serious harm then why would you keep doing it?

DD is my first and the principle of "adapt the advice to your circumstances" was fairly obvious to me (mainly because the available advice is all contradictory when looked at as a whole therefore cannot all be correct).

The main issues as I see it

1. People that shout the loudest about a particular parenting style are often the most insecure

1. Parenting trends are fed by social media/forums whereby everyone is an armchair expert spouting out what another armchair expert has said in a different forum I.e if you leave your child to cry they will spout seven heads and speak only in tongues when they are teenagers. Nobody actually looks into the scientific research or if they do it's from some Mickey Mouse university and carried out on three rats.

1. No mother wants to admit in RL or often in forums that they leave there child to cry and therefore the forums are massively one sided gentle parenting/AP type things - hence why it has become so popular & trendy. Where we live I would say AP is becoming the mainstream now. It will have its day, just like CIO has

Wonder what the next trend will be .....

I don't see how what you did is necessarily anti AP. It would be pretty normal for the actual ap parents I know. You tried everything else, and it clearly wasn't working for you or your baby. You gently tried sleep training, which worked quickly, and from what you say didn't involve crying for long periods or the baby becoming very distressed. So you were responding to your babies needs and allowing them to get the sleep they needed while not going crazy with tiredness, and what you did clearly was what they needed. Sounds good to me. I wanted to co-sleep until toddlerhood, read lots about it, bought a bigger bed etc. DD HATES it. Once she was one she made it very clear she wanted her own bed by kicking me, then started sleeping in a blanket on the floor. She has had her own bed in her own room since 14 months. I'm still an attachment parent, because it was right for her.

I am most definitely an attachment parent, more as a conscious choice now when dd is 3 than it ever was when she was a baby, when it was just what worked for me to stay sane. Just because the sleep thing didn't work for you, doesn't mean you can't continue to parent in that way if you want to. I gave up breastfeeding at 16 months, for reasons that were entirely about me (mental health related). It's about the ways that you choose to relate to your child, not which boxes you tick.

AP means parenting in a responsive manner to promote a strong attachment between the baby and the primary care giver, usually the mother. It does not necessarily mean bed sharing, breastfeeding, babywearing etc- they are all tools that can help you form a strong attachment, but you could also parent responsively with a cot, bottle of formula and pram and achieve a strong attachment.

A secure attachment with the primary care giver helps the child grow into an adult who feels secure and forms good relationships, this is accepted amongst psychologists and psychiatrists.

If you are utterly utterly shattered for a long time then you are probably not managing to be responsive to your baby's needs and I don't think continuing on as you were and making yourself ill and miserable would help your baby feel secure and cared for. Obviously leaving a baby to cry is not being responsive, but I think that if other options haven't helped you need to consider the age of the child and whether they understand that Mummy is coming back again, how secure they feel generally, and whether this is better or worse for your child than carrying on being sleep deprived. In some cases this would mean that CC is a reasonable option, in many cases not.

In your case your sleep training method sounds like a reasonable decision.

I don't think this disqualifies you from being an AP/ responsive parent!

"What a load of unevidenced assertion."

Hence my sentence starting "I think".

I think there's a big difference between using CC on an older child (who is more able to understand that you've just gone out of the room/downstairs and will be back in a few minutes) and a young baby.

Or what hopelessly devoted just wrote much more succinctly

sweetandfullofgrace yes, I did make my own decisions, you are right that I have to own my decisions. However I made my decisions after reading books, websites and speaking to AP type parents in real life who told me that controlled crying would be harmful, and would cause attachment problems, which made me loathe to try it. I'm glad you had the confidence to adapt to your circumstances and your DD, I however was an insecure new parent and was very much drawn in by the AP hype, and at first did not have the confidence to make my own decisions. I wish now that I had been more level headed and had thought for myself a bit more.

Yes skeeter we co- slept, I wish it had worked for us but it didn't. I'm a very light sleeper and would wake up every time DS moved, or kicked me in the face( about20 times a night) it certainly didn't work for us.

I'm with you OP

I think treating anything like gospel is really daft. I think we accidentally did ap with DS as he hated being put down so I held him a lot, co-slept etc. We did try controlled crying when he was still waking every 3 hours when i was back at work but it was awful. It was definitely not 5 mins of crying then falling asleep so we left it. I think 5 mins of crying at 18 months doesn't even really count as sleep training :) DD has to wait at least that long if I'm busy with DS.

The trouble with parenting advice is that whoever swears by one thing didn't have your child. They all seem vastly different to me. I am a big fan of doing whatever works and following no guidelines whatsoever :)

I also think that CC is harmful. Especially done repeatedly and at a young age and yes i do think it will cause issues later on. However, I thought that applied mainly to the first six months and really not such a big deal at 18 months.

Is a few minutes crying at 18 months really that at odds with AP?

Thank you hopelesslydevoted and glabella

Yes bumbley I would never consider doing cc on a young infant, I probably wouldn't do it under a year. DS was 18mo when we did it, we explained to him that it was time to sleep, and that we were leaving him on his own and that we would be right outside.

Controlled crying saved my sanity and quite possibly my and ds1s life.

That is all.

Op YANBU. Sleep deprivation is used as torture for a reason. Anyone who has not experienced it can never understand what it feels like. It's not exhaustion, it is dangerous. You did the right thing. CC, the way you did it, does no child any harm. Leaving tiny babies to scream themselves to sleep is of course harmful, but the CC method you describe is sane.

Some babies don't learn how to go to sleep and need teaching. DS2 has ASD and couldn't fall asleep naturally. After two years of constant broken sleep, we did CC as you did and after three or four nights, we were all feeling better. But those two years were very dangerous. It took me years and years to get over them and I still have a phobia about being prevented from sleeping.

Glabella YY to the tick box attitude.

I sometimes wonder how much love the box tickers out in internet land are motivated by ... or whether it's at best a coping mechanism and at worst a form of control/superiority.
Box ticking ain't child centred.

Pyjamas - yes, exactly what you said.

In reality I don't think an otherwise securely attached child will have long term attachment problems from being left to cry for five mins on a few occasions. If that was true third and forth children would be screwed.

Being consistently patented in an unresponsive manner can lead to attachment problems. Five mins of crying on a few days won't undo all the fantastic responsive parenting you have done already. In fact you may well parent more responsively when you have had some sleep the night before.

lastlines yy- I think unless you have experienced the utter hell of sleep deprivation then you have no idea. Parents who glibly said 'just sleep when he sleeps' , or 'have you tried co- sleeping' - I could have strangled them.
When I was at my wits end, I remember ringing the Samaritans helpline in the middle of the night, sobbing down the phone that I couldn't carry on. I was utterly broken. And yy to the phobia about being prevented from sleeping- I have that too. If DS is ever I'll and we have a few nights where he wakes up in the night, I get utterly terrified that he will never sleep again....he always does of course and my fears are unfounded but I have so much anxiety, bought on by all that time of lack of sleep.

I was quite badly affected by the "leaving a baby to cry damages their neurological development" articles too.
I can see now with the benefit of sleep and fewer hormones but I was torturing my ds and myself by trying to cuddle or bf him to sleep or cosleep. From around 6mo he needed leaving alone to fall asleep. He's far too easily stimulated by my or dhs presence to sleep. Leaving him did involve 3-5min of crying but then he'd settle. Holding him involved 2mins+ of him screaming in my arms. If I hadn't read all the articles about the hideousness of "letting babies cry" I'd have sorted myself out far sooner.

My motto is you do what you need to do to survive. If that's CC, Gina Ford, AP or anything else, crack on. The only thing that matters is you and your baby.

And what works for one baby you have probably won't work for the next. I was so smug, pregnant with DS2, thinking "I've got a 5 year old, I know what I'm doing". DS2 was the polar opposite of DS1 and, frankly, I went a bit mad trying to be the perfect Mama to him til I got my head out my arse, let him sleep in our bed and gave in with any kinds of rules.

4 years later both children are alive and healthy. That's a win in my eyes, even if I've drunk more gin than the population of a small country might.

hoplessley well it wasn't 5 minutes of crying, we left him to cry for no more than 5 mins at a time before going in, reassuring him, lying him down and telling him it was sleepy time.I can't remember how long the first night took, maybe 40mins? The second night was 20, and the third 10.

Yes museeumum me too, I was very frightened by the AP articles and blogs I read, warning about the perils of controlled crying.you are right, if I hadn't of read all of that stuff, i wouldn't have gotten myself in to such a state and would have sorted it all out sooner.

charlotte well said, and have a gin on me!

I think that co-sleeping and ap advice works amazingly, the babies just sleep or snuggle in and latch on whilst you half sleep. I don't think that ap, breastfeeding on demand with older babies works at all as you have to physically get up... Out of bed, and then put the child back down in a cot all alone, that would never work with my dc, we'd all be wide awake and then exhausted then next day.

I night weaned dc1 at around 18 months as I was pregnant and there was no milk so he was just frustrated and upset and then we were both exhausted the next day, but I continued to co-sleep with him, I cuddled him and sang to him, I explained there was no milk and mummy was there, cuddling him I never left him to cry alone, there is no need, he did cry, but I tried my very hardest to make sure he knew I was there for him in any way I could be apart from by giving him milk as there was none.

My advice to people who think that stopping night feeding is going to make daytime better for the entire family is to replace the nighttime comfort (in our case breastfeeding) with something else, now my ds is nearly 3 and he still co-sleeps, when he wakes he has a drink of water and cuddles in to me or dp, he self settles in as much as we don't have to wake up to settle him, but he still needs us close, which for us is fine and doesn't negatively effect anyone's sleep.