'The only way we've sorted a sleep prob in this house is controlled crying' - fuck off!!

[Smataya]

I text friend who has two under two how hard it's been of late with Ds 11 months just not sleeping. I've explained before he is just not a sleeper and likes to be close at night, wakes a lot for milk and that I'm doing attachment parenting. She knows how against cc I am and I will not ever leave my child to cry. Ds has not slept for longer than an hour since he was 5 months which is starting to take its toll, but as I say, he's just not a sleeper and it's tough.

Why the f is she doing this pa bull shit about cc over text?? She's been like eerr have you tried sleep training to me before and I just don't want to hear it. Her two sleep through and I just find it smug- she's got lucky and now claiming its all down to cc. Am I justified in texting back to say ftfo to the far side of fuck?!?!

Ok sorry, I (& aat least one other poster) assumed ops could request their own threads be deleted. My mistake. I hope the op can take the supportive stuff & not get bogged own with the nastier stuff.

You can request it - but they don't really like deleting it unless it's got very out of hand or carries identifying information.

They will only delete in extreme circumstances, not just because someone doesn't like some of the responses they've received.

YABU everyone's experiences are different. She sounds like she is trying to help but keeps saying the same thing as that is her only experience. You have decided rightly or wrongly to go down a different route. All of parenting is like this IME. Some people may have good sleepers 'by the luck of the draw' there is no way of knowing if it's parental style or luck.
Whatever the reason AP doesn't seem to be working for your little one or you. You can't survive on little sleep, it clouds judgement & can make you ill. Please get some help.

All the best to you OP, it's a difficult time but that full nights sleep will happen in the end.

I don't get this AP or CC debate

Ds1 slept in my bed til he was a year old, I breastfed him til he was 18 months old, he slept in the day when he wanted to, he was always with me til pre school, I have stayed at home for 16 years walking him to and from school (not at senior school ) attending every event

And for a period of no more than 45 mins over 3 days I let him cry for 5 mins at a time before going in and comforting him..and ruined him forever (apparently)

It's just parenting...I'm not an AP parent or a CC parent

What's the saying "mothers plan while mumsnetters piss themselves laughing" something like that

Wow you're really aggressive! I personally wouldn't use cc for my baby as I still cry when he does sometimes and I just couldn't do it! However some of my friends do it and I think that's fine. If they want to and it agrees with them who am I to criticise?
Your friend was offering advice to you because she may have interpreted it as a cry for help.
There are lots of other ways to get baby to sleep, just try everything! Also, try and calm down!

Coffee - "recent North American studies are not finding that there's a reduction in most transmission in STIs in circumcised males"

Got link? The one I have says the opposite:

Comprehensive Risk-Benefit Analysis of Infant Male Circumcision
May 2014 (Are your "recent North American studies" more recent than this?)

Scroll down to Table 4, where you will see various diseases and how much circumcision decreases their risks of contracting them.

Note that the figures are fold increase (as in 3-fold, 10-fold etc) and not %.

Studies from which those numbers come are cited to the right of each figure.

Risk of heterosexual HIV infection is 2.4-fold higher for the uncircumcised.
Risk of UTI for babies is 10-fold higher in the uncircumcised.
Risk of sphylis is almost 2-fold higher in the uncircumcised.
etc...

And then there is also this study about skin conditions (non-contagious) that circumcision largely prevents:

Table 2:

Men with Psoriasis.........72% are uncircumcised
Lichen Sclerosus...........98% are uncircumcised
Lichen Planus...............69% are uncircumcised
Seborrheic dermatitis....72% are uncircumcised
Zoon balanitis..............100% are uncircumcised
etc.

Correlation does not imply causation. There are many reasons why not being circumcised and certain conditions may coincide: for example being born in an area with poor healthcare but where circumcision is not practised. Furthermore balanitis is a condition of the foreskin so it stands to reason that it will only affect people with a foreskin.

There was an absolute difference in the crying of DS age 2,3, 4 months when he woke and needed me right by him; and the crying of DS age 9 months, frustrated and pissed off with me as I was right by him but he still couldn't go to sleep as he did not know how to. The angry cry of the 10 month child rocked and held to sleep who's peeled an eye open to see mummy has left the room and is totally freaked out - that's a bad one too. I added up how much he was crying by screaming every sleep cycle and it was in aggregate 20 minutes per night.

Because I'm an attachment parent - which to me means being in tune with what the baby needs - I noticed these subtle differences and tried a 1 minute, then 2 minute, then 5 minute gap before going in, or after laying him in his cot. Because he could understand some WORDS at 11 months I could explain a bit what we were doing. He cried. And screamed angrily. But no was was this a scream of abandonment. he was angry and didn't get what he should do, but over 2 nights he did get it.

He's a happy toddler who sleeps now. It was clearly, obviously what he needed. I appreciate the signals are mixed and not every case is so clear cut but I think given good health (ie no reflux) it makes sense to try this with an older baby.

That's right, all those scientists who carried out those tests must have been unaware that correlation is not causation

THE POINT that you catastrophically missed was that Coffee was WRONG when she said "studies are not finding that there's a reduction in most transmission in STIs in circumcised males". There is a hugely significant decrease in a wide variety of STDs and non-contagious genital skin conditions in circumcised men.

"There are many reasons why not being circumcised and certain conditions may coincide: for example being born in an area with poor healthcare but where circumcision is not practised"

The latter link I provided is about a study in Central London. And this is its first sentence: "It is well recognized that the presence of a foreskin predisposes to penile carcinoma and sexually transmitted infections".

I've never done CC with my two and they both sleep well. A baby waking up every hour might have tummy ache, usually caused by cows milk intolerance, might be worth looking into diet. Incidentally children who stop crying after a night of CC still have the same levels of cortisol as when they were crying, they're still stressed, they've just given up communicating that stress.

Although I'm sure the OP won't be back to read this, after 23 pages of fucking nonsense including a huge derailing regarding circumcision.

NRTFT but I suspect people are pointing out the OPs tone - OP you are entitled to be annoyed at just about everything really if you have a bad sleeper (trust me I've been there and it's hell) and your friend probably thinks she's helping but YANBU to hate CC - my DD was like your son and it's something I was never tempted to try. I don't care what other people do with their own kids but leaving DD scared and upset was not something I was prepared to do

I have to ask why you chose this friend to ask for support if you know that you have such opposing views. My sis and I have very different views over this topic so I just don't speak to her about sleep problems, or I know we will clash about it.

Three pieces of news, OP

1. it is not healthy for a toddler to be getting no more than one straight hour of sleep, as they never get into the restorative phase of deep sleep
2. it is not healthy for you either
3. there is no magic wand you can wave to achieve your friend's results with sleep without any of the effort she's put in. By effort, I mean sleep training, which doesn't necessarily mean CC but does mean having a plan and sticking to it patiently and resolutely until your child learns how to put himself back to sleep. Which at 11 months, he is more than capable of doing with the right help. Toddlers' biological need for sleep is far stronger than any bad sleeping habits he may have learned.

Hypotenuse you're making it sound like CC babies are permanently stressed. They might be stressed while CC is going on (though you're handily ignoring the fact that the vast majority of sleep training methods involve the parent reassuring the baby) but guess what? After a couple of nights, no one is stressed. You know why? Because everyone is sleeping.

I had happy babies. Bollocks to your cortisol

Hear hear. I never tire of hearing people who haven't had unbroken sleep for years tell me how my sleeping DC must be stressed in their sleep

Hypotenuse have you any evidence to support your theory? Cc is done on babies/toddlers after 9 months, not very young babies. You do not leve them to cry it out. You leave them to cry for a min, go in, don't pick them up, sooth them, go out, leave a bit longer each time. A pain cry is different to a whingy tired cry.

I would never do controlled crying and my children were not perfect sleepers.

I don't have any evidence that CC is harmful, but it just doesn't feel right.
And that's enough for me.

If a baby cries he needs comfort. That's my bottom line. i trust my instincts. Not some programme in a book.

Isis online (infant sleep information service, they had the initials first) have the largest overview of sleep training research (and if iIrremember correctly they only include cc not cio,and only post 6mths- i guess because of sids guidelines) and they say that the research does conclusively indicate that cortisol levels in children cc remain high all night. They also say there's no conclusive evidence to show this causes harm, which of course doesn't proove it doesn't either techniqually speaking.

It's up to individual parents to put that into ccontext and decide if they feel its a risk - temperament of the child, or underlying disabilities in our case made it very clear I would not take that risk, however small. Then of course there's weighing up the risk, and for some the risk of parent not sleeping would be much higher. While infant sleep cycles are 45 mins an adults are double that so waking every sleep cycle with a baby/young toddler can become very dangerous.

That must be lovely for you, four. I had a "colicky" baby who cried nonstop for 6 months. She was (1) feeding, (2) sleeping, or (3) screaming. It didn't matter if I held her or left her or sang to her or rocked her or whatever. She screamed.

When we did sleep training, we honestly didn't notice anything different - she was awake and screaming, as usual. It took only two nights. She slept through for 12 hours on the third night and has been sleeping like a log and waking up with a smile ever since (now almost 10).

Exactly four, good on you, different strokes for different folks. I personally value my sleep to function normally, and do not want broken sleep until my child goes to school if I can.

Meant exactly coteDzure, wonderful for these perfect parenting. A child really has to learn to self sooth. As I said its not about leaving a baby to cry and cry and it's not done on a baby under 9 months anyway.

permanent - I assume you are talking about this ISIS page.

That study presents such a target-rich environment that I don't know where to start:

(1) No control group - This is a huge problem in a study that claims to be scientific. If you don't know why, I can elaborate.

(3) They studied "extinction" method, which is Crying-It-Out (CIO), not Controlled Crying (CC).

(4) Babies were put to sleep in a laboratory (strange environment) by nurses (not their mums) which makes a stressful and unnatural environment in itself.

(5) Cortisol levels were elevated on Day 1, before the start of sleep training.

Take comfort in this "study" if it helps justify your sleep deprivation, but it is about as solid as Wakefield's study of 10 children showing a connection between MMR and their gut problems.

Also re cortisol - Those of you fearing it like the devil and thinking it will damage your babies' brains in a couple of hours over a few days should read this factsheet about toxic stress by Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child.

---------------
Learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy child development. When we are threatened, our bodies prepare us to respond by increasing our heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones, such as cortisol. When a young child’s response systems are activated within an environment of supportive relationships with adults, these physiological effects are buffered and brought back down to baseline. The result is the development of healthy stress response systems. However, if the stress response is extreme and long-lasting, and buffering relationships are unavailable to the child, the result can be damaged, weakened systems and brain architecture, with lifelong repercussions.

It’s important to distinguish among three kinds of responses to stress: positive, tolerable, and toxic. As described below, these three terms refer to the stress response systems' effects on the body, not to the stressful event or experience itself:

Positive stress response is a normal and essential part of healthy development, characterized by brief increases in heart rate and mild elevations in hormone levels. Some situations that might trigger a positive stress response are the first day with a new caregiver or receiving an injected immunization.

Tolerable stress response activates the body’s alert systems to a greater degree as a result of more severe, longer-lasting difficulties, such as the loss of a loved one, a natural disaster, or a frightening injury. If the activation is time-limited and buffered by relationships with adults who help the child adapt, the brain and other organs recover from what might otherwise be damaging effects.

Toxic stress response can occur when a child experiences strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity—such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support. This kind of prolonged activation of the stress response systems can disrupt the development of brain architecture and other organ systems, and increase the risk for stress-related disease and cognitive impairment, well into the adult years.

Q: When should we worry about toxic stress?

A: If at least one parent or caregiver is consistently engaged in a caring, supportive relationship with a young child, most stress responses will be positive or tolerable. For example, there is no evidence that, in a secure and stable home, allowing an infant to cry for 20 to 30 minutes while learning to sleep through the night will elicit a toxic stress response. However, there is ample evidence that chaotic or unstable circumstances, such as placing children in a succession of foster homes or displacement due to economic instability or a natural disaster, can result in a sustained, extreme activation of the stress response system.
----------------

Now, is there anyone here who will seriously claim that several hours of crying in total over 2-3 nights for a baby in a loving home equates to long-term neglect and abuse? Raise your hands now and try to argue that frankly indefensible case. Or read, learn, and change your unreasonable views on this subject.

I can't open your link on my phone, but Isis online is where all of the research is compiled and analysed - and the lack of clear risk or benefit prooven either way is why we have no set guidelines on sleep training.

I'm not justifying my sleep deprivation by any studys- iI have cfs and Adhd so have had life long sleep problems and higher than average cortisol levels- and my children have inherited many of my disabilities, and more, so the lower risk in our family is gentle sleep training.