AIBU to do controlled crying

[BergamotMouse]

I consider myself quite a 'gentle parent'. Controlled crying is something I said I wouldn't do as I don't want my daughter to learn that I don't respond to her cries but I feel like I'm on my knees.

DD is 8 months. Got through the 4 month sleep regression and was on about 2/3 wake ups. I breastfeed her back to sleep every time. For the past month or so she's been waking much more, could be every hour, she can be awake for 2 hours in the middle of the night and I no longer get an evening as keep trying to get her down until I give up and go to bed with her.

I'm just so tired. Will this pass soon or is my only option sleep training? Is there a gentler way?

Pre 6 months no way, post 6 months then I'd try something like gradual withdrawal if you're struggling. You will come out the other side, but it's very hard while you're in the midst of it.

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I've done it with my daughter and she's a brilliant sleeper now! She's 2 and has no issues. I don't believe she felt abandoned, she just learnt to settle herself. If you feel you are happy to try it, then do it. If it doesn't work for you though, don't feel like you've failed, sometimes it just isn't the right fit. It is hard, 5 mins feels like 30, but I used the timer on my phone so I wasn't tempted to go in too early, or loose track and leave her too long!

OP I promise you it will pass, please don't do controlled crying you will be distressed....

I went through exactly this phase with mine at 8 months and at 9 months she did start sleeping better (until I returned to work but that's a different story!!)....

You're doing a great job!!!

OP please don't listen to anyone who projects their own feelings on to you. Do what you need to do to say sane and rested. There are plenty of normal people on here who have done CC and confirmed that it is fine.

Op if you have always breastfed to sleep then of course your baby won't settle....you have trained him/her to sleep that way.....so now he/she will look for a feed from you to sleep each and every time....

Something has to change...bottle last thing? feed as much as possible in the day and try to not feed back to sleep in the night....

.l used to shush mine from nearby in the dark, and it seemed to settle them both back without a feed or being picked up...l never let either get distressed, but a bit of grumbly halfhearted crying was Ok in my book,( l am talking a few minutes of griping not full on yelling)
Oh and l never gave in whilst establishing good sleep habits, be consistent and give it some time doing the same method, 2 weeks or so at least.

Just to redress those who know bad sleepers because of co-sleeping and bf to sleep ... our co-slept until about the age of 1 or 2, and bf for varying lengths (17 months, 2.5 years, 4 years) - they woke at a developmentally appropriate level for feeds until at least 1 year old (that's normal) and then slept pretty wonderfully after that. They moved to their own beds and their own rooms when they were ready (about 1 year old?). Never had a sleeping problem. Co-sleeping and bf isn't for everyone but it doesn't automatically lead to a 'bad' sleeper.

The infant sleep information source at Durham Uni has some good, evidence based information about normal infant sleep.
Link here

I have a background in developmental psychology and I'm a professional psychologist. From this perspective: 3 days? No. Just no. After 6 months or so, done using gradual withdrawal? Probably no big risks.

I have a few friends who wish they had done CC when their toddlers were babies as their sleep has got worse not better. My two were 7 months when I did CC. In both cases it took two nights and it was the best thing I ever did. A mum on the brink of exhaustion is going to cause far more harm to her baby than leaving baby to cry for a few minutes.

Imagine you are alone overnight and have say toddlers who have a vomiting bug in the night and you're dealing with that while baby is crying. How is baby possibly going to be damaged by a few minutes crying while you are rightfully otherwise engaged? I realised that when I had my second DC that the needs of DC1 sometimes had to come first, which meant baby being left to cry for short periods. I have not seen any proper studies that conclusively link a few nights CC with long term psychological damage, assuming baby is well cared for the rest of the time. And CC from about two months old is pretty much the norm in France.

I think the cosleeping/bad sleeper thing is skewed because a lot of people cosleep becaise the dc are bad sleepers first. So it's not the cosleeping which caused it but it's what has been done out of exhaustion.

If you took a group of people who intended to cosleep before their baby was born then I suspect you may get a different result.

We cosleep because we are knackered and need some sleep. Yes threre are aspects of it we like but we didn't 'choose' to do it. Over the years we have spent £££ on cribs, sidecar cots, toddler beds etc which have all never been used.

Our current 5mo is the worst cosleep er even by our standards. She only sleeps with my boob in her mouth, so I hold her all night in an awkward position.

I want to ask all those anti cc (hope you don't mind op). Do you ever let your baby cry in the day? How long do you leave them if so?

You're not unreasonable for being exhausted and considering things you probably wouldn't if you weren't. That said, 8 months is definitely too young for sleep training. They're too young to understand and communicate with you. When they can then you could consider it.

Try it and see how you go. It may work it may not.
It worked for me DS. He cried for a short time then put him self to sleep and we never looked back. After 8 months we were down to one wake up, then he started sleeping through around 10-11 months.
But many will tell you it's not the way forward which I respect if their babies/toddlers sleep well but often I see comments by people adamant it's not the way forward yet their almost school age children don't sleep through the night so I'm not sure that makes their methods the ones to choose.
The first time you do it is not nice though but if it's going to work it will within a few days so it's not long.
I understand a lot of people poo poo the fact that they wouldn't do it 'just to get more sleep' but actually depending on your situation that might be the best thing you could do for your babies welfare. You are their care giver you need a certain amount of rest to look after them safely.

@MrsKoala dd doesn't cry. Of course she whinges and grumbles with the occasional shout when she wants my attention, but she doesn't cry. The only time she has ever properly cried is after her jabs, and she does hate getting out of the bath, so will get upset then. I don't know if this is because she's just not a crier, or that I've never let her get to the point of needing to cry to get my attention. She is my first though, so I have nothing to compare it to, and no doubt my second will be a screamer!

You should do it, I thought my dd needed feeding, rocking, shushing to sleep, took ages every night. On one occasion around 12 weeks I couldn't get back to her straightaway, was holding ladder for dh and went as soon as he was down and was she was fast asleep. Was around 5mins. At least 10 times quicker than if I'd gone to her. I think it's better for everyone especially the baby to learn how to settle themselves down.

I did it just for going to bed in the evening when my son was 1 year old. He used to put himself down so I knew he was capable of it, worked really well, didn't look back! I actually found it much easier having a timed plan rather than just rocking him for ages, tiptoeing out, waking him up by shutting the door, getting frustrated etc.
I dropped bedtime bottle at ten months too, I just think falling asleep by yourself is such a nice skill to have, some adults even struggle.

As an alternative to CC, I used this www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/1394888-What-worked-for-us-Hope-this-helps method with my DD a couple of years ago (saved the thread and have passed it on to friends with similar issues). Took a while but we got there in the end

MsKoala things sound tough for you. Will she not take a bottle or dummy like my ds?

DD is 17 weeks and EBF, so night time waking and bedtime have been my territory from the start. But I will be back at work soon and DH taking over, so we will be moving to mixed feeding. I have started weaning her off being fed to sleep, putting her down in her cot and holding her hand/stroking her tummy through her sleep bag. It takes a while but seems pretty effective. She does cry a bit but I'd prefer that to the full on screaming/tantrumming of a genuinely distressed toddler who has never known anything other than being cuddled to sleep. Once this is working more consistently for both me and DH I will try putting her down alone, then she will go into her own room, hopefully by 7-8 months.

MrsKoala try the Pantley Pull Out. It's a way of getting them to sleep without something in their mouth.

The secret is waiting until they are getting fluttery and having your finger ready to close their mouth by pushing up their chin the minute you slip out of their mouth.

If you don't succeed and they start waking, you reinsert boob and wait and try again. And again and again.

I had a lot of success with it. Actually the whole book No Cry Sleep Solution has a big bit on sleep training co sleepers who breastfeed all night.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I'm assuming at 8mnths you have commenced some solid foods. If DD has started waking hourly at night, I wonder if it's maybe hunger? Perhaps try giving her something to eat, and plenty of fluid, just before bedtime?
I totally disagree with the posters who say 8mnths is too young for a baby to start learning to go to sleep at night on their own.

At the moment when she is asleep I slip my nipple out, she sometimes roots and wakes so I put it back in. But sometimes she doesn't and looks for it about half hour later. If I put her down in her basket she wakes within 20 mins, usually about 7 mins.

I have never been able to lay her down awake as (like all mine) she screams and shakes violently immediately and then vomits.

When my dd was born. She just cried all night. She slept all night and cried all night. I tried everything! I fed her she cried. Picked her up, she cried. Put her down. She cried. Sang to her, talked to her, light on, light off. In my bed, back in hers. Everything. She wouldn't stop. This went on for about 2 weeks. I couldn't sleep in the day because it was Christmas and I always had people round. Too young and insecure to tell them all to fuck off and leave me alone. I was single too so I couldn't share the night shifts. I was so tired I was terrified I was going to do something stupid. I spoke to my hv and she suggested the controlled crying. She said "it seems to me that baby is perfectly healthy and it's you who needs help" by this time I had tried sleeping in the day but dd didn't like that! It seemed like she had some mummy sleep sensor built in and everytime I would close my eyes she would start.
It took about 2 days of controlled crying to sort a proper sleep pattern out for her. I can tell you I felt much more of a bond with her after she was allowing me to sleep than before. She's 16 now and we have a brilliant relationship. We're so close she confides in me about stuff most teenagers wouldn't dream of telling there dp's. She happy, confident, and bright. I still always think back about if I did wrong and wondering what could of made her cry? I've even asked her. But I really didn't have any other option. You just can't function without sleep. It's makes you stressed bad temperd and irrational. How can you be any sort of mother when you feel like that every day?

She slept all day and cried all night. Really must learn to preview

There is no decent research showing that cc is harmful.

There is plenty of research showing that poor mental health in mothers can have serious adverse outcomes. Now, only you can say whether sleep deprivation is affecting your mh, but it's not exactly a huge leap, given that it's used as a method of torture.

We all reach a point where we cannot just try harder, and to push part this point will result in total breakdown.

I know I reached it when my dd was 10 months, and cc saved us both. Me, from having a mental breakdown and her from having a mother with depression and all the damage that would have done to our relationship.

She's fine. We're fine. I don't feel am ounce of guilt. And anyone who suggests that I should have tried harder is a dick with their own issues, imo.

We did it at 9 months. It worked in 2 nights after weeks of ineffectual 'gentler' methods.

A great decision on our case. We never looked back, a happy, well rested DS, I got my sanity back. He's now a bright, charming, loving three year old.

There is so much guff spoken on this subject, but rest assured DS will alert us if something's wrong.

Sleep is important, for everyone. Babies need good sleeping patterns to support their development. And for many, good sleeping does need to be taught.