To not let my child cry it out

[melclaire1111]

Possibly a controversial thread but I need some advice!

DD 21 months and isn't the best sleeper. She can sleep through but has only done so on about 3 occassions. On a good night she is up once, on a bad night she can be up every hour.

I have not and do not want to go down the controlled crying/cry it method. I usually give her a few minutes to see if it's a whinge or an actual cry before going to her. Sometimes it's for her dummy, sometimes milk, but usually after 20 minutes she goes back to sleep.

Dh is now throwing a strip saying she should be sleeping through by now. I do all the night wakings (We both work full time but he works randon shifts including nights so I've just got on with it)

He is now saying he will do everything and make her cry it out all night til she learns which just makes me feel sick.

We are moving house soon so she will be going into a bed which I think will help but he's insisting we start now.

So help! Any advice without resorting to letting her cry all night!

Thank you for the replies. I'm really upset tonight as dh has come in from work and basically called me a selfish, horrible person for not letting her cry it out and stated that I an harming her by going to comfort her when she wakes up and that I have damaged her by not letting her settle herself back to sleep. Beyond upset at the momemt.

I can understand where you are coming from, it is hard to hear your children cry, but I really think your oh has a point.

Children cry for many reasons, if your child was having a tantrum during the day would you give in just to stop cries? That doesn't really help anyone in the long run. If you do the graduated methods your child will know they haven't been abandoned.

Sleep deprivation in children has been linked to depression/ADHD and ironically raised cortisol. If she is waking hourly she will have chronically raised cortisol and that isn't good for her.

Try and truce with your oh, assuming you otherwise get on I'm sure you can together come up with a plan to get more sleep.

I didn't mean cio in the new place!

We were in the same situation moving from cot to bed when moving house. I instigated a "you must spend the whole night in your bed" rule. That meant they could call for me or creep in to get me. Often they'd already found a spare pillow for me as the advantage of a proper bed is you can sleep a bit next to them, then creep out once they're asleep. They do naturally need you less and less. DD is nearly 6 and came once in the past couple of months.

I refused CIO from the start. DH insisted we tried it once and instead of having to comfort a crying baby he had to comfort a crying wife! It didn't work anyway as DS got himself into such a state it took far longer than normal to calm him down and then sobbed in his sleep for an hour or two. I was always punished for nightmares etc as a child and said I would never leave the DC at night if they were upset. Gave DH a ready made excuse but hey-ho. Things always seem worse at night when it's dark and you're (both) tired. I wouldn't leave an unhappy child to deal with things by themself or refuse my child a hug during the day, so why at night?

I recently came across this article which discusses a sleep training study done in babies more similar to yours and mine (I.e. not abandoned Romanian orphans), and the differences in cortisol are actually pretty minor. Worth a read if those are your concerns.
scienceofmom.com/2012/03/30/helping-babies-cope-with-stress-and-learn-to-sleep/

Just because your OH isn't getting up in the night doesn't mean he's not sleep deprived and struggling. My DH definitely is despite me dealing with all the night wakings/feedings in our 5 month old. It's an emotive topic, especially when sleep deprived, but there are gentler ways of helping them to develop better sleeping habits than CIO.

We sleep trained DC1 (gradual retreat method) because things were so bad I couldn't have carried on, and I will absolutely do the same with DC2 in a few weeks if things don't start to get better because I can't be the mum and wife I want to be when so sleep deprived. Sometimes it's best to think about what's best for the family unit as a whole.

CIO - I could never do that and genuinely can’t hnderstsnd how anyone could just leave their child to cry and cry until they fell asleep from exhaustion.

CC - I see this form of sleep training as acceptable (and necessary in some cases) and have used it myself.

I don’t think my 4 year old has been damaged because for 4 nights out of his entire life we did CC.

Getting enough sleep is just as important for the child as it is for the adult.

21 months IS quite old to still have night waking as standard. Maybe cio isn't for you but certainly you and your husband could work together to try and address the issue in a way that works for you. He may not be doing the night waking (although why the fuck not??) but he is no doubt disturbed by it and in a clumsy male way he is probably trying to make things better for you!

CIO/CC may not be actively harmful to a child long term, but it's not really very nice is it?

As a pp pointed out, we'd not leave a spouse or elderly relative to cry (Or cry with intermittent comforting) for a few nights to teach them to stop bothering us and go to sleep.

It's also not absolutely "necessary" to teach them to settle, it's a developmental thing which seems to take some dc longer than others. All 3 of mine sleep fine but it took 2 of them until past age 2. At that age they start to understand better and you can talk to them at bedtime, they get used to the routine.

I work full time and, yes I was tired as fuck but there's no way I could have listened to them scream. I took dc3 into my bed more on bad nights and actually got more sleep that way.

"The no cry baby/toddler sleep solution" and Sarah Ockwell-Smith's book offer some gentle alternative ways to help them and also explain why it's biologically normal for babies and little kids to wake.

For me it was just not possible for me to leave them to cry, so DH couldn't have persuaded me either.

Actually, it is damaging for your child not to be sleeping. Sleep is really important to them and, as others have mentioned, disturbed sleep is linked to a range of emontional and behavioural issues.

Added to that is that the body only produces grow hormones when they are asleep.

If cio isn’t for you then try gradual retreat. It takes much longer but isn’t as difficult for you and less abrupt.

we tried a mini controlled crying. first night you are in the room for one minute, out for one minute, back in for one minute, out for one minute and so on. took hours. 2nd night it increased 30 secs ie in room for 1.5 minutes out for 1.5minutes and so on. third night in for 2 minutes, out for 2 minutes and so on. this was a strategy recommended by a sleep consultant. it worked on the third night. good luck.

My husband knows better than to ever even think of suggesting CIO or CC methods.

You all must be shattered. If you don't want to do CIO then you need to find another way of helping your child to sleep through. Being sleep deprived isn't healthy for anyone

The thing is that doing CIO/CC doesn't necessarily improve your child's sleep, though it often improves parental sleep. Basically the child still wakes just as often, gets back to sleep without calling for help but takes longer to do that than if they had comfort from a parent. There was a study which tracked movement and found that children who had been sleep trained were actually more restless though their parents reported that they were sleeping better. The same study found that gradual fading produced similar improvements in parental sleep to CC but also improved child sleep without being stressful, so that might be worth a try.

Just try another sleep training method surely? Have you really never tried anything else despite your child waking up sometimes hourly at nearly 2 years old?

Well my DS (2) has always been an early riser, about 5ish. I’ve tried to settle him but once he’s up he’s up. He’s recently started waking up 4 and earlier. I’ve tried everything in the realms of going to him and trying to settle him. After a week or so of 3:30/4am wake ups I’d had enough. He was awake but absolutely miserable all day and wouldn’t settle for a nap. I’ve always said I wouldn’t leave him to cry but was at breaking point so I did. Now, if he wakes up at 4, I leave him to cry and he sleeps to 7/8. I hate it but it’s better then us all being miserable all day- I was getting pretty unwell

BuggerLumps out of interest how long did he cry for?

I think there is a difference between angry crying and properly upset - and I would be OK about leaving an angry cryer to sort themselves out and calm down but sobbing heartbreak gets massive hugs no matter what, but i also think that neither of those are conducive to sleep, and can't see what the goal is with letting them cry until they're exhausted - except as some kind of method of breaking them/punishing them/because you're angry yourself/because you are so tired you've been broken yourself (which can happen, we shouldn't deny it)

DS1 was a non-sleeper. He was actually genuinely hungry still in the middle of the night sometimes, so we'd have an emergency snack, he'd eat it, and go back to bed. It still happens now and he's 7 - that he'll wander out needing a drink or something, he just can't ignore his body's needs! He just slowly got more independent around being able to deal with something waking him up - and I absolutely know that leaving him to cry wouldn't have worked, because he needed help fixing what was wrong.

No, I'd leave him to cry it out instead at a hotel or his mothers.

Leaving a helpless baby or child to cry it out is just cruel, there's never any justification for it. All it does is raise their stress levels and teach them nobody will comfort them so little point in trying to get somebody's attention.

She's crying for a reason, find the reason not her being so exhausted she passes out. One of the reasons me little one cried was she hated her feet being constrained in sleeping bags and was happier with a duvet or blanket. It is trial and error which you could start now.

You both must be so tired. I think a lot of posters have missed the fact that on a bad day the wakings can be every hour. That’s just not sustainable for anyone and you need to find ways to get some sleep.

Is there a difference between the cries? There is a big difference between my 20 month old’s pain/scared cry and her moany ‘I’m tied but it don’t want to sleep’ cry. I never ignore the former but will let mine have a whinge as she goes to sleep. Often if I interfere it just re-sets her and she gets irritated.

You might need different strategies for settling to sleep at bedtime and for frequent night wakings. What are naps like?

It's also not absolutely "necessary" to teach them to settle....I work full time and, yes I was tired as fuck but there's no way I could have listened to them scream.

But for some people it is necessary.

When I did CC my 10 month old had horrendous sleep patterns. Between going to bed at 7pm and getting up for the day at 7am he would be up about 6-7 times and sometimes staying awake for up to an hour at a time and this was EVERY night. I was absolutely exhausted and I couldn’t function. I was in my knees, my marriage was being affected and I had also stopped enjoying my baby, I dreaded the non-napping days with him and I dreaded the nights with him too.

I was due to return to work as a paediatric nurse and there was absolutely no way I could allow things to continue. Would you want a nurse looking after your sick baby who’d come to work on 4 hours of broken sleep? I doubt it. It simply wouldn’t be safe.

Following the training (which I did under the guidance of a sleep consultant) my child was getting 6 more hours of sleep in a 24 hour period than he’d previously been having and that’s a huge difference!! He was a far, far happier baby because of it. We were a much happier household in general.

Did I enjoy doing CC? Not particularly but I had to do something and it worked very well.

I’d get a big bed in the new house and try cosleeping.

I have suggested co-sleeping as I know part of the problem is she doesn't like being on her own but DH won't hear of it. He didn't even like having her in our room when she was born to 6 months and tried from about 3 months to get her in her own room.

Naps are ok, she goes to nursery full time and we have asked them to limit her nap to 2 hours (although she normally has less than this)

Her current routine is she goes up for a bath between 1930 - 1945, bath time, changed and dressed, some milk and a song/story til she falls asleep normally about 2030.

I don't go into her the second she cries as sometimes it is just a whinge while she is moving around, but if she carries on then I do go and see her. Last night I tried not offering her milk and she only asked for it at about 4am, she had a small drink and went back to sleep.

I have tried not picking up in the night, or picking her up and putting her straight back but she screamed so much she was making her sick. As I work full time it is easier to pick her up, let her have a 10 minute cuddle and she will go back into her cot no problem (which is an improvement as a few months ago I could be sat with her for an hour or more trying to get her back!)

Her bedtime sounds quite late to me, especially if she's sleeping say 12-2 at nursery: that's a long time for her to be awake before bed. Is there a possibility she's overtired? My 21 month old is also prone to night waking and for him there's a definite link with overtiredness: late bed tends to increase chances of rubbish sleep. Just a thought.

I agree about the large time gap between napping and bedtime.

Between the ages of 10 months until 2+ years my son had a morning nap and an afternoon nap. Each nap was 1.5 hours so a total of 3 hours
napping a day.

When he was about 2.5 years old up until he was about 3 he then dropped to one afternoon nap from 1-3pm and we still had him in bed for 7pm.

When I used the sleep Consultant she said that not enough daytime sleep will lead to being overtired and awful nights. I was told to focus on improving daytime napping as well as doing CC at night as naps were just as important as addressing sleep issues.