To try cry it out

[Pippinsqueak]

Please be gentle, first time chronically sleep deprived mum of a 14th month old baby that is breast fed to sleep and when she wakes. She wakes almost hourly and has done since birth. I'm starting to loose it.

Aibu to try gentle cry it out? I don't even know where to start as I've always avoided it as I was told it's not the right thing to do by health visitors/gps etc. She is also still in our room in a cot bed on the other side so was thinking to move her in there soon.

Any advice on cry it out ? Also I am seeing a breastfeeding specialist when c-19 is over to wean off boob

Thanks in advance.

Cry it out is just letting them cry themselves to sleep. It's different to controlled crying (going in every few mins and spacing it out so you go in less frequently after some time) which is what I did with mine at a similar age. It was the best thing I ever did. They were both much happier children afterwards and I regained my mental health. People thinks it's cruel but I saw the huge difference it made to my children. Teaching them how to fall asleep without my help was a gift I gave them. Their behaviour and mood improved so much. It's what they needed and wanted. I was so sleep deprived I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I tried everything - letting them sleep with me (they didn't want to, they just wanted to play), gradual retreat (I did it for weeks and they cried far more than the two or three nights I did controlled crying). I'd highly recommend CC. I bet it will work in less than a week.

My DD is 8.5 months and was waking every hour, needing boob to link her sleep cycles. I bought the no cry sleep solution and have been working on it for almost a week now, essentially removing my nipple from her mouth when sleepy but awake. As I said we're less than a week in but already we've gone from 8+ wakes a night to 3. And absolutely no crying! I'd recommend it before you resort to crying methods

I don’t think CIO sounds right for you. It’s quite extreme and I think makes for distressed parents and babies. I think I saw it mentioned earlier but just in case not: gentle sleep training is a good way to go. It is pretty much gradual withdrawal which takes more time but is far less stressful. It took about 2 or 3 weeks to get my breast feeding 15 month old to sleep more consistently. It does need persistence but it does work! Good luck

@cathyj87 do you have a link for this?

@PatricksRum I can understand your feelings but try for 14 months getting up hourly all night and then looking after her during the day and working four says a week whilst breastfeeding. I do have support of my husband but he works 14 hour night shifts four days a week. Something has to give before it starts affecting her.

@bananafish @SallyWD @minipie @1Wildheartsease thank you all for your replies. I think I'm going to do the Ferber method but whilst we're in lockdown I'm going to send my husband in. I feel very sad about this but something does have to change.

I knew having a baby would be hard but not this hard. I thought by now she would have sorted her sleep out but seems I've drawn the short straw. All my other mum friends babies sleep mostly through the night

Some Mumsnetters are obsessed with comfort and never consider the baby/toddler may be crying because they are tired and are annoyed they haven't joined the sleep cycles together... I mean you're not enjoying waking up every hour either! How do you give them the opportunity to join sleep cycles? You let them figure it out themselves - yes that is likely to involve crying.

We did the Weissbluth method, where you put baby down and don't go back in. Did lots of research beforehand, DH and I were on the same page about it. Provided support to each other as DC cried first 3 nights. He has been a champion sleeper since he was 6 months. 12 hours every night. Think it may be harder for you as your child is older but persevere!

Honesty helping your child get good night's sleep is an important thing. There behaviour, appetite etc. Become better regulated and basically all people (adults and children) do and better after a good night's sleep.

Good luck OP. Remember whatever you do consistency isn't key.

*Consistency is key

Sorry lots of typos there

Do adapted (slightly closer times) Ferber with a stopwatch. We just did it at bed time and the evening. By the middle of the night, we were too tired to repeat it and just fed. It still works but takes a bit longer. Sleep is important for everyone. Until some of the more extreme anti sleep trainers offer to come round and get up every hour with your child, then do what you think is best.

Just stop the feeding to sleep, I think you'll find a big improvement. You can stay with her so she's not scared and alone until she's asleep. She's waking because she realises she's no longer feeding. And then wants to carry on.

Can you get a book on kindle from amazon. Gentle sleep solution, or a similar book with the gradual distancing. She doesn't need breast 'feeding' but she is using you as a soother. Too late for a dummy, but maybe a t shirt you've worn, and introduce that as he comfort blanket, so that you can move slowly away.

Have you seen the jay gordon approach? It builds up over the days.

Plus I'm starting to night wean tonight! Please let us know how you get on, I'll let you know too.

I cried control crying once and he cried so much he threw up so I stopped and then a few months later I tried again and the same thing happened so I gave up on that purely because the process of re bathing, changing etc was not for me 😂

OP, ignore PatricksRum.

At the minute your child does not know how to sleep. You have to teach her. You and her may not enjoy the process but there are lots of things that children don't like to do but they must be done. There is a big difference between sleep training and CIO. Sleep training is not cruel.

If it was left up to my dc, his toenails would never be cut. He cries, flails about, hits me, desperately tries to wriggle away. I am out in a sweat everytime I do it but it has to be done.

There are mornings that he does not want to go to nursery but I have to work to keep him fed and housed so I give him a big hug and send him in anyway.

Over the course of his life,there will be many more of these situations. I think sleep training is so emotive because up to the point that sleep training is required, you have tended to every cry immediately. Its hard to say no to your lovely baby but it will be for everybody's benefit in the long run.

We sleep trained DD1 at 4 months (Ferber method) it took about 2 weeks before she was consistently falling asleep within 5 mins! I introduced the nights first and then the naps. I never let her cry at night and would just feed her when she woke, however once she got the hang of self soothing she wouldn’t wake up unless it was for hunger. DD2 is nearly 4 months and we will repeat the process as it makes them happier babies who can have lots of sleep in the long run!

Cry it out or controlled crying is not gentle. It’s leaving them to cry themselves to sleep - until they are exhausted from crying that they fall asleep. That is not gentle. At all.

Massively unreasonable - imagine doing CIO to an elderly person? Or anyone else who can't sooth themselves - you wouldn't, just because babies can't speak doesn't mean you aren't harming them by such awful practices.

Try reading why love matters or the gentle sleep book by Sarah ockwell Smith. I have a 16 month old who I feed to sleep and overnight when she wakes multiple times. So I get it, it's tough.

You need to look at how you can get more sleep and more support. Not how you can subject a child to nighttime abandonment. While your at home with your husband can you nap in the day? Sleep in tomorrow morning? Go to bed earlier? Can you make time for good food and exercise? I know it's hard, and culturally in the west sleep training is seen as normal. But it's not biologically normal and can have long term impacts on the baby.

@Boshmama your analogy doesn't work because elderly people have already learnt the ability to sleep, so you would never have to leave them to cry it out in order to fall asleep.

Also, I'm Indian (North India) and it's bullshit that CIO is a western obsession. What's been sold to the west is an idea of some kind of Mother Earth figure that suffers unnecessarily because teaching your child difficult things that may not like and may make them cry is looked down upon.

My great-grandmother had 10 kids and quite literally grew up in a mud hut, she like my grandmother and mother all did cry it out without even realising it as it was just known as the way their children learnt to sleep. I don't think anyone in their hut would have tolerated hourly waking when there were 11 people sleeping in a room together!

We always put ds down and left him for up to 10 minutes to settle down. If there was nothing else wrong he would settle within this time. Yes he cried for a few minutes but he would always settle as long as there was nothing else wrong. We done this from when he stopped falling asleep while having his bottle. I don't see anything wrong with it at all. He's always self settled and has slept through from when he was 3 months.

@yulertula babies don't need to learn how to sleep, they know how to sleep from birth. We just try and force them to sleep like adults, when they aren't able to. Adults also don't sleep through the night, but are developmentally able to soothe themselves.

Would you leave an elderly person to cry themselves to sleep to teach them something else then? How bizarre.

At least the children in your example were all in the same room as your family so hopefully they got some comfort from that.

Sleep training is a money making scheme, if everyone grew up knowing what normal infant sleep looked like and how to cope with that then our children wouldn't have to cope with this nonsense.

All this 'I was sleep trained and it never did me any harm' is rubbish too. Maybe if you'd had the comfort you needed as a baby you wouldn't feel the need to deny your child the comfort they need.

OP, maybe start another thread about Ferber? Because you’ll just end up with two extreme camps here, and people who’ve apparently not RTFT and not discovered you don’t mean you’re leaving your baby abandoned all night...

Have a look at @Snoozy_sleep on Instagram. She's BRILLIANT. She posts lots of free resources which, if you follow them through, can help immensely.

I've just done it with my 7 mth old - the idea of not sleeping all night and then managing my 4.5 yr old all day was the breaking point - and it took us 2 nights. We went cold turkey with the dummy at the same time. It was almost as though he was ready to do it - he's now making longer in the day and is much, much happier. I'm breastfeeding too, btw.

Good luck!

Thank you to those who are understanding

By no means do I want to or am I going to abandon my child and leave her to cry until she so distressed she's sick etc but she does need to learn to link her sleep cycles up. Everything about me feels leaving her to cry is wrong but I've have tried as much as I can think of already.

I don't even expect her to sleep through the night even just three wakes a night would be heaven to me, but when you're up eight times a night, every night, breast feeding and then only getting half an hour before she wakes again something needs to give.

The Ferber method seems a good balance but I will also be looking at gentler sleep training methods. I have been put in touch with a sleep consult who has had excellent results but she's £90 an hour, expensive!!

@Goostacean I fear if I started another thread it will still form into two camps lol

@Boshmama are you always able to comfort your toddler? Are there times when inexplicably they have a melt down (often over something trivial)? Are they being caused harm in this instance? For example, if you have to say no you can't run out into the road it's dangerous, cue the crying because they don't quite understand yet the very important lesson you are trying to teach them.

I think fundamentally the leaving an adult to cry analogy doesn't work because emotionally children and adults are different. My DC tried to put a slug in his mouth today - I've not met any adult trying to do that. Equally my DC isn't anxious or depressed about Coronavirus because he has no concept of it.

My child hasn't been denied comfort he's been given the gift of good sleep from a young age. Is waking every hour honestly good for anyone? And still feeding in the night when they are over a year is just not needed. It only took 3 nights for my DC to sleep so well (45mins, 28mins & 10mins of crying then never again).

I think you're right that sleep training is a money making industry because so many parents are frightened to do what is actually the most straightforward and successful technique i.e. CIO. If everyone did that there would be no need for all these books promoting gentle techniques, which are basically ways to make parents feel better about themselves rather then crack on and do the job properly. (I've read Sarah Ockwell-Smith's book fyi and several other in the early sleep deprived days with DC1).

Yes very small babies cry during the night because it is a deep rooted survival mechanism, but by around 6 months they can absolutely be taught that they no longer need to cry, there are no hazards, they are in a safe environment therefore it's ok to sleep longer.