To think there has to be a gentler method than CIO for 13 month old?

[Pondlife87]

My baby is 13.5 months old and sleep just gets worse. She wakes up around 6-8 times a night. I'm working and I can't take it anymore. I have been against CIO/ sleep training but everyone is suffering and something has to give.
I've posted on a sleep training forum about it and people have said that she's too old and alert now for anything except CIO full extinction to work.
Please somebody tell me that they managed something a little less severe with their child at a similar age? I will do it if I have to, but only if it's the last option.

We currently have a bedtime routine which has been in place for about 7 months. We've broken the feed to sleep association. We've got black out blinds and we play white noise at night.
We've tweaked bed times numerous times, which only seems to make things worse. I've tried all the recommended gentle sleep methods for months at a time, with no change.

I'm at a loss of what else to do.

@Rainycloudyday that's the thing my daughter is completely fine, her frequent waking does not affect her at all, she's hit all her milestone on time or early and is active from dawn til dusk. She has 1.5 hrs sleep in the day and she's only boobed at during the night so I can get back to sleep. Very selfish I know but I'm desperate. But as I said she is being night weaned

Thank you for your comments, I don't know if what I'm doing or planning on doing is right or wrong

@Rainycloudyday Thank you for your earlier reply. That's a good point. I do think my approach to motherhood in the early days was quite self-sacrificing in terms of my own identity, maybe too much so. In some ways it came naturally to me and I just saw it as part of becoming a mum. As DD became a toddler more and more of my own identity came back in its own time. But I totally see that of course this will be very individual to each mum, and for each mum a notoriously tricky balance to negotiate for herself.

For me I think it actually helped, as I kind of stopped fighting all the ways in which having a DC constrained my own life and identity, and just gave in to it IYSWIM? So the night wakings and tiredness became easier to handle emotionally because I just accepted them. Maybe I was very lucky, though, that it worked out that way for me. Something like identity and mindspace clearly is very individual and impossible to tell others what's right and wrong without knowing their whole story (or even then!) Happy to report, though, that I'm very happy with my career, relationships, weight etc

Your later post about habits doesn't resonate with me at all, though. To me the supposed importance of 'habits' is just something sleep consultants push because it makes people sleep train even though they might have been able to handle the phase with interrupted sleep just fine. Like PP insinuated it then feels like you're doing your DC a disservice for life if you don't 'correct' their habits at the right time. I can't see that being true at all. In my experience children go through lots of phases where things change all the time, including in relation to sleep. Like I said I haven't done anything to correct DD habits of falling asleep and over time we went through various different ways in which she'd fall asleep, feeding to sleep, then when that stopped working I'd just sit with her and stroke her, then she naturally became more independent and able to just lie down by herself etc. I see it more like learning to walk and talk, they do it naturally in their own time, it doesn't have to be actively taught by us or else they won't be able to sleep ever.

@Leah00 I see it more like learning to walk and talk, they do it naturally in their own time, it doesn't have to be actively taught by us or else they won't be able to sleep ever.

But if your child was struggling to walk, or talk, you wouldn't just sit back and let them struggle, you'd get them help. Speech therapy or physio or similar. So i don't see why you wouldn't give similar help to a child struggling to sleep. We encourage our children to walk with games and toys and praise, we teach our children to talk by talking to them, reading to them, singing etc. We don't expect them to just know how to do it by themselves, we do loads of stuff to help them. Why should sleep be any different?

Controlled crying rather than cry it out

@theproblemwitheyes Because generally speaking sleep training makes children forcefully conform with how their parents want them to sleep. Not themselves. It's biologically normal for children to wake up at night. It's the parents who are struggling with this, not the child struggling with sleep.

@Leah00 ...parents are people too, you know. Sleep is a biological necessity, longterm sleep deprivation is dangerous, and a sleep deprived parent is rarely a good one.

Yes, I get that. I'm just saying that's why it's different from eg. getting a speech therapist to help with speech problems, or a physio with a medical issue.

Sleep is a biological need for children too though! A 18m old waking every 2 hours is unlikely to be getting enough sleep to grow and thrive. We sleep trained DD at much younger than that because she was chronically overtired and utterly miserable. She's been a completely different child since.

And sleep breeds sleep, at least it did for my children. It's not very kind to a child to leave them chronically sleep deprived and unable to get themselves to sleep.

Yeah, though of course that's also what your sleep consultant will want to convince you of, isn't it, so that you don't have to feel selfish... Again I really don't think children generally need sleep training so as to be healthy... It's more for the parents

My sleep consultant? Dont need a consultant to know that children are grotty when overtired sweetie. Could it be that because your children had no problems with sleep you actually have no experience in dealing with children who do?

My baby learnt to self settle and slept 12 hours each night from 6 months of age. She always wakes up happy (apart from very occasionally), because if she isn't ready to wake up she just goes back to sleep. I think that having the skill of going to sleep on her own makes her happy and well rested. We didn't need to do any sleep training, and am not really sure how it can really teach a baby to sleep, but I definitely think it's a desirable skill to have from the baby's point of view. It's not true that an 18 month old who wakes 3 times a night for a feed is better off than one who sleeps through . They may well be tired and stressed from the lack of sleep, and not being in control of their own sleep. This probably manifests itself as being clingy with mum, who then probably thinks there is a fantastic attachment.

@Leah00 yeah, no. I don't have a sleep consultant. I didn't need to pay someone to tell me that when my baby didn't get enough sleep, she was miserable and fractious and didn't eat as well - it was completely obvious. Not least because after three days of very, very minimal crying (like 10 minutes) she was putting herself to sleep and sleeping through. She had desperately wanted to be able to do that, the frustration at each wake up had been super clear, and once she was able to sleep by herself, all night, she was so, so much happier.

You can tell me all you like that sleep training is selfish - i think leaving your child miserable and exhausted so that you can claim you sacrificed everything for them is infinitely worse.

I think it took me till my fourth child to realise that the sleep advice from the AP/Dr Sears types was pretty fatally flawed, utter tosh almost. Co-sleeping was great at the beginning and a big help to breastfeeding, but looking back there was clearly a point where they went from feeding from hunger to a habit of coming out of every sleep cycle and needing to be on the boob to get back to sleep. Eventually it got so that it would be every hour after about 2, and I and they suffered from poor sleep.

Anyway, OP, a 13 month old does not need to nurse at night if they are healthy, it is just a habit, and not one that does anyone any real good. So I think you need to night wean. A lot of babies will start sleeping through the night as soon as they aren't nursing. I'd not offer milk either, only water if you really think they are thirsty. Dad or anyone not mum should do it if at all possible.

@jgjgjgjgjg

Graduated extinction methods don't teach children how to fall asleep on their own. Children are simply denied access to their parents, and left to work it out for themselves. Studies have shown that parents stress levels decline as they can't hear their child crying any more, but the stress levels of the child remain high. The concern is that we don't entirely understand the long-term impacts of living with consistently high levels of stress hormones.

What do constantly high levels of stress hormone have to do with anything? You aren't talking about all day for a year, or even a month. It's completely normal for babies and children to have some stress from time to time, and even a good thing - there are detrimental effects to never being stressed as well. Not that we should stress kids for no reason, normal stressors are plenty, but there is no need to avoid any stress because of some idea it will damage a child.

This kind of talk is really misleading, completely over the top to say this means constant stress. But it totally plays into the fears of mothers that the least little thing will damage their child. It really won't.

It can come as quite a revelation when a child suddenly starts to sleep through the night, or go off to sleep easily, and you realise how much stress the bedtime and night time was for the child too. Because all of a sudden bedtime becomes relaxed and not scary, and they are well rested in the day too.

@Rainycloudyday

Oh and all this ‘biologically normal’ guff-well it’s also biologically normal for a human adult to require enough sleep that they’re not hallucinating.

Sleep training doesn't stop hallucinations.

[quote theproblemwitheyes]**@PatricksRum* It's what the OP seems to be doing at the moment.*

Yeah, and she's so exhausted that she's come on a parenting forum asking for help to address it, because she isn't coping!

"Don't change anything" isn't a helpful response to someone saying "something desperately needs to change. Motherhood isn't martyrdom!

It may be your opinion, but you know what they say about opinions and arseholes...[/quote]
Like I said, I find it helpful.
It's what I'd want to hear.
I'm glad I follow loads of bio normal pages but before that I would be happy to hear it's normal.

@Rainycloudyday

But that’s the thing *@Leah100* it actually doesn’t always get better naturally over time. Sometimes poor sleeping habits are so ingrained in a child that they just stay that way or get worse. Sometimes children need gently teaching how to sleep instead of just assuming it will happen. We teach many other life skills, we don’t just sit back and wait for them to potty train themselves for example. Of course that doesn’t apply to newborns, I just mean that saying things will get better if you wait it out isn’t always true.

I don’t believe that it’s good for people to feel they have to sleep train, of course not. But equally I just can’t get on board with this approach to motherhood that involves sacrificing all wants and needs of the mum, for however long it takes. I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone in the family. I also think that approach is behind many of the posts on here from mums further down the line who have massive problems with their career, relationship, weight, general self confidence. Because they have basically sacrificed their whole selves. It’s like it’s a taboo sometimes for a mother to value her own wellbeing.

It always gets better. A functioning child grows and requires less comfort and learn to self-soothe

There is not one baby on the planet who requires training to sleep.

user8558 Wed 01-Jul-20 11:19:55
Co-sleep?

It's up to you. I would never leave a child to cry personally.
.......
I agree. I would co sleep, in fact that's what we did and it worked, we all slept well.

@theproblemwitheyes

Sleep is a biological need for children too though! A 18m old waking every 2 hours is unlikely to be getting enough sleep to grow and thrive. We sleep trained DD at much younger than that because she was chronically overtired and utterly miserable. She's been a completely different child since.

Do you have evidence for that?

If I hear a noise in the night or I'm thirsty so awake to drink and go back to sleep immediately it doesn't prevent me from getting enough sleep.

@theproblemwitheyes

Sleep is a biological need for children too though! A 18m old waking every 2 hours is unlikely to be getting enough sleep to grow and thrive. We sleep trained DD at much younger than that because she was chronically overtired and utterly miserable. She's been a completely different child since.

Do you have evidence for that?

If I hear a noise in the night or I'm thirsty so awake to drink and go back to sleep immediately it doesn't prevent me from getting enough sleep.

DC1 we did the No Cry Sleep Solution to arrive at a bedtime routine that had him being rocked to sleep by DH rather than fed by md. We put him down in his own room but moved him
In with us at first wake up. If he woke up much earlier than normal DH would try and settle with water. At 13 months his sleep was awful, by 15 months he was regularly sleeping through - I think teething pausing was actually the main thing that helped.

DC2 we didn't have the energy or time for playing with bedtime routine so kept feeding to sleep. However, we moved to putting her down on her own room at 10 months ish, and then getting her in with us from first feed with DH trying to settle if first wake up was early. At 13 months she was also up loads but by 15 months ish had settled to having 2 night feeds but as she went back to sleep very quickly after them they stopped being a problem. We did try night weaning but found that she still woke at night and it then took ages to get her back to sleep so gave up. She slept through reliably from age about 2.5 so it's definitely not the case that a feed to sleep association means they'll never sleep.

I'm currently up with DC3 aged 11 months who is teething. I'm hoping that similar to the other two sleep will improve when teething pauses.

@PatricksRum exactly - you drift off straight back to sleep after a disturbance. But imagine you couldn't do that. Imagine you had to wake up and cry and get someone to come and help you fall back to sleep every single time. Then you wouldnt be well rested.

[quote Porcupineinwaiting]@PatricksRum exactly - you drift off straight back to sleep after a disturbance. But imagine you couldn't do that. Imagine you had to wake up and cry and get someone to come and help you fall back to sleep every single time. Then you wouldnt be well rested.[/quote]
A cry is a form of communication.

My dc, aged 2, doesn't get to crying stage, just breastfeeds back to sleep. Wakes minimum 2 hourly.

Still not understanding how that would cause a bang to be sleep deprived.

We did the the shush and leave/ controlled crying type thing. Each time we left it a bit longer to go in to shush in the first night. So 5 mins, 7 mins etc.I won’t lie, the first night was awful. Second night was a bit better and by day 4 it was fine.
My children are teenagers now. They have always slept well and are not psychologically scarred. I suspect that years of sleep deprivation of child and parent is more harmful to the health of both, than a week of acute stress to solve the problem, but you do have to be resolved to do it.