Baby sleep- developmental or can it be trained?

[CurlyT94]

Have a 7.5MO terrible sleeper but I’m just happy to go at his own pace. I have read up a lot about sleep training and read the raving reviews, but I also follow a lot of ‘holistic sleep’ Instagram pages which talk a lot about how sleep is developmental and they will just get it when they get it.
This isn’t an AIBU topic just thought this was the best place for opinions?

A paper in 2017 using video footage of London babies found those left for 1 minute before intervention had longer longest sleep durations 3 months later than those responded to immediately. Blew my mind.

I think it is a mix of both. Yes, babies do wake often and some need more contact/presence/reassurrance than others but I also think that too much intervention actually can cause babies to wake up properly. and make it harder to go back to sleep.

All humans have sleep patterns, most of us don't know that we wake up and just go back, babies make a noise and parents jump. They don't let. the baby to go back on its own.

In the end all humans need decent sleep, sleep deprivation is a known method of torture and I think part of why parents, especially mothers, are so exhausted and feeling life is difficult.

I also think that prolonged staying in the parent's bedroom is not helping, we definitely woke each other up and our sleep improved when DD moved into her bedroom.

I am not an advocat of controlled crying at all but we used a method called Gentle Withdrawl to teach DD to go to bed awake. It was not about teaching to go to sleep alone, that was the next step.

Sleep training is really about giving your baby space to learn to fall asleep independently. However you do it.

I’m pro sleep training, used the Ferber method at six months. Baby went from waking every hour or two his entire life needing to be rocked or fed back to sleep (which could take hours) to being put down, awake, in his cot, and falling asleep within a minute. From six or seven wakes per night to sleeping 12hr straight.

Best thing we’ve ever done. Broken sleep for months on end isn’t healthy for anyone, baby included, and it wasn’t tenable. To be able to keep going with that after half a year of sleep deprivation takes a heck of a lot of resources and privilege, that not everyone has. People often forget that not everyone is the same level of physical and mental health to begin with and that months of crushing sleep loss can absolutely destroy people.

You’ll often get misinformed people sharing stuff about it being damaging but thankfully the evidence doesn’t back that up. If you’re curious about the research there’s an excellent chapter in the book Cribsheet by Oster which is pretty up to date, it focuses especially on a study that’s often quoted as ‘proving’ that babies who are sleep trained are still just as distressed but don’t communicate it. It’s a real shame when people state stuff about how it causes attachment issues without evidence as it puts parents off considering it. Nobody has to sleep train but it’s a great option when you’re on your knees and can’t keep going, and most people I know did it when all else had failed! There are pros and cons to everything you do with your child, but I wasn’t willing or able to let us continue through more months of torture. People who claim it’s developmental and they’ll learn to sleep clearly haven’t met the primary aged kids who are up throughout the night or who are poor sleepers, still need settling, can’t sleep independently. Here’s some info with sources:

No peer-reviewed research has reported detrimental effects from sleep training.

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/4/643

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/05/21/peds.2015-1486

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/3/e621

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/e203

Here's a look at the Middlemiss study, which is usually cited by people against sleep training or extinction (CIO): expectingscience.com/2016/04/21/the-middlemiss-study-tells-us-nothing-about-sleep-training-cry-it-out-or-infant-stress/

And here are the authors of some of the studies on child abuse and neglect say that anti-sleep-training people are mis-citing their work: ideas.time.com/2012/05/10/the-science-behind-dr-sears-does-it-stand-up/

A little information on the "cortisol" fear.

"In terms of their effects, the difference between short-term and chronic stress is one not of degree, but of kind. Short-term stress enhances memory; chronic stress impairs it. Short-term stress boosts the immune system; chronic stress weakens it.
So where does that leave us? A little stress, even in infancy, is fine, if not beneficial, but too much for too long is very, very bad.

Do we know exactly where sleep training fits in this spectrum? Just how much stress does a baby experience during cry-it-out?

The short answer is that we don’t know for certain. Everything we do know, however, suggests that this amount of stress, in the context of a warm, loving family, is just fine.

I believe that sleep training is not only not harmful, it is beneficial. Successful sleep training can decrease depression and chronic stress in the parents, and this benefits parents and their babies. Unlike sleep training, having a depressed mother during early childhood has been shown, repeatedly, to be linked with worse long-term outcomes for children."

expectingscience.com/2016/04/12/critics-of-cry-it-out-fundamentally-misunderstand-how-stress-affects-the-brain/

" To measure the effects on the babies, the researchers did something interesting: they measured the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, in the babies’ saliva. They also asked the mothers about their levels of stress. Twelve months later, they looked for any emotional or behavioral problems in the babies, and they also did testing to see how attached the babies were to their mothers.

Here’s what they found. The babies in the graduated extinction group and the bedtime fading group both fell asleep faster and had less stress than the control group — and not only that, their mothers were less stressed than the control group mothers. Of the three groups, the extinction group babies were less likely to wake up again during the night. And when it came to emotional or behavioral problems, or attachment, all three groups were the same.

This means that it’s okay to let your baby cry a little. It’s not only okay, it may lead to more sleep all around. Which makes everyone happier."

www.health.harvard.edu/blog/new-study-says-okay-let-babies-cry-night-201605319774

Touchy topic on MN btw, you’ll have posters along soon stating that if you consider sleep training your baby you shouldn’t have had one because parenting doesn’t stop at 7pm etc etc, hope you’ve got your hard hat on ;)

I’ve got 3 dc and have never sleep trained. We did term breastfeeding, bedshared and responded to any cry.

Eldest: slept brilliantly from around 18 months.

Middle: truly awful sleeper - truly, truly awful! Now at almost 12 years still doesn’t need much sleep. She stopped crying and being fretful when she woke round about 2 years but still woke often. Ultimately what had to change her was my expectation that she would sleep or needed to sleep 12 hours a night, once that shifted the stress just lifted on all of us.

Youngest: slept fitfully from day dot until around 3 years. She is autistic and has disrupted sleep patterns, we often only get 3/4 hours a night which is tough but is our reality which I can’t change so must accept and find ways to “be” with it.

It all sounds very granola but it’s worked and continues to work for our dynamic.

The problem with the studies that support sleep training is that parents were able to move from the sleep training group into the control group or withdraw from the study if they weren’t comfortable with sleep training once they had started. They obviously have to allow parents to leave the sleep training group due to ethical reasons- you can’t force a parent to leave their child to cry if they are not comfortable doing so. But this will massively skew the results because the babies who are struggling with the sleep training the most are the ones whose parents are most likely to withdraw from the study or move to the control group. These are also most likely to be the babies who would be most effected by sleep training, I imagine most parents know intuitively if CIO/CC is right/working for their child.
There is no way really to have a completely controlled study due to ethics. I doubt we can no either way if it is harmful or not.
Personally I think most babies will find sleep training stressful at the time but no lasting stress/damage/attachment concerns. A small minority of babies will find it incredibly stressful and struggle afterwards.
I do think it is a good idea to give your babies a chance to settle themselves and no rush to them straight away.

I know people who swear by it.

I know people who tried it and it didn’t work for them.

I considered it but decided it wasn’t worth the stress if it wasn’t guaranteed to help.

Every child is different and what works for one will not necessarily work for another.

We started by rushing in every time our daughter made a noise because everyone tells you it’s cruel not to. It would take her hours of rocking to sleep.

The one time I couldn’t immediately run up, she fallen back asleep in the minute it took me to get there. We started waiting one minute when she was whinging and she always went back to sleep by herself, shortly afterwards slept through.

We go in if there is proper crying but more often than not, she has a whinge for 30 seconds and falls asleep. I genuinely think we were winding her up by rushing in and everyone was worse off for it.

@3WildOnes

The problem with the studies that support sleep training is that parents were able to move from the sleep training group into the control group or withdraw from the study if they weren’t comfortable with sleep training once they had started. They obviously have to allow parents to leave the sleep training group due to ethical reasons- you can’t force a parent to leave their child to cry if they are not comfortable doing so. But this will massively skew the results because the babies who are struggling with the sleep training the most are the ones whose parents are most likely to withdraw from the study or move to the control group. These are also most likely to be the babies who would be most effected by sleep training, I imagine most parents know intuitively if CIO/CC is right/working for their child. There is no way really to have a completely controlled study due to ethics. I doubt we can no either way if it is harmful or not. Personally I think most babies will find sleep training stressful at the time but no lasting stress/damage/attachment concerns. A small minority of babies will find it incredibly stressful and struggle afterwards. I do think it is a good idea to give your babies a chance to settle themselves and no rush to them straight away.

But I can't see the problem with that - presumably those parents would be just as likely (if not more so) to give up if they were trying sleep training outside the study, so the study group of sleep trained babies and parents would be pretty similar to those 'in the wild'. There are a very small minority of parents who persist with attempting sleep training when it clearly isn't working and is distressing everyone but I think that is a very small (and highly desperate) cohort.

@Hardbackwriter because people use those studies to claim that sleep training is fine for all babies and parents are just being precious or martyrs if they don’t feel that it is right for their child.

We sleep trained at 7 months because I was going out of my mind. Some women react far worse to sleep deprivation than others- I was losing the ability to function and genuinely going mad. PND did not help.

We did gentle controlled crying, following a detailed plan from a sleep consultant.

It worked in three nights and saved my sanity. DS has slept for around 12 hours a night since, apart from when teething, ill, hot etc- then obviously we respond to him instantly.

I have no regrets and would recommend it. It saved my sanity and marriage. Sleep may be developmental, but I couldn’t take the risk the sleeplessness carried on until he was 4,5,6 etc.

100% developmental. Sleep training is proven to change the brain structure in babies - and not for the best. All they learn is that no one comes to their aide when they cry. Heartbreaking.

Sleep is incredibly difficult with babies sometimes. But it won't last forever.

Mine were babies in the early noughties they were gently Gina Forded from birth. No sleep training but "encouraged" towards good sleep habits. Did 7-8 hours from 2-3 months and a longer stretch at 6 months. DC1 was weaned at 4m, DC2 self weaned at 5.5 (started taking food from my plate). So that may have helped.

I left DS (DC1) to crying in his cot for 10 minutes once aged about 6 weeks- Dd barely ever cried, day or night.

It's odd how sleep is touted as developmental but there are so many poor adult sleepers and insomniacs.
I googled the phrase 'adult sleep training' and it has plenty of results.
It would be interesting to find out how many poor adult sleepers were sleep trained or not as babies.

@traumatisednoodle I’m the same. I did Gina Ford “lite” I called it where I just gently followed the sleeping and feeding routines (bottle fed). I never had to sleep train as such as I never let them develop those habits initially.

What helped me is not having the baby in our room or using a monitor so as someone said about we didn’t pick her up at every little squeak or snuffle so if she woke for a minute she had the chance to snuggle back down.

When having uninterrupted sleep is so important for mental and physical health, how can it possibly be a bad thing to teach your child this important life skill? We teach them everything else, sleep should be no different.

@Spyro1234 where is the evidence that sleep training changes babies brain structure?! There is no such evidence, your comment is just scaremongering and inflammatory. Besides, sleep training is an umbrella term that covers everything from full blown extinction , graduated extinction to the much more gentle stay and support or gradual retreat approaches.
I am not a proponent of extinction (cry it out) but as there is no evidence that it is harmful I think women can be trusted to make the right decisions for their babies and families. Equally I don’t think it should be pushed on women.
Personally I didn’t think there was enough evidence either way and extinction methods just felt wrong for me and my babies, I still sleep trained just not using cio or cc.

@Spyro1234

100% developmental. Sleep training is proven to change the brain structure in babies - and not for the best. All they learn is that no one comes to their aide when they cry. Heartbreaking.

Sleep is incredibly difficult with babies sometimes. But it won't last forever.

Lol. No, there isn’t any evidence that sleep training does that.

@VestaTilley

We sleep trained at 7 months because I was going out of my mind. Some women react far worse to sleep deprivation than others- I was losing the ability to function and genuinely going mad. PND did not help.

We did gentle controlled crying, following a detailed plan from a sleep consultant.

It worked in three nights and saved my sanity. DS has slept for around 12 hours a night since, apart from when teething, ill, hot etc- then obviously we respond to him instantly.

I have no regrets and would recommend it. It saved my sanity and marriage. Sleep may be developmental, but I couldn’t take the risk the sleeplessness carried on until he was 4,5,6 etc.

That’s the thing, people who say ‘sleep is developmental’ usually mean ‘just keep following baby’s lead it won’t last forever’. There’s rarely any actual advice or suggestions. It’s a form of ‘shut up and put up with it’ really. It fails to recognise that not everyone has the capability or resources to continue with poor sleep indefinitely, and believing (even though it isn’t necessarily true) that one day your baby will sleep better doesn’t help you in the here and now when you haven’t slept properly for months and are hallucinating. It’s a hell of a gamble to take, and I wasn’t able or willing to just wait it out and see if it got better.

@3WildOnes I think the term ‘sleep training’ puts people off as it sounds like training a dog. It’s actually sleep teaching. We teach our babies and children all manner of skills, sleep is crucial to their development and the wellbeing of the entire family, of course you can teach your baby or toddler to get good, restful sleep. In some circumstances it’s the kindest thing you can do.

@Spyro1234

100% developmental. Sleep training is proven to change the brain structure in babies - and not for the best. All they learn is that no one comes to their aide when they cry. Heartbreaking.

Sleep is incredibly difficult with babies sometimes. But it won't last forever.

You don't just ignore the child though?

Yes it's developmental as in left to it, most babies will sleep better as they get older and by 2, 3, 4 years old will probably sleep through most nights.

But also, you can do lots of things to encourage good sleep earlier on and most babies can sleep through the night by 6-12 months.

Waiting it out or actively encouraging sleep are both perfectly good strategies, down to parental preference, and neither approach will harm the child.

@Justgettingbye to be fair some sleep training methods do just advise shutting the door and ignoring the baby until the morning (extinction/CIO), unless the baby is sick at which point you would go in and change them with as little fuss as possible. There are obviously more gentle sleep training methods, graduated extinction/controlled crying, gradual retreat, scheduled wakings, stay and support/camp out etc.
The poster you quoted is wrong about sleep training causing structural changes in the brain though.

@Justgettingbye

Plenty just leave the child.

I have two anecdotes which means I’m firmly no sleep training.

1. I followed the advice in the Ferber book. Seemed ok and baby was quiet after a bit. One night he was a bit more reluctant but the book said that happens so I ploughed on. Went in to check on him. Covered in his own vomit where he had cried from from so upset. He was 10 months. The idea that he’d been so upset was enough for me to stop it.

1. When he was 2 he was a reasonable sleeper but often woke up. One night I missed his crying as wed moved house and didn’t realise the layout meant sound carried differently. I think he was probably crying for about 15 minutes alone. By the time I got to him it was horrifying. He was shaking, hyperventilating, coughing and clung to me for dear life.

I don’t think ANYONE should get so upset they cry like that so for me it was just something very hard I had to get through.