AIBU to ask if you sleep trained your baby

[babyjellyfish]

What approach did you take, how old was your baby and how successful was it?

Looking for a range of views and experiences.

Thank you.

@ScrumpyBetty

It's not about leaving a baby to cry alone in a room though We sleep trained DS when he was 18 months old and we never once left him to cry it out. We did 'gradual retreat' and I was always there talking to him and reassuring him that I was still there but that he had to go to sleep.

Personally I think not having slept for more than 2 hours a night and being on the brink of a nervous breakdown was barbaric on me and I could not be a good mother to DS being so sleep deprived. When I started getting some actual solid sleep I'm sure I became a much more responsive, healthy and better mother.

I was just about to comment something similar! When people on MN hear ‘sleep training,’ they immediately think about the cry it out method.

Tbh, I don’t think I ever sleep trained my child. One day I was so exhausted and put her down in her cot when she was 8 weeks, went to check on her and saw she had immediately went to sleep. Since then, we put her down in her cot to sleep. If she cries, we leave it 5 or so minutes and pick her up to bring her into the living room for 10mins so she can calm down. We then put her down again and keep repeating until she falls asleep.

MN will tell you sleep training is cruel and it’s better to be sleep deprived because that’s part of having a baby. I’m currently pregnant and will be doing the same thing with my son! I also don’t co sleep or do contact naps, I’m sure someone will come along to say I’m evil lol

What’s his room set up like? Do you play white noise? Is it dark? Is he warm enough?

There's controlled crying and controlled crying. Very short intervals of a few minutes aren't the same as leaving them to cry for an hour.

@Sexnotgender

What’s his room set up like? Do you play white noise? Is it dark? Is he warm enough?

His cot is in a corner opposite the door with an armchair next to it, where we sit for the bedtime story. We have a white noise machine which has a little night light function.

To be quite honest, my husband and I don't really see eye to eye on what helps. So I favour making the room completely dark, he favours leaving a night light on. I favour using the white noise, my husband doesn't see the point and quite often turns it off during the night, although he does like to play music very quietly in the baby's room or in the next room. My husband is always afraid that the baby is too cold and likes him bundled up in layers with a blanket over his legs, whereas everything I've read says he shouldn't need anything other than a bodysuit, sleepsuit and sleep sack. I genuinely don't know who is right about the temperature thing, as baby sweats quite a lot from his head, but often has cold-ish hands and feet.

What temperature is the room, cold hands are not a good indication of temperature. You shouldn’t use a blanket on top of a sleeping bag.

My daughters room is heated to 16 overnight (cold house!) and she’s in a vest, sleepsuit and 3.5 tog sleeping bag.

I play quite loud white noise and the room is pitch black.

I'll check the thermometer tonight. We don't have the heating on but heat comes up from the floors below so it's not cold.

I know we're not supposed to use blankets but he does seem to prefer being tucked in.

I sleep trained both of mine, one at 7 months and one at 6 months.

With both it took 2 days. I put them in sleep bags in their cots with white noise and checked on them at 5-minute intervals.

Before that, I was up with both of them the majority of the night, and after they were sleeping 7-to-7.

Sleep deprivation is hugely damaging to your own health and your baby's health, and you can't be a good parent while sleep-deprived. And if you don't teach them to self-soothe, night waking can go on for years. I have a friend whose daughter is almost 3 and still not sleeping through.

To each their own, but it was the right choice for me. Two nights of sleep training is less crying than they'd have if they had a cold, and it means you will all get some sleep.

Yes I did, and at no point did I leave him to cry. I used a company called Goodnight guidance and he was sleeping through the night within a week. He was 14mths.

Have a search of "what should my baby sleep in", there are quite a few easy to follow images by proper sources of info on there for your husband.

I trained my first easily. We established a routine of bath, same story and feed, bed at 6 months. Left in cot for short periods and then go in to room. But she didn’t cry so we didn’t have to go through that.
Second child was a nightmare. Tried gentle sleep training and controlled crying because we were exhausted and none of it worked. I regret doing the controlled crying as it’s not nice.
With the second we had to wait till she was 4 to sleep though and just ended up sleeping any how anywhere to catch a few zzzs. On floor next to cot, her in our bed, her on mattress on floor, squeezing in to her cot!, on sofa in front of tv, in a chair, in a car 😂

@babyjellyfish did you download wonder weeks app? Just saw an update that the night partying has only been for a few weeks. It really sounds like this is a developmental leap - please do check on wonder weeks. Is baby learning to crawl/walk? Night time parties are frustrating, but they really are a sign of a developmental thing going on in the brain rather than a sleep thing.

@HorseInTheHouse @Porcupineintherough yours is a convenient narrative spun to make parents feel better. Any baby is capable of falling asleep, they just prefer the company and cuddles - who wouldn’t? There are obvious , evolutionary reasons why babies are programmed to desire closeness and proximity to their caregivers. They are not yet cognitively able enough to understand that you are there just in the other room/ they are safe etc. the reason they learn to fall asleep without crying is they learn that no one will come, so they only cry when desperate- not just for comfort/ cuddles.
It’s a wonderful trick of logic @porcupine that you have persuaded yourself that what is cruel is to respond to their cries, rather than to leave them crying!

[quote Shitandhills]@babyjellyfish did you download wonder weeks app? Just saw an update that the night partying has only been for a few weeks. It really sounds like this is a developmental leap - please do check on wonder weeks. Is baby learning to crawl/walk? Night time parties are frustrating, but they really are a sign of a developmental thing going on in the brain rather than a sleep thing.[/quote]
He's 10 months today and not crawling yet. He only started rolling at 7 months and still isn't hugely into it. We've got him a rubber play mat to help facilitate crawling and basically he can bum shuffle a little bit, very slowly, and he can shuffle backwards on his tummy (but not forwards), again very slowly, and sometimes he gets on all fours and rocks back and forth a bit. So I guess he might be on the point of crawling, or he might not. If we put things just out of his reach he will try and grab them by leaning forward but if he can't get them he'll lose interest and try and go for something nearer rather than making a real effort to move, if you see what I mean!

[quote Bizawit]**@HorseInTheHouse* @Porcupineintherough* yours is a convenient narrative spun to make parents feel better. Any baby is capable of falling asleep, they just prefer the company and cuddles - who wouldn’t? There are obvious , evolutionary reasons why babies are programmed to desire closeness and proximity to their caregivers. They are not yet cognitively able enough to understand that you are there just in the other room/ they are safe etc. the reason they learn to fall asleep without crying is they learn that no one will come, so they only cry when desperate- not just for comfort/ cuddles.
It’s a wonderful trick of logic @porcupine that you have persuaded yourself that what is cruel is to respond to their cries, rather than to leave them crying![/quote]
In fact breastmilk and cuddles is biologically designed to help babies sleep. The idea that babies need to be “taught to sleep” by leaving them in a cot on their own to cry is absolute codswollop.

Any baby is capable of falling asleep, they just prefer the company and cuddles - who wouldn’t?

Unfortunately mine doesn't just want company and cuddles, he also wants to be wide awake and singing for most of the night.

I haven’t sleep trained any of my 3. I bedshared with all of them from birth.
I I did attempt it once with my eldest when she was about 10 months old due to pressure from family members telling me it wasn’t normal for her to still be sleeping with me. It was awful. The advice I was given was to let her cry for a couple of minutes before returning to the room to resettle. It felt so wrong. I lasted about 5 mins before I decided that it simply wasn’t worth it. Went straight back to bedsharing.
All of my DCs made the transition into their own beds around about their 2nd birthdays.
They are 6, 5 & 2 now and all sleep together in one room by their own choice. DCs 1 & 2 generally sleep through the night without a fuss. DC3 usually sleeps until around 2am, then makes her way into my room.
DC1 started sleeping through consistently from about 18 months old.
DC2 didn’t sleep through until he was 4.
DC3 has slept through a handful of times but is very easy to resettle.

@babyjellyfish

Any baby is capable of falling asleep, they just prefer the company and cuddles - who wouldn’t?

Unfortunately mine doesn't just want company and cuddles, he also wants to be wide awake and singing for most of the night.

Yes I understand- sorry I didn’t mean to derail the thread by responding to another users comment.

There are various periods of “regression” where babies do end up being wakeful for hours in the night. My baby went through periods of this too and it was awful , so definitely feel your pain! And you absolutely need to do what you need to do to survive.

For what it’s worth, my understanding from the mums I know who’ve tried various things is that the “gentler” methods of sleep training are not particularly effective for a baby that is determined not to sleep- you may just end up with a couple of weeks of being up all night / trauma whilst you delay the inevitable. you may find you have to go for the extinction option if you don’t want to wait this phase out.

If you can get him in his own cot in his own room he can be wide awake and singing on his own.

@Bizawit who said anything about leaving the baby alone? Not me, not the vast majority of people on this thread.

Baby's are human just like the rest of us. What starts off as a primal need - waking to feed - becomes a habit. Sometimes stopping the offer of food stops the waking. When we offered ds1 everything (cuddles, company, a drink of water) except the milk he started sleeping through and we all felt better.

If you prefer to stay up with your children do so. No need to justify it through false claims. No need to attack others who make different choices.

Babies

@babyjellyfish Bingo! This is an absolute classic. I promise you his sleep will settle down once he nails crawling. In my experience, night parties aren't 'standard' wakefulness, there is ALWAYS something going on developmentally and they ALWAYS resolve themselves once that thing has been achieved. I'm not saying baby will suddenly start sleeping through, but the long stints awake will go away and those are the real killer.

@CrimbleCrumble1

If you can get him in his own cot in his own room he can be wide awake and singing on his own.

Unfortunately it's a choice between:

1. Wide awake and singing in our bed; or
2. Wide awake and sobbing his heart out in his own room.

We went for the cosleeping option when it was a choice between sleeping in our bed or crying in his, but that's not currently what's happening.

[quote Shitandhills]@babyjellyfish Bingo! This is an absolute classic. I promise you his sleep will settle down once he nails crawling. In my experience, night parties aren't 'standard' wakefulness, there is ALWAYS something going on developmentally and they ALWAYS resolve themselves once that thing has been achieved. I'm not saying baby will suddenly start sleeping through, but the long stints awake will go away and those are the real killer.[/quote]
If that is the explanation, does that mean that reducing his daytime naps won't help?

Also, er, how long does it take them to nail it?

[quote Porcupineintherough]@Bizawit who said anything about leaving the baby alone? Not me, not the vast majority of people on this thread.

Baby's are human just like the rest of us. What starts off as a primal need - waking to feed - becomes a habit. Sometimes stopping the offer of food stops the waking. When we offered ds1 everything (cuddles, company, a drink of water) except the milk he started sleeping through and we all felt better.

If you prefer to stay up with your children do so. No need to justify it through false claims. No need to attack others who make different choices.[/quote]
I’m not attacking anyone. I understand why people sleep train, and it may be the best choice for many families.
I just think it’s important to call a spade a spade- it drives me nuts when people say you are “teaching babies a valuable life skill” by not responding to their cries in the night.
You are right that when people say “sleep training” they can mean many different things, and also it’s a very different process for babies/
Toddlers of different ages.
I was speaking of the method where you “train” a young baby to sleep in a cot by themselves , through allowing them to cry until they are too exhausted to continue. (Not methods that involve simple things like dimming the lights/ nighttime routines etc.) in my experience the crying method is the only one that works for a very wakeful baby). In my experience the “sleep training” methods that work on young babies (who were previously not sleeping well) almost always involve a fair amount of crying , however they may be marketed by various sleep consultants etc.

And I certainly don’t “prefer” to stay awake with my baby. Who would prefer that?? Sleep deprivation is horrendous - that’s why it’s used as a form of torture!