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.

@babyjellyfish

Yesterday he only napped for half an hour in the morning and an hour and a half in the afternoon (from 2pm to 3:30pm). He was exhausted but still in a fairly good mood for his dinner and bath. Then we put him to bed on his cot mattress on the floor of his bedroom and I slept on another mattress next to him. He woke up a few times in the night but went back to sleep easily when I stroked him. I didn't feed him or even need to offer him water during the night. He made it through until about 6am and we are all feeling much more rested this morning. The room was dark and we had the white noise on all night, and he had fewer layers than usual. (Thanks for the reminder about Room temperature etc, I think maybe he has been too hot at night.)

I think we will do this for a week or so until we've got a better idea about his nap routine and he is used to sleeping at night again, then we'll have a go at putting his mattress back in his cot.

This is only the second time he's ever made it all the way through the night in his own room, and we've all had much more sleep than usual, so even though we are a long way off him sleeping through the night independently, last night still felt like a big improvement.

This sounds amazing OP and it will get better the more he gets used to it. We've always had white noise all night - it's such a game changer!

That all sounds really positive OP, pleased you hear you are all more rested.

I was lucky that she followed her routine... I honestly think some children sleep some don't

This was definitely the case with dd and ds1, dd especially

She went to sleep everywhere…into her bowl of chips once 🤔 (obviously she wasn’t a baby then)

Congrats babyjellyfish 💐

Gentle sleep training worked for us. Stopped feeding to sleep at 4-6 months old id unlatch just before they fell asleep. Then I worked on putting down awake for naps which was hard so I introduced a comforter which started to work and he would suck on the taggys to get to sleep, I never left him to cry it out if he got distressed I would stop and try again the next day. Then I moved onto stopping the breastfeeding all night when he was abit bigger about 9/10 months I think, which was hard but I’d offer water instead and rock him , if that didn’t work an he got distressed we would sit in the living room and I’d let him play with toys untill he wore himself out and fell asleep. By 11 months he had completely cut out night feeds and slept right through and he just breastfed in the day..he self weaned at 15 months! He has slept amazingly ever since 11 months he even had 6 months of sleeping 7-10am. Of course when illness hits we would have to co sleep but he’d go straight back to sleeping once better. I was so lucky he got fully attached to sucking on his comforter which he still has now at age 3. It was hard work but well worth it and I didn’t have to leave him to cry it out. I had to do something as I had severe pnd and ptsd and I couldn’t come with sleep deprivation anymore and the constant breastfeeding.

Very very pleased for you!!! It’s amazing what one nIght of better sleep can do!

@coraka

50 minutes of crying ??? That’s horrific how could you listen to that? That would actually break my heart. They stop crying after that because they know no one’s coming for them, they give up , it’s damaging for them.
I did gentle sleep training and never had to do that?

Thanks guys.

We don't want to be taking it in turns to sleep on a mattress on his bedroom floor long term, but I'm hoping that after a few days like this we might be able to put his mattress back in his cot with one side off so we can still reach him, then put the other side back on, then gradually move the mattress on the floor a bit further away etc, until hopefully he feels more comfortable sleeping in his cot in his room.

What is this... gradual retreat with bells on?

@RandomMess

I did pick up put down from a few weeks old. No crying involved, if baby was fussing they got picked up. To me it was teaching them they were ok to be awake laying down in their cot and if they wanted me Some squawking summoned me pronto.

Pick up put down and all the baby whisperer's methods are brilliant. It trains the baby to sleep in their own cot but as you said at no point are they left for cry. It is physically and mentally hard work but it works

@coraka your poor, poor baby 😥 that is so bloody cruel.

I know this is MM and there are a lot of disagreements and I try not to be too harsh, but what @coraka did is cruel, very cruel. That's when the baby just gives up because no-one comes.

MN, not MM.

I think everybody makes what they feel is the right decision for their family and their baby. Can we please not accuse people of being "cruel" for adopting a different approach to baby sleep?

There are thousands of children being abused and neglected as we speak and so I don't think it is constructive to accuse someone of cruelty for deciding to let their baby cry in their cot in order to teach them to go to sleep independently. Not everyone is comfortable with these methods and that's absolutely fine, but the research does seem to suggest that they are effective, which is why a lot of people choose to use them. They don't do it because they don't care about their baby or enjoy listening to them cry.

If the older generation of doctors and grandparents where I live are to be believed, my entire generation were left to cry in their cots, and that doesn't stop them from having a close and loving relationship with their parents.

I wasn't left to cry alone but apparently I was a unicorn baby who just randomly decided to sleep through the night from 6 weeks.

If only my son had inherited that particular gene.

Well said @babyjellyfish

It's ok, don't worry, my DD is 6 now and totally fine! Like I say, she was much better off crying for 50 minutes once in her life than having years of a depressed mother! I was hallucinating and dangerous on the road. Depression in mothers is proven to affect babies badly. Car crashes are also a known danger. All the evidence indicates that sleep training has no negative outcomes.

Of course it was awful hearing her cry but it was the best decision. It had immediate benefits for all of us! DD was a much happier baby once she was sleeping better 😀 I really think this "cruel/damaging " narrative puts such tremendous strain on families and it's simply not supported by evidence.

I think if you went through years of broken sleep and found that really tough then it is hard to contemplate the idea that you could have fixed it and your baby would have been just fine (or better). You have to justify it and make it worthwhile so sleep training must be cruel / damaging whatever. But that is not my experience , so I'm happy to share it with other desperate families!

Or perhaps these people just didn't have the bad sleeping babies we had so they don't know what it feels like it to hit rock bottom and they never really needed to sleep train. DD2 didn't need sleep training. If I'd had 2 like her then perhaps I'd have had different ideas too.

I'd tried EVERYTHING else before I got to cry it out, by the way. Every gentle method, gradual retreat, shush pat, read every book, we even went to a residential sleep school for a week. Nothing had worked. Thank goodness another mother from my baby group recommended this sleep consultant and we got it sorted. Joy returned to our home!

If I genuinely thought that by leaving my son to cry it out he would be putting himself to sleep independently within three days, I would absolutely do it.

But I know my son and I don't believe it would work (at least not at the moment) so we need to adopt a different approach.

Different babies.

Provided the babies are safe and loved and well cared for, I think all approaches are valid.

I also think a lot of people's views about sleep training are shaped by what kind of baby they end up having. If you had asked me this question when my son was three months old and he was going to sleep in his next to me crib, waking up twice in the night to feed and then going back to sleep again, I might have told you I didn't think sleep training was necessary.

But then it all went to shit and here we are.

I think parents with babies who struggle to sleep independently, or who have to go back to work and simply can't afford to be sleep deprived all the time, often have different views to parents who have naturally "good" sleepers or don't work outside the home. And that's OK.

Yes I started very gentle sleep training with mine from about 6 weeks old. I would give them a chance to settle themselves, if it was a grizzle I would leave them, if they were upset then I would always comfort them. It was a slow and gradual process. They could all settle themselves from about 8 weeks with a dummy. Two were going through with just a dream feed at 11pm from 8 weeks and one kept feeding in the night until I night weaned at 12 months. They have alll gone through periods where they have wanted to stay with them whilst they settle and I have been happy to go with that. They have all stayed great sleepers. I was never comfortable leaving them to actually cry.

Oh yes, completely OP, every baby is different, sounds like what you're doing is working, good luck! I just didn't want to let those PP comments go unchallenged.

I did the super nanny method with dc2 when they were 8/9 months.
Put them down, then go in after 2 mins, then 4, then 8 doubling the time each time until they are asleep. Took 2 nights and then we had a more reliable and settled sleep pattern. It's not for everyone I guess, and you have to be careful to attempt it when they are not ill or going through anything like teething etc. For us (and I include dc1 in that who was being affected too) it was brilliant and I would do it again.

I haven't but I think the term sleep training is a massively confusing term for a myriad of methods between very gentle to CIO. My DC has never really moved on from the newborn stage at night time and is now over 2. To say I am broken by lack of sleep is an understatement. I honestly feel if I could have had my time again I would have got professional help very early on to implement gentle methods as now I have an extremely wilful toddler and changing habits is near on impossible. I'll add that my husband has never once put her to bed or got up in the night which made it difficult for me to even think about anything beyond 'survival' ie. Getting us both back to sleep in the quickest way possible - in bed and on the boob.

I sleep trained my first baby at eleven months. Until then she had slept in our bed and had been okay - lots and lots of night wakings, but went back to sleep after breastfeeding. I went to bed early and was able to nap in the daytime, so it was fine for me too.

From ten months old she changed. She was often crazy tired and really unhappy. The GP didn't think anything was wrong. Simply moving her to a cot didn't help, so then I did full-on sleep training. I found it heartbreaking but I stuck with it. It "worked" in the sense that she slept regular hours and for longer stretches, but she was still just as tired. So the only thing sleep training achieved from my point of view was to rule out the possibility that she was tired because she had poor sleep habits. That was useful to know, so I guess I don't regret the sleep training. I do feel bad for her, however.

I kept on looking for a medical explanation for her tiredness and eventually, about 18 months later, discovered she was much better when off dairy.

My second child was never sleep trained, instead sleeping in our bed until she was six years old. That worked really well.

@coraka I think if you went through years of broken sleep and found that really tough then it is hard to contemplate the idea that you could have fixed it and your baby would have been just fine (or better). You have to justify it and make it worthwhile so sleep training must be cruel / damaging whatever.

That's such a ridiculous thing to say! Leaving a baby crying on their own in the dark for 50 minutes is, objectively, cruel. Dress it up or justify it how you want, it's cruel. You say you were all happier at the end of it, great, but you can't try to claim that the method wasn't cruel. To suggest that everyone who didn't subject their infant to that ordeal and was sleep deprived as a result regrets it and so retrospectively decides it is cruel is just bonkers.

Also, there are no credible studies showing no damage from this kind of sleep training, so what you are saying is inaccurate.

@coraka

It's ok, don't worry, my DD is 6 now and totally fine! Like I say, she was much better off crying for 50 minutes once in her life than having years of a depressed mother! I was hallucinating and dangerous on the road. Depression in mothers is proven to affect babies badly. Car crashes are also a known danger. All the evidence indicates that sleep training has no negative outcomes.

Of course it was awful hearing her cry but it was the best decision. It had immediate benefits for all of us! DD was a much happier baby once she was sleeping better 😀 I really think this "cruel/damaging " narrative puts such tremendous strain on families and it's simply not supported by evidence.

I think if you went through years of broken sleep and found that really tough then it is hard to contemplate the idea that you could have fixed it and your baby would have been just fine (or better). You have to justify it and make it worthwhile so sleep training must be cruel / damaging whatever. But that is not my experience , so I'm happy to share it with other desperate families!

Or perhaps these people just didn't have the bad sleeping babies we had so they don't know what it feels like it to hit rock bottom and they never really needed to sleep train. DD2 didn't need sleep training. If I'd had 2 like her then perhaps I'd have had different ideas too.

It sounds like you did what was right for your family, and you were honest about what the process involves. I had an horrendous sleeper , and it was hard. It is difficult to contemplate that had I just done CIO we would have all been better off, but I am totally willing to acknowledge that possibility (however hard it is). (Having done sleep training, I wonder if you are willing to contemplate the reverse?) Nevertheless CIO was not compatible with my philosophy of parenting, and violated my instincts/ intuition as a mother, so I persevered. I don’t think anyone can say what the long term impacts of different methods are, we all just have do what feels right to us , at the time, as best we can. I think we’ll all end up living with some regrets at some point along the line!

@Shitandhills I recommend the Emily Oster book as mentioned by PP. She quotes numerous studies suggesting that, as opposed to being harmful, cry it out and other sleep training methods actually beneficial for babies. Just one example:

"There are a number of good randomized trials that speak to this. One representative study from Sweden, published in 2004, took ninety-five families and randomized them into a sleep-training regime involving a form of “cry it out.”8 The authors focused on whether behavior during the day was impacted by the nighttime—basically, they asked whether the infants were less attached to their parents during the day as a result of being left to cry during the night. This particular study found that, in fact, infant security and attachment seemed to increase after the “cry it out” intervention. It also found improvements in daytime behavior and eating as reported by the babies’ parents. Note that this is the opposite of the concerns raised about “cry it out” methods.

Oster, Emily. Cribsheet (p. 178). Profile. Kindle Edition.

The data about attachment disorders comes from studies of children from Romanian orphanages, where children were seriously neglected, not from brief episodes of parents not responding in the context of a loving and nurturing relationship.

It's good news - sleep training does not harm babies! That must be good news to you, even if you have chosen not to do it! Of course we all make different choices and we just make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time.