To think controlled crying is cruel

[KazMa]

DH would like to try controlled crying/sleep training but I am totally against any sort of crying/leaving DS on his own upset. Any advice?

Here is current scenario:

DS just turned 7 months old and we have been co sleeping since the dreaded 4 month sleep regression, he also breastfeeds to sleep - will go to sleep without it but needs a lot of patting, rocking and walking around so it’s easier just to BF.

For a month now I am able to BF to sleep and then leave him in his cot in his own room for nap times and he will sleep 45mins to an hour per nap (3x per day).

At night however he will wake up and only go back to sleep if he is laying & feeding next to me in my bed. (Eg, bedtime at 8pm but he’ll wake at 8:45 and won’t go back to sleep.

Right, so ignoring them when they cry sometimes is neglect and sometimes it isn’t? How does the baby know which is which?

youre not ignoring them. Even if you come back after five minutes, you’re still coming back and comforting them.

Ah ha!
So @minimarshmallowsmore has a child who still doesn't sleep age 4 and wakes up twice a night to be sung to 😂
Literally ridiculous, I would have that sorted in 5 minutes.
" Go to sleep it's night time"
Is she at school?
She must be exhausted

So, what about the method where the parent sits quietly in the room, initially by the cot and after a few days has moved so they are outside the room? Do you think that is OK? ( sorry can't remember what it's called).

In the case of not being able to get to them immediately, presumably you do so as soon as you can and most of the time that'll be very quickly. With controlled crying it's consistent, to ensure they KNOW you never come straight away.

Gradual retreat. It's what is apparently recommended by the NHS now, instead of CC.

I agree and never did it with my two year old. Sleep is developmental. We co-slept until around a year then transferred to his cot and he now goes down 7.15-7.30 with absolutely no fuss.

Sounds like you had a naturally good sleeper. Lucky you! 😀

And yet people who help their children get the sleep they need are the neglectful ones. 🙄

I swear some people enjoy making parenting more difficult than it needs to be.

My 3 month old son is asleep in my arms as I type. His 3 year old sister is having a quick nap too.

There were things I wanted to do. The laundry needs folding, the floors need mopping, the living room needs dusting... but in ten years when I look back on this time of seemingly 'unproductiveness', I'll be glad I cuddled my baby as he slept and not wasted that time cleaning floors. They are so little for such a short time, and time snatches that away from us before we realise.

Do I feed my baby to sleep? Yes. Do I cuddle him because he cries when I put him in his bed or pram? Yes. Is it frustrating? At times. But, I'm a mum, and making my children feel safe, secure, loved and wanted means so much more than dusting the sideboards.

The sad thing is the parenting is for them and their needs not the childs.
Disgusting to crow about a child of 4 waking up just to sing to their parent when she should be asleep.

No she isn't exhausted. She sleeps for 5 hours or so, wakes up, cries, I sing to her and she's asleep by the end of the second verse generally. No loss of sleep. Sometimes if I tell her to lie there while I go to the toilet, she's asleep by the time I get back. Sometimes she isn't and I have to stay longer. Sometimes she really struggles to sleep no matter what I do but I still stay with her until she manages to get to sleep. If I get exasperated and leave the room she gets herself into a state and it's harder for her to get back to sleep then so I prefer to help her straight away. At her age I don't know what ignoring her would achieve, she can get out of bed so presumably she'd just end up in my bed unless I locked her in her room.

Then you take her back to bed telling her that night is for sleeping. The same way you would encourage her to not get up too early.

There were things I wanted to do. The laundry needs folding, the floors need mopping, the living room needs dusting... but in ten years when I look back on this time of seemingly 'unproductiveness' I'll be glad I cuddled my baby as he slept and not wasted that time cleaning floors

No-one cares about unproductiveness when they've got a three month old. Months/years of sleep deprivation, on the other hand, is an actual problem.

So all your posts about other parents are defensive then?
Telling us all we are crap parents because our children sleep and yours doesn't!
Rocking it @minimarshmallowsmore !

These aren’t healthy sleep habits, for anyone.

If my 2 year old was doing this I’d be pulling out the sticker charts. No way would I have a school age kid waking me up every single night to be sung to.

You think other parents sleep train their babies so they can…. Dust the skirting boards??

I think it’s cruel to deny your child a proper night’s sleep by not giving them the tools to learn to get to sleep / get back to sleep on their own.

there, I said it! ducks

I don’t know anyone who has regretted sleep training (about 60% of my friends have done it), but I do know people who bitterly regret not doing it earlier, when they realise they have unnecessarily denied themselves and their baby(!) months of good sleep due to scaremongering.

I also know some desperately exhausted mums who are STILL not getting a proper night’s sleep after 15 months as they think sleep training is cruel. Madness!

and yes, all of our babies still cry when something is actually wrong (my baby cried the other night due to teething), they also cry throughout the day to say they need food or attention or whatever, so no, they absolutely have not learned that nobody will come if they cry! Complete tosh!

My babies all had a very regular bedtime routine which culminated in warm fed baby being calmly settled into their cots in a dim quiet room and left there on their own. There was no crying at all . Sometimes you might hear an older baby babbling happily to themselves or their teddy for a little while; but in a few minutes they would be fast asleep. This was not special , rare, unusual; just the normal way for babies to be put to bed at night in my day.

We started putting our 7 month old down about 5.5 months to sleep on his own but with us on our bed next to him but just out of sight. Got a routine of bedtime milk, cuddles, story, a kiss explaining what’s going on then lamp off with just nightlight left on. I always give him a small teddy to focus on so he’s not feeling completely alone then every time he makes a noise we pop our head over the cot, say shh shh sleepy time now and eventually he gives him, normally he’s asleep within 5 minutes of light out but if over tired he makes this god awful (I can say that as I’ve dealt with this noise from about 3 months old several times a day) grizzle, he takes longer to settle then but does go eventually.

I think every baby needs their own routine which works for them. We just randomly started trying it one night when he seemed like he stopped wanting to fall asleep on me and he took to it instantly. He now goes to sleep between 6-7.15 nightly sleeping until most of the time 6am but the last few days he’s got a cold so hasn’t been so breezy. It was later roughly between 8-9 then I took him up a bit earlier each night which got him to 6-7.15pm, depending on when his last nap was.

Goodluck!!

I'm perfectly happy to continue doing it. So it's fine for me. In what sense is it unhealthy for her? She doesn't lose any sleep herself and she doesn't get distressed. She cries out and I come. She's fine.
If I did change my mind though, how could I change this behaviour at her age? I couldn't physically keep her in bed, she'd just follow me! Sleep training can only be done when they're contained in a cot.

I swore I'd never do it. Then I got a baby my first baby! who ONLY would go to sleep if he spent about 5-10 minutes crying in his crib alone. He'd cry mournfully on your shoulder, while begging to be put in the crib to cry some more (he wouldn't sleep anywhere else, wouldn't sleep on us!), and then...5 minutes later...sleep.

He became a toddler who eagerly went to bed. We've used controlled crying for the others as well, since (we have four). It works well, the children are very happy kids, and only one of the four now has any bedtime upset at all (but he's a very high-strung kid, always has been). The other three (6 years old, 2 years old, 8 months) have no complaints about bedtime, in fact, the two year old will gather up his favorite stuffies and head on upstairs to his bed on his own, then squawk at us to get him in pajamas.

I worked with mothers and babies for a while and fron what I saw sleep deprivation was the most significant cause of distress and poor early years experience. I'm convinced that a large contributor to PND is sleep deprivation, and that some people diagnosed with PND are just experiencing the normal and expected response to long term sleep deprivation. Even other huge factors that affected early parenting experiences - money, partner, family support - were often secondary as they were better navigated and tolerated when the mother was reasonably well rested. Not only did I see it drive mothers to absolute despair and depression, but in many, many cases it seriously affected their ability to bond with their babies and be the parent they desperately wanted to be. It was heartbreaking. That's why I have no truck with the emotionally manipulative and immature anti-sleep training brigade. It's very clear they have no real interest in what's actually best for babies and mums. I find the lack of empathy, insight and compassion genuinely staggering. I really, really want any mothers of babies reading these threads to be confident to do what is right for THEM and ignore the whole godawful lot of em.

I don't think controlled crying is cruel. I thin leaving your screaming baby for for hours is cruel, not for a few mins at a time. If the baby and the parents get better and more sleep then there are massive benefits.

She's having a disrupted nights sleep every night. I mean if you think back to pre kids, did you wake up and have a conversation or sing with someone in the middle of the night as standard? Other kids go into lighter sleep, roll over and sleep some more.

And you do what other people do with children who are pissing about in the middle of the night. You tell them it's nighttime and continue to return them to their beds rather than reward them for waking up by making it into a performance. You seem rather afraid of making your child not like you by doing really standard parenting stuff.

I didn’t sleep train my baby because I wanted to dust the fucking skirting boards; I did it because I was insane with sleep deprivation and could not function on a daily basis or even properly bond with my DD. I was referred to the local mental health team with suspected PND. Should I have just struggled on like this so that DD never had to experience being left to cry for a couple of minutes?