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.

It isn't just about work. Women's wellbeing matters even if they are SAHMs or on maternity leave. Many women have talked on this thread about how disrupted sleep made them feel.

My grandmothers were SAHMs and sleep trained too

Firstly, yes you can function on broken sleep if these are natural wakes that your body does and you get enough sleep overall. Sleep cycles are only a few hours long so you don't get deeper sleep by sleeping 8 hours through. If my daughter goes to bed at 8 and gets up at 7, and in the night she is awake for 3 minutes twice because her body wakes her up and she goes back to sleep again that is not a damaging broken night's sleep, of course it isn't.
Secondly, how could I control how often her body wakes her up? All I could potentially control is what she does when she wakes. Going back to sleep alone and going back to sleep with my help takes the same amount of time so the same time awake overall. The idea that if I taught her she has to go back to sleep alone, that would make her actually not wake up is ridiculous.

Could someone suggest how I should have got a decent night's sleep when I was awake every 90 minutes? Neither me or DH was rested.
I didn't mean to imply that SAHM should put up with no sleep, I understand completely that we all need good sleep. Including the baby.

I know you weren't implying that - it's others taking the view that if it wasn't for the nasty modern working world women wouldn't need sleep.

Broken sleep is so soul destroying.

I'm not ever going to disagree with how a person says sleeplessness affects them.

But all sleep is contextual, not an absolute right or wrong, and the industrial work pattern has coloured our views. Your GPs would have been raising children in a period with more strict parenting rules than currently, and those rules came in part from the industrial revolution.

We now have different norms emerging, informed by a more developed sleep science, different attitudes will evolve.

I did not think that you were, and it is soul destroying to be constantly knackered.

I'd still like anyone to advise me how I could function being woken up every 90 minutes. And to remind us that sleep deprivation is used as torture.

Don’t worry, as a mother you’re an emotionless delivery vessel for your child, and your needs are irrelevant. You don’t need any sleep to function.

It is not that women would have needed no sleep, but our sleep norms are always contextual.
Humans have always needed enough sleep, obviously, shift workers are at increased risk of all sorts of health problems due to sleep impacts.

Like feeding though, people get very defensive, but humans vary on quite a wide spectrum due to our complexity.

Going back to sleep alone and going back to sleep with my help takes the same amount of time so the same time awake overall. The idea that if I taught her she has to go back to sleep alone, that would make her actually not wake up is ridiculous.

Yes, I agree. And I wish I could have articulated this upthread, when another poster found it 'baffling' that I didn't sleep train my child.

I did it, when my daughter was a baby. I went to bed early and got like 4 chunks of 90 minutes so 6 hours overall and 90mins is long enough for a sleep cycle so I functioned reasonably that way. It was a shit time but these things don't last forever, it got better after a few months. If I wasn't able to cope with it I would have tried bedsharing before I would have tried controlled crying.

I don't think anyone is suggesting you would, long term? Most people can cope for a few days and it gradually gets worse and worse.

We tried bed sharing, it didn't work. We spent all night being kicked.

Some absolutely would suggest that, I assure you.

Yes I think it’s cruel and lazy parenting who would rather get an evening to themselves and good night sleep than respond to their babies needs.

@minimarshmallowsmore just did suggest it was fine - apparently going to bed early is all it takes

So at what point do you think being woken up every 90 minutes is unacceptable? My oldest was 18 months when I tried controlled crying, that was the point where we, DH and I, had enough. We had tried other methods and they didn't work. I was desperate for a good night's sleep, and that to me wasn't getting out of bed every 90 minutes, neither did I want to go to bed at 8 p. m when the baby did. I actually wanted to wind down after a day at work, enjoying a bit of adult time with DH and get myself in a good place for another stressful day at work. I know the answer is going to be about how it's unnatural and a product of the post industrial work ethic, but this is how we live and work now, and that needs to be taken into account.

Babies often cry when they're tired though. If you keep cuddling them or feeding them you're stopping them going to sleep.

Letting them cry means they'll more quickly go to sleep which is arguably kinder.

Same for us - with the added bonus that our son found being in bed with us very stimulating so he wanted to play not sleep. I think almost everyone who sleep trains tries cosleeping first but it only works if the issue is that the child wants to be with the parents. My son just couldn't link his sleep cycles before we sleep trained, cosleeping just made sure we couldn't even sleep while he was sleeping, it didn't make any difference to his wake ups

It was fine for them. If you choose a different way that's fine. Don't need to be defensive about your choices.

Going to bed early does give more time to sleep, obviously.

You said no one said it was fine. I pointed out that someone did say it was fine.

I am not disputing it was apparently fine for them.

I absolutely agree with you. Just thinking about it makes me feel stressed.

The poster wasn’t being defensive, just correcting your assertion that martyrs weren’t foisting unrealistic expectations on her.

I meant no one is saying it was fine FOR YOU.

Obviously it is different for different people

No one can foist an expectation onto a person.