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.

You're acting like babies are sentient beings

Bloody hell!!

If you wake up naturally then you were in light sleep anyway. Her waking up of her own accord isn't taking her out of deep sleep. If you're arguing that waking up for 30 seconds and falling back asleep isn't harmful but waking up for two minutes and falling back asleep IS harmful then...well...well. I don't know what to say about that. On one of her wakes she normally goes to the toilet as well. Is that okay by you or should I tell her to hold it in?
Yes I do sing her to sleep at bedtime. She gets two stories and a lullaby. It's part of a consistent routine.

Everyone wakes up multiple times a night. Sleep studies show that. But for most adults it is so brief we do not remember it and just go back to sleep. It is normal to do so.
Learning to sleep like an adult means learning to ignore those brief seconds of wakefulness and go back to sleep.

It didn't bother me, what concerns me is that in the here and now other desperate parents who are perhaps being made to feel cruel by thinking about or actually doing controlled crying might be ripping their hair out and feeling like the worst parents ever, when they aren't. And no one seems to be able to come up with an alternative which actually works.

To your last point, they will cry if they are sick etc so this shouldn't be a concern at all. If they are in distress they will absolutely let you know. My DC has been sleeping 12 hours for the past 8 or so months but he was sick a couple of nights ago and woke up at 1am crying, so I held him until he fell asleep and put him in his cot. He then woke a few hours later so we co-slept the rest of the night. Next night he was fine, and went to sleep as normal. If they're sick you don't just leave them to cry.

You have these opinions based on ... your opinions

@Loics Exactly!
If you want to do controlled crying, ignore all those exaggerating and saying how awful it is. You get between 2 and 5 nights of it being difficult, then you both get to sleep. There has been lots of research and there are no long-term negative effects, although those against it often claim there are. But what they are saying is an opinion, there is zero evidence.

If you don't want to do controlled crying don't. But don't use scaremongering and guilt-tripping to get others to accept your unproven opinion.

This is why, like a fly to shit, I often can't help myself and get stuck in on these debates.

I can laugh and be sarcastic about all the misinformation and emotive hysteria on sleep training because I've already done it, but there'll be other desperate parents out there wondering if maybe it's for them, their last resort. And then they read titles like this thread's.

Clear evidence in this thread not everyone should reproduce.

I can see some of these oddballs still changing nappies and breastfeeding their adult 22 year old at uni making sure they never experience a sad thought.

@loislovesstewie it's just odd to insist that people making other choices than you must not have had it as bad (think that was you anyway, otherwise apologies). I disagree that CC is cruel/ causes harm objectively, but for my babies and me, I felt it was absolutly cruel (for various reasons I have already explained). My DD was a terrible sleeper. Terrible. Didnt' sleep longer than 25 min at a time for her first 4 months. I didn't not CC becuase I wasn't sleep deprived but because it did not feel right for me/ us. DS was a much better sleeper naturally, but the way I dealt with his wake ups was to be more responsive rather than less (cosleeping mainly), and that worked really well for us when he was a baby.

We all make different choices, you don't need to poo poo others' (just as others shouldn't make mums feel bad for sleep training if they feel they need to), or minimise their situations, or blame them for their own situation, because they aren't the same as yours.

I think those desperate parents should have access to a variety of points of view. Plenty of people believe controlled crying is cruel. Plenty of people believe it isn't. When you're trying to make the decision for yourself you need to see both sides and decide what resonates with you.

Well, the point is that this doesn't happen. The very very vast majority of children learn to sleep irrespective of sleep training. It's not a necessity for sleep in the grand scheme of things as some on this thread are suggesting.

This was me with my first. Terrified I would harm my DS by letting him cry. Instead I nearly smothered him by falling asleep on the sofa (I did not mean to fall asleep I was bloody exhausted) and he slipped down the side. I also drove when I knew I was too tired and I knew it was dangerous. After the sofa near miss I knew I couldn't carry on and luckily started sleep training. In less than a week I had my life back and no longer felt I was risking both our lives when driving.
With my second, my DD I did not make the same mistake.

I don't care if people manage their life fine without sleep training. Some mothers have babies who naturally sleep more, or who settle quickly co-sleeping. But if you do not have a baby that lets you sleep easily then life can quickly get impossible and frankly dangerous. Our bodies need sleep. It is not optional.

@EndlessRain1 The message you are responding to is obviously hyperbole. But some people do never learn to sleep through. I have met adults throughout my life who have always woken at night for long periods of time, and still do.

I kind of agree with both sides. It's ok to choose it because it is what you need. It's also ok to not choose it because it doesn't feel right to you. I would say it's just as damaging telling a mother (in this case) to ignore her insticts and upset at not comforting her baby when she feels she wants to/ her baby needs her to otherwise she is being cruel, as it is to tell a mother that she's cruel for sleeping training a baby she feels the need to sleep train.

Yep, as I said I was the same. DD woke loads and didn't settle. I chose not to sleep train still. It was bad for me and dangerous at times. We gave sleep training in many forms a go, mainly the gentler ones. We did try CC in desperation but it was really upsetting for DH and I, and DD made herself sick from the crying which only escalated as it went on rather than settling as she was meant to. I was not prepared to let my baby literally make her self sick from crying in order to sleep train. Incidentally, she improved loads with time, and at the age of 2 slept so deeply that she was near impossible to wake.

Yes, some adults still sleep badly (I am one of them and suffer from insomia on an off), do you know for a fact which of those were or weren't sleep trained? Because otherwise you can't make the connection. My theory on this as an aside - some people genetically are worse sleepers and sleep more lightly. I expect those people can also pass that down to their children.

For information I have no idea if others had it as bad as me, I don't know how bad it has to until a parent has had enough, we can all tolerate anything in a different way, but as I've said telling a desperate parent that they are cruel doesn't help. I wouldn't be singing songs in the middle of the night, or making toast as the person I knew did, because I find that baffling. For us it worked, whether it was coincidence or not I didn't know, but it did improve our lives. If everything else has failed, then what?

I've never slept through the night either. Like I said before on nights when my daughter sleeps through, I still wake up a couple of times. I don't consider it broken sleep, that's my natural sleep. Maybe my daughter is like me genetically. And these days when she wakes up she needs me to help her get back to sleep, but the day will come when she can sort herself out alone. She isn't there yet.

@EndlessRain1 Nobody is saying a mother should not comfort her crying baby. Nobody.

To be honest, I have no idea whether sleep training has a negative long term effect. Probably not. But at the time, despite my own lack of sleep, leaving my baby to cry didn't feel right TO ME. I have never judged other people for doing it. And yet the one or two people I knew who did it, and who recommended it to me, seemed almost angry at me for not doing it. I even said I would try it just to get my SIL to shut up. I didn't try it though.

I think you have to be taught to sleep through. Like all things some people learn it easily and some find it much harder and will not learn it naturally.

If I had been in a situation where I was not just sleep deprived but dangerously sleep deprived e.g. couldn't safely drive, then I may have moved to sleep training as an absolute last resort, but I would have felt completely terrible about it and I wouldn't be encouraging others to do the same who are obviously NOT in the same situation as that (e.g. telling someone they shouldn't get up twice in the night briefly for their 4 year old).

This thread isn't a 'both sides do what works for them, live and let live' scenario though. It's explicitly: the other side is wrong.

If the thread starter thinks that, fine. But the other side will invariably respond.

WEll perhaps it wasn't you who said it, sorry. Someone said soemthing along the lines of everyone who didnt' choose to sleeptrain didn't have it as bad as them (massively paraphrasing). That's just an odd conclusion to jump to.

For the record, I would neither make midnight toast or sleep train. Although I did have a period of vigorousl bouncing around the room as that was the only way to get DD back to sleep for a while. We all do things out of desperation (and it's apparently to you ok to ridicule or chastise some people's desperate measures - like the singers or toast makers - but no way ok to say anything negative about those who sleep train)

@minimarshmallowsmore Unless it is abuse or neglect (and sleep training is not abuse) I think parents should do what is best for them and their baby.
Lots of mums have miserable early years with their baby because they try too hard to do what others are telling them even when it is making them and/or their baby totally miserable.

Yeah it works this way too. When I was in the thick of the 4 month sleep regression the rest of my NCT group were quite patronising to me and acted like it was my fault for not sleep training. My mother in law used to take my husband aside and rant about it too.