Sorry, respectfully, this, and indeed most of the replies in this thread, is such complete crap.
Sleep is a fundamental human need. Show me a study that convincingly proves any damage to infants who are sleep trained and I will show you a hundred that convincingly prove that sleep deprivation can be catastrophic for both physical and mental health. Which is exactly what you should be piling onto new parents, and let’s face it, probably mainly the new mother, right? Because she signed up to this, right? It serves her right for not being fully prepared? What utter sanctimonious bollocks. I’m not advocating sleep training straight out of the womb, my second practically co slept for half the night from day one. But by 6 months with both of our children, every time I moved or breathed they woke, furious. They’d probably been fed about 45 mins before, so were not hungry, so couldn’t be fed back to sleep again, rocking didn’t work, bouncing, whatever. They just screamed because they were exhausted, I cried, my husband cried. Eventually they’d settle, somehow, and then an hour later I’d breathe again and the whole thing would restart. In the day time I couldn’t properly attend to their needs because I was exhausted. My mental health was suffering. I wasn’t the mum I wanted to be.
At 6 months we moved each of our babies into their own rooms. We used ferber’s controlled crying method and within days they both slept through and have done ever since. They no longer spent half the night screaming because they desperately wanted to go back to sleep but couldn’t. They just slept.
I 100% believe that a regular good night’s sleep has been fundamental for me and my husband being good parents, but also our children being happy, energised and be ready to learn and play in the day. Anti sleep training advocates make so many unproven assumptions about ‘damage’ and ‘trauma’. By the same token, I could argue that essentially purposely depriving my children and myself of a good night’s sleep for what could be years, through really important stages of their mental development, that that could also be potentially very damaging. Not to mention the damage caused by exhausted parents who end up at the end of their tether regularly barking or snapping at their kids.
You’re welcome to self flagellate all you like. But don’t make other people feel guilty for making different, probably more sensible, decisions for their families.