Why doesn’t everyone sleep train?

[Goldstar88]

I know there’s always debate about the pros and cons of sleep training. I personally haven’t with my 13 month old (and they do still wake 1-2 times but sometimes sleep through). I often have friends telling me I just need to sleep train. My DC self settles, even in the night after a feed, so I have never thought it that necessary, albeit I’d like to have a reliable solid night’s sleep (wouldn’t everyone!).

I’m genuinely intrigued as to why if sleep training is the silver bullet it is touted to be by sleep experts and lots of parents, why doesn’t everyone do it? Surely it would be taught by every midwife etc and no one would ever face sleep deprivation after the newborn stage?

Am I, and lots of other parents, just being naive and missing out, making it hard for ourselves?

To be clear, I really don’t like the idea of leaving my DC to cry and I’m holding on to the hope they will eventually just sleep through as they get older…!

@5128gap I think we are saying the same thing. I'm saying both parties don't seem to regret their choices so clearly both options (sleep training and not sleep training) are both good and valid options and that whichever option people choose to go for, they seem to be happy with.

I couldn't sleep train my daughter as her main reason for waking in the night is pain. She has severe silent reflux and multiple food allergies.
At 3 she went back to waking every 40 minutes only sleeping if held upright. It took 6 months to get her reflux back under control.

Whether sleep training will work will depend on the reason they wake and that will be down to the baby

Every child and family is different. Just do what works for you and don't worry about others. If you're OK with still being woken twice a night then it's not an issue that needs fixing, is it? If you're not then you'll need to explore some different solutions. 13 months is quite old for sleep training though, so you may well have missed the boat. Sure there are some other strategies though.

My friends range from automatic sleep training at 4-5 months, through to co-sleeping until 4 years old. All of our children are lovely and developing well. Just do what works for you.

Judging from threads on MN, there are also a lot of people who are living miserable, sleep-deprived lives and are near to breakdown as a result of not establishing a sleep routine. Now their baby is 9 months old+ and they still refuse to sleep train but everyone in their house is miserable.

These people also often say they would never have another baby because they are just too exhausted.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone who’s sleep trained and not said they wish they’d done it sooner.

I know loads of people who regretted that they never sleep trained. When we were considering it most people with poor sleeping kids said to me 'I wish I'd been strong enough back then to do something about it, make your own choice but my only regret is not sleep training when they were a baby'

Some kids in the group still need soothing back to sleep at 5-6. A couple still can't fall asleep at night without a parent there, and it can take hours.

It must be so awful when one parent is keen to sleep train and the other won't allow it. Honestly if that had been us I'd have said to my DH fine, you will do all the bedtimes and wakes in the night if you won't get on board with actually helping DC to learn to sleep better. It just holds the entire house hostage and makes everyone miserable. It's not nice for kids to be awake all through the night either. Sleep plays such a crucial role in learning, and behaviour.

We sleep trained at 15m, but then our son was showing strong understanding of bedtime. He'd go over to daddy and wave me off once he was done with bedtime stories.

It only took one night of fussing and crying for him to understand. 25m in which half the time was my husband cuddling him and soothing him until he was put down again. He didn't cry again after that, just drifted off to sleep once we put him in the cot.

Now he points to his cot when he's done with bedtime.

He doesn't sleep through, but he also doesn't wake up needlessly - and he doesn't lie there miserably not crying because he thinks no one is coming either. We've seen him either wake briefly and go back to sleep (within a minute), or get up to call us - and we come.

So I don't believe that "experts" know that "he thinks no one is coming". He just needed a nudge to understand that he can fall and stay asleep where he is.

Oh, and I am happy that I waited until 15m!

6-9m I was able to nap in the day and happy to do so.
10-12m he was sleeping much better.
12-14m he was teething 8 teeth at once and settling into nursery.

15m he basically understood all of his routines anyway. It fitted in with Christmas break, and a good time to night wean as well.

I just couldn't have ever contemplated it, and mine were absolutely horrendous sleepers for the first year or so. You don't have a baby not knowing that sleep deprivation comes part and parcel with that, everyone is aware of the sacrifice that comes with it. Yes, it's a hell of a lot worse than you realise, as until you've lived it, you have no idea how bad the lack of sleep can be, but that's what you've signed up for. It wouldn't surprise me if the sudden obsession with sleep training, is directly linked to the uprising mental health crisis we are seeing in modern western cultures. It's been proven time and time again that the level of cortisol rises significantly when babies are crying and their needs are not being met... it's pretty obvious that this could in turn lead to long term issues. Infants giving up on crying (communicating) because they know their voices will be ignored by their primary caregiver (The person they need to look after them, and have an instinctive need to be close to) is not okay. That person is making a choice to ignore their needs.

But you're talking about crying it out. There are plenty of us that did it without or with very little distress.

That's very kind of you! I stopped following the thread as people kept coming on to talk about leaving your child to cry. I've sleep trained two out of 3 children and never once left them. Yes, they cried, but I was with them to comfort them and at no point were they left alone or abandoned. Never. I don't mind being judged for my decisions if people know what they are judging, but the ignorance on this thread is annoying when posters kept explaining that you don't have to leave a baby to cry by themselves in order to sleep train them.

As it happens, my mental and physical health were on the floor and actually my marriage was quite rocky too, all because we were all exhausted. I came onto mumsnet and asked about it, and the responses upset me so much that I continued to let our toddler's sleep rule our lives. When my husband took charge, he stayed by our daughter's side all night and obviously didn't breastfeed her. He stroked her, patted her, shushed her and spoke to her the entire time. After he came out of the bedroom (and she was asleep) he said 'Darkdiamond, she wasn't upset or neglected; she was angry'.

I now realise that the people who told me how much I was confusing and harming my child didn't actually understand what they were talking about, and I listened to them over my my own body, sanity, and husband!

So if anyone is reading, and you're at the absolute end of yourself with being woken 8-10 times a night and you feel guilty for considering sleep training; don't. You can do it without abandoning your baby or damaging their brain development. You can get your life back and still be a loving, attentive mother. Yes, you may have to listen to some crying, just like when your child doesnt want to go in their carseat, have their teeth brushed or be told 'no' when they ask for sweets before dinner. Supporting your child (and sometimes other children) to get adequate sleep at night is as crucial as meeting any of their other basic needs and doesn't have to involve leaving your child to scream for hours in a dark room.

Here we go...

I think it depends on the baby / family. I cried my son out at 4 months by accident almost as he was so mad about being un-swaddled that he wouldn’t be comforted - three nights of crying for less than an hour and he was all good and sleeping through the night. As he’s got older he sometimes cries out - but I’ve found that if I go in he stops but then never goes to sleep and cries much more when I leave so I prefer the version where he cries briefly and resettles himself as long as I can see he is ok. Will see how it goes with my second. It’s all very personal. However, anyone quoting the only study that every suggested sleep training may do damage was one done in an orphanage where the kids had no love or affection given to them - it’s insane to compare that to a situation where a child is growing up in a loving and caring family.

Never sleep trained DS and he'd wake 12 times a night until 1, then maybe 4 times a night until 2. Then he slept through, as he was ready. I didn't do anything.

I maybe would have sleep trained if he didn't have severe eczema (scratched a lot if left alone) and a tendency to vomit everywhere if he cried for too long.

I "sleep trained" my 2 over 30 years ago because that was the advice back then and neither of them suffered because of it.
Yes you expect some sleep deprivation with babies but there's no point making it worse than it needs to be.

I want to specifically call bullshit on, "Crying is the only way babies can communicate", because it is literally untrue.

Babies make a lot of physical gestures and motions that show their needs - for example, fists clenched when they're hungry and relax when they're full. Nipple diving and rooting. Tongue thrusting. Legs kicking for happy. Eye rubs for sleepy.

I'm sorry that nobody told you other signals babies give for their needs, but you are 100% incorrect.

That's awful.

The parents were idiots to sleep train in that way tbh even if they had 'read it in a book'.

I do accept what people are saying about there being very gentle types of sleep training. But any type of sleep training that involves CIO and leaving your child alone is just horribly cruel and goes against surely any natural, empathetic parental instincts.

Not to mention the fact that they have different cries and parents are able to tell which cry is which.

DS had a tired cry, it wasn't a distressed cry, it was more like a whingey/moany cry. Very different from his cries when something was actually wrong.

I would say I sleep-trained. I never had any issues whatsoever with my child sleeping. And she was asleep by 7.30 every night.

She always had a bath at around 6. A nice long happy bath. She had her hair washed (this is important because of the effect of water on the scalp, the calming effect all together of a properly-conducted bath and rubbing with a towel afterwards). The sensory experience of water, fun, relaxation, skin stimulation, cold to warm to cold, to snuggled up, is significant.

Then when her hair was dry and she was all nice in her pyjamas, into bed. Choose a story. And I lay next to her. And read to her. Sometimes for ages because I love it too, and/or I told her a story. And then we had a ritual of cuddling her toy(s), and she had to close her eyes if she wanted a song. And then I would sing softly to her, and stroke her eyebrows. Then she went quickly to sleep. As soon as we started the song it was triggering her sleep response.

Then I quietly left.

And every night, around 2.15am, she came out of bed, her feet padding across the landing, and she got in next to me and her dad.

And we all slept like babies.

And then this coming in to us stopped, naturally, when she was about 8/9.

And she;d done it from a baby, we'd adapted her cot so she could get out in the night, because originally she started swinging herself over the top in a vault to get out haha

And that is my method. And I have children so I can be a mother, a parent, and look after them, and I loved every second of doing this for them.

PS
oh and maybe I did this because I said no child of mine will ever cry themselves to sleep, alone, distressed, screaming out for hours for his or her parents. Because I was myself 'trained' by that method and it literally traumatised me for life, and actually led to impulsive choices re: men because I just needed to be hugged.

Mine didn't need that. Mine were/are able to be safely alone, sleep alone, and wait for the right person before they jump. One in the best long term relationship, which he waited for for a long time. The other calmlly waiting for her right person.

Nobody crying.

Just because we have different ways of look8ng at things, it doesn't make me ignorant or narrow minded. That sounds more like you.

I think that my parents and my friend's parents had just been socialised at the time to think that's what you had to do so I don't blame them, without going into details there were work reasons they didn't have options.

What strikes me is how difficult it is to parent for the first time and how hard it is to feel ok about your choices or to know what to do when there is so much conflicting advice.

I coslept but the guilt was piled on to me by others.

There's lots of compromises that can be made so it's all manageable, like going in and out of the room leaving longer intervals for example, leaving the door slightly open. Night lights. Mobiles.
If a baby knows you are close by that can just be enough sometimes, in the next room.

What are people's most helpful strategies that's have worked for them? Maybe that would be useful - mine was attaching little push button night lights to a diaper box so I could change nappies without putting big lights on. And I put a little lullaby thing in there for soothing noises.

I didn’t and couldn’t do it. I co-slept with my boy until he was 3. He was breasted until just before he turned two, I broke all the rules by feeding him to sleep and still feeding in the night. He stopped feeding on his own quite abruptly and showed no distress at it. He is 7 now and an excellent sleeper. Falls straight off, sleeps through unless he takes himself to the toilet.

Im not sure how much we can control these things sometimes! I think you do whatever works for you.

Posting this in case people worry about making a rod for their own back etc

I’d say it’s the exact opposite — I’d be willing to bet that babies and small children are getting a lot less sleep now than 50 years ago because of poor sleeping habits, not putting them in their own room etc.

This post is total bollocks to be honest. There are far bigger factors at play in the mental health crisis and I think we all know it.