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…!

I agree.

People at least need to learn the many methods of sleep training before judging it and making the incorrect assumption that it always means leaving a baby to cry.

I sleep trained my daughter- Gina Ford method. Worked like a dream and she slept all night.

We sleep trained our first. Didn’t need to with the second as practiced putting him down to sleep from early on and he was less stressy. Neither of them slept through til after a year though, and still often don’t. I see it as a better way to put them to bed, not to make them sleep through.

I tried it and I lasted about four seconds.

With hindsight I'm glad, because it turned out he had obstructive apnoea and it would have put him at risk of brain damage if I'd gone through with it.

The same Gina Ford who said that if your child vomits from crying you pick them up, change the sheets and put them back down without holding them or looking them in the eyes?

She might have removed this from her recent books but I remember feeling ill when I read that. My friend recommended me the book when I was pregnant. It was a distressing thing to read.

It’s child abuse

I didn't sleep train, my daughters are grown up now, and I don't regret not sleep training. They are small for such a short time. And then they are teenagers who you have to haul out of bed 😁

I think it is misunderstood like gentle parenting
Lots of parents I know sleep trained their children but their children wouldn't lay screaming for hours most would self sooth but not be distressed. it is entirely dependant on the child's temperament

Also, I would never judge a mum for leaving her child screaming if it was safer I have been sleep deprived because my daughter was intolerant to dairy but because the allergy test came back negative we didnt realise that dairy was causing her so much discomfort I was a single mum with a 5 year old surviving on very little sleep.

We did it with the first and it worked perfectly. But I don't know how we got through it. Perhaps I wasn't very maternal then or maybe she learned fast, ( always has done). I couldn't bring myself to do it with second and he was the worst. I didn't get a full night's sleep til he was almost 18 months which was a killer. For third, somehow sleep just wasn't a big problem and I don't know why. I think she was in our bed a lot of the time ( not ideal but she wasn't too wriggly. )

So if you can do it, I would recommend it. Based on my experience, if you can do it, you'll be glad in the end.

This is exactly the type of sleep training I did with my children once they were about six months old.
If I knew their nappy was fine, they were fed and not in pain, I would never automatically pick them up. I would pat their backs. They gradually settled more without needing me.

When they were ten months, I timed their cries (if fussy cries not blood curdling cries!) for two minutes before attending to them. They quickly started sleeping through, within a week actually.

Only their father ever got up to them once they were weaned, unless they were sick.

Because I found the days hard work with babies and toddlers but cosy nights together are what helped us bond and got me though the hard parts of parenting. I've never wanted them to sleep differently and co-sleeping and breastfeeding meant there was never any crying or getting up in the night so there was nothing to train. Once they moved into their own beds they'd come down to our bed at some point in the night quietly usually without waking us and just go straight back to sleep. I'm glad my 6 year old still slips into my bed in the early hours of the morning. I will miss it when she stops. Waking up in a warm cosy family nest is my favourite thing.

With some kids it doesn't work, so that's that. DD started screaming as soon as she got put down in her cot , so there would definitely be crying. And hyperventilating, and throwing up or pooping herself. It was upsetting for all of us so ended up cosleeping instead. The kid just didn't like sleeping much.

No it isn’t. 🙄

Sleep training is neither here nor there, it's how you interact and treat your child when they're awake and active that's important. My DS was in NICU for months often having to cry it out as I couldn't hold him, it was horrendous but he survived and when we got him home we showered him with love and he is one happy and confident little boy. Parents need to do what works best for them to ensure they are present to love their child when they're awake

Agree with other posters, I think the success of sleep training massively depends on the temperament of the baby. I, now that I have two, have come to the realisation that DH and I only make fussy babies 🤣. I tried sleep training DD1, who was a horrific sleeper, and it was awful. We tried all sorts of different methods, they all ended up with her hysterical to the point she made herself sick. It was horrible! She eventually figured it out on her own (although since her baby sister has arrived has decided she would also quite like to sleep in Mummy and Daddy's bedroom 🙈). Now we have DD2, who's only 3 months old, I've already resigned myself to 'what will be, will be' as she is following in her fussy big sister's footsteps!! Other friends with far more chilled babies have had more success on the sleep training (how I envy them!!)

I cannot leave my baby (now toddler) in distress. It kills me. If he’s in his cot crying hysterically, he needs me. He’s just over 2 years old now and I still won’t let him cry. I may let him whinge and self soothe for a few minutes, often he moans in his sleep. But actual crying real tears and showing real emotion, absolutely no way could I leave him. It’s bloody cruel.
Very occasionally, usually when he’s under the weather, he needs to be in our bed, so, DH goes to the spare room and DS comes in with me. We just do what comes naturally to us, and that’s putting DS first. Sleep training is putting your own needs before the needs of the child. That doesn’t sit right with me.

I don’t believe all babies are trainable. I also think you are trying to get them to do something that contradicts nature. As humans have evolved through centuries we would have slept with our babies on us, it’s only in the very recent history we’ve put them down anywhere else. It’s hard wired in babies to want to be held. I suspect that forcing them to sleep alone, crying it out might be actually doing some long term psychological harm. Look at US where sleep training is more mainstream and the proportion of people on anti depressants and other prescription drugs as adults. I suspect there is a link but we don’t have the research yet.

Worked with child no.1. Tried it with child no.2 and failed miserably. Constant tears so we quickly gave up. Child no.3 was even more glued to me so I just co slept and never sleep trained. Different methods suit different kids.

I didn't as I think its cruel to leave a baby crying alone - they're learning that they won't get comfort/attention when they need it. I think 3 months is a bit young to have to learn that.

@Taigabread

A friend of mine said this. She could 'never leave her child crying'. So instead her child then proceeded to cry for hours through the evening, in her arms, exhausted and desperately overtired and crying because they wanted to sleep. And then cried again every 2 hours through the night. And then cried lots in the day and was generally quite an unhappy baby as just seemed so tired, all the time.

Mine fussed for a few mins (literally 3 mins) before falling asleep. Was a happy smiley delight all day. The only exception was when for whatever reason they didn't sleep well (loud noise or whatever) when we really observed the impact of poor sleep as the next day they would be so so unhappy and much harder to manage.

Which method involved less crying??

Sleep is unbelievably important. A very brief period of fussing at bedtime (minutes!!) is absolutely worth it for the beneficial impact of good sleep.

Exactly this ^

I honestly don't understand how people get babies to sleep without sleep training.

Before we did it, she'd be crying for hours with us rocking her, put her down and she'd wake screaming, waking every few hours. We were all miserable.

Co-sleeping is also a mystery. She would never fall asleep other than on me, and then I couldn't sleep as it wasn't safe. Apart from as a newborn she wouldn't just falll asleep in our bed.

We did Ferber and it was life changing. Yes she cried at bedtime, but the longest she's cried is 8 minutes.

If she wakes in the night we go in straight away but she normally sleeps though.

Before that, hours of crying. I don't actually understand what non-sleep training looks like and always feel guilty that we sleep trained when I see negative posts.

I think it depends. Our first slept through the night from 6 months and it was very simple. I always went to her when she woke and fed her (breastfeeding) straight away and back to bed. But when she woke 5am I thought, I wonder what happens if I don't rush to her. She cried less then a minute and it was more like a soft cry calling out and back to sleep. We did that 3 days in a row and that was that. She then slept through the night. DS was slightly different and I was worried he might wake his older sister (born 20 months apart) so I ran to him every time until 13 months when I was fed up. So I had to let him cry for 10-15 mins and again it was one time and for 3 nights until he stopped. I think if you keep going to them, they will keep waking, but use your judgement, as you can tell by the cry....if its a sleepy cry or little moan that sounds like they will go back to sleep, then let them do on their own. But if they are crying down the house, then go to them.

When they got older if they ever woke I would go to them (as it would be waking for a reason). They would rarely wake, but if they did it was because they were scared or the odd time sick.

Babies do not have any ability to 'self soothe'.

However some babies will learn help isn't coming and shut down (ie, stop objecting) far far quicker than others, and some will experience less distress/damage to the developing brain than others.

So for some parents it looks like sleep training was fine, it worked well, hurrah, their sanity is saved. For others it will be a horrific experience with babies vomiting and shitting themselves in distress, and for most it's going to be somewhere in between and what makes a difference is how long the parent can ignore their instincts.

To further complicate the issue, there are myriad reasons beyond 'I am a small baby and am not supposed to be by myself' as to why babies don't sleep well, many of which the parent will never figure out because thats impossible - and there are myriad ways of applying 'sleep training' - from a very mild 'fixed response' (return, touch, shush, leave) to a balls to the wall absolutely ignore the screaming blue faced child no matter what, and again.. everything in between.

All of this means that not only will 'it' not work for all children/parents but 'it' may well not even be remotely the same method that person A means, that person B then attempts.

1. some babies sleep better naturally than others and so there is less need
2. each parent's threshold of what they are able to tolerate tiredness wise varies hugely, what may be debilitating to someone may be manageable to someone else
3. some don't want to leave their babies to cry, even for short intervals.
4. some try and it doesn't work or their baby becomes to upset for them to want to continue

For us personally, we considered it several times and things naturally improved so did not feel a strong need which outweighed our reservations. I did not find 1 or 2 wakes a night by that point (13mish) to be so debilitating that I could not cope with it, despite being back at work. I prioritised my desire not to hear by baby upset overnight over my need for unbroken sleep. Others balance those things differently based on their situation. Sleep training has worked for everyone I know who has used it. But most of them have needed to redo it many times into toddlerhood. All it does is teach a baby that they can fall asleep by themselves. It does not solve issues around routines/timings or peak periods of separation anxiety, where their need for closeness outweighs their ability to fall asleep without support. Research shows that by age 2, there is no difference in sleep trained vs non sleep trained babies.

Ds would fall asleep in my arms then I would put him in bed (my bed) until he was about 3 then I used to lie down with him until he was asleep

I never wanted to leave ds crying I wasn’t comfortable with this

Some people dont like to be bothered too much by their babies. They sleep train them and than 20-40 years later they will be surprised that their children end up in psychotherapy.