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 think not everyone does it simply because a lot of people think they have to jump the moment baby stirs - sometimes waking them up when they might have just gone back to sleep on their own.
Definitely this which is why, years ago in those dreadful dark ages, our babies slept in their own rooms asap so you weren't both woken up by every snuffle and grunt and mew. You heard them when they actually cried and crept in to stroke their back and soothe them until they dropped off (sometimes helped with a dummy or a thumb). At least one of the parents had a job to go to and sleepless nights mucked that right up.

Oh so sleep training is leaving them to cry? No, I didn't do that.

I did a "sleep management plan" instead, never left to cry but used shush pat to settle them back to sleep.

I didn't sleep train, but I didn't have to. Just out of interest at what time would the 9 week old go down and them wake up for a first feed? BF or bottle? My granddaughter, breastfed, (pumped when I had her) would take a 9 pm feed, then one at 11, which is when I'd settle for the night. Then get up about 6 am. For a baby, I think tgat is good enough.

I didn't do the routine thing because we had family we would stay with, we'd travel a fair bit and I wasn't tired by her sleep pattern.

This exactly. Sleep training literally means to teach your baby/child to fall asleep by themselves. Lots of confusion with the cry it out method which I’m completely against. I sleep trained my youngest two children at approx 11 months old. I did it with my middle daughter because I was returning to work and luckily my PIL were going to mind her. Because of my schedule she was going to stay in their house one night a week and I didn’t think it was fair to be up 2/3 times a night when they were in their sixties. I did the put down pick up method and worked so well I repeated with the youngest at the same age. No crying out involved

"and no one would ever face sleep deprivation after the newborn stage?"

Bwahaha. I know multiple people, including myself, who had wonderful sleeping babies who slept through the night without sleep training until they hit about 3 and they developed fear of the dark / started having nightmares etc.

I am more sleep deprived now than I have been since dc was three mo old.

My solution is Co sleeping. If I left dc they just cried until they were sick (or, after we swapped from a cot to a bed, wouldn't stay in it).

I'm always a bit confused on what it actually means in practicality, I have never once left my boy alone to cry but when he was sleeping in his own room from 6 months, if he cried I would go in, "shhhhh" him gently while holding his hand and stroking his head/back until he fell asleep. Same every time he woke up in the night. I guess this would be classed as sleep training maybe? But I still couldn't ever fathom the idea of leaving him all alone in a room to cry. He's been sleeping independently since he was about 8 months old now, 11 hours at night and I now put him down for his nap/bedtime sleep happy as Larry and he gets himself comfortable and falls straight to sleep, he's 14 months old now

I also had a baby that woke every 20 minutes all night despite co-sleeping, breastfeeding, etc. After 2 months without any improvement (despite everything I tried), I also chose to sleep train for mine and my baby's safety. I think I was very close to a complete breakdown. It's not for everyone, but it was necessary for us. Not everyone does it as not everyone needs to or wants to. After 3 nights she started going to sleep easily on her own and I've always tended to her night wake-ups. I think she still woke 2-3 times till she was 1 and that was amazing to me! 3 years on she's a happy and good sleeper and we still help her get to sleep in the middle of the night if she wakes and needs us.

I really do think all babies are different though. I've never been able to soothe either of mine with just shushing/patting/singing etc, they rapidly escalated to hysterical I-can-hardly-breathe crying if not picked up. So I would pick them up, soothe them, put them back down...cue instant hysteria again. I tried leaving one of them for a few minutes to see if he would just 'grizzle and then calm down' but he got so upset that even once I'd picked him up he hiccup-sobbed in my arms for about 10 minutes. Naturally calmer babies might respond well to a variety of sleep training techniques but I do think some are just wired to be more sensitive.

I absolutely agree with everything in this post.

On the occasions mine starting waking again during the night we didn’t rush in and after 10-15 mins they were usually asleep again. If we’d rushed in after 2-3 mins it might have been a different story.

Also have three very well adjusted, secure teens.

Breastfed. I would feed her at 5pm and then again at 7pm. Dream feed at 10.30/11pm.

That would get her through to about 6.30am.

Yep. Sleeping in the same room and co-sleeping has buggered this up massively.

GF is much maligned on here but this is what I followed and it is all incredibly sensible.

The ‘crying until they’re sick’ thing is a MN trope.

I don’t remember this being in GF’s books AT ALL (would love a reference). I also followed her method and my babies never ever got to that stage.

Because it felt like harder work and more upset than simply going along with my child's sleep patterns and preferences. My one child would only fall to sleep in my arms, so we simply sat there calmly and quietly at around 730 each evening until this happened, then carried them to bed. It was no bother. Another of my children would persistently get out of bed and come into ours. It wasn't ideal but we got more sleep than if we'd been up and down taking them back and forth all night. By the age of about 5, all of them had graduated to going to bed at bedtime and staying put from choice, they seemed to decide it was the more 'grown up' thing to do, and as it came from their free choice they were quite secure about being alone by then. They're all adults with healthy sleep patterns.

I think two things are true here. Those who sleep train never seem to regret it. Those who don't never seem to regret it. Those who did sleep train get the benefit of a good nights sleep and those who don't sleep train get the benefit of the moral high ground! Just comes down to deciding which one you want really!

Of course there are those unicorn babies who naturally seem to love sleep and those parents are the real winners!

I'm not writing this perspective to make anyone who sleep trained to feel bad. Sometimes people have to try this out of necessity.

My best friend told me when we were children that one of her earliest memories was screaming in fear and distress being left to sleep alone. That she remembers the cold sick terror of thinking no one was coming back. She had been adopted so it probably compounded the abandonment feelings that were already there. Her parents had done what they had been advised to by the book in those days and did their best, and they were lovely people, but she spent her nights having the terrors.

The thing was that I remembered this feeling too. Being in my cot and endlessly crying for my dad to come and pick me up and then hitting my head on the sides in distress. It just doesn't seem like an intuitive and natural thing to do to me, but some babies maybe wouldn't be so affected. Maybe if there's multiple children it works because they have that other person in the room.

www.askdrsears.com/topics/health-concerns/sleep-problems/co-sleeping-yes-no-sometimes/

Really interesting stuff here about the mother and baby when they sleep.

I don't take any 'moral high ground' for not sleep training. I'm the first to admit I didn't because it felt like the harder and more upsetting option for me. Possibly would have been better for DC to have had a routine, but frankly in the context of the lifelong job of parenting, its small potatos. They're in their 30s and 20s now with no issues, so what's to regret? Ideally no parent should have regrets about doing what worked best for their families at the time because the impact of one method over another, while a big deal at the time, is usually minimal in the scheme of things.

There are so many pervasive myths out there about how cruel it is, how it causes lifelong attachment issues. Unfortunately many parents will hear that and accept it as true without actually researching it for themselves. I know when I was pregnant friends with kids would casually talk about how appalling it is to do to a child and that they would never do it because how could you if you love your child? Funnily enough some of them put their baby at massive risk by bedsharing as a solution.

If anyone is curious, the book Crib Sheet has a chapter on sleep training. I'm so thankful I had an open mind and was happy to look into it rather than just listen to opinions from friends! Best thing we've ever done. I recommend it to everyone.

@Darkdiamond I've just had a quick read through this thread and wanted to say how much I appreciate you for calmly challenging some of the myths around sleep training. I'm sure there will be parents who don't know much about it on here whose eyes have been opened a little!

People who can cope with waking hourly for months at a time past the newborn stage and who judge parents for sleep training will never admit that not everyone has the privileges to make that possible.

Just some to think of:

• if you have an older child to drive to school, you can't risk falling asleep at the wheel and killing everyone
• if you have certain chronic health conditions that are exacerbated by exhaustion (e.g. chronic pain, mental health difficulties, chronic fatigue, many more), you simply cannot physically tolerate that level of interrupted sleep indefinitely before you become too unwell to care for your child
• if you have a job where you can kill people if you try do it while severely sleep deprived
• if you don't have any village to step in and watch the baby while you catch up on sleep in the day

Unfortunately not everyone is physically or practically capable of just waiting it out indefinitely waiting and seeing when or if their child will finally learn to get better sleep. Sleep training is a proactive way to help your baby/toddler learn how to fall asleep unaided and get better quality sleep. No wonder babies and toddlers wake in the night crying if they wen to sleep with a parent right there and then wake up in a different place alone. It'd be disorientating for an adult let alone a small child.

I do think people mean well when they refuse to sleep train and they genuinely believe they're doing what's best for their child, it's easy to be shortsighted when you're absolutely exhausted and haven't got the mental energy to draw from. Sleep affects everything though. Learning, managing emotions, physical wellbeing. It's no kindness to a child to just sit back and accept they have poor sleep and do nothing about it.

Parenting is sometimes about doing the difficult things you know are for the best for your child's wellbeing. I always found it funny that we understand you have to help a child learn to use a potty, to walk, to talk, but apparently sleep is just one of those random things you can't do anything about (despite there being evidence-based, effective techniques anyone can put into practice) haha

I was very anti this but 18 month old Dd was wakingand feeding constantly all night. One night with DH soothing her when she woke but no feeding and she started sleeping through. Magic! I then did it a bit earlier with 2 and 3.

I'm guessing what we were told to do 30+ years ago would now be considered sleep training. It worked for me.
My daughter has a 2.5 yo. He stays downstairs until he falls asleep naturally so sometimes not till after 10. She was saying that she and her husband get no time together in the evenings because of this. I'm not sure what the advantages of this method are meant to be but it just seems exhausting.
I wouldn't suggest anything to her as I don't want to be seen as interfering.

Good for you not offering unsolicited advice, it will preserve your relationship.

I don't think what your daughter is doing is a method tbh. Sounds more like parents that are too exhausted or lazy to implement a proper bedtime routine with boundaries. That poor little lad being left to pass out downstairs with all the stimuli of lights/noise and then being carried to bed. I thought most parents knew the importance of a solid, reliable, bedtime routine.

@CherryPopShowerGel thanks for that.
I did ask her what was the reasoning behind this but she didn't really give me much of an answer. She thinks the way she and her brother were "trained" was awful! I know that I had a life in the evenings and wasn't getting cross becuase they wouldn't fall asleep. There's a new baby due in a couple of months so goodness knows what will happen then.