Why do I have to sleep train my baby?!

[Squirrel81]

My DS is 11 months old. He has ALWAYS been a terrible sleeper but me and my husband work very well as a team so although it’s not been easy we have managed. He also rarely is able to sleep in his cot for his naps in the day so I have to contact nap a lot which is challenging.

My priority, of course, has always been DS and I’ve done pretty extensive research on sleep training and concluded for my family it’s not suitable - I prefer to be responsive to my baby, and the research suggests that the impact on baby of leaving to cry is inconclusive - but I have decided for myself that there IS sufficient evidence it raises their cortisol and can impact brain development. I do not personally want to risk this, even more so because I have a sensitive baby (which people also eye roll at, as if I don’t know my own child). I do however have friends that have sleep trained and I respect their decision - and also understand not everyone has a set up as manageable as my own in terms of disruptive nights.

So my question is - why does everyone feel the need to tell me I HAVE to sleep train. I must do it or my DS’s sleep will be doomed for eternity. I feel incredibly judged for not sleep training, as if I am weak because I can’t allow my baby to cry & not responded to. As if I am not doing the best by him because if I did sleep train his sleep would be better quality.

I am so tired (no pun intended) of the criticism and it is making me doubt myself.

Yes you are very fortunate to have extended maternity leave so you don’t need to prioritise your own sleep.

Others who are not so fortunate may not have that luxury and may need to sleep train.

You’re making it sound like you’ve carried out extensive randomised controlled clinical trials for your “extensive research” which I suspect really means reading some papers which support what you think.

Gazillions of babies have been successfully sleep trained and they are not walking around with brain issues because of the “impact of cortisol”.

This is perhaps the most impressive PFB post I’ve seen on here. Well done 🏆

Maybe I picked the wrong website 😂🫣

Of course you don't 'have to'. But don't go around complaining about how tired you are/broken sleep/petty arguments with DH further down the line unless you are prepared to do something about it.

@Youdontseehow Absolutely not my intention! My apologies, I was merely searching for some like minded people. Eek!

As long as it’s not all you ever talk about with people then I don’t see why people care? How else would they know to care? You just say your night was so so and move on?

So you need an alibi? 😂

I respect others’ views on it, so wouldn’t have tried to talk you into it if I knew you IRL. Although I wish the anti-sleep trainers had offered me the same courtesy!
But having had one friend crash on the motorway thanks to sleep deprivation, and others still up multiple times per night with primary age kids, I do sometimes question their decisions to myself. Especially if they’re complaining about it a lot. OK if you can cope with that, but they look so chronically tired, as do the children.

If you can manage it without it harming the rest of your life, then fine. I’ve got one friend who has coped with it by being in bed for 12 out of every 24 hours herself, so she’s had enough rest. That’s been going on for over ten years now (two children, biggish age gap). But she isn’t working so can manage it. There’s no way I could do the same!

Nah, thanks. The patio got built in 1993 and the next kid was a doddle to deal with once there wasn't a twat in the vicinity keeping both of us awake.

I think sleep is one of those things that everyone has a different experience of and thus a different opinion on.

the best advice is nobody else in the world has ever had your baby, or tried what you have.

I have four, two age six, a four year old and a two year old.

one six year old has never slept. And I mean never. The twins were adopted, I say this for completeness. Co sleeping was not recommended. After. Bad bout of croup age two I gave up with the night wake ups and she sleeps in a super king with me. She sleeps. So that’s a win. She chats now about one day having her own room and bed, it’s set yo ready but she has no interest in it and I have three other children to parent so cannot be up all night.

her sister sleeps beautifully and always has. even if she is sick she likes her own bed with me going along to her.

My four year old is in with us. She does start the night on her own. Loves that routine. Lasts maybe twenty minutes.

My little one has slept like a dream from day dot. No idea why. Nothing different.

with the eldest, we went two years without sleep, or I did as DH did have to work. It broke me, then eventually I thought what is the point here.

everyone now sleeps in this house, albeit a case of musical beds.

we now have a DH with one broken leg and one broken knee on the other leg so it’s even more fun. He wakes more times than they do!

You don’t. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But people do like to justify their own decisions to make themselves feel better about it.

Never sleep trained either of mine. They slept with me til 1 and a bit full time, until probably 3-4 for part of most nights. And then they just slept in their own rooms. Youngest did still come in some nights and sleep on a floor bed in our room until maybe 6, only a couple nights a week if that.

The great thing was, I got lots of sleep! I was back to work with a long commute and 5:30am starts and it meant I slept well and nights were no fuss. Both mine are excellent sleepers now and bedtimes have generally always been low stress.

😁

It's obviously totally up to you how you deal with your child's sleep. What I will say is there are many different ways to 'sleep train' - you don't have to leave baby to cry alone.

OP your updates I think change things a bit given the responses you’re getting.

It’s amazing you’re getting a 2 year maternity leave, truly amazing (I’d have loved that!) and you don’t seem to be affected by the broken nights either. The thing is, everyone is different. I had twins, and 10 months of maternity leave (that was with tagging on my AL - it was as far as it could possibly stretch for us). I was utterly broken from them always being awake (one or the other) all the time; when they were almost 4 months old I clocked I’d been basically awake for almost 30 hours and I had developed incredibly bad PPD. Can you see why I sleep trained?
And as others have said, it wasn’t leaving them to cry, ever. It was keeping an eye on wake windows, putting them down in the cot awake but calm, when they woke giving it a few mins to just see what happened - a slight whimper? Let’s leave and see. Crying? Picked up straight away.
It saved my sanity. And I still find it cruel to read comments suggesting doing so caused any harm to them; it didn’t, in fact I’d argue keeping their mother in that sleep deprived state much longer would’ve been much more detrimental.

I just want to share my experience. How you parent is your choice only. Ignore any comments that come along as trust me over the years there are so many more to come. Take the advice you need and ignore the rest. But please, always remember there is no one ‘right’ way and most Mums are just doing their bloody best.

Except that there’s absolutely 0 evidence for that!
It makes me sad that gradually and gently teaching babies to learn how to sleep independently has become such a loaded and emotional topic.
If they don’t like food the first time they try no one would just stop, same with learning to walk and they fall and cry you wouldn’t just tell them to give up. Babies and kids benefit from sleeping well.

I did sleep training with my first child, now mid 20s and still terribly anxious. I didn’t with my 3 other kids because I thought the anxiety was related to the sleep training and they are far far happier people.

Who knows if the anxiety is linked to sleep training but I’m SO glad I didn’t risk it with the other two. It just seems cruel and wrong. do what you think is best OP

Yet another Mumsnet post with posters wringing their hands about these poor babies left to cry alone in the dark.

Let me say it for the gazillionth time :
sleep 👏🏻 training 👏🏻 isn’t 👏🏻 leaving 👏🏻 your 👏🏻 baby 👏🏻 to 👏🏻 cry 👏🏻

I did a version of the gradual retreat with both my children. Neither were ever left alone to cry or not comforted in some way. We just gradually moved what that comfort was.

Boys now 3 and 5 and have slept through (other than nightmares/illness) very happily since. They have a calm bedtime routine and after book, get into beds and listen to a story as they drift off. I wish my own sleep hygiene was this healthy!!

Honestly OP your posted started judgy but then did the massive drip feed of explaining why you don’t mind broken sleep-as you are financially well off enough to have an extended maternity leave for 2 years

So you are in a massively privileged position preaching to those who have to work and try and find sleep with a / several young children….

I get really confused by these posts, if you’re happy being woken up by your baby throughout the night and you have the time, energy and patience to function on broken sleep then keep doing what you’re doing.

If you want to a baby who sleeps well then go with a routine, putting a baby in a quiet room and allowing them a few mins to settle themselves 🤷‍♀️

My dd is like me, we both need a quiet, dark, comfortable space to sleep and co-sleeping would have been more stressful than being left alone to settle.

My 2 babies slept terribly. We never sleep trained but from the age of 2 they stopped napping and slept through.

I didn’t sleep train my kids. They slept eventually op. Crack on. You’re doing fine - maybe just stop discussing it?
x

You should also look up the impact of chronic sleep deprivation on brain development and on adults for a balanced view of the harms. But other than that, if you stop talking to people about it they might stop telling you.

I didn't teach my baby to walk. She saw me walking a lot (obviously) but the steps she took to start walking were not things I could have taught, because I wouldn't have known how/that she seemingly needed to do certain things, if that makes sense?

The progression went something like:
Rocking on knees
Pulling to stand
A kind of warrior pose
Deep squats
Downward facing dog
Plank
Forward fold
Warrior but moving, kind of a crab walk
Etc. Etc.

She had to test and work things out for herself.

You don’t HAVE to. I didn’t. Mine (9) sleeps perfectly well, and I never “trained” her. I thought the concept was ridiculous. They sleep well when they’re ready; I knew I wouldn’t be staying with her whilst she fell asleep at 18 🤣

As a result, she’s a very secure, confident sleeper who has NO fear of the dark. Amazing. And no stress for either of us.

My two were sleep trained, a mix of controlled crying and gradual retreat. It took 3 days until they were sleeping through. They're 11 and 7 now: neither of them remember it, both of them sleep like logs, we never EVER have battles at bedtime (not smug about it, but it's true), both know they can call us if they have a nightmare, can't find their teddy or drink, feel unwell, etc etc.

Co sleeping is always touted as the fix for poor sleep but it didn't work for us - they both thrashed and screamed just as much as they did in the cot, and nobody slept. They wanted rocking, and they wanted me to do it, and they wanted me to do it in a way that nearly broke my back. In the end they didn't want the rocking either, and would fight and fight and fight until eventually they couldn't stay awake a second longer. DS (DC2) used to headbutt me, pull out clumps of my hair, writhe around in my lap so much I genuinely thought I was going to drop him. It had to stop, for all our sakes.

I nearly crashed my car more than once. Nearly lost my goddamn mind because they'd sleep for 45mins, need rocking/holding for 20mins and then I'd get a total of 25mins before they'd wake up again. I was beside myself with DD until we did CC at 14mo. When DS was 9mo I could feel it happening again, PLUS he was waking DD, so we did it with him and it changed everything. They were happier, I was happier, DH was happier (and didn't have his wife sobbing in his arms every night becuase she couldn't cope any more).

Sleep training saved my life. Of course you don't have to do it. But I wouldn't be here if we hadn't.

I mean, everything in the literature (as in, what decent studies there are, not books peddled by n=1 salesmen) backs up @MrsTerryPratchett . You seem desperate to cling to your belief that your child's sleep is somehow your achievement...it's projecting a certain fragility.

So many are obsessed with getting their NB's to sleep theough the night when there are many factors to consider and parenting is not one of them. When a baby sleeps for 5 hours straight it is considered sleeping through the night.
Babies grow and develop rapidly and require frequent feedings which contributes to lighter sleep and waking. They must be fed on demand without "tricks" like semi-solids in their milk or formula to encourage longer sleeps. Their circadian rhythms take several months to develop as well, so they are not affected by light/dark the way adults are. Routines are calming, but babies don't just learn that "now is sleep time." They will sleep better once their weight is approx double birth weight, though.
It is much easier to follow baby's cues and adjust ourselves which is why the "sleep when baby sleeps" advice still holds. Trying to teach baby is mostly futile because they will sleep through when they are ready. The range is 4-6 months to sleep 5+ hours straight and that can't be taught or forced.