Am I being unreasonable .. about sleep

[TotsDaddy]

We have twins, now aged 2y10m and a little girl aged 11m.
The twins didn't sleep through the night until they were a year old, both had a 10pm and 4am feed. The 10pm feed continued untill they were over 2, I was exhausted. At the time my wife declared that she didn't believe in sleep training techniques, and there was nothing we could do except grin and bear it. It was if fact so bad, that that the constant waking damaged my eyesight ( No I'm serious, the consultant said, even before I mentioned our situation, "This sort of damage to the cornea is caused by stress and continued sudden waking")

When we had the little girl I hoped we could do better. She is now almost 1, and has been cuddled/fed to sleep on a regular basis. Again any form of sleep training has been rejected outright. She still feeds at 10pm and 5am, and for the last week has spent 2am until 4am awake while been cuddled back to sleep.

I'm told that this is all just normal and if I really asked people in private they would admit it was quite typical.

So.. am I being unreasonable about sleep?

Once again great posts from Lenin and very good advice, too.

Facebook - we've done tv and books during the night (among other things) and our children became good sleepers. It does work.

Tv as a crutch/distraction/time absorber is not a great idea, however desperate times call for desperate measures if nothing else works!

I think the thing with being a parent is your baby will ALWAYS be able to tug at your heartstrings, they will always know the chinks in your armour, and they will always be the only people in your lives who will cause a complete breakdown in common sense. I don't mean to offend parents by saying this but I have worked with so many families as an objective outsider and you wouldn't believe what some parents think is "normal" as they have allowed it to become so, as a means to get through each day, or as a deliberate or inadvertant choice... parents have so much pressure to be perfect, so much guilt to not "damage" their children. Sometimes it does take someone like me to come in and take the strain, let parents take a breath, regain their perspective and then see the wood for the trees. Also, it is always easier to help a baby learn to self soothe if the baby doesn't associate you with what's happened previously. SO when I go and spend a week with a family the baby doesn't know me from Adam. But I act gently and calmly and they respond well to my prompts and encouragements and it generally works well, and parents are astounded. The phrase I hear most is "If I'd known it was THAT easy...!!!" and I tell them but it's NOT that easy at all if you are knackered, stressed, paranoid, upset, and all the other emotions that run through you when it's your own baby screaming all night. If you're one of the lucky parents who have got good sleepers that's great. But all babies wake in the night, good sleeper or not. And I feel very strongly that it's our job as adults/teachers in the child's life to teach them the skills necessary for healthy habits. This applies to food, exercise, cleanliness, etc. It doesn't mean letting a baby feel alone and scared and isolated, and destined for years of therapy. It just means investing some time and effort into seeing if your child is ready for the next step in developing good sleep habits and being able to get themselves back to sleep after the awaken in the night.

I'm sorry but I don't buy the whole "we have someone to cuddle in the night, so why shouldn't they" argument. What about us lonely singles? adults wake in the night and get themselves back to sleep without even being aware of it. That's what we are teaching our babies. If we have a drink of water or get up for a wee, then that's different. A habit is NOT a part of the self soothing process in my mind. A habit is an extra behaviour that we choose to do. we still go back to sleep. We don't rely on that sip of water/hug in order to fall back to sleep. And we don't cry if we don't get a sip of water/hug. We just know how to drop off, as we learnt it as a baby. Some of us might have learnt at 3 months some at 3 years. There is no right or wrong way to learn it. I choose to use my method as after years of doing it, it works. Parents are happy, their children are happy, and if there are any regressions etc which are perfectly natural, the skill has been learnt early on and remains effecive and successful even if things go tits up for a while.

They do indeed learn it, eventually. But if parents choose to teach it and the child is ready to learn, why not do it then? It's like toilet training, some children are ready at 18 months others haven't a bleeding clue and aren't ready til they are 4! You can try and teach it, and if successful that's great but if the baby isn't ready yet there is no point in putting them through it. I have had to tell some parents there's a snowball's chance in hell of this working at this point in time, then I have returned 3 months later and it's worked a treat. But I will say if I try and train a 4-6 month old 90% of the time it works within a week and even if events such as illness and teething mess things up down the line, the baby is still able to self soothe once they are feeling better. So that's why I advocate strongly about doing it that early IF you are going to do it at all.

And that is the Most Important Thing

I wonder if everything I do and know on a professional level will go flying out the window once it's my baby I am dealing with??? Probably. [sigh]

So are you saying that parents should over-ride any instinctive feelings they have that what they are doing isn't right for their child? That really is what I did with my first dc. Everyone telling me it was for the best. With hindsight, it wasn't.
You have said that you don't have the same emotional attachment for a child that isn't yours as the parent of that child has. Are you saying that's the way to go? Wouldn't that be a bit risky? If a parent over-rides their instinct in one area isn't there a danger they might not trust their instincts in other areas?

Thanks for all the advice. I'm a bit too tired to take it all in today so we're going for an early night and I shall review thoroughly tomorrow.

ElenorRigby - my DS has been sleeping in his own cot in his own room since he was 7 months. I can count the times he hasn't woken in the last six months on one hand. Not all children are brilliant sleepers.

My DS has got a lot worse since he turned 2 and started having nightmares as ImSoNotTelling mentioned. I have realised in retrospect that I was smug at times about my DS's sleep and now I'm in sleep hell so don't bank on it

Juule, I don't know if that is aimed my way but I will answer anyway with a big, fat emphatic NO. Parents should never over ride their own instincts, if something feels wrong then STOP it. If your baby is not responding well to any attempts to teach self soothing then stop: they are not ready. I do the same thing, if my charge does not respond well, in that they get more distressed or over 3 nights there is no progress made, I stop, simple as.

When I say I don't have the same emotional attachment I mean that I don't allow emotion to cloud my judgement of the situation. I can tell from listening to nearly 100 babies cry what cry is a tired, winding down one, and which one is a frantic distressed one. I have the benefit of experience behind me that many parents don't have, and I use my experience to judge the situation and act in the best interest of the baby at all times. If I can tell the baby is winding down, I will allow 5 more minutes whimpering. A parent might not realize that the baby is close to falling back to sleep, or they might just be too desperate at 3am and just give up. I can approach the baby with a bit more objectivity and this kind of emotional detachment allows me to maybe act in a way a parent simply could not by virtue of their own attachment to the child. Confuddled??? Me too. I can't explain it well in words. It's more of a physical dynamic between a parent and child, and a third party and child. I would never encourage a parent to detach from their baby. However many parents do, as they get so frustrated and resentful about/from sleep deprivation that they just turn off. It's a normal response, however much you love your baby I bet there are times that you've wondered how much you could get for them on eBay!!!!

SCARY - re "explain to me what I should do about my DS who was awake from 2am until gone 5am last night singing, playing games, telling stories, jumping about."

It sounds like he is doing these things because you are there. Child or adult, nobody sings, plays games, or tells stories for three hours on their own.

In your place, I would prepare a room for him and explain that he is now a big boy, and big boys sleep in their big boy beds. Teddy is there to hug him in his sleep, etc. He is old enough to understand.

Of course he will protest. There will surely be tears. I wouldn't ignore them, but would comfort him without reversing the decision - kisses, hugs, stories, whatever, but he sleeps in his bed.

Be consistent and he will adapt to the new rules. This is not "breaking" him, nor is it cruel.

DS needed a feed every 2 hours in the day and every 3 hours at night till about 6 months. After that it was 3 daytimes, 4 at night. He first slept through at 11 months, by which I mean 11pm to 6 am. But he now gets night terrors, 6 weeks later, so though we don't feed, he does need cuddles and soothing.

Tis normal. Horrific, draining and exhausting, but normal. Not a fan of sleep training either, as it seems mainly to consist of training babies not to expect their needs met, though I admire your wife for sticking to that with twins. I am not sure I could have.

Oops. Sleep deprivation meant I missed reading oh, 11 pages... again.

"Not a fan of sleep training either, as it seems mainly to consist of training babies not to expect their needs met"

Not always! When babies cry they do not always need adult intervention. It's the only way they can communicate any kind of negativity they feel. Sometimes babies simply have a wail just to have a wail, like we would have a moan to our friends or go and shut ourselves in our rooms and listen to crappy music. If we were to respond to every single cry a baby made we would go insane! If a baby has been fed, bathed,changed, cuddled and soothed til they are sleepy and then laid in their crib/bassinet/parents bed at a time of the evening when bedtime makes sense, and then that baby cries for several minutes, it doesn't mean their needs haven't been met!!! Sleep training does not (in my mind anyway) mean depriving a baby of food or a nappy change or anything else essential to their physical well being.

I am really enjoying (if that's the right word???) this discussion. I'm incredibly fascinated with sleep and infants and would LOVE to be a part of a long term study of the psycho-social development of all infants who received some form of sleep training versus those who didn't. Hhhmmmm maybe that's my career aim for when I finally (reluctantly) grow up?

Lenin, with all due respect (and you sound lovely from your posts) I think your' wrong. The reason we adults have someone to cuddle at night is that some of us have sexual relationships and so we sleep with our partners. Some don't, and those people sleep alone. So your argument is based on confusing two things- sexual closeness & parent-child closeness. IMO these are 2 different relationships & should be kept separate. This is to the benefit of both child / parents. IMO extensive co-sleeping (and more generally, no boundaries of this kind) could potentially confuse these 2 separate relationships i.e. the child may not be helped to realize that the relationship between mum & dad is 'special' and different to the relationship he/she has with mum/dad. I'm not saying this happens in every case, I'm just saying that that's how I view things. That DP & I need to have our space, time etc in order to function as a couple (not only sexually, but generally as a couple). And that DS also needs his own space in order to feel 'this is my room / this is my bed' and develop his own separate life from early on. I felt (in the case of our family) that the co-sleeping we were doing until 9 months ended up after a certain point being detrimental to the general balance in the family. I'm not saying this is the case for everyone. But this is how I saw it.

One last point. In the case of adults sleeping with their sexual partners, they don't rely on being cuddled in order to fall back to sleep. As Mananny said, we all wake several times at night. I don't cuddle DP everytime I do, I assume I just turn around & fall back asleep.

As for DCs having the 'right' to their own habits. Sure, I have no problem with that. However, not all habits are created equal. If I (as an adult, developed a habit of getting up at 3.00 am, making myself a cup of tea, & reading for an hour, I would probably after a few months be exhausted. I would then assume I'm suffering from insomnia & try to do something about it. I would not simply accept it as a normal 'habit' which I've chosen to have. DCs can't change the habits that are detrimental to them (and to their families) without some help. That's what parents are for.

I'm not entirely sure that's all it's about cote - last time he did this (a couple of weeks ago) I put him back in his own room and he was still playing with his toys 2 hours later.

This has only happened on Friday nights though which is the evening after he spends the day with my mother. I don't know if she does something to him but it seems a bit of a coincidence ...

Maybe she has him sleep a lot of the day? Or he could be very over tired... overtiredness makes children nearly impossible to settle down for the night, they get the second (and third and fourth...) wind. Lots of people mistake overtiredness for NOT being tired at all and this just perpetuates the problem.

Mananny, thanks for responding. What you say does make sense. Stopping if something is obviously not working seems sensible to me.

I think my reservations are with the people who are insistent that sleep training only requires a gentle method over 3 days (perhaps a week) and in no way involves breaking a child's will and works for any baby/toddler. That in some way it is the parent who is weak for not persevering or that they have misread their child's cries.
Also the assumption that without this training the child will never learn how to self-settle or sleep through the night.
My experience has shown me that the all the above are not necessarily true.

I accept that there might be times when new parents need guidance. However, I think there should be balance between letting parents know that there is a valid alternative to cc/sleep training that can enhance family relationships and is only one phase among many.

I meant that the night-waking was just one phase among many.

"the assumption that without this training the child will never learn how to self-settle or sleep through the night"

Who said that?

Without intervention, the child will take his sweet time (read: months, sometimes years) to sleep through the night. That is not good for us as parents, not good for siblings, and not good for child himself who would greatly benefit from a full night's sleep.

I actually disagree with that Cote, I think if a baby has a good routine from early on (good routine=doesn't equal strict routine) then probably sleep training can be avoided altogether. I really believe that the worst sleep training has to be done with babies/toddlers that have been completely fed on demand, have many sleep associations (cuddling, rocking, singing to sleep etc). I suspect that one of the reasons sleep training doesn't work for some children is that their feeding/sleeping structure in the day is not consistent & then it's harder to work on sleep at night. What I'm trying to say is- if a baby is used to being rocked to sleep PLUS fed to sleep PLUS has a dummy PLUS is fed on demand PLUS sleeps in parents' bed then sleep training is bound to be a nightmare if parents attempt to change all this in one go. It's simply impossible to do. While, if you only have one particular issue & everything else is relatively ok & then sleep training can be relatively painless for all involved.

This is an hypothesis, I'm not assuming I know why sleep training works / doesn't work for children. I'm just going by my own experience which was the following: first we structured DS's routine a bit (after 5 months of being completely fed on demand)- which didn't involve any crying at all actually, nor any pressure of any kind. I felt at the time (when he was 5 months) that it was a good time to gently introduce a routine. Then the only problem we had was the dummy which made his sleep really really bad. So at 9 months when we bit the bullet (due to exhaustion) & did sleep training for that it was really quite easy. I really really didn't feel my DS was traumatized by the whole thing. He whinged more than cried & was comforted by milk during the whole thing.

i have returned to this as it's still rolling on!
this is not a competition about whose kids sleep worst-and it does seem to have turned into one at some points!
i personally wouldn't want to have sex with my toddler in our bed,i wouldn't want to have sex with my toddler in the same room-i wouldn't want to have sex with anyone else in our room-and if it's ok to do it at 2 how about 3? or 4? or 6? where's the cut off?
i wouldn't want to have sex in my lounge as A) i have a teenager who often wanders around the house and B)don't really want carpet burns as it's not the image i am trying to convey.
it really is horses for courses but i also wouldn't want bloody matresses lying around the house to enable my toddler to dictate who sleeps where,with whom and for how long..

Took the words out mf my mouth Cote.

The whole point of training a child is, if they are ready it does work. If we waited for children to do everything at their own sweet pace then quite frankly nothing would be achieved for years! Any form of teaching at an age and child appropriate stage is an intervention. It is a parents job, a teachers job, a nanny's job, to teach children life skills and not sit back on their laurels and wait for a child to do it all themselves. Obviously it can be done gently and without huge distress and trauma (I manage it!) and it can be done at 4 months or 4 years. But the child has to be ready. But being ready does not mean there's no intervention, IYSWIM. Maybe receptive is a better word than ready? Either way, I stand by my ethos that it's a positive skill to teach and if it can be done at 4-6 months it is way easier than doing at a later stage.

(I am mananny btw. Changed my name as I am no longer in Boston and I was getting depressed seeing mananny when I am not there any more )

Maria - I was referring to a child who hasn't already slept through on his own by 6 months or so. Personally, I wouldn't wait for this baby to sleep through in his own sweet time. Friends who went down that path had children who slept through at 2-3 years. I would kill myself by then and probably take a family member or two with me to the other side.