controlled crying...don't we all do it in the end?

[mamacherry]

Who does it? Is it ok? Will it cause lasting damage? Don't all parents inevitably do it in the end at some point or other, whether they admit it or not? Considering it with my 4 months old dd2 as she started sleeping though the night 8pm to 6am at 8 weeks but is now waking regularly and I am sure she doesn't need milk - she's massive!

Sorry, Rag - it sounds as though your ds sleeps as well as mine, who was co slept with and fed to sleep from the start right until he was about 5!

The bit about causing harm - I'm talking about studies into cortisol levels in children left to cry for varying amounts of time at a very young age.

These levels form the baseline which carries into adulthood and if raised, can preempt a greater stress response in later life.

it depends on how you do it I guess but I still think no crying is best...or as little crying as possible, controlled or not.

But sometimes CC does actually mean less crying overall...

Thanks Flight - I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this

Even if my DS does turn out to have higher stress levels in later life it will be hard to know, without a controlled (no pun intended) experiment whether this is due to CC, being an only child, having older parents, having an EMCS, having major surgery at an early age, moving schools etc etc.

Anyway, it worked for us and now there are even more things to worry about as he gets older

Should add to my last post (saying I am lucky to have great sleepers, who were initially frequent hungry wakers until 8mths ish) by saying they sleep anywhere and even at 3.5 DS happily sleeps at GPs without us.

Not sure how I got to be this lucky but it wasnt by using CC.

Maybe its payback for the frequent waking in the early months.

Well exactly. Mine will probably have very high stress because of other factors...I only argue against it because it feels so fundamentally unhappy (at least temporarily) for both parents and children, but then, there are things I have done which have put my children at risk of other types of stress.

You can't really win as a parent. You can only do your best.

igglybuff - i meant giving solids @ about 4mo meant they slept better. prior to training them at 6 mo. Which was pretty painless all told (2 nights DD, 0 Nights DS)

CC threads, to those who don't already know, will end up with people alleging it is a form of abuse and mentioning daft studies into the behaviour of Rumanian Orphans and then draw parallels to our little loved-up darlings being left to yell for a bit. Then with people pointing out how ridiculous that is, and that if it makes them sleep better that has to better all round.... and that there really is zero evidence of any 'psychological damage'/....

then everyone gets bored and goes back to discussing whatever it was they really anjoy discussing...

it's been done alot.

CC at 4 months would be a cruel and crazy thing to do.

The idea of CC is that babies learn that parents won't sit with them the whole time, but will come back, and they aren't being abandoned. At 4 months old baby's brains aren't capable of forming this deduction.

It'll appear to "work" because your baby will give up hope and stop crying, in much the same way that the children seen in Romanian orphanages don't cry.

To answer your original question - no, we don't all do CC.

I thought you'd like my Romanian orphanages bit!!

But let's face it, people who do CC always seem to post about it, wanting reassurance that it's OK. To me that suggests that deep down they suspect it can't be right.

i would never ever do it. babies/children need to feel secure - if they cry and their parent/carer does not respond then they don't understand why. babies are designed to cry when they need something and mothers are designed to respond - thats why cc is so excrutiating for mothers because it goes totally against their natural instinct. this is based on john bowlby's theory of attachment amongst other child psychologists. it is widely recognised by child psychologists that leaving to cry is damaging. not sure if controlled crying is same thing.

also i read, on here i think, that leaving your baby to cry raises his stress levels which then goes on to produce large amounts of stress hormone, cortisol in the blood. as a result every time the child gets upset in the future these large amounts of cortisol get produced as a learnt response, so they go into meltdown or get angry very quickly for minor things.

this is what i read/heard. but feel free to correct, modify, disagree, kick off

Rebecca - I don't think people who do CC always go on about - its just that as England says - this topic always gets a hugely emotive response on Mumsnet - I am sure most of us who do CC keep away from these threads - as I should have done tonight !

Doing CC at all

Doing it at 4 months!

One of the few things I judge on tbh. How anyone can leave a baby to cry is beyond me. Makes me feel sick just to think of it

Rebecca you are so right.

I really believe that when you interact with your baby, then you are laying important foundations for the future development of your child.

IMO ...
At this age you should still be responding to your baby.

Agree with Kalo and there is lots of good evidence to back this up. I reckon probably lots of parents make things much worse for themselves, sleeping wise, by ignoring the stress angle. I mean, all the picking up and putting down just serves to make the baby more and more anxious and upset. How does that help him/her sleep - let alone develop good long-term sleep associations?

In my book, babies and small children learn to sleep like they learn many other things - by example. Spending their nights with adults who are very much asleep is an extremely good way to learn things like, we don't get up to play in the middle of the night.

My DD was a horrifically crap sleeper, even at 9 months old she was waking 8 times a night. No way I could do CC, I brought her into bed and she stayed there - the only way any of us got any sleep. When she was 18 months I finally found out the reason why - hay fever - she couldn't breathe properly! Glad I didn't pay attention to the so-called authorities on baby sleep, who are obsessed with behavioural problems and have little understanding of normal sleep physiology in either babies or adults.

No, never did it. DS might have slept through/ self-settled sooner than 22 months old if we had but he sleeps great now and we're happy with the choices we made.

Those that are criticising the OP for starting a thread to make herself feel better about her choices- what's wrong with that? I join in the odd thread about er, co-sleeping for example, so I can read posts by people who agree with me and feel good about what I did. Thought that was the whole point of MN, actually...

up til the age of about 2 babies do not understand that they are separate entities to their mother , they think they are one and the same person (thats why terrible twos exist - they realise they are an independent person so they have to keep testing this), up til this point they are completely egocentric - they believe the world literally revolves round them, that they control it, if they cry you come for them that is fact. when you cc then you break this natural instinct which is a survival mechanism. in turn this makes the child unable to trust/rely on his own instincts and unable to trust others so they say.

on the other hand parents may need to balance this view with the fact that a mother who is at her wits end with tiredness may have no other option. I have a non sleeping 2.5 year old so i know how hard it is.

i would say that 4 months old is way too young for any kind of sleep training.

the amount of books on babies sleeping proves than non sleeping is perfectly normal.

perhaps we should look at how soceity looks after mothers. in some soceities many people look after the mum, do all cooking, cleaning looking after other children etc so mother can just concentrate on feeding and sleeping and cuddling.

its not easy is it?

Never done it - even if I wanted to, which I don't, mine are both escalating criers, and got just hysterical if left. dd is, and has been for a long time, a spectacular sleeper now - at almost 4 she still has an afternoon nap, goes to bed like a lamb, listens to story CDs and then goes to sleep, and wakes at a civilised hour.

4 months is too young, your baby is having a growth spurt and experiencing sleep regression. It's normal, to implement cc at this stage would be cruel. Both of mine did this at exactly the same age, I was shell shocked when dd did it after having previously slept well but expected with ds.

That said I did a combination of cc/gradual withdrawal with ds at 7m as he was waking for 7 oz of milk in the night thru habit and refusing all milk in the morning. But we didn't just go cold turkey with the milk there were a LOT of stages and it was hard work.

Never did it with dd luckily she slept through all on her own at 4.5 months, miracle.

hairy - I just wish people would be honest if that's what they are doing, rather than throwing what seems to be an open question inviting debate and then accusing anyone offering the opposing opinion of being patronising (in this instance).

No, we don't.

Heartily agree with kalo again

Also, most of the books about baby sleep contain horribly wrong information about what is 'normal'. e.g. those tables which say how much sleep they should be getting at any given age. Complete fantasy (which you can see for yourself when comparing with scientific surveys of how much babies actually sleep). Such books are all about what author x thinks ought to be the case. They set very unrealistic expectations and therefore make many of us feel inadequate.

3 DCs and I've never done it, never needed to. We've tended to do the 'pick up, put down thing' so they're taught to self soothe but NOT ignored. I liked the Baby Whisperer book.

Kalo12, your post is really interesting.

Not sure I agree with this bit though:

'i would say that 4 months old is way too young for any kind of sleep training.'

I think it depends what you class as sleep training. My 15 week old is responding well to the 'pick-up, put down' method. She is never left to cry though, and I'd feed her if she didn't settle, of course.

I think a structured routine helps. Baby knows what's coming, and parents can guess at what's wrong more easily.

I never needed to do CC. I responded to my Ds's needs as and when he needed it. He slept through the night from about 4 months IIRC.

At 16 months he still sleeps 12 hours a night. We had a little hiccup a couple months back when he started waking at 5.30am but I just got up with him, made his bedtime later until he was waking at 7am again then brought his bedtime forward to normal time again.

I don't like the idea of CC but with baby #2 on the way who will probably be completly different to Ds1 I won't rule it out.

But it will be the very final last resort if I did do it and never before 6 months.