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!

I think good sleep associations from BIRTH are the key and if your child can settle themselves they don't need CC. But there's the rub - settling yourself often involves a little bit of crying. There's a big difference in cries and all babies cry at some point. I'd rather mine cried for 10 mins before drifting off into a lovely sleep than cried for 2 mins at a time 25 times a day/night due to overtiredness, waking up, etc. I let my DD have a little cry out from early on rather than rock/feed/cuddle to sleep. She slept thru 7 to 6/7 from 7 weeks, except for the odd bad night due to a growth spurt/teething/cold, etc. Thing is I know if she wakes there IS something she needs as she CAN resettle herself

FWIW I understand that seperation anxiety starts earlier than 2yrs (try 6-9 months) and terrible 2's are more about frustration at not being understood!

its big business - just like fad dieting - everyone knows really the only way to be healthy is to eat healthy food and have an active happy lifestyle but there's still millions on diet books slimming foods etc. anyone can make facts fit their cause - jaffa cakes only 12 percent fat big deal only lard is 100 percent so 12 is quite high for a tiny biscuit.

i said to my sister (who has 4 kids) my ds doesn't sleep. she said 'babies don't' i said what can i do? she said 'nothing!'

best advice i ever had. no i just go with the flow.

(btw not a fact more anecdotal - my friend did leave to cry/cc - her 2 year old has really outrages tantrums. my ds , although demanding and can be a nowty knickers never has a tantrum !)

No
I have had 4 children and worked full time and still never felt the need, it undermines all the good work you've done during the day IMO, parenting is a 24/7 role and there's much kinder ways to ensure everyone gets the sleep they need.
Apart from anything else the person who seems to suffer the most is the mother.

I did feel for friends of mine whose babies slept through from a few weeks old then 4 months came and BAM! waking every few hours. At least my DS hadn't begun sleeping through before we hit the 4 month growth spurt. But, it was still bloody horrible and something that just had to be endured.

The four month growth spurt is normal and it does come to an end. Whether you advocate CC or not, this is NOT the time to do it, it's waaaaaaaaaaay too young. Babies wake at night, it's normal, and it's because they need something, be it food or comfort, they need that need met.

My DS is 10 months now and is pretty much sleeping through with no CC done. I hate the idea of it, and was determined that we'd get him there in his own time. But if he still woke up 5 times a night perhaps I'd feel differently.

I will add that my DS often has a little cry before he drops off, a quiet, "I'm really" tired cry. I don't pick him up as soon as he whimpers, otherwise he'd never fall asleep on his own. But if the cry goes on for more than a minute or two, or the pitch starts to rise, then he's comforted.

Never done it here

DS is 14 weeks and he only starts to stir at night and he gets a feed and a cuddle, we cosleep so we are probably awake less than a minute. He's far too small to be left to cry.

There seems to be this sheer fascination and ultimate goal in parenting that your baby must sleep through the night practically from the minute they are born.

From an evolutionary point of view the babies who cried more and were fed more thrived better than the quiet ones, babies aren't meant to sleep through the night, as someone else said instead of expecting babies to sleep we should focus more in helping the mother. Just my honest opinion.

Never done it and never will.

Just because a baby's big doesn't mean she doesn't need milk. She's growing at an amazing rate!

I've never done it and don't think I could bear to. DD is nearly four and has slept through bar the occasional once a night wake up since she was about fifteen months old. Prior to that she was still having night feeds so I would not have felt comfortable ignoring a person who was hungry and didn't have the capacity to think 'well, soon it will be morning and I'll have breakfast'.

I do sit with or near DD while she falls asleep but this takes less than five minutes and one day she won't need it any more. I'll wait for her to tell me when she doesn't.

Am horrified at the idea of doing this to a baby of four months - he or she will have literally no idea what is going on and will feel totally abandoned, IMO.

What you can do at this age is make waking up at night as dull as possible. Don't switch any lights on bar maybe a very dim night light, don't talk, don't play, don't do anything interesting other than offer a feed, cuddle or nappy change. I know people who read books to their kids in the middle of the night and they are still waking up at four years old which I do think may be related. That really is a rod for your own back! Comforting a sad little person really isn't, it's just what they need. And at that age crying is only talking. They haven't any other way to tell you something is wrong. Plus, their needs and wants are pretty much identical at four months - they simply don't have the ability to play up or do it on purpose. If your tiny baby needs to know you are there I think it would be very cruel not to give her that reassurance.

Nope, not once have our DTs cried longer than 10 seconds and they are 2.6 and happy healthy children. We have never left them crying and never will.

I'm not sure whether I employed CC (wasn't a concept back in 2000!) but I do remember how tempting it was to leap into action every time the baby made so much as a squeak. I think it's important to distinguish between a baby 'making a noise' and 'crying'... I found that sometimes I'd lie in bed listening and the noise would just fizzle out without me doing anything. But if it went on for any length of time and increased in volume, then I'd get up and see what the matter was.

Always trust your judgement. It's rarely black & white.

Nope, never have, never will.
I think its downright cruel to leave a baby to cry themselves to sleep.

And agree with Flightattendant about it raising stress levels in later life.

Nope, never done it. Responded to DSs needs and he learnt to sleep through in his own time - right after about 6 teeth came through so suspect night wakings before that were a combination of pain and hunger (Wasn't obvious at the time).

Very very glad I never left him in pain. What kind of a lesson would that be for life?

None of my 3 have ever been left. DC1 and DC3 are fabulous sleepers, both from about 7 months or so (with blips for illness/ teething/ feeling like a bit of midnight interaction.) We co-sleep and fed to sleep. DC2 has never slept through, goes to sleep around 11.30 - midnight, gets up a few times in the night, generally a poor sleeper. CC would not have made any difference, but it would have been cruel to him.

Did CC at around 8.5mo as DS was waking every hour in the night, usually being awake for two hours in one of those periods (with DH or me rocking him constantly). After 3.5mo of that (and before that, the best was two wakes at night for BF and first three months little sleep at all) DH and I were broken. We got DS checked out by the GP and a cranial osteopath. Both said seemed to be DS had a habit as no problems they could find.

We did CC, and it worked until DS got a cold about 3 days later. We tried again when he had a break in teething/colds at around 10.5mo. And then again at around 13mo. And then again at around 15mo. Finally we seem to have helped DS settle back to sleep unless he needs us to do something.

But still he only sleeps a bare 10 hours at night and about 75mins during the day.

I appreciate those who have said they never have, but that they can see why others with more challenges felt they had to.

And to those who think CC is about leaving a child in pain/hunger, you really need to read Ferber's book, as this is not what he advocates. The opposite in fact.

DH looked into all the research that the anti-CCers rely on, and frankly it's not definitive. Because nobody would experiment on small children.

We do our best as parents.

IsitMeOr - well done if you could always understand your baby's needs.

My point was that I didn't realise until afterwards that my DS was suffering teething pains at night which were making him wake frequently. He had none of the 'classic' signs, either during the day or at night, except wanting to bf lots at night. It wasn't until 6 teeth appeared within the space of a couple of weeks and he suddenly started to sleep through that I put two and two together.

The thought that I could have left him, thinking he was just 'waking for the sake of it' or 'out of habit' makes me shudder.

I'm sorry if this annoys people, but here goes.
CC worked for us, I know not everyone agrees with it, but the fact is EVERY child is different and will react differently. So different things work with each child. On the other hand 4 month is a little young; we didn't do it until DS was about 8 months old. He's now 22 month and we still have to do it once in a while, as he's is a very strong character and wants to be in control We obviously check he's dry, full etc.... But you can tell by that age the difference between a cry for attention/assistance and a cry just because they don?t want the fun day to end.
Plus, sometimes you have to try anything to get some sleep, we both work full time and if we spent ages sitting, rocking etc DS to sleep we wouldn't get to eat, clean, wash etc. We love DS more than the world and it took over 3 years of treatment to get him, but sometimes you just have to take control back
At the end of the day everyone has to do what's right for them and if others don't agree, who cares, it's not wrong, just different

We did do cc with DS and it didnt involve not checking on him regularly. It took two nights of me and XP sitting anxiously on the top step of the stairs (not all night, btw). After that DS didnt need it and could settle himself happily.
I honestly did it for the very best of reasons at the time as I thought it was the right thing to do . I had read a few books that made sense to me at the time and they advocated it.
I dont think I will be lucky enough to have another baby, but have to be honest, I dont think I would do it again.
Obviously we didnt do the cc thing properly anyway from the sounds of this thread, as we did go in after a couple of minutes and check and then after 4 minutes etc and were inches away from his door all the time. I dont think you are supposed to do cc in a baby as young as 4 months though.

Oh, don't leave her to cry, especially not at 4 months! She is tiny!

There is a reason people say they find it emotionally difficult to do CC - it breaks your heart to leave your child crying because we are not supposed to be leaving small babies and toddlers alone crying! It just seems so obvious to me.

I think it is significant that a man came up with the technique. He wouldn't have got the same chemical responses to hearing his child cry as we do as mothers.

I can see that if you have a child above the age of reason who won't sleep, then of course you need to be stricter and leave them to sort themselves out. Its different as a 4/5 year old knows you are downstairs.

FWIW I think babies and their sleeping is very little influenced by what we do. I bet you are thinking "Oh she has stopped sleeping through, I need to do CC or I will be making a rod for my back and she will never sleep again ever!"

In my experience its not like that. My DD (14mths) has phases of sleeping brilliantly and phases of sleeping less well. They seem to be very linked to developmental milestones and teething. What I have done and not done seems to have very little effect on how well she sleeps.

Wow, I am surprised that the answers are not more 50/50 here.

My first DS slept beautifully from a very early age so I got lucky there. However DS2 was the complete opposite and wasn't giving up feeds let alone sleeping through much before 15 months.

Hence we did a little bit of CC when necessary with DS2. To be honest I don't think much was required anyway.

When I say CC what we did was leave him for 1 min and return to soothe, then leave for 2 mins and return, leave for 3 mins and so on until the time period got longer in between, is that classed as CC ??

It worked for us and I am a strong believer that its one of the only things that works unless you want a terrible sleeper at age 2/3/4...

I would agree though that 4 months is too young for CC. Think we only did it from about a year ish from memory.

Remember that a lot of people IRL will be lying when they say their x month old baby is 'sleeping through'.

It really isn't the biological norm for tiny babies to sleep all night, even if it is our cultural norm.

Isawthreeships - I wish! .

The reasons for the long gaps between CC attempts was because we thought there might just be some reason why DS was waking (slight runny nose, a bit dribbly during the day, etc) so were only prepared to try it when he had been sunny and happy all day long and still woke every hour at night.

As I say, from reading many sleep books/MN and talking to people IRL, DH and I are pretty convinced that DS's sleep behaviour is fairly extreme and unusual.

We do the best we can to ensure everybody gets enough sleep to function. At 17mo we're still using the survival strategies that some people only seem to have to use for the first 3 months and then the odd night due to teething/illness.

DS is also the only child I've heard of who started to suck his thumb at 3mo and then stopped again a couple of months later. I was gutted as it coincided with his sleep getting much worse again.

We did a version of CC with DD when she was 4 months old, at the suggestion of her pediatrician. On third night, she slept through for the first time, and still does, at age 5. The single best advice I have ever received.

babies stop crying and settle themselves after usually 3 nights. this is how long it takes to break the instinctual trust between mother and child. if a baby cries and the mother doesn't come then it gives up crying - not my opinion, john bowlby's theory of attatchment.

babies are meant to cry. if they stop crying to have their needs met i can't honestly say i believe whatever you're 'has worked'