4 month old and controlled crying/self soothe

[emmak8383]

I call it controlled crying but what we are just trying to do is help our daughter to self soothe. Our daughter is breastfed and has always gone to sleep on the boob. Because of this she is unable to self soothe when she wakes in the night. I am still feeding her during the night but sometimes she has woken an hour later after being fed and we have had to go in to her to get her back to sleep as she obviously doesn't know how to do so herself.
So what we have started now is to soothe her by not picking her up. We rub her belly and shush her. We leave her for a minute or two and then we go back and try again with the belly rub and shushing. Sometimes we do pick her up just in case she needs a burp (even though she has already been burped) and then put her back down to try again.
Let me make it clear that we are not just letting her cry it out till she stops. We are trying to soothe her without picking her up so she doesn't rely on it.
We are just after some thoughts about whether this is too early. A lot of information that we have read says controlled crying should not be done before 6 months or 9 months old.

[CoteDAzur]

And the post you replied to is the very opposite of "hysterical", saying we all do what we can live with, to each their own etc.

From where I sit, you are starting to look slightly hysterical, though.

[atthestrokeoftwelve]

Cote I will let you cool off a little- your posts are becoming increasingly hysterical.

[MyNameIsAnAnagram]

I haven't rtft but I don't understand this correlation between self settling and sleeping through. My two boys are vastly different in terms of sleep -ds1 needed loads of help getting to sleep for ages, he sleep through almost a year before he could self settle. Ds2 is now 8m and can self settle (not because we've caught him, he just can do it ) but doesn't sleep through, waking between 1 and 4 times a night.

[Keznel]

Ho hum like everything out there people have passionate belief in one thing or another! We are never all going to agree on this. I did try co sleeping but neither me nor DD got a good nights sleep at best we were getting an hour maybe 2 at a push!! How can that be good for her or me! That's why we sought an alternative and yes we tried PUPD and all the rest of them but DD did not get the concept of sleeping at night!! I was slipping into depression and I do not say that lightly, it was then that DH and I discussed at length to try CC. Being made to feel we've damaged DD is cruel and ridiculous, do you force your views on everyone in your lives or just when it comes to babies sleeping?? We were at our wits end and CC gave us a solution and a baby that now enjoys going to bed! When we say bedtime to her she skips of to pick the book she wants read so so far not displaying any signs of psychological damage.

I just feel that some people need to be more tolerant of other peoples decisions. You never know what's going on in someone's life to make them do the things they do! Sorry am rambling as I am now sleep deprived from DS (18weeks) and no! I haven't done CC crying with him yet before you ask

[atthestrokeoftwelve]

No one has suggested that you have "damaged" your DD.

Can you please post a quote for this from the thread?

[Keznel]

It's what's being implied by the anti CC brigade. Besides I'm too tired to read, or take in the information in 155posts! I'm off to make some coffee and try not to put the teaspoon in the bin. DS co sleeping not going well either, sigh

[CoteDAzur]

Atthestroke - "Hysterical" is not a magic word that makes people so when you call them hysterical.

As anyone can see on this thread, it just isn't happening, I'm afraid.

[atthestrokeoftwelve]

Kenzel that's unfair.

You are reading too much into the posts here- and it's unfair of you to put words into our mouths and then judge us for it!!!

[Rooners]

I don't think many babies of 18 weeks sleep 'well' tbh. It's normal. The danger is sometimes that people expect babies to fit in with family life and sleep at the same times as everyone else when they're really not supposed to.

[Rooners]

And by 'danger' I don't mean 'your child will die from being left to cry briefly'.

I mean it sets us up to feel like we are failing, or our babies are malfunctioning or something.

If we could learn to respect the way babies behave and regard it as normal for them, and something to make allowances for, not try to 'correct' asap, it might make our own lives a lot less stressful.

[Booboostoo]

Here are my thoughts on the link provided by cantthinkofagoodone and the studies it links to (I didn't have time to read all of them in detail so I read the main review study she cites):


The article itself admits that:
a) one of the three factors influencing sleep, quiet sleep as a newborn, has nothing to do with parenting techniques
b) there is no evidence of causation in parenting technique interventions, this could all be mere correlation.

The article then points to the Mindell review as evidence.

The Mindell review:

1. sets out the sleep problem as parent defined, so by definition co-sleeping, breast-feeders would not classify themselves as having a problem (only non-co-sleeping non-breast-feeders would see them as such as per this discussion for example).
   
2. the studies do not include any co-sleeping breast feeders.
   
3. he has a bizarre interpretation of the failure of extinction and graduated extinction techniques as stemming from the parents’ inability to tolerate the crying, rather than the child’s inability to tolerate the technique. This pre-supposes the technique is good (efficacious and beneficial) but can’t be correctly applied by the parents which is the reason for its failure rather than leaving this to the study to establish.
   
4. graduated extinction techniques are the only time self-soothing is mentioned and there the assumption is that this is the goal of the technique – there is no questioning of whether the ability exists or testing of the question of whether it can be developed or not.
   
5. similarly there is an assumption that are such abilities as independent sleep initiation techniques, that babies develop them and that parents can take steps to encourage their development; again there is no evidence to back any of these claims.
   
6. pretty much all the techniques mentioned as supposed to have positive results (from really tiny studies) but there is no study considering whether sleep patterns would have improved on their own anyway – again no evidence of causation. Despite the very small number of data available the authors do conclude that interventions are better than non-interventions.
   
7. worst of all the durability of the treatments is rarely measured nor is it compared with changing sleeping patterns in parents who do not use sleep modification techniques.
   
   In conclusion the whole argument is leakier than a sieve with researchers assuming the conclusions they ought to be testing, tiny poorly designed studies and no confirmation of causality over simple coincidence.

[Booboostoo]

CoteDAzur I went to my window three days ago openned the shutters and the sun came up, I went to my window two days ago openned the shutters and the sun came up, I went to my window today openned the shutters and the sun came up...ergo my openning the shutters causes the sun to come up. That's about the strength of the argument you are using (and by the way I am criticising the validity of the argument not you personally, unlike some of your posts which are borderline too personal for friendly, rational discussion).

[minipie]

booboo there are many, many parents who have done controlled crying for a few days and at the end of those few days their child's sleep is completely different to the way it was before. Usually their child wakes up far far fewer times.

Are you really saying that that is all a huge coincidence?

If so then, in the nicest possible way, you are nuts .

[Rooners]

I also thought the Mindell review was flawed because of the starting point of 'problem sleepers' or something like that - sorry haven't looked at it since last year so can't recall the exact words.

I wouldn't consider my babies' sleep to have been a problem, really, at any point. Not a problem that needed to be 'sorted out' in any case.

So that counts people like me out of the study from the off.

[Booboostoo]

minipie there are many people who have done homeopathy and at the end of a few days they are healthy again, doesn't mean homeopathy treated anything - in the same way that there are many people who open their shutters in the morning and then the sun comes up (in fact there are probably millions more people with the shutters/sun thing than the sleep training/sleep improvement, so mere numbers don't mean anything). You need much more than correlation to establish a causal link, this is not my insane thinking but a fundamental building block of science, research and the rational process by which we try to make sense of the world.

[Rooners]

Thankyou for such an excellent post, Booboos.

[minipie]

booboo if there are many, many people who have had a long term health issue and a few days of homeopathy sorts it out, then yes I'd say that is pretty good evidence that homeopathy works. I have no idea if that is the case. I do know it's the case with sleep training.

By your logic anything could be coincidence. Maybe it's coincidence that a baby drops off to sleep whilst being fed. Maybe it's coincidence that a baby smiles when you smile at them. However the fact that millions of people have noticed an immediate correlation, suggests a cause and effect relationship. Same applies to sleep training.

[Booboostoo]

minipie this is simply not the case. Simply believing something is true, no matter how many people believe it to be true, does not make it true. Homeopathy has a very well documented placebo effect so merely stating that a lot of people believe it to be true does not make it true.

The reason the recovery is coincidental to the use of homeopathy is that there is no reason to believe a causal connection between homeopathy and treatment. There is no physical evidence that water has a memory, there is no experimental data to show that like treats like and there is no evidence that substances that are diluted become more potent. That is, every premise on which homeopathy is based is proven to be false, therefore any connection between it and an improvement in health is coincidental.

Your examples by the way are not similar. There is actual evidence that breast milk helps babies sleep. This is based on a chemical analysis of milk and our understanding of what hormones like oxytocin, prolactin, melatonin and cholecystokinin do. E.g. melatonin is undetectable in breast milk during the day, but peaks during the night. This is a causal story that ties in with everything we know about brain chemistry and how hormones work, not some made up stuff that people happen to believe. This account of the link between breast milk and sleep remains true even if no one actually believes in it (truth is not created by belief).

[jaybirdsinginginthedeadofnight]

www.nhs.uk/news/2012/09September/Pages/Controlled-crying-safe-for-babies.aspx

[minipie]

Of course truth is not created by belief. But parents don't "believe" their children to be waking less after sleep training. The children either are or are not waking less, it's an objectively observable fact.

In our case, DD went from waking virtually every hour between 12 and 7 am (and having done so for months) to waking not a single time. She did this on the first night after doing CC at nap time and bedtime.

I have heard/read plenty of similar stories from other parents - even on MN, where CC is vilified.

Are we all just deluding ourselves that there is a causal link?

Honestly I can't quite believe I'm having this discussion, your argument is so ridiculous. I'm off to do something more constructive.

[Onefewernow]

I have resorted to controlled crying. I didn't for my first or second, or even my third- because I have decent age gaps between all three, over 5 years in each case. However the fourth and fifth were shortly after number three- you simply do not get time after a few weeks of trying to juggle them all otherwise. If you take the view that toddler 4 may need lunch and a nappy change then baby 5 must be put down at some point. Whether he likes it or not. And that means that baby 5 gets used to going to sleep without being held.

[Shockingundercrackers]

Op I haven't read through the whole thread (have non sleeping 6 mo) but IMHO chuck all the "expert" books in the bin and log off the Internet. Trust yourself and your baby. Soon you'll recognise the cries which need to be answered with boob and the ones with cuddles / reassurance and which can safely be ignored. Dc1 was an Xiang sleeper when we leaned to listen to his cues. Dc2 not so much but he's just a totally different personality and a very happy boy.

This time passes so quickly. Honestly it's not worth worrying about. There is no right way of doing this, just enjoy your baby and do your best to give them what they need and you'll be doing fine

[CoteDAzur]

Booboo - Sorry but I'm at your clutching at straws with "how do you know it works" and comparing CC to homeopathy sugar pills. LOL!

[CoteDAzur]

That's not an actual quote, by the way, before you race off in a tangent

[Booboostoo]

minipie That is not the definition of an objective observable fact, pretty much every aspect of it can be challenged:

Objective: it's clearly not objective as it is the subjective experience of two people. No effort has been made to make it objective through, for e.g., the use of a disinterested observer, the setting-up of control conditions, the recording of results, etc.

Observable: while it is true that you observed this happening you set up no formal criteria for your observation, e.g. what counts as disrupted sleep, what counts as sleeping through, and therefore your observations cannot be consistently compared with those of others. For example, my friends claim their DS sleeps really well, having been at their house at bed time several times it means that their DS is put to bed and left to cry for 20 to 45 minutes. They don't mind this and think he is unproblematic in his sleep. This is a subjective observation, which by its very nature, can be misleading if you are looking to generalise results.

Fact: at best you have seen B follow A (if we ignore the above problems), you have not in any way shown that A caused B to occur. Even if you appeal to other parents on MN who used your technique with B as a consequence there are equal numbers of parents who used a different technique with B as a consequence or no technique at all and B still occured. My friend's baby has slept 12 hours through in her crib with no effort on her parents' behalf from 6 weeks to now (2yo). In addition for everyone who has seen B occur after A there are the people who tried A, or another technique, or nothing at all and B still did not occur.

The whole point of scientific studies is to examine A and B under controlled conditions as well as to discover the rationale behind the relationship between A and B and account for any possible relationship between them.

I never said you were delusional, I merely criticised your argument for being invalid.

CoteDAzur of course I can tell you are attempting to be personally disparaging but I can't tell what this contributes to the discussion so I am not sure how to respond to your contribution.