Newborn's and Controlled Crying?

[asampras]

Can you use the controlled crying method with newborn's or are they just too young. Secondly is controlled crying leaving them to cry until they sleep or allowing them to cry for a while then picking them up to comfort them and then put them down again?!

It's causing arguments with my husband who is afraid our baby will grow accustomed to being held until she falls asleep and thinks we should leave her to cry to sleep and me who thinks at 2 weeks old she is too young for this method and can't bear to hear her crying until she's red in the face and hysterical!

[3sEnough]

Hi - I did cc at a really young age (10 weeks) after hv advice with my first child and then again did it with 2nd and 3rd (because it worked!).................but even I, devil mother, thinks 2 weeks old is just NOT ON!! Far, far, far too young......give it up, feed her, cuddle her and just go with the flow for a bit younger (and ask your dh to stop listening to his mum...I suspect!!)

[3sEnough]

Bit longer!

[fletchie]

I completely endorse everything that people are saying on here. I remember everyone telling me that I was spoiling my first dd by picking her up when she cried. I would also recommend the 'Baby Bliss' book - wish I had found it the first time around. He recommends swaddling and swaying your baby whilst shushing in their ear to stop the crying - honestly, it worked like magic!
Enioy your baby at this age and don't listen to anyone else - Mil's particularly. This time soon passes and believe it or not you will look back on it as the best time of your life!
Good luck xx

[growingbagpuss]

We did sort of controlled crying on our 7 week old - we ckecked he was fed, dry, eetc etc.. and when we put him to bed if he cried we went in, and spoke to him, reasssured him, and left him. After 4-5 nights he learnt to settle himself off to sleep -and has been an absolute joy since then.

To leave a child to cry (without picking them up) you have to be ABSOLUTELY sure there is nothing they need other than sleep -and at 2 weeks, your little babe doesn't know what it wants and it may well be cuddles.

I'm a strong advocate of routines, after about 2 months old I could count on one hand the nmuber of times my ds cried in a day sometimes, because he was so happy, and knew what to expect from me - BUT I would never go into routines like that so young.

As everyone has said - a tiny baby needs to learn first that you are there, despite not being attached to you any more (even though it may feel like you are attached!!)

hope this doesn't sound too harsh

Good luck

[Kif]

asampras - your dh is trying to 'fix' things - bless him.

He's doing the classic bloke thing of seeing a loved one in pain/struggling/scared and wanting to come in 'Rambo style' with effective decisive rapid solutions.

Tell him that newborns are a slog - but they don't need to be fixed. The first few months you 'invest' in your future relationship/their mental health. The best way is to go a bit floppy, let things wash over you and go with the flow. It'll all pass in a sleep-deprived twilight blur - but will be rather lovely in retrospect.

the thing with cc - as well as the points raised by other posters - it relies on the baby not being hungry. Newborns are frequewntly hungry - esp if threy've been burning calories crying. Non-starter, really.

Why not say '3 months the babies way, then we'll review how it's going'.

His job is to create a bubble where you and baby can just wallow in each other. So - fielding visitors; taking you out when you need a change of scene; bringing you things when you want to stay at home.

If he wants to invest in future routine -
a) Make night and day distict
b) start a bed timre routine with bath and massage
c) If bf, feed lots to get your milk going
d) help you on your first trips out e.g. push pram if you're weak
e) let the baby sleep on his chest while he watches tv to give you longer stretch of sleep

Trust at this stage will make a routine easier and more natural to establish later.

[yomellamoHelly]

Have a 15 week old ds2. Have not done this at all. Have no problem with putting him down when he's happy (and think that's good for him) , but do (still) pick him up the instant he gets distressed if possible. Have to say with ds1 it isn't always. There are also times when no amount of cuddles etc.'ll keep him quiet. Generally though he is capable of amusing himself for short periods of time.
I do put him down to sleep at regular times though and also the instant he yawns I'll bung him upstairs. Most of the time he'll go to sleep by himself (you need to be able to distinguish what a tired cry is, though). I think doing something similar to that'll probably appease your dh's concerns. The key thing is learning to read her for when she's ready to sleep and putting her down at that stage rather than to continue cuddling her, I think. It's all about instilling some good habits for later.

[3easterbunniesandnomore]

May I just say, that CC is NOT adviced to be done before 6 month, and common consensus is now that even that is to young and it should be nearer the 8-9 month mark....

[Lazycow]

2 weeks is way way too young for controlled crying.

Most babies will cry a bit and you won't always be able to pick them up straightaway especially if you have other children etc.

Give it at least a few months and then review. Some babies settle beautifully after a few months if you just respond whenever they neen it. If in a few months time your baby is having real trouble sleeping and you are really exhausted then you can reviwe things then. Came back then and ask how to do controlled crying (which is not just leaving them to cry by the way)

In the meantime if your baby cries they crobably need to fed/changed or just rocked and held. Kep doing this for a while yet - you are doing fine - it really is hard at first but newborns often are very hard work (lovely though )

[Anabellesmumanddad]

Can I ask a different question of all of you... Our baby is just over six months old. She goes to bed without a peep at 7pm and was sleeping solidly until 5am. (She would stir at 10pm but would go back to sleep without intervention). She even slept though the night a bunch of times.
She has now suddenly decided that she needs to wake up at all weird hours of the night (such as midnight, 1am, 3am) and we know she isn't hungry.
She certainly is more mobile so sometime when we check on her she is in all sorts of strange positions and we thought perhaps her wanderings around the cot are waking her up.
But we are finding it difficult to resettle her and get her to sleep again without feeding her. We are trying 'controlled crying' but not having much success at the moment.
Can anyone shed some light on this issue for us?

[3easterbunniesandnomore]

she could be teething, and also at 6 month they are going through a huge devellopemental leap...where they learn so many things, which can unsettle them, therefore, the best thing would be to respond to your child, possibly, rather then doing cc at first instance...but just pov...

[3easterbunniesandnomore]

also, 6 month is very young to go without nightfeeding, again, just my opinion, and I know some Baby's naturally don't have nightfeeds that young, but it is kinda rare

[AnnabelCaramel]

Is she sleeping in a grobag? If not, they are fab for wriggly babies.

[RachelG]

Maybe she's going through a growth spurt. If feeding settles her, she's probably genuinely hungry.

Babies go through all kinds of phases - nothing ever stays the same.

On the subject of CC in babies younger than a year:- most experts now acknowledge that these babies are simply too young to understand what is going on. The reason that CC appears to "work" is that the babies learn that their cries are ignored, so they stop bothering to cry. They give up, because they know there's no point. Don't shoot me down for this, I'm just quoting the experts. Not a nice way to "learn" how to settle in my opinion. Personally I would never take the risk.

[3easterbunniesandnomore]

Rachel...you might want to take part in teh other debate then....called from attached parenting to abondenment parenting, as that is about CC or CIO

[Lazycow]

I personally would keep doing a night feed if required until a baby is a year old or so


After that I do actually believe they probably don't need it and it can possibly after that age start to intefer with the amount of solids they eat if they have too much milk at night. However before that a baby's main nutrition should come from milk and I never felt that 1 or 2 (max) short feeds at night was much of a problem until then.

[Anabellesmumanddad]

thanks for all your tips guys....We appreciate all your feedback! I suppose the bit that got me was that she started waking so much earlier than usual but she does seem to be going through a stage of raised awareness. Besides we love her and don't mind the cuddles so it's kinda nice to hear people suggest that we can indulge that

[Jacanne]

Another book you could try is "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley - though to be honest, as far as I remember, that is aimed at older babies too.

[PrettyCandles]

Annabelles, is she in a sleeping bag? Sleeping bags can really help restless babies, as they are slightly less mobile in them, more cuddled and less likely to get their arms or legs stuck between the cot bars.

Asampras (as if I needed to add anything to what all the others have already said) at 2w the baby hasn't even got used to the world outside your tummy yet. There are all sorts of physical changes that have to happen in the baby's body to enable them to function - changes to their blood circulation as their lungs take over from the umbilicus - and these changes can take a few weeks to complete. At 2w she hasn't even fully woken up from the dreamstate of being inside you - you'll see a change in her in a few days' time. All 3 of mine 'woke up' at about 3w, and suddenly were more alert and interested in the world.

I found two really useful tips from the NCSS book, things that I wish I had known when my first child was born: firstly that it can take 25minutes to settle a newborn (and she classifys newborn as up to 4m, not 6w). Secondly, a way of takeing the baby off the breast when he's fallen asleep, without wakig him. The book was worth it for just those two tips!

Another excellent book is The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer.

[growingbagpuss]

I think there is a difference between cc in the truest sense (which I would never do) and gradually leaving a baby that has had basic needs met - I know people who cuddle and cuddle a crying baby -when actually that baby is crying BECAUSE it is tired, and over handled, and it needs to go to sleep.

There is a train of thought that says over-cuddling over stmulates a baby - I'm not an expert - but know from experience that this can happen - it did with our 2 week old when we went to visit relatives. When left to cry for a short while on his own after hours of crying and cuddling, he fell asleep.

This is one reason we started to leave our ds gradually when we were putting him to bed in the evening. We didn't do it in the night until after the first few times he had slept through -once he had gone through, we were reassured that he was unlikely to really be hungry - so he was comforted and settled back to sleep.

Sorry to muddy the waters - night feeds and cuddles, and all that is always going to be a contentious issue - and I think you have to go with what you feel comfortable with.

[3easterbunniesandnomore]

"There is a train of thought that says over-cuddling over stmulates a baby - I'm not an expert - but know from experience that this can happen - it did with our 2 week old when we went to visit relatives. When left to cry for a short while on his own after hours of crying and cuddling, he fell asleep. "
that is a completely different issue though, isn't it....a newborn Baby is bound to get narky when handed around by people in an environment of unfamilliar smell, etc....
I know of people that will only let their nearest and dearest, i.e. the immediate family hold their Baby because it can be so unsettling for a child....of course all those people that want to cuddle the Baby don't want to do it out of malice, but it does make sense that it is kinda a overwhelming and scary thing for such a new little person.
I think people often forget that a Baby si a person NOT a thing....sigh...but that is a whole other rant

[Mamalennon]

There's fussing and grumbling in a baby which you sense will quickly calm, then there's full-blown crying which will only stop if the baby gets so exhausted it tires itself out and sleeps with needs unmet - it's the latter, in my opinion, which would be psychologically harmful. The points made about passing a baby round are certainly valid - it's about what's right for the baby, not satisfying the emotional desires of the adults!

[elibumbum]

Haven't read the whole thread but I would also add that you should never use controlled crying on a newborn. I read recently that researchers found that babies cry less when they are a bit older if their parents responded to their crying quickly when they were newborn - they need to know that they can rely on you and trust you. I found The Baby Whisperer book very helpful when it came to sleep issues(I was really sad to hear that she died not so long ago - her book was so reassuring and kind).

[suzi2]

I haven't read the responses... but firmly believe you can't 'spoil' a 2 week old! She's been held close for 9 months and now your DH expects her to be happy being out there on her own?

Cuddle her as much as you like and you can becuase the time goes so quickly. I worried about spoiling my DS so probably didn't hold him as much as I should have. He was still a crap sleeper so I don't think it mattered. DD is 7 wks and is asleep on my knee/arm as I type.

[MrsHarry]

Have read this thread with interest...my first is due in 10 wks & I have been doing lots of reading about sleeping/routines etc.

What do you all mean exactly by Controlled Crying?
What is an acceptable way of doing this....is it going back to visit the baby at short intervals to try and settle her?

What would you suggest if this method really isn't right for you and the baby (I'm talking later on, after at least 6 months).

Be grateful if anyone could add any advice about this, as so many of the books seem so prescriptive.

[Lazycow]

Hi MrsHarry

The fact is no book or advice can prepare you for a newborn. It's good that you are thinking about it but in the first few weeks I'd focus on getting to know your baby and letting them take the lead for a while.

You may find you have a lovely easy baby with no need for CC - so why worry unless you need to.


CC is something people use if their baby doesn't sleep. However a newborn (after the first week or so) often doesn't sleep well and regular night wakeups are to be expected. This is normal so try (and I know it wasn't easy for me) to go with the flow a bit.

Then again some babies sleep really well so you may be lucky.


Are you planning to breastfeed? If so I'd spend the time left informing yourself on that.

Get some phone numbers (NCT or La Leche) to call for advice in the night. Ask the hospital how they deal with feeding etc. Ask someone you know and trust who has breastfed to visit you early after the birth so you can ask them for help if you need to. This is what I wish I had done before ds was born.