Half arsed sleep training - should it be all or nothing?

[phlossie]

I can't bear CC BUT we're desperate for some sleep...

DD has had various minor difficulties - early teeth (and lots all at once), a series of colds, a chest infection... all have interrupted her sleep. Now she's well and on good form, so we're thinking about doing something to push her in the right direction with sleep.

From a very early age we established a bedtime routine - the only routine we have, but it works for our older child. When she wakes in the night, I get up, breastfeed her and she settles back down with no problems. But she wakes 2-3 times a night with no kind of pattern or predictability, no relation to how she's slept through the day, and in no relation to much she's fed/eaten during the day.

Now - she's 7.5mo - we're trying some half-arsed sleep training - trying not to feed her before 3am, but going in at intervals, picking her up, cuddling her until she's calm and then putting her back down. Right now we're listening to her scream and it feels all wrong.

But I actually can't function without the sleep - I can't look after a 2.3 year old and get on with life. DH is constantly late for work to give me an extra half an hour sleep.

Can you do CC and like the idea of AP? It's ridiculous really... Advice needed!

all or nothing! I did it and I know its hard but it really doesnt last long dd was 3 nights.

Other wise she is crying and getting upset for nothing which I think is cruler than deciding just to do it, and you teach her that if she crys long enough you will give in which makes it harder if she gets worse and you really have to do cc.

Just put her down say good night and return to her every couple of mins and say something like its night time time to go to sleep I promise if you do it properly this time next week she will go to sleep on her own happily and sleep right through

I'm Ap and never did cc with any of mine. In my opinion 7 and a half months is far too young for that. Some babies just need more milk than others.

I have 3 dc's andmy 16 month old wakes in the night and evening still for milk/comfort, it's a natural stage in their lives imo.

I don't agree with cc anyway as I believe it teaches them that noone comes when they need them. AP and cc do not go hand in hand. Check out Dr Sears website, google it.

oh and my dc's never cried once I comforted them so it wasnt cruel at all, it was cruel to leave them upset. I cared for them and still do and I don't cope well with lack of sleep but I make do, it was my decision to have children so I take the ups and downs with that.

I agree with dylanthecat, all or nothing.

I've done CC successfully and didn't look back with DC1, but by the time I got to DC4 it was far easier to co-sleep and not have the stress.

CC is stressful, you have to be strong and determined, but in my experience it took just 3 nights to crack it.

Also, I think you can distinguish between the angry shouts and upset cries. I now put LO down in her bed and she shouts for a minute, I listen in - if she ups the ante and is getting upset I'll comfort her, but if she's just yelling because she's knarked I've put her down, she'll drop off quickly anyway.

your dcs never cried when you comforted them because you wernt doing controled crying.

Actually my hv suggested cc to me because trying to function with NO sleep isnt easy

What i said was half doing controled crying is letting them get upset for nothing

Can I make myself clear I also chose to hsve my dd and as a working single mother take the ups with the downs

and I CARE for my daughter

sorry to be the voice of doom, but we followed cc to the letter when ds1 was 15mo and we were half dead due to sleep deprivation. We both even took 2 weeks off work to devote ourselves to doing it properly ( we were that desperate). On the last day of the cc fortnight he was awake screaming from 2 till 6 am ( with us going in to him at all the proper intervals etc) CC just doesn't work with some kids. Had he got it in a few days I would probably be raving about it, but as it was, it felt awful and cruel. Give it a go if you want, but be prepared that it's not right for all children. Co sleeping is good though

That's exactly what puts me off AP, JodieG, the assertion that AP parenting is more caring and that people who do CC are being 'cruel'. We all care for our children, do what we feel is best for them and take the ups with the downs equally.
The 'up' of CC is having a baby who sleeps through the night after a few nights of the 'down' - heart wrenching crying (or in tiredlady's case, there was no up - poor you).
Anyway, with CC you do go to your baby, you just don't feed them or pick them up - you pat, stroke and shhhh. This teaches them to wake up and fall back to sleep on their own. I do like Dr Sears, so will check him out.
Thanks for your opinions. We're going to give dd a bit longer to get more into solids and see what happens, though the wake ups are at the same time every night, so may be habit - and we might have to do cc in a month or so. At the moment the cries are upset, foxy. But I've started just giving her one boob rather than both so she takes less milk at night.

while mulling over whether to sleep train or not, you may find some useful insight on this thread

We did it when my DH had a week off work. She was fairly young but did sometimes sleep through so we knew she could do it. Whe she cried DH went in and patted her. There was no way I was going in and then not feeding her as she would be livid and who could blame her! After a few nights of getting a non milky person coming when she called (it wasn't really proper crying anyway) she gave up and has slept through ever since.

She always was a good sleeper though so I think you need to be confident in yourself that she is ready to sleep through and is not really hungry. And then you have to be prepared to see it through. If you find the crying too hard to bear then really it's not going to work and you will just upset yourself so I wouldn't put yourself through it!!

I think it's tha language around controlled crying that bothers me "She gave up" "We cracked it" "You have to be strong and determined""heart wrenching crying"......we're talking about a tiny baby here!

Aah well when I say she gave up I mean she stopped crying at night, not that she was ignored. TBH she did it herself really, I have friends who are much less soppy than me who couldn't do it and from talking to them I know I had it really easy.

I still think though, you know your baby, is she really ready to sleep through, or is it going to be too heart-wrenching for her/you. All babies are different and some just won't sleep through no matter what while others just need a gentle nudge and job done.

I personally would never be able to leave a baby crying for ages - for me it was breaking the mummy milk connection (sending DH in) which worked.

But CC isn't about leaving a baby crying for ages. Its about managing it. You aren't dumping the baby in its cot and buggering off. You are coming in every min, two, three mins to reassure.

And I stand by saying 'strong and determined'. If you choose to use CC then doing it half-arsed will ultimately be detrimental. It takes effort and time, and you have to do it properly.

They may be tiny babies but they need parents who can cope and deal with them, and sometimes using cc saves the sanity of a mother who may otherwise have sunk very low (as in my case).

Reading with interest, but what is AP anyone?

AP is Attachment Parenting - the complete opposite of GF parenting!

I think waking up 2-3 times a night when she is 7.5 months is very normal. Some wakes for milk (I don't believe all babies are ready to sleep through at this age without milk) and some wakes for the comfort. None of my babies slept through at this age and I would have loved them to just wake up 2 -3 times a night

I think if you have a baby who wakes every 20 minutes or every hour, then you can start talking about a sleep-problem or other underlying problems. 2-3 times a night is just having a baby in the house.

In fact though, don't we all take what we feel is right from all the various theories. I don't know anyone that actually sticks rigidly to one way of doing it for everything.

I find this whole idea that either you are a rigid GF type person (or worse that Clare whatever she was called who put the babies in the garden), or you are totally immersed in meeting all the babies needs at all times to the detriment sometimes of meeting your own needs, very polarising.

In real life we all strike a balance somewhere in between. Probably most people use AP type approach most of the time but then try to be firmer for the things which are important to them. For instance I feel it is unfair to keep DD in her buggy all day while I go around the shops and meet other mums for coffee so I try to limit this to an hour or so. If I need to be out for hours I make sure there are times she can get out for a good crawl around. My friends will happily keep their baby in a buggy for hours. It makes me feel uncomfortable but that is an important part of their life and so fair enough. Sleep is the area which is paramount to me and so that's the area where I've been firmer.

I think, if the OP is at the end of her tether, and is not operating well in the daytime, then giving CC a go will do no harm and may help. If OP is BF, really try breaking the idea that crying at night = mummy milk as this is what did it for us.

seeker - but CC isn't meant for tiny babies! At least, not my interpretation of it. I fed a very demanding DD on demand day or night for the first 7 months, just because I know that some babies just aren't capable physically of going through the night and I didn't want to risk trying to force her to do something that she really couldn't do. But at 8-9 months the difference between upset "I need you" cries and grumpy "but I quite like my 3am snack" cries was really obvious.

We just ran our of physical and mental resources and really needed to do CC at that stage for our own sanity. And to be honest, once DD was sleeping through the night, she was much more cheerful in the day too.

ChukkyPig - I think you're dead right and I totally agree with you. I don't think that there can be opposite types of parenting unless you go with an extreme and stick with it with no exceptions. In that sense extreme AP-ers and extreme Gina Ford-ers are just that - extreme - and you probably find that both are equally unshakeable. For this reason I think that AP and CC are compatible - I like to carry my baby, bf on demand, co-sleep when under the weather (or camping), do BLW etc etc. BUT I need sleep to function - and would consider CC to get it.

All that said.... dd slept through from 7.30pm to 7am last night. Something to do with the bowl of cauliflower cheese she ate for supper I think! Now she's gone a night without milk, I think ChukkyPig's no milk method is the way forward...

Yes and amen to your last post, phlossie.

Glad things are looking up!