I am considering controlled crying - did it work for you?

[Travellerintime]

I can't believe it, but I am seriously thinking of using this with ds. Never considered it with dd (3) as once she got to 6 months her sleep improved massively (partly due to using baby whisperer techniques).

Ds is 6.5 months, has NEVER been a good sleeper, but in the last few months pretty much wakes up every hour and a half after about 11:30/12pm. His 'long' stretch of sleep is when he first goes down in the evening at 7pm, until about 10pm.

Recently I've started taking him in to bed with me when he wakes around midnight as he won't settle in his cot. However, sleep is no better this way - I think we keep each other awake and he ends up feeding his way through the night.

We have gently tried to teach him self-settling techniques (eg pu/pd), but they just haven't worked. I am completely exhausted, and feel that my relationship with my dd and dh is being affected. Not to mention my bonding with ds.

I'm not sure I want to hear controlled crying horror stories (as I've read them before), but I would like to hear from people for whom it's worked...

DaddyJ, thanks for the threads, which I've just skim read. This has given me some reassurance that we will go through with this cc thing some point soon - just as soon as I can start decreasing the night feeds and upping the daytime calories.

travellerintime - how are you going to decrease your feeds? The number of them or the length? thanks!

I know you have not asked for "horror stories" about CC, (basically you have actually asked for reassurance that it's ok to do!) but I feel that before you do this you need to understand the consequences of it. There is a huge wealth of research detailing the long term effects of this kind of parenting, it can be highly destructive and damaging.

There is no doubt that Controlled Crying works but be cautious, because it works by teaching your child that there is no point crying because no-one will come. It does not teach them to self -soothe or any of the other platitudes that people justify it with.

This quote from the Association for Infant Mental Health (AIMH) UK

"Avoidant attachment is a strategy often developed by an infant whose parents have
discouraged overt signs of either affection or distress, and who do not readily offer
sympathy or comfort. The conviction that others do not see you as someone worth
loving, or even responding to, can lead to low self-esteem and subsequent aggression."

full text here Well worth reading if you are considering Sleep Training.

"Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt is also worth reading. As is "The Science of Parenting" By Margot Sunderland.

I know I am going to get all kinds of unpleasant reactions, but quite honestly I am horrified that people think it is acceptable to leave thier babies to cry themselves to sleep (all be it in timed segments) instead of responding to thier baby and giving them the comfort they are asking for. To teach a baby to lose hope in the name of a full nights sleep is IMO shocking. It's a terrible thing to do to any child or baby, and to do it to a baby as young as 8 weeks is nothing short of child abuse.

Monkies

Caz, one method is giving water, the other (that I know about) is to reduce the night feeds
by a certain number of minutes each night.
The later method sounds ok in theory but is damn hard to implement!

Travellerintime, I suppose you recognise most of GreenMonkies's post from the
first thread I linked to. It is useful to understand what the attachement parenting
movement are trying to say - it helped us immensely with the sleep training.

Don't worry this thread won't get too heated so make sure you express your doubts and resolve them first!
(I am assuming you have doubts because of the first sentence of your OP.)

Hi, I could've written your post a few months ago when my DS was up every few hours at night, also after being asleep for a large chunk of the evening (eg 8pm to 12am). He had learned to fall asleep on the boob as that was the easiest thing for me to do to get him back to sleep but we resorted to CC as I was going insane and it was starting to affect my relationship with DH through sleep deprivation. We started it when he was 6 months and stuck to it until it worked. I let him cry for 2 mins, went to check him, said 'night night it's beddy baws' and turned on him music and put his blanky back in his hand and promptly left. I repeated this after 3 mins, then 4, 5, 6 etc.... First night he cried for 1.5 hours then slept through! Next night he cried for even less time. 3rd night was a nightmare but that's common apparantly. I'd say within a week we had it sorted and now (8.5months) he goes to bed at 630pm (his bedtime gradually came forward naturally) and that's him with no peep until about 5am. I give him a quick feed then he sleeps til about 7 or 8am. I would never have believed that would happen a few months ago so there is hope. You have to totally stick to it though when you are introducing it otherwise baby will just get confused. If my DS wakes and cries before 3am now I just go in a hush him and now that he has associated sleep with his blanky and music, he settles with these. Good luck with it all!

I think a good way to tell if they NEED their night feeds is what their first morning feed is like. My DD, if she has a feed in the night barely touches her 7am feed. That tells me that she doesnt really need it iyswim

DaddyJ, do you remember the thread about CC which requested that people with Mental Health experience to give their honest opinions on CC. Ie would they do it, have they done it?

to a person, every single one of them said that they would never do it. at least never with a child under the age of 1 year.

it was a very enlightening thread. such a pity i did not save it. such a pity it got deleted. I wonder why.

I think I may be a disenting voice, but I tried CC on my DS on at least three occasions with absolutely no success at all. All it did was make him (and me) cry for hours and hours and hours each night. It was truely horrendus - after 3 weeks he was still screaming for two hours each night. I feel terrible that I did that to him - in my defence, I was desperate and sleep-deprived and not capable of making good judgements. In retrospect, I think my DS had really terrible problems with his teeth (for weeks and weeks the only way I could get him to sleep was by giving him neurofen) and he also was very hungry when he started to move and was not eating solids.

I suppose what I wanted to say was, give it a go if you want. It clearly works for lots of people. But it may not necessarily work for you. It isn't the cure-all that some say it is.

What did seem to work for us (when his teeth were better) was a modified CC, where I went in every minute, or every 30 seconds to pat him on the back. He was cross that he wasn't getting a cuddle, but I genuinely feel he didn't think he was being abandoned. This technique was recommended by my local sleep clinic. And since 12 months he has been a fantastic sleeper - which is lucky because I had months and months of sleep to catch up on.

Good luck.

Neolara, I think that's a really helpful post
because even anti-CC folk make out that CC always works.

No, CC is very unlikely to work if there is a real need behind the crying.

CC works when we are simply dealing with a habit, when it's a matter of letting the protesting child
find out for himself that he is capable of falling asleep without any crutches.

The only person who cried was me, she sang, chatted, played never slept though until I went in and nursed her to sleep.
If you watch kittens they all sleep in a huddle together because babies need comfort, until one day they just don't.

Would have gone mad if my dd hadn't learnt to self soothe and sleep well, so from about the age of 4 months when I had an established bed and day time routine would settle her and if she cried when i left her would set a timer for 10 mins intervels and go back check she was o.kay, reassure her that I was there for her, would try not to pick her up unless it was really necessary and leave her again, it took about 3-4 nights of having to go back up 2 or 3 times and that was it 12 blissful hours of sleep! zZzzzzzzzz

yes, it did work with ds1
no it didnt work with ds2
dont think we did it with ds3 b ut i dont really remember tbh

And I have read 'why love matters' which I thought was a fantastic book and really thought provoking but still feel that in the long run for a happy baby you need a happy, responsive mum who doesn't end up resenting the baby because they are so tired! Which would have hapened in my case I am sure! And as long as the baby has a mum who shows kindness, love, affection, pride and can respond to their needs I think they will be just fine! XxX

I used it with DS2 (who is now a happy and well balance 13 year old). After watering down the night time feeds until it was virtually water we knew he was not hungry. Left him for 5 mins, then 10 and then 20 on the first night. You have to look at the clock otherwise time seems much longer than it is. He got himself to sleep on the 20 minute one. The second night he only needed 10 mins and on the third night he slept for 13 hours and did so thereafter.

If your partner is invloved you need to agree on exactly how you are doing this. It will not wrk if one of you goes in at the wrong time. Done properly I don't know anyone where it hasn't worked after a couple of nights.

However, first night is horrendous and you must look at clock. Also siblings are often woken up

hi there, i positively hated the cc idea and actually used pantleys no cry sleep solution book which had really great tips, it all helped but dd at 13mths was still waking at midnight and 4am for milk.i got her onto water then nothing but still waking up.the week before i went bk to work,just 2 days a wk, i had to do cc.

i only left her 20s, 40s 60s etc building up to max of 2 mins only.it took 3 miserable nights but cos i only left her 2mins max she never got into a horrible mess like the nightmare stories are about.every time she cried i went in and soothed and then purposefully went out.after 3 nights dd was totally fine.

i really think the walking out purposefully is the key though,not creeping out.apart from when she is poorly dd has been great, she has horrible ear probs and sometimes they can go on for ages, at these times she wakes up and comes into bed with us then when she's well again she's fine.

i really wish i didnt have to have done cc but it worked for us. i never leave dd crying now either as i was very worried about her thinking no one comes if i cry because there are always valid reasons for crying. my strict sis in law did CC from 4 DAYS and jokes with my mil that its great you just shut the kids in their rooms and let them scream it out.consequently dd has never been babysat by s-i-l or m-i-l.good luck.

sorry i didnt make it very clear, i didnt try any sort of sleep training before dd was 13 mths as she was breast fed until 12.5mths.we then did all the pantley tips then did cc. sorry just read my post bk and it sounded as if i had been trying to sleep train her since she was born!
as i understand it CC is soothing ie patting,talkig etc until baby is breathing calmly then walking out.from when they start crying i timed 20s then went bk in and calmed again,only when breathing calmly again did i go out, next time start at 40s. i didnt think cc ever meant leaving them to scream longer than your upper limit, mine was 2mins but i think some people do 5mins.any longer than that and surely your baby gets in hysterics and is too traumatised to sleep anyway?

yes, twice. But dd was 12 months and so was ds

Yes we did it at 6 mths with dd1. It was hard, but I am glad that we did it, and felt that we were all much happier for it. 7 years on she still finds it hard to surrender to sleep (eg. will employ any delaying tactics possible), but when she is asleep (from 8) she stays asleep until morning.
best of luck.

I did it at about 13 weeks, and I am totallly confident that my now happy, confident, outgoing and very gregarious 2.7 year old suffered no ill consequences at all, mentally or physically. It took one (pretty awful) night and 2 naps, but he has always been a good sleeper since, and happy if he is awake by himself, chats and sings and plays. I feel that I know what is best for my child (and of course that applies equally for everyone else's opinion) and myself and my abilities as a mother, and that this was completely the right solution for us. you both must be absolutely committed though, as has already been said, because during the tough times, (very brief in the scheme of things even if it takes a few days), you will have to support each other. Hope you get on well.

Caz10, my idea to decrease feeds (not an original idea - I think it originates with Ferber, but tried it with dd and it worked) is to time them, and then start decreasing by a minute each night for each feed. So it gives dc a chance to up their feeds during the day gradually.

I'm also going to try and stretch out time between feeds - like you I tend to feed every 2/3 hours, but will try to stretch to four...

However, ds is a pretty determined chap, so he may have other ideas..

Thanks all for responses. It's helped me formulate the way we're going to do it. I am going to wait until ds is eating more solids and feeding less during the night. I'm going to take note of ds's response - if it's not working by night 3 or 4, then I guess it won't - perhaps for the reasons posted by DaddyJ ie if there's a real need behind the crying. Neolara, I like your idea too, and will consider this too.

And although the argument mooted by Greenmonkies is a potentially persuasive one, I also really believe that ds, dd and dh deserve a well-rested, happy mum, and that until I get some sleep I am not going to be able to fulfil this.

Just read Muffinmum's post - anyone who used cc, did you all go in and calm your dc, and THEN leave, or did you just go in, say sleepytime, or whatever, and leave whether or not dc was calm or not? I'm not sure if dc would respond to my voice alone to calm down - I'd have to pick him up to calm, and then that would really be pu/pd, which we've tried, to no avail.

Thanks all.

sounds sensible travellerintime

i keep thinking dd will sort herself out, but it's becoming more of a problem as I am back to work soon

would be interested re your last query too, as dd def needs picked up to be calmed too ,most of the time anyway

does your lo sleep on their back? just asking as i've had much more success settling dd on her side, which i know is wrong, BUT if i settle her on her back she flips herself onto her side anyway

worth a try in the meantime!

Hi Caz10,
Ds sleeps on his tummy. At about 4.5 months, he started flipping over onto his tummy, and we could not settle him on his back. So we gave up and now put him down on his tummy. Not recommended, I know, but at least we get some sleep this way.

Hi Traveller

We didn't do controlled crying as such but a sort of modification. DD was waking and having little feeds around 6 months, obviously not hungry (she was having stacks of solids and eating like a horse) just wanting a comfort.

This is what we did:
DH had a week off work and so I said that when she cried he would go in and pat/cuddle whatever. As I was BF and I knew that if I went in and didn't feed her it would be adding insult to injury. She would go nuts and I would feel cruel. So DH did it for the week.

After about 4 days she stopped waking and has slept all night since.

However she was always quite a good sleeper anyway, so we only needed to point her in the right direction.

Sounds dreadful. We found controlled crying worked really well for ds, but wasn't very successful with dd. ds went for full on major crying and wore himself out very quickly, so it wasn't very painful as after a very short period of time we learnt to read his crying and could time pretty much to the minute the point when he would go to seep. dd on the other hand could cry for ages without using much energy so it was much less effective. I think whether it works depends entirely on you and your baby, but definitely worth a try. You must be absolutely shattered.