Any child psychologists out there? What do you think (professionally) about controlled crying?

[Neenztwinz]

I have used CC, I think it is a very quick and effective way of dealing with sleep problems, but I was wondering if there was any research done into its long-term effects. My SIL is a child psychologist and she is dead against CC, so I wonder whether it is because of research she may have seen. I don't want to ask her about it because our babies are only 7 weeks different in age and discussions such as these are just not worth the hassle IYKWIM.

cote, I also have a question for you - how long did you bf for?

Did I say I was going to bf my ds into this teens? Why on earth would that thought even occur to you? I am no longer bf-ing my 5-year old - that might give you a clue.

A 2 year old does not just feed for nutrition. If you bf-ed a baby beyond 1 year, that would be patently clear without having to read kellymom. In any case, I do not allow my ds to feed between the hours of 10pm and 5am - because i want to claw back some personal space to myself. I am not some martyr. I did try to wean him from the breast when he turned 2, but he was not ready and protested loudly. My dd was weaned from the breast at 17 months during a nursing strike.

Does it offend you that some mothers try to meet their dcs' needs in ways you would not?

You said you were night-feeding "just the 2 year old" and now you say you don't feed him "between 10 PM and 5 AM". So you are not feeding him in the night, are you?

It still wouldn't "offend" me if you did, because I don't care in the least what you do with your breasts, but I would think you were a bit insane.

I breastfed DD for 6 months.

cote, I initially used the word "bf-ing" but I see you interpreted it to mean 'nightfeeding'. So fair enough. From your comments about bf-ing, I did not think you were particularly well-informed or open-minded. I question whether you even read the links I posted from kellymom.

Is someone who does not do what you do 'insane'?

Cotedazur, are you saying that anyone whose 2 year old (or presumably older) is still given breastmilk at night if they want/need it is insane?

I asked: "Good God, woman, are you still night-feeding a 5 yr old and a 2 yr old?"
You answered: "just the 2 year old"

And you say I have "interpreted it to mean night-feeding"

Let's at least agree that this is not me misinterpreting the answer, but you misunderstanding the question.

All good now that we understand each other.

2 yr old "still given breastmilk at night" in a beaker by the side of the bed - sure.

"Still breastfeeding 2 yr old at night because I can't refuse milk to my baby when she is crying from hunger" - yes, there are some issues there, and not just with the child.

Do you think anyone who breastfeeds a 2 year old (or older) at night is insane, or just that a woman breastfeeding a child at night because she thinks the child is hungry is insane?

Thank you for your patience with these requests for clarification!

Sorry I just lost the patience. Re-read previous posts for clarification.

I have been told before on MN that milk is not stored by the breasts but is produced instantaneously as the baby sucks. I thought it was a bit [how?] at the time! Glad to know this is nonsense (which I thought anyway - why would you get engorged then?)

Came to this thread a bit late, but hey ho.

Re: controlled crying being distressing, I think it is distressing for a baby to be left to cry. I don't think anybody can question this. HOWEVER, you have to balance this against the effect of sleep deprivation on your parenting abilities. It is also distressing for a toddler if their parent is not able to get through the day without losing their temper every 10 minutes because of the sleeping habits of a younger sibling. I am not sure that the benefits of having a co-sleeping parent who will wake and comfort throughout the night are worth it IF the down side is being in the care of a semi-comatose parent during the day.

Obviously its easier to balance the demands of caring for children during the day and night if you have lots of help on hand during the day and can share night duty - this is not possible for many parents.

On the other hand, my experience with my children is that gradual withdrawal at their own pace stops night waking. CC just wasn't necessary. They do still sleep badly when ill. Surely no child always sleeps through? If they do isn't that a bit worrying?

I also think that we sleep at night because, unless you are breast feeding, its difficult to eat in the dark. You wouldn't be able to find your knife and fork and would keep knocking your drink over.

I was told that, too. By someone quoting Kellymom again.

Does anyone know why this woman is revered on MN as breastfeeding Goddess and her website gospel?

I was going to ask the same thing in my post Cote! Everyone's always going on about Kellymom. Howe do we know that everything she says is true?

I read on it once how sometimes your baby will cry in the night even tho it is not hungry but you should feed it anyway because maybe the baby just needs a cuddle... I thought 'er, no, night time is for sleeping - day time is for cuddles!'

cote: "Still breastfeeding 2 yr old at night because I can't refuse milk to my baby when she is crying from hunger" - yes, there are some issues there, and not just with the child."

Are you directing this at me?

Cote - you're getting a bit offensive now.

Why the 'good god, woman', and and 'insane' and 'there are some issues there' (insulting both mother and child)?

Not nice. Back down.

If blueshoes wants and is able to feed her 2yr old like that and parent in that way (regardless of whether you believe her physiological explanation), then why should you care, let alone insult her and imply that she is insane?

Your experience of bf-ing went one way, blueshoes' has gone another. Leave it at that.

No, blueshoes, I am not directing that at you, because you later explained that you are not breastfeeding your two year old at night, and that your earlier comment about not being able to listen to your baby cry of hunger was not re your 2 yr old.

As I thought was clear to all, a misunderstanding because your answered the question: "are you still night-feeding a 5 yr old and a 2 yr old?" with "just the 2 year old".

Hi again everyone,

Unbelievable but nice that this thread has gone on so much... 992 posts, wow!

Just to say, that I also have lots of doubts about many of the things that Kellymom says. Also, I have even more doubts about this idea of 'storage capacity' (being different for different women). I seriously doubt that's true, and I've never read it before, in the many books about parenting/breastfeeding I've seen (I'm a bit of a bookworm). I'd love to see more links about this storage capacity think, if you have them, because to be honest I seriously doubt the validity of the theory. I also agree with those who wondered why we should take everything written on kellymom so seriously.

Things with us are going better. Our boy went for 5 and even 6 and a half hour stretches in the night last week . He was also noticeably less cranky. I did loads of expressing in the day, & made a huge effort to get him to feed more in the day, & it has kind of paid off. We still have a long way to go as he still prefers snacking rather than eating full meals, but I'm hopeful that we'll see a big improvement soon. I also have loads of doubts, the more I think of it, about the theory I believed in so far, that they need to eat little & often. I'm seeing an improvement in my milk supply just by encouraging bigger meals in the day, and also expressing a couple of times a day. Not sure how I could see an improvement in my milk supply just by feeding loads in the night (as I had been doing) because you have to take into account the tiredness also... I'm so exhausted- even now, with the expressing & constant effort to feed it's no picnic- and I'm SURE exhaustion cannot help milk supply.

Anyway. The useful thing that I've learnt from all this is that

1. my boy was clearly able to sleep longer stretches, he just hadn't learnt how to, & was obviously needing to feed in the night, which is why he woke up constantly
2. he clearly has much less of an issue with his dummy than we thought. Which goes to show: we were about to consider sleep training for the dummy, and now we've realized he had sleeping/feeding issues and not dummy issues...

I suppose this is a good lesson for those who would rush to do sleep training without considering more basic issues first... Issues that may actually be CAUSED from feeding on demand (which is what I did until now).

Maria - with the benefit of hindsight, do you now think that using a dummy interfered with your and your son's understanding of the natural sleep-feed mechanism?

I think I will probably get flamed for this but hey ho - this really makes me think that we dont understand demand feeding properly - or cue-led feeding as I prefer.

I often see babies being put to the breast every time they cry - and I know starlight was an advocate of this but sometimes I really think that they are tired or bored or whatever and then they become snackers and this can interfere with the way that their sleep and eating patterns would have developed. Do people get told to put baby to the breast all the time because it is the simplest advice that would cover most people whereas the more flexible approach of feeding every few hours with a decent gap but feeding more frequently when there is a growth spurt is much more complicated and actually harder to do?

Obviously this doesnt apply to tiny babies because they need to be put to the breast often to stimulate supply.

What I think is crystallizing in my own mind is that baby being put to the breast and cosleeping is the best thing for younger babies but the best thing changes (for most) as they get older and they can be helped by stretching to two then three hours a feed.

Am sure it helps to feed after a sleep rather than before as well.

Anna - I think you're right about dummy use - it should only be a last resort - though the guidelines have changed on this havent they in terms of SIDS?

oh and Maria am so pleased things are improving - sorry for the exhaustion as well. If its any comfort I think it depends on the woman re exhaustion and milk supply - I havent been affected by it, all that has happened is that i have become even more exhausted. After my dds birth I was in the ITU and had a very long recovery period - have been given a year. The bfing means that my body will just take much longer to recover and am even more tired than I would have been - my body is effectively prioritising the bf over my recovery - am still producing loads of milk but to my detriment if you see what I mean.

In my cackfisted way am trying to tell you not to worry about your milk supply - it sounds really good.

oh and your last comment about rushing to do sleep training raised a question with me - would most people who do sleep training will already be feeding their baby in more of a routine during the day dont you think because of the way in which the two things go together - as 'demand' feeding and cosleeping (often) go together.

I am very dubious about that SIDS research and dummy use . But then, as someone who always breastfed her baby to sleep and always co-slept, there really was no place for a dummy in our lives.

I went to a very scary seminar recently where dummies (and bottle teats) were demonised because of the petro-chemical content of the rubber. Yet another reason to avoid.

Yeah, Anna, all those chemical are bad - even the chemicals in shampoos etc (parabens) and storing food in plastic containers is A Bad Thing (tho i do it - try to use glass tho as much as poss). The nutritionist Patrick Holford (Optimum Nutrition Bible) is big on the this issue.

Maria, so glad you are seeing better sleep and feeding. Giant, I agree that in the early days putting the baby to the breast lots is a good thing to stimulate supply and get the baby used to sucking, and that after a while the baby should naturally stretch out more between feeds. Not sure what I would do if it didn't - if my babies cried, I put them to the breast. They also naturally had a 2.5 to 3-hour feeding cycle. It was just now and then I would feed them between those times. My SIL (the one mentioned in the OP) only fed her DS every three hours and he cried a lot of the time in between then. She just put it down to tiredness and wind when I would have just fed the poor thing. So i think it is hard to say babies should be made to stretch out between feeds if the result is a very unhappy baby. But I suppose, like CC, eventually a baby fed every three hours will turn into a baby who only needs to be fed every three hours, so it is about short-term pain for long-term gain (it takes more than three days tho from what I saw of SIL - it took more like five months!)

If anyone wants to carry on this conversation I have started a new thread

here

For anyone who was hoping this conversation would die - I am sorry!

Want to play thread 'chicken', neenstwinz?

Is this the last post?