Giving Controlled Crying a go?

[mrspoppins]

This is not a thread designed to evoke debate but it is written as a response to being asked what to do if you should decide to try this. There are a lot of parents here who are happy with it and a lot who aren't. We just have to accept that. If you are having difficulties settling your child of any age to sleep and are not happy with your present situation then it may be of use to you so read on!

If your child has been sleeping with you in their bed or in yours, withdrawing yourself completely will be too traumatic and you need to do a more gradual approach before taking on this technique. If anyone would like help with that, post here and I will jot a few pointers down for you.

First Things First

It is vital to choose a regular time to start the bedtime routine and stick to it.

If your baby is aged 6 months plus, timing the evening routine to coincide with their last bottle is important so as a rule of thumb, allow yourself an hour. Try not to let baby fall asleep on you whilst feeding in order to place them into their cot asleep as when they wake up, they may be disorientated. It is better for children to fall asleep in their cot/bed in order to promote a safe and happy feeling about being in bed but awake.

If your child is no longer having a last bottle, end your routine in their bedroom having quiet stories with the lights low.

Ensure an older child has a last wee before your stories start and their teeth are brushed so they don't need to leave their rooms again. They should have had their last fluids of the day with their evening meal to avoid needing the loo at 10.30pm!

Choose your timing method...You can choose any interval you like.
1min-3min-5min-1min-3min-5min
3min-5min-10min-3min-5min-10min
5min-10min-5min-5min-10min-15 min

If you would rather, keep the interval the same length 5min-5min-5min.

STEP 1 Put into cot/bed calmly and gently. Hushed tones for babies, whispering for older children...sleep well...love you. Night night...lights off. Door closed and leave the room. Do this even if you child is already crying. Smile and reassure with your expression.

STEP 2 If baby is crying immediately, wait the amount of time you have chosen then go in. Make no eye contact...look at their bodies or hands, lie them back down if they are standing, just gently touch their arm if they are still laying...no talking...just whisper sshhh sshhh sshhh in a calm, slow way. Stay for approx 2 mins. Leave.
If baby starts to cry after a little while, leave them to cry for the first timed interval you chose before you go in and do the above.

STEP 3 Continue with the timed intervals you have chosen until your baby or toddler falls asleep. Reassurance should still be kept to a minimum of no more than two minutes and they shouldn't be lifted out of the cot/bed or be cuddled or spoken to.

This may take a while. Be prepared for that. Have a chair to sit on outside their room, a coffee and a magazine or even set up the ironing board and get a few things done! You must not simply stand there waiting to go in...It will drive you nuts and the minutes will seem endless. I think having something to occupy yourself with will make things easier for you. Cleaning the bathroom or just tidying up is another idea!

Controlled crying can take a few nights to establish. You must give yourself time and be patient.

If you have a toddler who is constantly coming out of their room, take them as nicely as you can back to bed. I say this as they may not be cooperative at all about the idea! Even if they are kicking and shouting, ignore?ignore?ignore. Even if it kills you!
Toddlers who are coming out of their room to you, wait till they come out to put them back.
Toddlers who are in a cot, use the timed interval method but make it longer 5-10-15 as an example and then go back to 5mins.

The principal is the same for all age groups. Do not offer reward for crying and screaming about going to bed. They are safe. They need sleep. You know it is the best for them. It is simply that they don?t understand.

The younger child cries as they have no language. That is their language. It is hard to listen to and we are programmed to want to nurture/ keep safe our offspring when they cry but remember, they are safe and they don?t need protecting.

If there are questions you have, post them and I?ll do my best to answer them.

What a parent does regarding sleep is surely so determined by their circumstance that we have to allow people to just get on with whatever they want to.

A first time Mum, not yet back at work might be able to cope with poor sleep as she can doze in the day.
A Mum with other children needs to be alert for them to be able to fulfill their needs and to be safe...driving etc...
I am not a person who has firmly fixed views on what parents should do. If they don't know what to do, I can tell them what has worked over the years for me and show them what to do if they want to try it, but if they are happy with the way their family life is, then I say nothing.I only give advice when it is asked for. Am off to bed now...my teenager is home and so I'll catch up with you again! x

MrsPoppins, I empathise with your frustrations but FD has raised a couple of good points. The breastfeeding question is a valid one. Breastfeeding and formula feeding babies have differing metabolisms. It is unfair to refer to this point as 'nitpicking'.

Further down the thread, you mentioned how much solids a baby may be having and whether nutritionally a baby may be getting enough during daytime in order to go through the night. YOu did so in the context of a 4 mo old and added information up to 6 month olds. A lot of babies do not take sufficient amount of foods and foods which are calorie and nutrition dense till 8 or 9 months old at the minimum (this is just the nature of the weaning process) so this information can run counter to what is nutritionally safe for some babies. As you may be aware, the current guidelines is to wait till around 6 months or 26 weeks to wean babies irregardless of feeding method. Weaning at 4 months or 17 weeks though very common, is not supposed to be recommended by anyone working in the NHS without specific advice under the care of a paediatrician, for example.

Do you realise that Richard Ferber, the daddy of controlled crying, no longer seems to recommend using CC to under 12 month olds? A lot has been researched and written about the way the human brain changes over the first year of life, not to mention how their bodies and metabolisms grow and develop neurologically and physically. As a paediatrician he seems to have been reading the literature out there and has altered and even omitted some things from his first edition. He no longer implies that night waking before twelve months means your child has a 'problem' sleeping. He has also included a chapter on co-sleeping which I find refreshing. [pun not intended]

Ah ok thanks for reply. Was just thinking that my 5 1/2 month old who had slept through for about a week has now started waking again and I reeeally desire for him to sleep through! (New sharp ridges on lower jaw though so hoping it was just teething)

I had forgotten the link with deep sleep and cot death.

Quite agree mrspoppins, each to their own.

If you have one child, you do not have the added pressures of coping with the other children's needs in the daytime. You can afford to be awake more and not have a great sleep cycle as you may have more opportunity to catch up with sleep in the day

If you are sleep deprived..not able to sleep in the daytime to catch up, you are more likely to have difficulties being safe driving etc..

sorry ..hadn't realised it was thatgarbled.

Foxytocin, the original bf mention was because I had only written bottle in my post not bottle/breast

Igglybuff asked why the neighbour's baby woke still in the night at 16weeks and I was saying that they still probably needed feeding. It was not about my original post at all but in answer to his question.

I have been doing this for 17 years and, yes, things change and new ideas and research come through. You read everything and reassess.The NHS states that conrolled crying doesn't cause psychological damage, others say it does..You have to weigh up the arguments and make a decision.
This was not to solve a problem sleeper but how to help your child get a good night's sleep...it also isn't meant just for babies but that seems to be the focus at the moment.

Years pass and ideas change.That is the nature of parenting and health but just because something has fallen out of favour does not mean it cannot still be effective.
It is choice.

Posted by Jamieandhismagictorch "DS2 had, prior to his sleep being disrupted by teething, always been able to settle himself to sleep. After that acute period, had passed (when he needed more comfort from me during the night), I felt he'd got into a habit of needing me there, so in a sense, it was not "learning" to self-soothe, but re-learning, that was needed."

Jamie, this is exactly what happened with us. DS self soothed from 9 weeks and was a brilliant sleeper then a particularly bad bout of teething that started around 10 months changed all that. We would go in and rock him to sleep or bring him in with us but when the teething stopped, he still expected it and it's been like that for 3 months now - it has been taking us over an hour to get him to sleep in the first place which is fine, but then sometimes 2 hours or more to settle him in the middle of the night, and that is on top of him waking several times.

We didn't start CC last night after all. The blankets instead of grobag seemed to work a bit better, and the much later bed time seemed to work too. We were still up with him but it took a lot less time for him to settle. We will persevere with that for now. As I said, CC would be the absolute last option for us, as it would for most parents I expect.

CC will always be a controversial method and whilst I was smuggity smug when my DS was sleeping though during his first year, I can now totally understand how desperate some parents become if their DC has never slept through. I have literally felt nauseous with tiredness at times and have barely been able to function. Looking after my DS in that state frightens me quite frankly - I am not fully with it when I am caring for my son and the thought of me missing a trick and harm coming to him terrifies me. I think this could be the point at which some parents, like us, consider CC.

For the record, MrsPoppins, there are quite a few mums who have more than one child who are perfectly functioning and have work lives, and/or study lives and other pressures and are not walking or driving in a near stupor. And have not done controlled crying. they solve night wakings and early morning wakings differently.

Your original post mentioned only bottle feeding but can't you acknowledge here that you have made an oversight and that breastfed babies are different when it comes to sleeping and feeding? So different rules may apply? Even if you don't appreciate the spirit in which this point was raised?

"This was not to solve a problem sleeper but how to help your child get a good night's sleep...it also isn't meant just for babies but that seems to be the focus at the moment.
"

I am not sure how we are supposed to read this statement. Your original post has states that the information is valid for your baby from 6 months plus. I realise the NHS has guidelines for using CC from 6 months. The point I am hoping to raise is that babies from 6 months do not have a clinical problem if they are waking during the night. Parents are having a social or cultural problem with what is biologically normal behaviour. It is only fair that people are made aware that night waking is normal. And if they still want to do controlled crying they are doing so with more information about night waking.

NOt so long ago I listened to a HV instruct berate a mum of a 5 month old breastfeeding baby how she should deal with this baby's sleep 'problems'. It seems like for a few weeks she had been 'advising' this mum about how to 'fix' her baby's sleep. The longer this hv ranted the smaller this poor woman became before my eyes. Completely undermining her parenting. So despite the published guidelines, some HCPs break these anyway just like how they continue to recommend weaning before 6 months against the guidelines they are supposed to be following.

Parents deserve to have all the information on feeding, sleep and weaning, non?

Foxytocin, I have either been utterly inept at explaining myself or you are misreading me.
I have said it is all down to circumstance.If a parent is coping and happy with whatever they are doing regarding nighttime that is great.It doesn't matter whether they have one baby or 5 children. They will be managing their lives quite happily and so will not seek out other methods. They will not need to.
If they are not coping and incredibly tired and their days are difficult due to sleep deprivation, this may be a way to alleviate that.It doesn't matter that the tiredness is the parents problem, it is a problem.
I am simply pro choice.
Mine are grown up now but I have always worked from right before their births to immediately after.DD1 didn't sleep and I was beside myself with tiredness and became unwell. I tried this, it worked, life got better.My job as a nurse didn't fit with family life so I changed jobs. DD2 was very ill as a baby and there were 5 years between them,they came with me to work daily as I was lucky enough to have a job that fitted. I bf dd2 for months and months and months as she was poorly and unable to wean until nearly 1. I can see this from lots of angles.

The original post was a general post for someone here by request. Happy to do that but I gave ideas for all age groups as it can be for any aged child. The focus of the discussion that followed was babies. That's ok.
I never once said that night waking is a clinical problem. Yes, I could have posted links here, there and everywhere for all aspects of child sleeping patterns but the thread wasn't for that.It would be an interesting thread though.
In my job I say this is what is out there..what do you want to try? They choose, I help.
I doubt that we would ever be truly happy with our decisions if they were all based on research as there is a lot of conflicting advice and so we would still need to choose one way over another if we choose using that criteria.Others go by instinct and never read a parenting manual in their lives..There is no one way and so it doesn't matter.
Parents may find in the following years that choices they made were wrong. New evidence based research may come to light which in turn means that they were wrong in their behaviours.It doesn't mean that they are going to have children who have issues as adults.There is every day in which to do the best for your family. Mistakes here and there are inevitable. It is the whole picture that counts.
I am not a berater. I leave that to others as there are a lot about!

In answer to your earlier question FD. If I picked up my tired baby who I have just fed to feed again she would either refuse and get really cross if she was super tired or she would use me as a dummy til she fell asleep and then she would really cry when I tried to move as she'd be woken up from a light sleep.
I feel it is my job to care for my baby and to answer to her cries and make sure she spends as little time as possible crying and never gets to screaming point. What I do works for us. My baby sleeps well, barely cries, never screams and me and DD1 have happy times together (apart from now as I neglectfully type).
At night I always feed her when she cries as she only cries as she is hungry.
It is perfectly possible to allow a tired baby to have a little cry and still have a baby who is very happy and healthy who has cries responded to and so cries very little.

Right..on this note I am leaving.I don't want you to think I am just giving up but I type slowly and have a mass of things to do today.
Lots of luck everyone. x

I have a ton of course work marking to keep me company this PM so i won't try to answer fully. I wan not trying to say that you were talking about anything other than in your post. I was broadening the perspective of the topic which as you state was intended for one person but you realised that other people are reading too so they can take away what they wanted from it.

You did state that it was for one person but then went on to talk in general. By talking in general as well it raises more issues than it answers and that is not your fault. It is a pro and con of talk boards that many people in many scenarios will be reading and it is difficult to address all their issues raised in a general post.

I was only raising points to include 2 common issues which the affect sleep in the first year: method of feeding and brain development in the first year.

I wasn't questioning what you did. You did what was best for you with the information you had available at the time and the circumstances of your own life. That is all any mum can be asked to do, hopefully with current information available to them.

Hope your course work marking is going well

If you're desperate for some sleep my advice would be let the kid come into your bed or simply swap beds with him/her. That's what we did for about 2 years.

Worked for us.

Then, one morning I woke up and realised night he hadn't come in the previous night, and he didn;t come in the next night, or the one after that, or the one after that or ever again.

He broke himself of the habit.

We managed to get through that little phase without listening to seemingly endless screaming and crying in the middle of the night, or suffering any guilt or feelings of frustration.

Simples.