Controlled Crying - stress levels stay high even when babies have learned to settle themselves.

[Codandchops]

OMG!!!

Even worse is that I could not bear to leave my DS as a baby so used to sit in the room and re-settle him every 5 mins. How shit is that? He could see me for 5 mins at a time not comforting him (even though after every 5 mins I did comfort him).

Have always felt an irrational guilt about DS's autism and wonder if I made things worse .

Need to read the research and look at numbers involved.

What else could you have done? There will no doubt be a report out soon saying that nursing your baby/ child to sleep is damaging!

Yes, I recognise my emotional response is irrational - just going to look now and see if the research was based on 10 children or something ridiculous like that.

Have you got a link as I can only see some highly dubious Daily Fail article.

Soooooo babies should never cry-really ???

Controlled crying normally only lasts a couple of days to kick in and involves just 5 mins of crying.To be quite frank 3 days of doing that which resulted in beautifully sleeping twins I couldn't give a stuff re cortisol levels. The amount of cortisol my lot would have been exposed to from one very stressed out mummy with a life of no structure would have been waaay more.

Babys have cried since time began.GF doesn't advocate leaving babies for hours crying,nobody does.Babies often have siblings,mums with households to run so there will be many a time mum can't drop everything to avoid a 2 minute wail,it's life.

Telegraph article about the same

Theres lots of studies on how cc damages babies physically and mentally,i thought everyone knew that!

As far as the links to autism,i wouldnt of thought so,but i dont know.I think most of us do what we think is best at the time,and we cant go back in time and change the way we did things,so i wouldnt worry about it too much tbh!

Cod try not to feel too guilty. As mum's we all feel guilty at times, I did controlled crying with DS, as I couldn't cope anymore with the lack of sleep, as my H at the time was away all the time conducting an affair (I didn't know about) and I also had a 20 month old to look after too. I needed them to sleep and I had run out of options in my desperate state.

I look at both my lovely children now at age 3 and 4 who sleep well and feel loved and I am glad I did it and I do not think it has had a lasting affect. I can also add that I did PUPD with DD but with DS that just didn't work.

I'm going to start saving for their therapy as adults now Seriously, we all do the best we can. And that's all you can do.

Cuddler can you link to all these studies?

I think it depends on the whole family really,some people like their kids to be in bed and also they might all have to be up the next morning for work,nursery.school.in those cases i can see why routines are important and that maybe -a big maybe_a few nights of cc would be better than general chaos and stressed out parents.
Personally i have 4 kids and not one of them has a bedtime and they all nurse or cuddle to go to sleep,usually at the same time!It works for us as none of them go to school or nursery,i stay at home and doesnt have to go into work as often as most people so for us its nice.

The study said it involved 25 infants over a 5-day period. That doesn't sound like a lot of people to me. Don't get me wrong, I am sitting on the fence on this one. I personally did CC when I was a first-time parent, but I had PND at the time and had an awful episiotomy injury which left me unable to walk for a week after. When I became a new parent the second and third time round, I could not bear to hear the babies cry (and had nice births and did not sustain any injuries other than minor bruising), so I was more "up to it" if you like, for avoiding the CC method. But I don't think this study is convincing enough when it only involved 25 babies, iyswim??

I will have a look and try to!Ive read in lots and lots of books and magazines about it so i am assuming they got it from somewhere,and apart from that,it just makes sense to me?Its not natural is it really?and i have heard so many women say how wrong it feels to do it and the babies obviously dont like it (although they do give up in the end!)and i believe thats because its just not the way nature intended!

I also dont think someone should feel guilty for doing it though,like i said before,you do what feels right at the time!I might look back in ten years time and wish id been more gina ford like,i highly doubt it!but its possible!

Also i think its important to remember that "no evidence of harm" is different to "evidence that theres no harm".

Particularly re physical and mental damage.

This study(by some woman in Texas) says babies will remain stressed for a while after errrr is that big news?

All babies will be stressed at times as they're human like mums.My babies picked up on my stress from my face,my heartbeat,my voice etc.That in turn made them stressed.

As soon as I did cc and a routine they never got to the frantic stage,they were more relaxed so I was more relaxed so they in turn were even more relaxed.3 very relaxed,happy kids here who have always been fab sleepers to boot.

The woman quoted in the mail is some AP expert something I would never ever put either myself or my family through.

It's horses for courses.Mums need to mother how it suits them without this continual drip feed of "studies" and "advice" that make big bucks for those who publish and report them.We're all perfectly capable.

As somebody says it'll be the turn of AP next week.

Never put your kids through what?

Its funny isnt it how when you get so used tot he way you do things when you hear someone doing it a different way it seems so wierd.I dislike the AP label but i do parent my kids like that,we both do,although it was while befoe we realized that was what we were doing,we just did what we felt right to us.

Cuddler it was natural to all my 3.

I had twins first so they were used to waiting from the first minute they popped out.Dd came a year later and I had to toddlers who needed and deserved me just as much so she had to wait at times.I was always there,they were secure,they knew I was coming and doing my best.

The cc was no different and seriously the benefits after 3 days completely outweighed the months/years of stress we'd all have been exposed to if I hadn't have done it.

Said article is just another headlining crappy article with conclusions based on very little designed to gain a few more clicks,earn revenue and make mothers feel crap.

The thing is even some people do need to see studies and advice,you might be happy with the way you are doing things and so am i,but some others arent and the studies and advice can help these people,i just wish there were better advice out there.

Also i dont buy into this whole"whats best for mum is best for baby"saying that you hear so much.It may suit a mum a lot more to formula feed from birth,wean at 3 months,put the baby in a nursery for 40 hours a week at 4 months and leave them to cry themselves to sleep at night,but does it suit the baby?I dont think it does.

but rockpool,i had 4 in 3 years,i didnt do any of the things that you said you had done,in fact i did the total opposite,and we dont live in chaos or stress,in fact i believe if i had done all of that then life would be harder and less enjoyable.I guess its like you said,horses for courses!

Ok the idea that CC could have anything to do with your sons autism is absolutely rubbish and has horrible overtones of the cold mother's symdrome theory.

www.autism.org.uk/News-and-events/Media-Centre/Position-statements/Causes-of-autism.aspx

Yes agree with LeQueen. It's a balance. Of course it is stressful for them, but being attended to by an exhausted mother/father is also stressful. And this will be for a much longer period of time than cc. I think cc is probably best left until the baby is at least 6 months and probably better nearer a year though- works quicker, more likely to work the first time you do it etc etc- therefore stressful for shorter period of time for baby, perhaps they could give advice regarding this rather than just saying cc is bad. I read this in the Dr Christopher Green book "How to tame your toddler".

I've been fighting the urge to wade into the bunfight, but honestly, rockpool, who do you think is making money out of this? The researchers? Do you know what research pays? You don't make money from journal articles, nor from journalists mis-quoting your studies in the Hate or the Torygraph. But I digress.
To return to OP's concerns, the study doesn't remotely mimic a normal CC situation; in this case all overnight and naptime care for the babies was provided by nurses in a residential clinic, with mums able to hear their babies, so there is clearly a lot of new stress there for the babies to deal with. The study examines salivary cortisol levels prior to, on day 1, and post-clinic, and finds that prior to CC, mum & baby had closely-associated cortisol levels, whilst after 3 days babies had high cortisol and mums reduced, i.e. that mums were responding to the reduction in their babies' crying, whilst babies were still stressed.
More research would need to be done to figure out if the babies were still 'stressed' further down the line.
No causal link is suggested or implied between this and any complex behavioural traits, nor could it be - this is just one small piece or research, which as is often the case, is being reported as an endpoint.
I've bothered to take the time to read the original study, unlike the journalists, personally I don't fancy CC much, but fwiw I don't think it harms babies at all. And for people who are desperate to get some sleep and order back into their lives I can imagine it could be a godsend.

I can't bear to hear my baby cry - I'm not actually sure how parents can do controlled crying without leaving the house completely or wearing ear-plugs.

But, I can understand why parents do it, and undoubtedly think that if you need to do it, then do it. All babies are different, and what works for some may not work for others.

After all, I'm only 4 weeks in with my baby - maybe in another few months when I still haven't slept for more than 4 hours at a time, I'll be trying CC, who knows?

here you are Cod - this will (hopefully) make you smile a bit

My sister did CC and has a lovely, well behaved 8 year old boy. I have done completely the opposite and (so far!) have a lovely happy little girl. Whatever works for each family.

Regarding better advice, I don't think there will ever be better evidence based studies. It's so hard to isolate individual factors that will influence babies sleep patterns and later behaviour, genetics, illnesses, relationship between parents, siblings, all play a part. It's just not possible to conduct a conclusive study.

Oh, and that study was carried out by an AP pressure group. Just sayin'.

Agree with LeQueen and Tgger that preferably wait until babies are older to do this.