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.

Cuddler sorry how can you say that?

Babies differ,mums differ,life circumstances differ,personalities differ,bodies differ.One size does not suit all.AP suits you,my 3 would have loathed it and it would have screwed all 5 of us up big time.Horses for courses.

Personally I couldn't bring myself to put my 3 in nursery but if I had bills to pay and sanity to keep it would be a no brainer. Life isn't all hearts and flowers.

Alsp people don't need these "studies". They're 2 a penny,often contradict each other and really only a scientific expert could trawl through them all and say which ones were worth loosing any sleep over.

What is natural to one mum is not to another,mums need to just be left to get on with it in their own way,the newborn days are hard enough as it is. For me and plenty of others they're just months to get through any which way.

You're a mum for ever and it's a marathon not a sprint. There are many different stages and you just get through them all as best you can in ways that suit you,your baby and your family as a whole.

Totally agree Rockpool. It's just a nonsense to think it's a modern phenomenon that children are left to cry for - SHOCK - a few minutes rather than satisfying their every whim the second they express it. We have the luxury to indulge our children far more than they ever have been before, and it's frankly ludicrous that our (on the whole) well-loved, well-dressed, overly-cossetted, sleeping on organic mattreses and eating nothing but the best food babies/children, are still somehow 'damaged' by us. I prefer to think of my children as being unbelievably lucky rather than looking for any blemishes on their otherwise perfect existence...

I was going to respond, but ladymuckbeth said it all. Also a bit annoyed that the Telegraph article didn't point out more specifically that the researcher was biased as a member of the AP group, surely that sticks out like a sore thumb at the bottom of the article.

ladymuckbeth has hit the nail right on it's head. I wanted to say something similar, but it came out like this:

Stupid studies are stupid.

Ladymuckbeth children originally were simply carried everywhere, so they didn't "need" to be attended when they cried or needed something. They already had what they needed (they felt safe, were being cuddled and had milk).

Evolutionary speaking, there's no point letting a child cry - it would attract predators, it's a huge waste of energy for the child. There is a reason why we feel so bad when our children cry - we evolved for that. It seems so obvious...

Anyway, I think every family is different and the needs of the child and the parents have to be balanced (which is different from doing whatever is more convenient for the parents at all time) and I really, really don't want to get into the bunfight. This is the sort of discussion that always ends badly.

There is some research about that here, and references to the studies, to those interested:

www.isisonline.org.uk/how_babies_sleep/sleep_training/considerations/

Oh FFS - I didn't even bother clicking on the link because I knew it would get right on my tits but biased MUCH, in that case?

Thank you thumbwitch

It's easy to be a bit irrational about these things and yes, I have now seen it was funded by an AP group. So no bias then?

so...unnatural situation (not their own rooms or a familiar space)

short period of time (5 days) so no comment on longer term gain (not getting to the point at which baby might just think 'feck it' and go to sleep

crude measure of 'stress' by cortisol level (if baby is just happily mucking about but not asleep that would also generate cortisol)

researcher is a member of 'AP squad'

why would anyone pay any attention to this study?

for all you know after X time the non-cc babies are still waking and stressing everyone and the cc babies are sleeping better (or at least amusing themselves)

What, all ten of them (in some cases)? It's absolute nonsense.

I read a couple of AP books when I was disillusioned pregnant and the emotional blackmail used to get the (flawed) arguments across was astonishing. Likening the bars of a cot to a cage, in one instance...

And it's a bit of a leap, frankly, to go from an age when we used to avoid predators straight through to the 21st century, without looking at the THOUSANDS of years in-between. Hmm, what do I fancy doing - worrying about the fact that I let my children cry for a few minutes, while they slept on their organic mattresses in their warm bedroom, with a stomach full of food and two doting parents looking after them? OR shall I worry about the billions of children throughout the world who have none of the above?

yes primeval humans did respond totally to their infants at all times, if they wanted them to survive. we don't have to.

the thing i hate though is the fact people keep saying "a few nights of controlled crying better than months or years of stressed parents and no sleep" but why does everyone assume that unless you are doing cc then life is going to be like that?I dont do cc and my life is the total opposite of that!and i know HEAPS of other mums who dont do it and they dont live in a world of stress and chaos either!

I dont want to get into a fight either because i do think we all do what we think is right,but i just dont like the way people assume that unless you are uber strict and have some supernanny style/gina ford routine where kids are banished to their own rooms every night at 7pm,then life is going to be a mess,because thats not true!

and everyone assumes kids who sleep with their parents who arent sleep trained dont sleep!My 4 all sleep straight through and have done from about 1 at the latest.Even if they did wake up it was never a big deal,they just latched themselves on and fell asleep again!

Sarry B you made me snort and almost spit chocolate at my screen

Codandchops I am a cuddled/feeder to sleep ( though we have on occassion left ours to cry and hated it) bit I can see this is not really relevant. Your ds has a loving mum, and you did not contribute to his autism. Now wipe your tears and accept yabu!

Well that made no sense. I meant the study. And yabu for stressing about this and thinking its lined to his autism. Not that you asked if ywbu, you got the judgement free :)

i don't assume lack of sleep training means no sleep, some kids sleep fine without.

but people trying cc/cio/pupd are quite likely to be in the 'kids don't sleep' group, no?

I agree with Rockpool. Three nights of being left to cry for ten minutes or so left my two able to settle themselves and sleep through the night from eleven weeks for dd and four months for ds. Cue happy mother (as I really really need my sleep) and happy babies. It wasn't a Gina Ford style situation where I was imposing a super strict routine, but it worked for us. I wouldn't advocate it for everyone and I certainly wouldn't let a baby cry for long periods of time, but I was lucky that both of my two ran out of steam very very quickly and fell soundly to sleep, waking up with seemingly no feelings of still being stressed.

Dd now 11 and ds now 7 and no adverse effects so far. Dd very chilled and ds is an emotional roller-coaster (but he was like this from the moment he popped out into his world).

why does everyone assume that unless you are doing cc then life is going to be like that?I dont do cc and my life is the total opposite of that!and i know HEAPS of other mums who dont do it and they dont live in a world of stress and chaos either!

but that's the point Cuddly, every child is different and what worked for one will not necessarily work for another for example I know tonnes of mothers (the majority of my friends and all of my family) who sucessfully breastfed their babies, I did not, so I suffered huge stress and my ds needed formula 9and lets not consider the stress my ds must have felt from the almost constant crying he did whilst I doggedly persisted with bf when it was not working). Telling me that breastfeeding is preferable or that the health benefits of breastmilk are greater than those of formula, or even that you are really good at breastfeeding would have done nothing about the fact that it simply was not working for my ds.

For what its worth I love co-sleeping with my son and it works great for us, but there are a lot of mothers for whom this would not work.

It is great that you have never been in a position where you are desperate enough to have considered cc. But maybe you could try to use a bit of compassion to understand the women who find themselves stressed to bits and reduced to tears by their child's poor sleep pattern and therefore use controlled crying to ensure that they have the physical and mental energy to be the best mothers they can be to their child.

"why love matters" by sue Gerhardt is a good book, not just about cc but about the relationship of how the babys nervous system and brain develop and how it conditions how we respond to stress etc.

i think that cc done on an older baby ie over 1 and with parents that are loving and attentive during the day etc, is probably fine tbh its the whole picture that matters but a little baby that is left routinely to cry is not good. and yes they all get left for the 5 mins when we shower or deal with a sibling etc but i am talking about repeatedly leaving a young baby for long periods of time day or night is not good for them.

there is a lot of info to show just how important those early relationships and attachements are, which we all know anyway it makes sense and if you undermine them by leaving a baby to cry for long periods i dont think it can be healthy.

i couldnt do cc with any of our 5, but we still managed to ahve consistent bedtime routines and they all learnt to self soothe, it took some longer than others and comfort and reassurance but they have all got there, generally by 18mthsish some quicker than others. it worked for us and is what 'felt right' but eveyones circumstances vary and you have to do what works, but if you are going to do it, then do cc properly ie going in and reassuring etc, i wouldnt leave a young baby to just cio on their own.

Maybe I'm missing something but its just doing CC that is stressful?

What about colic, reflux and teething where babies might cry? Isn't that stressful for them?

BTW I did CC with dd, went from over an hour rocking and patting and screaming, with CC 15mins most.

I think it would be really helpful to see a longer study to see what happens to cortisol levels after those first few days. My mental and physical health was so much better as a result of a few nights of controlled crying that I must have been a better mother to DS. A social worker friend has complimented me on DS's secure attachment so I don't think it has done any harm.

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

There is no way to prove a negative. You can never prove that something NEVER harms, so that's a silly argument.

I knew I shouldn't have clicked on that thread.
My DS was a horrible baby. It didn't stop me loving him, I didn't have PND, but I still thought he was a nightmare, because he truly was. He cried almost constantly, for no apparent reason. I guess in prehistoric times, we would have been thrown out to avoid predators?
I carried him in a sling all day long, listening to him howling in my ears, trying to zone out (the ipod helped, and saying my rosary over and over like an utterly mad woman). To top it all, he didn't sleep : no more than 30min in the day, 2hrs at night followed by 2hrs of crying. Day after day, month after month.
At 6 months, I couldn't take it anymore, and I did CC. It wasn't hard to be honest because I was so used to hear him cry. Thank god, it worked a treat, and he has been a good sleeper ever since. In addition, he started crying a lot less during the day and became much happier.
Make of that what you will, but CC is not the work of the devil.

It was the same here Catus once dd started sleeping she was so much happier. Before she was so grizzly and scream if I ever put her down.

Blackout: yes, the change was amazing. Maybe he was just overtired all the time, it seemed like he was "fixed" by being able to sleep. The relief I felt is indescriptable.

Same here Catus and a whole lot of other babies/mums I know.