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.

Mama I did say at the begining of the thread that I had tried everything else. No patting, rocking, cuddles, co-sleeping ect ect worked. As I said before it was a case of either trying CC or putting whiskey in her bottles. Oh and she still won't sleep in the car or pushchair

ds1 was the worst sleeper out of my 5, we had always planned on having 4 and when he was little i said never again! but he got older by about the time he was 18mths i thought yes and so had ds2, and we then had ds3 and ds4, after ds4 i was really poorly and we had only ever wanted 4, but i got well again thanfully :) and life was good and we ummed and ahhed and got a bit lax with birth control on the odd occasion and dd was our bonus baby :) she is great, the boys dote on her. we are done now tho, barring a lottery win so i can have a huge house and a cleaner, then i may think of another but actually i feel very complete right now ,dd is 17mths and life is great, the sleepless baby days are past etc and i am not sure i could do it again, 5 times is pretty good innings tho i think :)

mama I'm so sorry to hear that, can't believe that dr

oh mama that is awful :(

and yes i came under pressure to do cc, hence trying it for one night with ds1, as i said earlier int he thread, 30-40mins of crying and vomiting bayb meant no way was i doing it again!

See Mama the pressure I had was from bfing and not following a routine which I found awful and alien to me.I had to hide GF from the hv..I ditched bfeeding,got into a routine and did cc.It suited all of us massively.

My dc have always needed routine,they were constantly hungry with bfing(had 1 in SCBU,1 nearly from dehydration).My dc are like me.They need 3 square meals a day at the same time.They like to know where they are and panic if hungry or tired.

It's horses for courses and 1 size really doesn't suit all.Mums should have the power to choose for themselves without being bullied into doing things the way others do.Stat quoting and scaremongering is one of the real negatives of MN imvho.

Anyhow I no longer have babies thankfully so I'm off to get some sleep.

When Dp called down to say she had been sick, I went online to do a quick what the hell do we do baby being sick during sleep training search (thinking I'd get advice to feed her and settle her try again tomorrow) and found a babycenter thread where people were saying clean up and carry on!!!!!

5madthings I will certainly try the tummy stroking again and see if we can build on that.

DP is great, he works from home a lot so lets me catch up on as much sleep as I need. I just feel like I need the occasional long stretch, say four hours, not these short periods.

DD2 will only sleep in buggy in day, not night, she knows its snuggle time with mummy. That is half the battle, she clearly needs her snuggle time with mummy.
DP managed to scoop her into cot once she fell asleep, which again, we have only managed once before as she is a very light sleeper and usually wakes up.

We need to think again what to do. Any ideas welcome (but not anything involving extensive crying....)

She was spectacularly awful. I'm a trained MH nurse and thro training came across her name and she was very very poorly viewed. When she was involved with me, she was still training.

Cereal - do you use sleeping bags? I found they really help.

I would love 4 or 5 or 6 . Dh says 3 is enough

yes cerealqueen if you follow the cc routine properly they would say clean her up and carry on :( beyond awful.

i think she is too little, try the tummy stroking and i used to put some of my old clothes, something that smelled of me where they were sleeping, also, i would do the feed and creep away thing but if i was holding them i always held them wrapped in a sheet so they were warm and cosy and then when i put them down as they were in the cosy sheet they didnt feel being put down as much, esp if you put them in a nest of blankets etc, ie rolled up either side of her, she is probably having a growth spurt at 6mths as well and lots of development ie sitting up etc you may find she naturally gets better in the next few weeks. i so sympathise, anyway your dh can take her for longer int he day so you can get a good 4/5hr stretch of sleep ie tank her up on milk and he can take a cup of water and snacks etc and go out so she is entertained and will hopefully nap on the move etc, even take some expressed milk? in a cup maybe if she wont take a bottle, she should be fine for a longish period during the day if you arent there and she wont think about mummy milk so much!

lockets i am thrilled we went for 5, its a lovely number, has its mad moments but i really do love my little family :) well not so little according to some, but its perfct for us :)

I am so jealous I started so late I only managed to squeeze two in under the wire. I would have loved a football tam!

i had my first at uni, not the best plan in the world, but i am glad i did now :)

thing is you just dont know what life will throw at you do you, i always wanted a largish family, planned in my head first at age 27ish, as it is i met dp at 19 and had ds1 at 20 and now am 33 with 5!! i could maybe squeeze in another few, sadly finances wont allow it, but i feel incredibly lucky with the brood i have :) which is partly why i am being an egg donor actually, to give someone else the chance of their own family, its such an amazing thing :)

I'm interested to read that babies crying for long periods is normal, I think Rockpool said that.

I must have been very lucky that neither of my 2 DCs ever cried as babies then. I could probably count on one hand the number of minutes cried by each baby before they were 12 months old. I have had easy babies so it seems!

yes, DD wanted to be carried a lot as a small baby, and in her first 6 months, she was hardly out of the sling and slept on me and night. This is probably why she didn't cry and I used to pick her up as soon as she grizzled. She is fine now, very independant girl, very secure and she just plays on her own for ages now.

I just find it strange how so many people can be judgemental, I think it's great for those of u who didn't have to use cc, who's babies didn't cry a lot. For those who did use cc they did it for a reason, not to hurt their child, or because they think their baby was trying to wind them up( I do get that some parents may think that) but I certaintly didn't. I used cc once my baby was at 7months, I was exhausted and I just personally think getting my baby in a good sleeping routine is the best thing....for my family. Doesn't make me a bad mummy, I think I'm a good mummy I love my children and have done what is right for us.
My baby is 11 months now, she sleeps well and is independent also, very secure and is a happy girl. She still has cries during the day if she gets tired, but I can't always pick her up straight away. If she got to the point of throwing up, or just getting in a right state then I would drop everything for her but if she's crying because ive gone to do my older girls hair and she wants me to cuddle her she will have wait.

What Im saying is all us mums on here are good ones (I imagine) and we all have different points of view that doesn't mean any of us wrong or right we are just doing what we feel is good and right for our own family.
I don't like when people are trying to smug about not using cc, what makes u better than anyone else?
We are all trying to do the best for our babies.

I'm not smug about not using controlled crying. I just didn't do it. And nobody has to. It's not compulsory.

Sorry if someone already mentioned it (long thread and I only skimmed through) but looking at that study it seems like they didn't use a control group at all. So for example, maybe the babies had higher than normal cortisol levels because of being in an unfamiliar environment etc. Without that, I don't think the results tell us anything meaningful at all about the efffects of 'controlled crying' for the baby.

Actually this study didn't seem to be even trying to answer that question, it was more about "synchrony between mothers' and infants' physiology", which I'm sure is an interesting issue in itself, and may possibly have some bearing on the child's wellbeing, but it doesn't seem to be at all clear at the moment if or why that's the case.

Definitely don't think this study is a reason for anyone to change their routine with their baby, or to feel bad about the way they did things.

You feel guilt as soon as you become a parent, wondering if you are doing this or that right, etc. This is just something else for parents to argue over, amongst all the others out there!

Agree lovechoc!
That's right seeker no one has to do cc and no one has to feel like a bad mum if they do do cc
I just don't like when some people are totally disgusted with those of us who do cc, or did do it. I don't agree with a lot of things my friends do with their babies but I don't judge and certainly don't think their bad mums.

Anyway not a lot more to be said really

Trying to do your bet is not necessarily doing your best. I do not think anyone does CC just to torture the baby - but whatever economic conditions people have often force their hand in resorting to solutions which are not necessarily good - and as this is often the main advice (some HVs suggest it, for instance) people do not know any better. Some could change their lives if they had evidence available that what they are doing is harmful, but many cannot. Yet, I would still be very careful in suggesting that this is not a problem free approach. Ephiny, I do not think you can judge a study based on a Daily Mail overview of it. Also, not every study needs a control group. In this case, the comparison is between children at the start of the test and then on the third night. I am sure if you check the actual study, you will find that they also measured the babies' cortisol levels at the very beginning of research to determine if they may have had unusual cortisol levels compared to normal babies. It is unlikely that they included such babies, this would have made the study pointless
This is not the first and only study into this, and I suggest you check PubMed for other such research if you want greater proof that being left to cry alone is harmful to babies. They may recover from this if conditions are right but parents who have to resort to such parenting are likely to be unavailable to set things right in the longer run.