Anyone else feel like a fool for not sleep training?

[Lelophants]

I think I know the answer to this because every baby, mum and relationship is different. I also don't want to make this a judgemental post, but would like to hear from any mums more similar to me and see how your kids turned out! Do you regret avoiding the whole sleep training fiasco? Were you also the only one you knew not to do it?

I dont want to sleep train for various reasons and I am happy with that, but it's starting to get me down how I'm the only one out of my friends who hasn't and I keep wondering whether I'm just being stupid.

It's just me still breastfeeding, going to bed early, missing out on late night chats and consistent naps. A few local friends who were similar are now starting to sleep train their 1 year olds (who were adamantly against it before). My friends who have had babies after me are also now doing it. One of these has a 3 month old and she keeps going on about how well it is working and giving me sleep tips, which is driving me a bit mad tbh. She keeps gently patronisingly telling me how basically really I should've done this by now as my ds is 1 and her 3 month old (I know ) is great and I need to toughen up and do it.

I feed him to sleep, still breastfeed and frequently bedshare at night. Naps are up and down and yes I am tied to the pushchair during rain or shine and sometimes I tear my hair out a little bit, but I still find it better than the alternative and I want to do what's best for him, which is what we are doing currently. I feel comfortable parenting this way but sometimes I am made to feel like I am being a bit of a soft idiot.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just try it for an easy life. I can't look forward so can't see how he will turn out and what is best for him. I guess I'm looking for some reassurance that I'm not an idiot for doing what I'm doing and my ds will be OK! And worth missing out on the 12 hour stint at night.

@MilkLady02

Totally agree that different things work for different children and you have to find what works. I’ve tried most gentle sleep methods but DS is just a very light sleeper. He has no “drowsy but awake” setting. He wakes in a second and is sat up crying/calling for me. I’ve tried shush and pat, gradual retreat etc... but what I’ve never understood (and what is never explained) is what do you do when they don’t settle? Does anyone with experience of these methods have advice? The other night DS cried for nearly an hour with me in the room, coming over to shush /pat every few mins but just getting more hysterical. I can’t go on with a method that doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve read up so much on it and I’m pretty sure I’m doing it right, but what do you do when they don’t actually drift off or become drowsy?! How many hours do you let them cry? (Because DS would definitely have gone on for longer than an hour!) It’s my ultimate question that I just can’t get an answer to!

It stops becoming gentle and you persevere wirh the cio method or you give up and realise it's not for you.

@Lelophants
“It stops becoming gentle and you persevere wirh the cio method or you give up and realise it's not for you.”

Exactly! I’ve tried that twice but I just can’t stick with it! He was in our bed again from 4am this morning after two previous wake ups! Sometimes I can rock him back to sleep and get him back in the cot, sometimes not. If he’s the slightest bit awake going into the cot, the crying starts and doesn’t stop so I just don’t understand the drowsy but awake thing???
I get the principle and I want it to work, but I make no progress! I want to know how other children drift off to sleep! Either I do not have one of those, or I’m doing it wrong, but nobody can tell me what I’m doing wrong! It’s so frustrating!!
I’m with you on not sleep training if it’s not working!!

[quote MilkLady02]@Lelophants
“It stops becoming gentle and you persevere wirh the cio method or you give up and realise it's not for you.”

Exactly! I’ve tried that twice but I just can’t stick with it! He was in our bed again from 4am this morning after two previous wake ups! Sometimes I can rock him back to sleep and get him back in the cot, sometimes not. If he’s the slightest bit awake going into the cot, the crying starts and doesn’t stop so I just don’t understand the drowsy but awake thing???
I get the principle and I want it to work, but I make no progress! I want to know how other children drift off to sleep! Either I do not have one of those, or I’m doing it wrong, but nobody can tell me what I’m doing wrong! It’s so frustrating!!
I’m with you on not sleep training if it’s not working!![/quote]
The reason why we went with CC is that we tried the “gentle” methods and couldn’t persevere with them. They might get results eventually, but when we were already so exhausted the prospect of spending several hours a night shush patting / sitting on a chair further from the cot while the baby STILL cried was not for us.

Now, DD goes in the cot drowsy but awake (ie, she could fall asleep on one of us, her lids are starting to get heavy etc) but she knows that the cot is the place to go to sleep and so does it within a few minutes. Sometimes she strokes the bedsheets and the cot bars for a few mins then goes to sleep but mostly she’s asleep by the time we get downstairs to the monitor again.

@MilkLady02 if baby is crying hysterically I would go back a step or 2. Whilst I’m sure these methods won’t work for every child, I’ve used them with dozens of families and I’ve found they work brilliantly. Feel free to message me if you would like any suggestions.

@user853600

Good for you! Come back to me when you've crashed your car into a wall with your baby in the back seat because you haven't slept more than 30 minutes at a time in six months. Otherwise, maybe keep your nasty judgements to yourself.

Why do you keep saying good for you, come back when...
Why is it a nasty judgement to be against sleep training but it's an acceptable opinion to be against natural parenting?

It's the same with breastfeeding. You can't say anything without someone racing to the bottom. Oh, you're only saying that because you don't have it as bad as me. Bullshit. I've not had one minute away from my dc, I've changed all nappies, she's never had a bottle of breastmilk. I'm tired, I'm knackered, but I won't teach my dc that I won't be there for them during the night. It's possibly to practice biologically normal infant sleep and be tired. They're not exclusive.

What i am saying, and what you do not seem to grasp, is that for some people it is not simply a case of "being tired", it is a case of being so severely sleep deprived that you are unable to function and are in fact endangering yourself and others. At that point, "prioritising biologically normal infant sleep" (or encouraging poor sleep habits, whichever way you look at it) is no longer an option. You are getting enough sleep to allow you to function, and therefore you're comfortable not sleep training. There are many women out there who are not getting enough sleep to function, and those women choose to sleep train. Implying that they're cruel or selfish or bad parents is just shitty behaviour, and to be honest it smacks of mummy-martyrdom-superiority or bitterness or both.

@3WildOnes
Thanks for the reply.
Yes I’ve just been going back a step but it feels never ending! We can never get past the rocking to sleep and placing in cot stage as if he’s even in a light sleep when placed in cot he wakes and is upset. I’m so gentle putting him in, it’s like playing baby buckaroo! He’s 21 months and I’ve been doing this about 9 months now! Some weeks feels like progress, less waking, other weeks wakes at 3am and nothing will get him back to sleep! Been night weaned several months now. I’ve kind of accepted that he’ll get there in the end!

I've not had one minute away from my dc, I've changed all nappies, she's never had a bottle of breastmilk. I'm tired, I'm knackered,

I think that what people are trying to say, perhaps not as politely as they could, is that this is, in part, your choice.
If you have a partner, or other adult help, you don't have to be with your dc every minute, day and night, and not doing so doesn't make you a worse parent. Not changing every nappy yourself doesn't make you a bad parent. Looking after yourself so that you can better look after your children doesn't make you a bad parent, and it isn't selfish.
And, as has been stated multiple times, sleep training doesn't have to mean that you ignore your child at night!
People have used very emotive language to talk about sleep training, which is obviously going to get people's backs up. But I cannot find any evidence anywhere that it damages the bond between child and parent, or that it causes any damage.

Ultimately, if what you are doing now works for you then brilliant, carry on! All I'm saying is that if it isn't working, there are alternatives.

If you have a partner, or other adult help, you don't have to be with your dc every minute, day and night, and not doing so doesn't make you a worse parent. Not changing every nappy yourself doesn't make you a bad parent.

It's not a choice. I havd no option.

I'm baffled as to why pp seems to think there's a race to who is most tired and apparently, I don't qualify for that because I continue to follow a normal sleep behaviour pattern.

It doesn't mean I'm not sleep deprived. It means I'm actively choosing that path and putting that before my own wants/ needs.

@

@Ohalrightthen Don't tell me how tired I am.

I can be as tired as you (and everyone else who sleep trains) or more so and still choose to follow biologically normal infant sleep behaviour.
I don't have to be energetic or more energetic than you to be able to do so.

It's a choice.

@Ohalrightthen What you're trying to do is justify sleep training by saying some are too exhausted not too.

Don't justify it. You see no issue with sleep training so why are you justifying it?

This is exactly the same as bf vs ff.
Oh, you're lucky you were able to bf. I was too tired. Etc etc.

We all have choices. I didn't make mine because I'm not as tired as you. I made mine because I'm priorising that above myself.

I adopted a self soothe approach from 6 months onwards before that I shared with my dd.

Idea surrounding my method was she doesn’t have to go straight to sleep (we as adults don’t lay down and go straight to sleep) she can listen, look and feel comfortable in her bed alone with dim light on, even few safe toys or books ect. I also always leave classical radio one for her to listen to. Read her lots of stories and cuddle before I leave.

She naps in cot after lunch and goes to bed with zero issues apart from the fact she wants to go to bed and I have to keep telling her it isn’t time yet ahah. My parenting is by no means perfect! But I’m proud we have bedtime to an art, she’s nearly 2 so this could all change when she goes in a big bed....

Oh when I mean self soothe, I didn’t leave her to cry I created an environment, and she just doesn’t cry in bed...she’s happy to be there. But so would I be with stars, music, and her comforter ect.

Sorry keep sending messages lol do need to point out I stopped bf at 6 months tho! so might have massively helped haha

@Ohalrightthen

We sleep trained at 10m and on day 2 when she slept through i felt like a complete and utter moron for not doing it months before. It has had literally zero negative impact on her and i was martyring myself for nothing. It was much more about me wanting to feel like "a good mum" than me actually putting her first. Now she gets proper sleep she's a totally different child.

This. You aren't currently doing "what's best for him". He'd be fine either way, and likely better off if he slept well and through the night. You're doing it for you, and whether that's because you think mothers need to be martyrs or for some other reason, only you know.

There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do, and you can surivive on little or broken sleep, and he's happy with broken sleep patterns. I couldn't handle it, so I did do sleep training (with one DC - the other didn't need it). I also felt like a fool for not doing it earlier as I was so much happier and more patient during the day.

There's a reason sleep deprivation is a recognised form of torture.

It’s 100 percent better for everyone if you all get a good nights sleep. Since I started my method (it must be in a book somewhere) I’ve had a happy calm dd with set naps, dropped the morning ect just has had a long afternoon one since she was 15 months. Also I don’t have a crazy early start, usually sleeps 7:30- 8:30 am.

Best advice was sleep breeds sleep in the early days so I took long naps and disturbed nights until 6 months, I didn’t wake her from a nap no matter what time I just started each day as a new one. If I want her to nap earlier I get her up at 7 she’ll sleep 12, wake 2 be in bed for 6, if I wake 8 it’s nap 1 up 3 in bed for 7, 8:30 is sleep 1:30, wake 3:30 bed 7:30. I do tiring activities, like I’ve got a trampoline indoors now before I had a bouncy castles. I’ll do brain training and game activities in the morning/letters and numbers. I’ll always go out for long walk ect to get her tired. Before lunch and after nap ect. Hope this is helpful

I can't believe what set off all the latest aggro in this thread was @Ohalrightthen saying she'd been tired enough to crash her car with her baby inside. And then a different poster to the one she'd even been replying to saying "how dare you suggest I'm not also tired enough to crash my car? I could totally crash my car! I would happily crash my car! I just prioritise being a biologically normal parent over not crashing my car!". The evidence of sleep deprivation is clear on this thread... (whereas I'm not sure the evidence of our noble ancestors having staggered around the prehistoric landscape in a state of confused sleep deprivation for years of their lives is clear at all...)

[quote MilkLady02]@3WildOnes
Thanks for the reply.
Yes I’ve just been going back a step but it feels never ending! We can never get past the rocking to sleep and placing in cot stage as if he’s even in a light sleep when placed in cot he wakes and is upset. I’m so gentle putting him in, it’s like playing baby buckaroo! He’s 21 months and I’ve been doing this about 9 months now! Some weeks feels like progress, less waking, other weeks wakes at 3am and nothing will get him back to sleep! Been night weaned several months now. I’ve kind of accepted that he’ll get there in the end![/quote]
How bad is his crying when you lay him down? Have you ever just left him for a few minutes to see what happens? I read some sleep book (maybe precious little sleep?) that advises as a first step to just leave them to see what happens. We tried this also with DD and some of the time she just wanted a grumble then would turn over and go to sleep

It might be worth a go. If he’s hysterical then it’s potentially a comfort thing / reflux maybe?

My baby has just turned 9 months and I started a solid routine last week, I won’t call it “sleep training.” Before this he would take all his naps on us or in his pram, feed to sleep at night and scream bloody murder in his cot, waking every couple of hours, until he was in our bed. Because of this he wasn’t actually getting the recommended amount of sleep (3 hours in naps & 11-12 hours at night) and it was just hard going for all of us.

I felt like I’d missed the boat and messed things up for a long time, however we are almost at the end of week 1 and he goes down for all his sleep in his cot and wakes only once in the night for a feed - it’s crazy how much better we feel and the predictability of his routine makes things much easier to plan.

I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong but you might want to consider the later years. My niece had no routine as a baby, no sleep training, and she had no interest in her own bed until it was a forced situation at around 3-4 years old when the baby gate was put up in her bedroom and she screamed herself to exhaustion and fell asleep for the night - seemed much less kind but after years of the alternative, it was tough.

It depends on what works for you as a family - if you don’t mind it and won’t mind it for the years to come, keep doing what you’re doing.

@ShirleyPhallus
Yes that’s what brought me to try the retreat and come back to comfort thing. I thought I’d just see what he would do if I left him to settle with me in the room at the door, and out of the room just outside. It’s definitely an “I’m not too happy with this” complaint cry rather than distress, otherwise I’d have been right back in, but if left for a few mins it escalates, so I feel like the calming atmosphere is gone and there’s not going to be any drifting off! The methods say to keep coming back every few mins, but seem to assume that at some point the baby will drift off. I’ve never found a troubleshooting section of how long to persist or what to change if it’s not happening!

I’ve always stuck to a routine, we always do bath , teeth, story , bed, have done since 8 months old. He would never nap in cot as a baby, I would follow all the rules of right sleep environment etc, and after an hour and a still awake tiny baby I would just take him out of the crib because there’s only so long you can try! I clearly remember a walk in the pram when he was 5months to try to get him to sleep. I walked for 2 hours!!
And he still didn’t sleep!!
But he’s happy and playful and chatty in the day, I think I’ve just produced an insomniac!

Hi, hope I'm OK to jump on this thread?! Op I totally get what you mean, I have an 11 month old and his sleep always has been really up and down. I just kind of thought it was normal, but so many people have said I should 'leave him to cry' and I know this isn't what sleep training even is, but it's what I'm always told, mostly by dhs family.

We thought about it on and off from about 7 months. I got the little ones sleep programme, but it just didn't work for us. I've tried shush/pat but honestly was sitting there for an hour once before I just gave up! Sometimes it's honestly like just as we get to a point where it is quite bad and decide to try controled crying, ds magically starts sleeping a bit better? And then we don't try it because when it's good, we don't want to do anything to change it!

We never, ever let ours cry alone but when she hit a bad phase at about 12 months we realised that taking her out of the cot wasn’t helping so we instead spent a few nights lying by her cot holding her hand and she went back to self settling no issue. She was FF and we’d always had a routine in place and she self settled no issue, yet sleep was always something she wasn’t keen on.

I don’t think it has to be sleep training or nothing at all; we just figured out a way of fixing an issue in a relatively painless way.

DD is nearly two, goes to sleep easily by herself at night and sleeps through yet still gets up at 5am every sodding day, so I just think some are owls, some are larks, some love sleep and some hate it. You do what you’ve got to do to survive.

OP, I feel like you. My LO is only 8 months, bf to sleep and cosleep part of the night. I sometimes wonder if I'm missing a trick by not doing some sort of sleep training. But then when we have started trying some gentler methods it either has no effect, like she lies playing in her cot for ages - or quickly escalates to serious tears and screaming. I think I might need to wean her when she is a bit older or get Dad to do the nights for a bit. So, generally we just muddle through, I get enough sleep, LO seems to be doing fine and I just tell myself we will change something if it actually feels like a problem to us. I am reassured by reading these posts. Not only the ones from people who didn't sleep train, but also those that did and found it worked reasonably quickly/easily.

I think the idea is that you just don’t give up. We have always put our baby down in his own cot asleep and he refused to go back down after his night feed. I did a course and it changed everything. I think a lot of it is making sure they’ve had adequate sleep during the day so they are tired enough etc

On one of the first couple of days of our new routine it took 2 hours of him crying and me going in to shh and what not before he eventually drifted off. Now it’s a max of 10 minutes if he needs me to settle him!