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Sleep training - do I actually need to?

41 replies

JL642 · 18/04/2023 15:56

Getting sick of my social media advertising sleep training left right and centre, including other mums mentioning when they are starting sleep training.

Do I actually need to sleep train?!! I am up a lot at night, but I can manage - I feed to sleep it’s quite quick (I know it may not work for ever) - I’d rather continue to be baby led on the assumption my baby will sleep through the night when she is ready.

Or will my baby not sleep properly until I sleep train?!

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JL642 · 18/04/2023 17:34

BertieBotts · 18/04/2023 17:18

I like Lyndsey Hookway if you want a counter to this kind of thing :)

But in general, I would caution against consuming/seeking out too much parenting content on social media in general. I find that the short form nature of it tends to mean that a lot of it is overexaggerated, a small part of the story, or straight up false, because there isn't enough space/time for nuance or reference to sources, but because you're seeing the same thing over and over again there's a psychological phenomenon which makes you assume it into your general knowledge and then it gets treated like any other information that you "know", without you necessarily realising that it's come from a less robust source than, say, something you learned from a book or a course or a teacher or life experience or had looked up the official recommendation etc.

Also, the algorithms favour polarising content, so you'll tend to be bombarded with very one-sided viewpoints, often with criticism for the other side, often with fear bundled into it. So the sleep training type accounts will have loads of threatening warnings about "bad sleep habits" / you'll never sleep again or even claims that whatever you're doing is harming your child's development or increasing their risk of SIDS. And a lot of the anti-sleep training accounts will equate controlled crying with abuse or neglect, or speak about brain damage or trauma, or breaking your child's attachment if you ever let them cry, and in reality neither of these positions are true, but constantly consuming content that seeks to provoke anxiety really can make you anxious and worried about getting things wrong, and that's really unhelpful.

Lastly, even if you are really careful about which accounts you follow, I still think it can end up very overwhelming and not as helpful as you would assume. I thought I'd try and clean up my instagram and make it more useful so I followed a load of people that I think put out useful/good content, but actually even with this I find scrolling it is quite stressful, I think because I'm being bombarded by 25 different pieces of micro advice and it's just too much to process all at once. And when I've finished, I'm not left chewing over whatever I've learned, I've just instantly forgotten it all because it is too much random unrelated information.

So I think I'm going to go back to the balance that I have on facebook, which is much more manageable - a few RL friends and groups with RL people, some harmless fun/entertaining groups that are neither inspirational (guilt/envy inducing) or educational (stressful) and just a handful of learning type accounts on topics I'm interested in that I just don't have time to look for long form content or that person doesn't produce it but I like them anyway.

For parenting advice or anything else I do want to learn about, I will use instagram to quickly get an idea of someone's content, and then I'll look to see if they have a podcast or any books or a youtube account (with longer videos). I find that it's more effective to learn stuff this way, because in the same 10 minute period, rather than being fed 25 randomly unconnected facts, I can learn more of an in depth understanding of one topic, that's more interesting, more useful, it's more likely to be well informed and it will stick with me over the next day or so, so I can think about it, process it, maybe discuss it with somebody or try it out.

I think you have summed up really well what has been happening to me on social media which probably explains the stress / pressure I’ve been feeling that I must sleep train asap or the world will end 🤣

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Bullzeye · 18/04/2023 18:36

Sod the social media and never compare yourself to others. I made myself ill trying to sleep train when my baby screamed for my comfort, he would shake and scream when watching me leave the room and I couldn't do it. Animals sleep with their mothers so it's biologically normal for us to do so.

He sleeps in my bed and I love it. If he cries during the night I feed him. Everywhere I look says its creating bad habits but he is sleeping so much better next to me. A well rested baby is a happy baby! I'm due to go back to work soon but I will be less disturbed having him in my bed then having to go into another room and resettle him.

He is going to have to go to nursery for a day and I know itll be a challenge for him to sleep there as he is so used to contact naps. But I'm sure they will get him to sleep somehow!!

Just do what works to keep your baby happy and for you to get some sleep.

JL642 · 18/04/2023 19:02

olderthanyouthink · 18/04/2023 16:30

Yes or else you child will be an insomniac. It's a well known fact that all insomniacs have their parents to blame for their inability to sleep due to their parents responding to their needs 7am-7pm

/s

There's not much money to be made be telling people it's natural and will be grown out of (or if not it's probably a neurodevelopmental condition like autism/ADHD). Sarah ockwell smith makes money doing this but she's put a fair bit more effort in to it than some one who m wants to make a quick buck WFH around the kids.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Bullzeye · 18/04/2023 19:59

Forgot to say I follow the happycosleeper on Instagram and she's amazing!

Tinybrother · 18/04/2023 20:06

Marchintospring · 18/04/2023 16:44

I hate all the prescriptive parenting bollocks. Really it’s common sense about knowing what your baby needs. Sleep training is useful because it gives you downtime and routine. We all have a circadian rhythm and it merely helps to tap into a useful one early ( nursery, school, work all start before 9am).

You’ve spent 9 months lugging a live being around. It has learnt when you’re asleep and when you are awake, the times of day you are stressed and calm . If you are naturally a morning person then stick with that. If you’re an owl your baby will be familiar with being awake in the dark and getting sleep when it’s tired. They mostly all sleep at the beginning so it’s just handy to have routine they slot into. Since we are mostly on maternity leave in the U.K. routine gets lost and we all moan about not sleeping.

you know that blaming maternity leave for babies waking a lot in the night is bollocks, right?

AlltheFs · 18/04/2023 20:10

I never sleep trained, I BF DD to 26 months and she sleeps beautifully- she sleeps in until 9am given the chance! She’s 3.5. From about 15 months she just gradually got better and better.

Sleep training is bollocks. Babies do not need training and sleep is not a problem that needs “sorting”.

Alexahelp · 18/04/2023 21:09

Also never sleep trained. At 2.5 my DD now wants a cuddle before going into her cot and asks for help sleeping if she needs, but mostly doesn’t.

We did follow a routine though and am a big advocate of finding one that works as helps to identify when sleep is going haywire (as it always will do, because babies) and you can try to tweak to fix it.

AegonT · 19/04/2023 13:06

It's coming up on your social media because you click on it, post about it here and you may be Googling it as it's got you wondering.

There is nothing wrong with sleep training but no you don't have to do it.

We didn't and they both got better on their own. Both sleeping through the night around 1 but it is normal to happen later.

chochol1000 · 19/04/2023 13:43

We didn't but baby settled into a nice routine herself around 9 months
Very unsettled before hand but has cmpa and reflux
Did the No cry no sleep with my first which was good

Miriam101 · 19/04/2023 14:03

At the moment you're both happy so of course you don't need to and as you can tell from this thread plenty of people don't and their children do eventually sleep fine (although that does seem to take some of them a long time!).

I sleep trained both my kids at about 9 or 10 months and in both instances it was because a) I was not coping mentally with the terrible nights, b) they obviously needed and wanted to sleep but couldn't work out how, and were past the point of me being able to rock or feed them to a deep sleep and, less importantly, c) I heeded the warnings about sleep training toddlers being far harder than a baby and decided to seize the moment!

I really urge you though to not put your brain through the blizzard of parenting bollocks on social media. It can fry your mind- especially when that mind is sleep deprived.

JL642 · 19/04/2023 14:21

Thanks everyone. I blitzed my social media last night and unfollowed every “baby expert” I’d stupidly followed when I was obviously in my newborn exhausted phase

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Cotswoldmama · 19/04/2023 14:24

I didn't sleep train. Mine just eventually slept through at about a year old. I can see why some parents chose to but it wasn't for us.

wobblyweasel · 19/04/2023 14:30

Being a much older mother (DD34 DS25) I've never heard of sleep training! My DD slept quite happily all night from about 3 months old, DS was a pain to get to sleep, he wouldn't fall asleep until he was rocked to sleep, and it was taking longer and longer, so I just settled him down one night he was about 8 months old, without the rocking, he cried so I went in to soothe him without picking him up. Within 3 nights he happily went off to sleep. Maybe this was sleep training after all GrinGrin I never co-slept, I'm far too restless at night, with twitchy legs so I had horror visions of kicking the poor kids out of bed..

Seasonofthewitch83 · 19/04/2023 16:43

Its only a problem if its a problem.

Never sleep trained my DD, we coslept and breastfed as that was the way we could get the most sleep. She was also a contact sleeper so for the first year I had to just lay in bed scrolling my phone.

She used to rouse every hour or so, and if I wasnt there she would then wake up properly from crying. Then it went to two hours, then three, then four....

She is now pretty much sleeping through the night, we have the odd things that throw us off (dropping the nap seems to have set everything to shit again a bit).

Sleep trainers make money by exploiting extremely tired women. There is not a one size fits all approach. My friend did ferber because her DD had the temperament for it. Mine didnt.

JL642 · 19/04/2023 17:29

Seasonofthewitch83 · 19/04/2023 16:43

Its only a problem if its a problem.

Never sleep trained my DD, we coslept and breastfed as that was the way we could get the most sleep. She was also a contact sleeper so for the first year I had to just lay in bed scrolling my phone.

She used to rouse every hour or so, and if I wasnt there she would then wake up properly from crying. Then it went to two hours, then three, then four....

She is now pretty much sleeping through the night, we have the odd things that throw us off (dropping the nap seems to have set everything to shit again a bit).

Sleep trainers make money by exploiting extremely tired women. There is not a one size fits all approach. My friend did ferber because her DD had the temperament for it. Mine didnt.

I think my DC is similar to yours re contact night and night feeds.

You’re right, my DC does not have the right tempermant for some of the sleep training methods given the extreme stress it causes her if I even have to pop her down to run to the loo for three seconds 🤣she’s certainly not a go with the flow baby

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TinyTeacher · 20/04/2023 13:12

Hope. You don't have to. Never sleep trained my eldest. She did wake once a night for a wee until she was 3.5 (but also never once wet the bed -totally out of nappies by 2.5). My younger 2 I still cosleep with at nearly 2.5. One sleeps through unless ill, the other usually wants a cuddle at 2am but nods off quickly.

I did have to stop feeding to sleep though. But I did it around 2 years of age without much fuss as they were old enough to understand. Yes, that meant a lot of broken sleep until that point, but I just never felt right about sleep training. I thought I would with my twins, but the moment never felt right and then it was unecessary.

Basically, do what works for you!

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