help and support please - doing controlled crying, i feel awful.

[mieowcat]

tonight, after 2weeks of very unsettled bedtime routines and last night being up till 3.30am with dd (9mths) we are doing controlled crying.
we have fed her milk, read astory, had cuddles and put her in her cot where she started screaming 35 mins ago. i cant bear hearing her so upset but know when we've 'given ' in before it makes things worse. going in to pat her etc, only upsets her more. do we sit this out, how long is too long? i feel terrible. please please advise support. xxxxxx

I also wanted to add that many people who do CC and CIO have problems in the longer term.
you may feel you are "teaching" your child to sleep. but what you are actually teaching her is that there is no point calling for you when she needs comfort because you won't come.

many people who do CC/CIO find that while it may "work" for a while the child regresses whenever there is a major developmental milestone, or illness/teething, or any other kind of upset.

Message withdrawn

I did CC with DD to get her to self settle first thing at night.

I agree with wheelsonthebus. You do need to pop in every few minutes and expand the intervals. We used the same ones as she does.

I suggest going and calming lo down however you can and starting over if you have not been doing the intervals. Hard I know - DD would cry more if we rocked/shhed her than if we left her.

Also if lo has been crying for so long it may be worth checking nappy and offering more milk.

Let us know how you get on, I will pop back later

Mieowcat, I've done this with DD and DS, but this was very much going in every 5 mins, not getting them up but patting and shushing and then leaving again - they always sounds much worse for a few seconds after I went in, but things settled quickly and now they both sleep pretty well. You have to be confident that they are not ill, and not undergoing other upheavals - more for your own peace of mind, really - but it does work in 3 to 4 nights, in my experience, with crying periods of up to an hour at a time, sounds awful now, but they do sleep very well and everyone functions well. It is exhausting and stressful in the short term, but as long as you can be consistent, I think it does really work. I have also just gone back to work full-time, and you do need to know that you are going to get some decent sleep, otherwise all problems seem magnified. I would say stick with it, tell your partner how best to support you (ie. stop you from going in, pouring you a large galss of wine etc.) and remember why you are doing it - so that your whole family is well rested and cheerful.

(I don't think that negative posts of the 'my baby's crying makes me feel ill' are necessarily what the OP is after.......)

we attempted CC when ds was that age (with timed intervals increasing etc..) and honestly it wasn't a great move - he is quite a sensitive little soul and got into such a stress that WE ended up getting stressed..it was an awful vicious cycle and made us all unhappy and cranky -i kept at it because i was terrified we were getting into "bad habits" etc.. anyway, i think i got to the point where i thought "most cultures around the world don't expect their kids to sleep perfectly and go to bed at a certain time" and tried to relax a bit.
I will not lie, this led to several months of broken nights BUT we weren't stressing about it and just hoped it wouldn't last. We decided to try CC again when he was about 18 months and it really DID work this time, after only a few days.
Just sharing what happened to us but please feel free to ignore if its unhelpful!

Poor you, lack of sleep is horrendous. I just want to add stick with whatever you decide to do and stay consistent. I found the Millpond Sleep Clinic's book extremely helpful and they had an approach to suit me and my family. Thank goodness! I would definitely recommend.

Having no sleep is really hard so make sure you look after yourself too. And catch up when you can. There are plenty of strategies out there for solving sleep problems - you know your child so go with what works best for both of you. All the best with it

My DS was a nightmare at 6 months, to the extent that I was regularly in tears at 'bedtime' and I was so exhausted that sometimes I felt like I could throw DS. He'd wake up to 10 times a night (between 10 and 6ish) I'd spent the last 6 months responding to every cry and I just couldn't take it.

I let DS CIO one night when I couldn't take any more. When I tried turning it into CC (several times) he just got angry when we went back into the room. After 6 months I knew my baby well, and it wasn't an upset or hurt cry, more angry / grumpy so I left him. We let DS CIO for long enough for us to get him waking 4 hourly and sleeping 12 hours. The worst crying (max 45 minutes with CC, 20 with CIO) was over within a few days, and after the first few weeks we haven't let him cry for more than a few minutes.

I read that crying increases cortisol levels, but I also read that sleep deprivation makes babies less able to clear their system of cortisol. I found so much conflicting advice that I decided to watch my baby instead. I couldn't see any signs that he didn't trust me - in fact as he was sleeping more he was noticably happier.

When DH and I were less stressed ourselves, we moved back to the kinder settling methods, but we really needed that time to get over the worst of it and not be near breaking point.

I completely understand people who say you should try other ways of settling your baby, and that they can be genuinely hungry (at 9mo my DS has 1-2 night feeds). I also get frustrated at people who expect young babies to sleep through the night, but I also know that at some point you've got to start getting a bit more sleep to see you through, especially when you're at work. (Our business got a fine at work because I did everything to file our EOY return but didn't actually press the button to submit it because I was knackered!)

Anyway, if you've got the energy to try some things from NCSS, or something more gentle like Pick Up / Put Down, then try that first. My best practical tip is to watch your baby during the early evening and try different bed times as soon as they show any signs of tiredness. I had been trying to put DS to bed at around 8 but we'd fight about it for hours! From the beginning, bedtime at 6 (which he still does) was much much quicker, and most of the time we still feed DS to sleep.

Good luck, and I hope you find a technique you're happy with.

ok, now im not getting too excited but... shes ASLEEP!!! has it worked? tommorow night will tell us more? thanks for all the support, i was nearly crying myself. xxx

Good luck mieowcat.

so, she is asleep an hour and a half after you first left her and she's been crying the whole time?

has it worked? you tell us.

Thisisyesterday - do you have any links to the 'damaging in the long tem' evidence for cc? Also - what sort of long term problems are there?

ok, I have done a quick look on the issue of "damage caused by controlled crying" - and as ever opinion is split. leaving to cry for long periods is not thought of as a good idea, and is a real no-no before 6 months. See recent newspaper articles on the subject: here and here and here

thisisyesterday I am not trying to start an argument at all, I want to be helpful to the OP. But can you back up the assertion that "many people who do CC and CIO have problems in the longer term"? It's not really fair to state that if you can't without showing some evidence (if you can, great, I for one am interested in what research has been done, and as I say I only did a quick search). A book published last year said that it was damaging but that no study had actually shown this!

soz, will see if I can find it. have posted it before on CC threads on here, so you may find it quicker than me by searching?

the bit about problems in the longer term is based on what I have read on here and other forums! just seen a LOT of people saying that they've done CC but the child has regressed every time there is some kind of upheaval in their life.

Elizabeth Pantley very good, much kinder than cc.

can't find all of the stuff I've previouisly read:

one article here

eva lillian

These researchers studied two groups of mother-infant pairs. Group 1 mothers gave a prompt and nurturant response to their infant's cries. Group 2 mothers were more restrained in their response. They found that children in Group 1 whose mothers had given an early and more nurturant response were less likely to use crying as a means of communication at one year of age. These children seemed more securely attached to their mothers and had developed better communicative skills, becoming less whiny and manipulative.

More studies were done to shoot down the spoiling theory, showing that babies whose cries were not promptly responded to begin to cry more, longer, and in a more disturbing way. In one study comparing two groups of crying babies, one group of infants received an immediate, nurturant response to their cries, while the other group was left to cry-it-out. The babies whose cries were sensitively attended to cried seventy percent less. The babies in the cry-it-out group, on the other hand, did not decrease their crying. In essence, crying research has shown that babies whose cries were listened and responded to learned to ?cry better?; the infants who were the product of a more restrained style of parenting learned to ?cry harder.??

harvard uni gazette

This is yesterday - are you saying that 'problems in the longer term' is in fact just that they may go back to crying again when there is upheaval? Surely that means that they are crying when they NEED their parents comfort (as opposed to expecting to be 'put back to sleep' through feeding etc) which I would expect any child to do?

dr sears

tbh, I don't think that CC is the answer to everything and I would absolutely expect a child to regress when upheaval occurs. I'm moving house soon and I fully expect that ds will not settle as well as he usually does and we may have a few nights of co-sleeping or starting off co-sleeping before middle of the night transfer to cot. it is just that when you're utterly exhausted and your child either wakes up every few hours or simply will not go to sleep when they are very tired despite all the love and attention in the world, that CC can work. ie it worked for me and works consistently!

Mieowcat - go to bed and sleep yourself

Chairmumiaw - that is when I did it too. I got to the point I could not cope and DD was crying (screaming) for hours in sheer exhaustion. We were lucky perhaps - DD was asleep in a total of 15 mins. I never had to go in for the 9 min shh.

Naps were and still are a different matter But with a nice chill out in the evening (and some food!) I found I could cope with a couple of night feeds and a tough little nap day.

yes, but at what cost????

I can't say 100% that CC is damaging. it hasn't been prioven beyond all doubt.
but evidence suggests that it could be.

I am not willing to take that risk with my child. I don't know that it is safe.

all I am saying is that there are other ways of getting sleep and coping with it. there are gentler methods of teaching a child to sleep.
it just seems that people perceive it as CC or nothing. and it's not like that at all

yes clucky. and that it puts you back to square one.
not just that they cry because they're in pain or whatever, of course that's natural. but that they then continue that, and you end up having to do the CC/CIO all over again.

a child that is happy and secure and has slept well by himself usually will go back to a normal routine once the upheaval is over.
but it would seem from reading a lot about it online that many children who have been CC'd DON'T. they regress to the former wakefullness

thisisyesterday, all articles are very interesting but none of them actually seem to state what age baby and how long is a long time. do they mean do not let your baby cry for even 10 seconds, or is a long time 30 mins, hours etc (which I'm sure most people wouldn't be able to cope with). also articles seem to be talking about very young babies, although I didn't see explicit references to age. again I hope most people wouldn't want to leave tiny babies to cry - the idea of the 3 week old in the dr sears article being left is to me heart-breaking, and I didn't go anywhere near CC until ds was well past 6 months and on formula so I had an accurate idea of what he was eating and drinking.

haven't read the other posts but...CC worked for us with DD1 within 3 days. And I couldn't bear it - I used to hide at the bottom of the garden and let DH come and tell me when she was asleep

DD2 - never needed it as from day one she was popped in her cot, door shut, don't switch monitor on until she is asleep.

Best of luck with it.