What do you say when your lovely friend tells you she's doing controlled crying on her 4 month old because she wakes to feed every 4 hours?

[thatsnotmybelly]

This is NOT a judgy thread. I am genuinely interested in what you say when your friends make choices that really stick in your throat.

Do you speak your mind?
Polite smile?
Tight lipped smile?
Fake gushing so they'll never know you're secretly appalled?

My friend is lovely, and a great mum. She is doing controlled crying on her (very placid and 'easy') 4 month old because her paediatrician told her that it wasn't necessary for her to wake to feed every 4 hours overnight.

I did say I thought every 4 hours was pretty normal, in fact pretty good, but friend said that as the baby was now on solids in the evening she ought to be sleeping through.

I very mildly mentioned that I thought breastmilk had more calories, but to take it any further would definitely have left friend feeling got at and it is not my business to criticise my friend.

But, (and I realise that many people think otherwise) I really do think that letting a 4 month old cry for milk is awful. I think expecting a 4 month old to sleep through is completely unrealistic. I think 4 months is too young for solids. I think she should jolly well feed her baby and put up with feeling tired.

(I wish my 16 month old could be relied upon to sleep for 4 hours!)

But then I don't doubt that the little girl is utterly loved and looked after and happy.

Do you find it easy to do your own thing and let others do theirs?

Or is there a point at which you say what you think, and if so where is that point and how do you do it?

I know what its trying to achieve I just dont like the way it is done

but she could be ignoring her babys crys for food

it is possible

you didn't and many others would never but she could be and thats very sad

Hmm, a bit of a hard one op.

My first two DC slept through from 8/9 weeks old, so I automatically assumed DS3 would do the same. I was very wrong, and he was still waking 2/3 times a night up until two weeks ago when I done CC with him. We had a few rough nights, and one extreme night, but since then he has slept through from 7-6. I knew he wasn't hungry when he woke, his cry was not the same, but I still fed him as it is was an automatic responce when he cried in the night.

CC might work if her DC is indeed just waking for a cuddle instead of a feed. Only she will know this. She just has to be prepared for a few rough nights, it might get worse before it gets better. Perhaps you can just bite your lip a bit harder and offer her support when she starts doing it.

If I was lucky enough to have any friends and they were doing this I would say something. A mum at school started her baby on solids at 4 months and I said something.

Mine were breastfed 2 hourly until 6-7 months though at night I might get 3 hours sometimes. It is what happens when you have a baby. You lose sleep.

To the OP - how about lending/buying her a book that you know suggests doing things differently? For instance 'child of our time' mentions that babies who are comforted immediately grow up more happy and secure. I would give that a go and then leave it at that. But maybe I am a non-confrontational wimp.

Well, having been extremely put out earlier on today by some of the comments made, and perhaps being in a somewhat angry state myself (!), I would like to applaud some of the very sensible comments made by some of the more recent posters, explaining that CC is different to just leaving a baby to cry.

I've been thinking about this alot today (and just now while my two 2 yr olds wailed for a while before finally succumbing to sleep!).

I think if you are the sort of friend who always voices an opinion to her, then you should question what she is doing. She might be so exhausted and sleep-deprived that anything seems OK, even things that she herself might disapprove of in a less muddled state. We've all been there.

I have some friends I would never raise controversial parenting things with (dummies for instance) as they are so insistent with what to me are judgey opinions. But others I would, knowing if I was really being daft (like not brushing their teeth cos they didn't like it!) they would gently tell me and I am very grateful. Maybe you are the latter to her, and this is a gentle cry for help?

I guess it depends what frame of mind she is in, and how you tell her. Some help and support, a book 'leant to you by a friend' with some cc alternatives, could be great for her right now. Or even a dummy if she doesn't think they are the devil (I hate those bits of plastic, but they did save my sanity!)

Chiming in here to say that I'm another one with a baby who likes to cry sometimes before she sleeps, especially when she's in a grumpy/overtired mood.

And yes, I found that out the hard way.

Cuddles, rocking, patting, talking, forehead stroking, singing...

...did all these and she just got more hysterical.

Now I just pop on her mobile and shut the door and within a minute, she's fast asleep. When she's in a mood like that, it's the only thing that works.

I think this is such an interesting discussion because the situation in the OP is right there in the grey area between "perfectly OK parenting, just different from what I do" and "harmful to the baby".

My usual practice - similar to most people I think - is that if someone is just doing something different, even if I think it's a bit daft, I won't say anything, just smile and nod and mind my own business.

But if I think the baby is being harmed, I would feel obliged to say something, obviously as tactfully as I could.

So the thread is polarised just as you'd expect, between people who feel the baby is at risk of harm and those who don't.

It's a grey area because nobody knows for sure what the effects are when a baby is left to cry. For myself, I know that I just can't leave mine to cry, it's not possible.

More objectively, I looked briefly at the research literature recently and there is loads, just loads, about how some mothers and babies are very finely attuned to one another, and some are not (for various reasons).

It seems that the way a mother interacts with a baby has profound effects on the baby. They may not be able to speak but they're picking up a huge amount from us and even at 1 month of age they can expect something to happen and be surprised when it doesn't.

In particular I found some research about cortisol levels in babies and how in a stressful situation the babies of better attuned mothers recovered from the stress more quickly (as measured by salivary cortisol levels).

None of this proves that leaving a baby to cry (for 5 minutes or 50) is doing them any harm, but certainly for me there's enough there to convince me that reponsive parenting is the right way for me and mine.

welliemum where did you find some of this literature about stress responses? Am quite interested to read it.

Would also like to know what info (if any) there is about being able to change. So much of this stuff seems black and white ie 'if you leave your baby to cry it will grow up traumatised'. But what if you did CC say in the past, now regret it, and so make amends in the future? Can it help repair the damage?

Not sure if I am making myself clear. What I am interested in is that I just muddled my way (quite badly sometimes!) through the first couple of years, exhausted and worn out and on the verge of tears always. I hope it caused no lasting harm to the DTs to be sometimes left to cry, to hear me shouting in a fury, etc but these things did happen. The fog is now clearing and I am trying to do much better. But I worry the damage is done, and that destroys me.

Penona, I have also heard about the research thatwelliemum mentioned. I was told that leaving a baby under 6 months to cry for long periods is thought to increase cortisol levels. Older children with higher baseline cortisol levels tend to be the sort that crave excitement and so might go looking for trouble if they can't get excitement any other way.

The problem with all research is that the conclusions are always a generalisation. All people are different. So one child might be hugely affected by being left to cry while another might not be affected at all.

I really do think that while events in the first few months / years of a baby's life might have an impact on their temperament, their ongoing care throughout the rest of their childhood is equally important. You recognise that things might not have been ideal for your DTs in the past and are clearly trying to do better now. I think what you do from now on is more important and it is not worth agonising over the past.

I have never done CC but my DD did cry most of the time she was awake until she was 8 weeks old. This was because she was in pain. It tears me apart that I was cuddling her, rocking her, doing anything I could to help her but, until she got the right diagnosis and treatment, there was nothing I could do. If crying for 10 minutes or longer is supposed to do such harm to a child, is mine also permanently harmed because I could not help her? I hope not.

OP, sorry I have rather hijacked your thread. If I was in your situation, I would probably try to make a non-judgemental comment about how hard CC can be to do. By 4 months my DD could go about 8 hours at night between feeds, except when she had a growth spurt. So it it not unreasonable to be thinking about ways to encourage a baby to sleep for longer.

penona, I'll happily to tell you all about how to access the literature, but just wanted to say first that so little is known about how early life influences later life that I don't believe you'll find your answers there. Firstly, a lot of it is just speculation, and secondly, as mumtoem says, it's a generalisation and can't be applied to everyone.

The fact (it does seem to be a fact) that little babies are very, very responsive to their mothers doesn't mean that they're easily harmed - you could argue the opposite actually.

You had an especially tough deal having DTs, but I can tell you that even just having one at a time is hard at best, and at times utterly knackering.

Maybe there're people out there who swanned about in a loved-up glow the whole time, but I've never met any! As far as I can see, we're all muddling through and often it's as much as you can do just to get through the day (or night) in one piece.

IMO if human babies were easily harmed by having exhausted parents, then the human race would have ended long ago.

I think the fact that you're reflecting in an honest way on what it was like, and using that experience to change what you do, puts you streets ahead of most of us.

Now to answer your questions: A good way to access the medical literature is to use a search engine like PubMed. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez This] should get you to the PubMed home page (if not, you can google it). Then you type in search terms - cortisol crying turns up lots of papers for example.

The problem is that without a sub, you can't read most of the papers in full, only the abstracts (summaries). That means it can be hard to tell the good studies from the bad ones.

My impression of the literature on this topic (from a fairly superficial read) is as I mentioned above, that babies are responding very strongly to cues from their mothers. But it's nearly impossible to measure the long term effects of parenting, so the literature isn't helpful there.

I think it's fairly clear to experts that babies in extreme situations (ie abandoned babies in orphanages) can grow up to have attachment problems. However there's nothing remotely proven about how the behaviour of an ordinary, knackered mother impacts on a baby long term - and I'm sure you can see that having a knackered mother who is there as you grow up is a completely different kettle of fish from a mother who disappears one day and never comes back. You can't extrapolate from one to the other.

So IMO the possibility has been raised that what we do could affect our children in later life, but nothiing is proven.

Aaaargh, link to PubMed

Thanks for that welliemum.

Is a very interesting area to me, and every now and then I have to just come off MN for a few months as all the judgey threads about dummies/bottle feeding etc etc just make me feel so lousy about myself. I do try and avoid them, but when I am feeling despairing I somehow seem to punish myself with them!

Will have a look at some of that stuff.

When you say 'babies responding very strongly to cues from their mothers' what other situations do you mean? I know that is the point of cc - that children learn mother won't come for a whinge so don't do it unless they are really in pain or something. Just wondering when else?

i wouldnt say anything (altho i totally agree with ur opinion) she hasnt asked ur advice shes told u this is what shes doing, i give it a week tops that baby will b bk to 4 hourly i bet!
once my daughter slept thro 3 nights in a row i then decided if she did wake i would give her water, this didnt happen for months,
iam one of those annoying mums she slept thro frm 6 weeks and at 6 mnths woke bit thro nite but soon realised milk wasnt on offer then snapped out of it quick sharp!!

There is one important caveat to the literature on crying and cortisol as pertains to controlled crying: no-one has ever demonstrated, despite trying, that babies who have experienced cc actually objectively cry more beyond the first couple of nights. In fact, over the course of the first year of life, they may cry less than babies that do not experience cc, because they wake less frequently at night etc. so OVERALL cry for less time. I always get a bit cross when I read this implication of causality when the mediator variable (crying itself!) is lacking. I'm a research developmental psychopathologist.

As for the OP's question, I'd ask more about what the 'controlled crying' involved before i ventured to give my opinion. By finding out more from my friend, I'd be able to ascertain her rationale, her methods and her own confidence in her decision, not to mention any research she might already have done. Finding out this information would then shape my response, if I made one at all.

I would express surprise that the paediatrician had recommended solids at 4 months when the current NHS guidelines are 6 months and state vaguely that I might have read somewhere that CC is only recommended for 6 months or older, but I wasn't quite sure. In other words, would try and impart information to someone who obviously hasn't got it in as casual and non-judgemental a way as possible.

I think there is sometimes a general perception on MN that all mothers with young babies are hysterically defensive and offended to receive unsolicited advice; but frankly I was always quite grateful to get advice from other people even when I suspected (or knew) it was wrong - I could nod and smile and discount the stuff in the latter category. I didn't see it as a criticism of me unless it was very obviously intended as such. Meaningful silence let me know that the other person thought I was doing something wrong, but didn't actually give me any help in finding out why they thought that.

I think if you are going to offer advice though, you must only do it once and not keep repeating it (unless it's specifically about something which harms DC's, like you must not leave your baby in the bath on their own to go and answer the phone or sth very obvious).

it isn't awful. I don't think it is cruel. four months is not universally described as too young for solids.

so, how to react to someone elses parenting decision that you don't agree with? Politely and nicely. then bitch about it here if you want to.

dropping heavy hints that she is wrong will just make her hate you.

See I would have hated that. I always wanted to know what people thought, even if I disagreed with them. I would have hated the thought that they were being nice to me about sth they considered wrong (and with more information I might have agreed with them) and then going off somewhere else and bitching about me. I would have considered that incredibly unsupportive and would have been really pissed off with them tbh. That's really not helpful to someone who might be looking for advice. (I always was, but I think you can usually gauge whether someone is telling you sth in order to get your honest opinion because that's what they want, or just a polite nod. You should obv. take your cue from them.)

ah, but sometimes it's nicer just not to get into a fight?

especially if you believe someone is 'harming' their child - if you show them that opinion how are you not going to make them angry?

then get on the internet if you want to blow off some steam (we all use pseudonyms for a reason, right?)

ultimately its her baby and her right to do as she wills within reason.

Yes but I don't think it always needs to be a fight. Thinking about it, actually, it would be v. bad to be a fight - no one should be getting into a fight with the mother of a new baby.

I agree, if you imply or state that s.o. is harming their DC, then you're either going to make them angry or feel like shit or both, but you can impart information tactfully without implying that you think they are actively (or even passively) harming their child. However, your diplomatic skills need to be extremely honed and you do need to check that that mother is attuned to accepting info.

I always hated the polite, uncomfortable silence so much more than the blurted out "oh, do you young mothers do that nowadays?" The former felt so much more scary and undermining than the latter. But if you genuinely believe that someone is harming their child and it's wrong to say so, you can't seriously enthuse about it either can you, so I suppose polite uncomfortable silence is the default response. It's a really difficult tightrope, v. interesting thread.

Many of us in our thirties or forties will have been left to cry for period of five plus minutes because that's WHAT A LOT MOTHERS DID back in the sixties and seventies.

I was left to cry when I was very tired and over stimulated and just needed to sleep, and I'm certainly not a screwed-up psycho or stressy wreck, thanks. Unless you hide my chocolate biscuits.

I notice that most posters here seem to be focussing on the cc issue rather than commenting on the fact that even though the op's friend's dc is crying and the friend thinks it is because the dc is hungry, she is still not feeding her more than every 4 hours. Do you all think it is ok to withhold food for so long? Personally, I think she perhaps needs feeding more frequently, particularly if she is so hungry that the friend is putting baby rice into the milk to fill her up

I haven't done cc and with DD I picked her up within seconds of her starting to cry. However, sometimes I leave DS (3mo) to cry for a few minutes if I am occupied with DD (2yo) and he is in the same room (in bouncy chair, under baby gym, for example). I feel that if I stop whatever I am doing with DD (story, getting dressed, bath, playing) as soon as DS starts crying, I am sending a message to her that he is more important - she is too young to understand that he needs to be picked up immediately every time.
How would those who oppose ever leaving a baby to cry deal with this situation?