Those who have survived controlled crying....

[barbie1]

Can you please tell me how?

DD is 7.5 months and had never been a good sleeper.

She was crawling at 4 months, standing at 5 months and almost walking now. The doctors tell me she is forward and that she finds it difficult to switch off

We live abroad so have no family or close friends to help, hence having to give cc a go for all our sakes

So here we are 3 weeks in, i put her to bed awake, she cries, stands up and paces the cot. I leave. Go back, lie her down and it starts again.

We went from crying for 2 hours (on and off, never longer than 10 mins before i checked her) to her letting me lie her down and patting her off to sleep after about 20 to 30 mins of crying.

Never once has she just laid down and gone to sleep.

She naps well in the day, has a routine for bed etc etc.

How can i encourage her to lie down and not scream for hours???

I know cc is a highly emotive subject and i don't wish to be flamed for doing this... I really do think its the only option i have left now.

PS - I found the following website/book/private consultation a life saver.

www.babysleepanswers.co.uk

The personal on line support is only about £50 and it really helps to have someone hold your hand, regardless of which method you choose to go for.

All babies and all mums are different and need individual approaches - you can't condemn something just because you personally didn't do it.

Best of luck barbie - your child sounds like my kids but they are very funny and intelligent when older!

I am not against cc at all, you have to sleep yourself after all.

one thing I noted in your post was that she naps ALOT in the day time. is there any way you can try and get her to have 1-2 day time naps. i dont like her , but gina ford does have good advice about nap times for her age.

also can you try to tire her as much as possible

so much conflicting advice, but i think you either need sleep experts, or to try and follow a strict routine

lots of sympathy x

Just a little thing but you can buy 0.5 tog Grobags which are very light indeed and might keep your DD comfortable but covered up on a hot night. Ours was a lifesaver on a hot summer holiday.

Oh my thread is still going!

Just when i thought things couldn't get any worse.....it didnt!

Last night she did wake 45 mins after going down but we did pick up/ put down x3 and she went right back to sleep until 12am, had a nice feed and went until 6am. This is the best night we have had in a long time.

iggly your post re food made me sort out a meal plan for the next week in order to introduce more meaningful foods. I will try her on 5x small meals a day. Thanks again for your imput.

posie i really get the feeling you dislike cc

porcamiseria interesting what you say about naps, today she has had only 2, refusing to settle for the other 2. She hasnt eaten too well this dinner time due to being overtired but we shall see what happens tonight. I have the GF book, might dig it out and have a look.

amijee Thankyou for your input, to be honest i think i will give cc a miss for a while...3 weeks in it really hasnt worked for us. Will bear in mind the not putting her down if we ever attempt it again. Off to look at you r link now

Bed time here, wish me luck

Excellent news! Glad you had a better night. Here's to one of many

I have done it but never that young, I guess I don;t need as much sleep as some!! I survived the last two babies with reflux, it wasn't pretty and IU was so tired I ate all day long!!

WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOO for a better night, why is it the minute you ask for help the thing starts resolving itself.

Hi Barbie1 - I can sympathise with you, but sympathy doesn't make you feel any the less tired nor help when you are getting out of bed for the fifth time

I live abroad too and have no family around to support me.

My DD who is 9 months tomorrow has recently gone through a phase of about 5 weeks of very similar behaviour,although she is awake longer but less frequent although tiring nonetheless.

Is it possible she is confusing night and day?
You don't say if you have a bedtime routine such as bath, story, bottle, snuggle and bed.
We stick religiously to this routine and sometimes she is fast aslepp by the time I put her in her cot and others she is just dozy, to be honest neither makes a difference so I wouldn't (personally) worry if feed her to sleep and don't put her down awake.

I have tried CC (complete with ear plugs and an alarm clock) but found each time we went it after 10, 12, 14 etc it wound her up more. After 3 nights of CC the time she cried for did not get less and the following night she would sleep thru purely because she was so knackered from the previous 2 nights and thus we were back to sqaure one.

In the end I became part of the "cuddle club" and picked her up and cuddled, or rocked (more like swung) her to sleep.

THis seems to have improved her night time waking (that said I have just spent 20 mins resettling her after an hour in bed but she is teething I think.

I wonder if they know that if you are going to give them what they want i.e. a cuddle then after a time of doing this they feel more secure that you are always there.

It may also be worth using a snuggie/softie that she associates with nightime, I use one along with a muslin which I tuck between me and her when I cuddle her to sleep and then when I put her in the cot I slip it between her arms.

I don't know if any of this is any use but I suspect you are ready to try anything.

Posie I'm with you there - put on at least a stone in 3 months and DS has reflux, poor boy.

I have nothing but sympathy for you and think some of the responses that tell you you're deluded and just need to live with it are cruel and hurtful and entirely unhelpful.

I am in the same boat. I have an 8 month old who wakes every hour/40 minutes every night and has done since birth. I am so exhausted it is making me throw up in the evenings. I am bordering on the edge of depression, incredibly on edge, and my relationship with my baby's father is suffering badly.

I always swore I'd never do cc. I fell into the 'It's cruel and damaging' camp and couldn't bear it.

But I, too, have reached a point where it is no longer responsible to go on like this.

We are now on our 7th night of cc and there has been no improvement, however. :(

I don't know why people who are anti controlled crying come on these threads. People who are desperate enough to have resorted to it deserve nothing but support, not to be made to feel even worse by people telling them they're bad parents

Sappholit sorry to hear things are tough. Are you BF or FF? is she waking for a feed? How are her day naps?

I'm breastfeeding.

Honestly, there's really and truly no point in offering me advice about it :). I have done everything humanly possible to get my baby to sleep. We co-slept for 4 months, but I got so exhausted - she woke every 20-40 mins and cluster-fed for two hours from 2-4 every night. I've taken her to doctors, health visitors and diligently followed a plan from a sleep specialist that has apparently never failed before, but it has failed this time. I have done textbook cc and that isn't working, either.

I don't know what the alternative is, but I don't want to put me or my dd through cc for very much longer.

So so sorry. I know you don't want advice - but can't help it, just wondered if you'd ruled out discomfort - does she wake in pain? My DS had silent reflux and dairy/soya intolerance which I had to diagnose myself and present to the GP after four appointments before they took me seriously. His sleep was awful. He needed a comfort BF to get him back to sleep every time he woke.

Have you tried having her sleep on her front (can she roll?). First night my DS did that, he went from waking a million times a night to sleeping til 3am (not every night mind!)

Much easier to resettle without feeding too when on their fronts as can pat their bums.

She doesn't wake in pain, as far as I can tell. I've taken her to the doctor a couple of times to see about reflux, but they seem fairly sure she isn't suffering.

She sleeps on her front. She can roll, sit up and crawl.

I'm trying not to bf to sleep as much as I can cos the advice from the sleep specialist was to break the association between bf and sleep, as this would help her to settle without me.

What made you think reflux?

Can she self settle at the start of the night? DS couldn't but we taught him - well gave him a chance really to try with an early bedtime, put him down after a feed and step back a bit and he'd flap about then fall asleep. When he woke in the night, I'd BF quickly and put in the cot regardless of whether he was awake. Usually he'd drift off, if not, I'd rock or BF.

As he got older, if I heard him wake, I'd wait ten mins before going in - unless he was kicking off then I'd go straight in. Sometimes he'd put himself back to sleep again (I never believed he would).

This got easier with introducing a comforter, so he'd play with that if he woke fully.

How's she doing on solids? Plenty of carbs with some protein?

When you're exhasuted, cc is something you consider. For some people, they see a change within a few days, others find it doesn't work for them. I was in the latter camp, at the time it made me feel even worse than I already did.

In the end I used ideas from The No Cry Sleep Solution (theres a website with some excerpts, which will give you an idea what it's like). It basically advocates a bit of routine, but also has ideas for how to get better sleep if co-sleeping. I wouldn't normally post a link to it on a cc thread, but it seems you are looking for other ideas now.

Remembering those endless days and nights of tiredness, you have my sympathies. I hope that you get some (more) sleep soon. If you continue to have good nights, feel free to ignore the book suggestion.

sappholit here is my hand, together we will get through this. Failing that we can go slightly mad together

We had 2 good night, then last night was back to normal, didnt do anything different. The only this different was the fact she didnt do a poo during the day! I have found this to be the case a few times, no stool passed = a crap night sleep

Im keeping a sleep dairy.

Her day naps have gone to pot now because im unsure how to get her to sleep we manage the morning sleep by feeding as its coincides which is a relief, the afternoons we are normally out so she can fall asleep in the car, but the other two? Who know's????

The book mentioned above by a poster is on it's way to me...My main concern now is to get some sleep, any which way. Once we are both stronger i will try another method.

If you need any one to moan along with im here!

i'm in pretty much the same boat as you. HV suggested controlled crying at nearly 9 months. Told to get her sleeping in her cot for naps during the day first, and to try and disassociate feeding from sleeping.

We're on day 3 now. Days 1 & 2 I put her down for a nap at 9.30 am and left her to cry for 4 minutes at a time, at which point I went up and laid her down, patting her gently and saying 'go to sleep.' This only served to make her scream louder each time.

I feel like i'm betraying her trust by doing this, its horrible. I'm supposed to do this for an hour each morning for at least 4 days to see if this approach works. Today she screamed for 50 minutes (in between my comforting her in this rather stilted way) and slept for 10. Jeez, is it really worth the pain, I wonder?

I don't know if it's a co-incidence but she has actually been much better these past two nights (settling between 9pm-12 and then again between 2 and 7am) but that's with my still feeding her to sleep at night. Like you, I feel my boobs have reached the limit of what they can take (pulling, scratching etc), and although the past two nights have been better, she still needed to be rocked/ fed to sleep for 2 hours after waking. I've no idea what to do now as she's on the verge of walking too.

Sapholit - my heart goes out to you and I can feel your despair at the situation. If it helps, I can share my ( successful) experiences of cc.

I have 3 kids - 4 yr old ds, 2 yr old dd and 4 month old dd. My kids were all terrible sleepers for all the usual reasons - breastfeeding excessively to sleep, never put down awake, rocked and carried a lot. In addition, my ds is naturally wakeful and doesnt seem to need more than 10.5 hrs sleep in total. I can remember periods of time when I was waking literally every 20 mins thru the night with them ( around 5 mth mark) and the max sleep i got a night was an hour. I was very depressed and also resented my kids badly. ( to the point of actually not wanting them)

I went back to work ( full time) at 5 mths with the first and 6 mths with the second. Needless to say - I was desperate. I decided on cc as the most effectice and quick method BUT IT HAS TO BE DONE PROPERLY. A half hearted attempt only makes matters a lot worse in the long run. Sonme of my tips would be:

1. Start cc with night time sleep at beginning of night. This was the worst of it is over whilst you are still awake ( maybe 2-3 hrs until 11pm) If you do it during the day, it takes so long that nap time becomes feed time and then you have just taught the baby to feed to sleep!

1. If they are having established feeds in day ( mild and solids) they do not need any night time feeds. If they are not quite established stick to only one overnight feed. SO with my ds I did it at 8 mths and didnt feed him at all overnight, With dd i started at 6 mths and fed her around 3am but continued with the principle of cc the rest of the time

1. Make sure you have someone at home to support you with cc and make sure they are on the same page as you

1. I found Wendy Dean really helpful on www.babysleepanswers.co.uk as a personal on line consultation. She helps you to be consistent and keeps you going when you are drained and lacking any motivation.

My ds ( at 8 mths) took about a week to sleep 8 until 5 ( I let him come into my bed at 5) and my dd ( at 6 mths) took 3 days to sleep 7.30 until 8 ( I learnt from my son and worked hard on the early mornings!)

It was far from easy, I am dreading doing it on my 4 mth old when she is 6 mths but know it is the only option for me when I go back to work. I am already paving the way for my 4 mth old by not feeding her too frequently overnight and letting her cry it out for short periods when all her needs have been met.

I hope this is of some help to people - all I can say is that you are not alone, it's incredibly difficult but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And if you've seen the light once, that's what keeps you going.

much love x

Thank you so much, Amijee.

At the moment, it's working reasonably well until around 3am, but then it all goes to pot and there are frequent wakings (every 20-40 mins) until 6, when we get her up.

Could you tell me how you dealt with the early mornings?

Hi there

All babies go into a lighter sleep around 4-5am so it's always the last period to crack. We didnt crack it with our son until he was of an age to be bribed into staying in bed with reward charts etc.

I think you have to keep going ( and some are much harder nuts to crack) and above all be consistent. If your consistency slips, it is worse than going back to square one because they have won so to speak.

If you do all the right things and are consistent you WILL get there in the end. And it will be worth it because the most important thing for your child is your sanity and parents who are getting along.

Good luck and good night for now x

Thanks.

We will keep persevering, but I found last night incredibly difficult. All I want to do is just bring her into bed with us, but then I remember why we started out on this hideous journey in the first place.

Thanks for the suggestion for NCSS. However, I have been referring to that since she was 4 months old and I treid every suggestion it offered, and nothing worked for our baby.

I truly don't think there is anything we haven't tried. Controlled crying was absoltely my last resort.

Can you bring her into bed later on in the night? When DS started to sleep better at night, it was always at the start of the night and his stretches of sleep got longer so he stayed in his cot longer until he got used to it.

Yes,I think that's what we'll do. I hate leaving her on her own when she was so used to co-sleeping and so happy with that arrangement. :(

I also lived abroad with no family around when the DCs were babies. None of them were inclined to be sleepers at all, and one in particular nearly drove me batty.

CC was something I just couldn't see myself doing at all and there were neighbours and thin walls to consider too, although the Ferber books came out and were all the rage when they were all babies. Co-sleeping worked far better than continuously getting up to settle a baby all night every night, and they all eventually slept through (the really bad one took 2.5 years before she could reliably sleep thorough though). If I had it back I would have bought a cot that would roll right up to the bed or a clip on one, or maybe a much bigger bed.