Controlled Crying

[LosingPatience]

With the controlled crying, did your babies scream the house down? I have let her cry, pat her at increasing intervals only to have her scream more when I pat her. I've also shut the door and let her scream (sometimes for an hour), thinking she would eventually fall asleep, but she doesn't.

Do I just keep trying longer? And is the high pitched screaming normal?

By the way, she is waking up several times at night now and not going back to sleep without feed/cuddle so I really need to get into a routine. Thanks for the previous advice.

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How old is your dd? How much does she sleep during the day and when are her sleeps? What time does she go to sleep and wake up in the am? I think it really is important to get the rest of her 24hours right before doing cc - ie if she's waking at 9am and sleeping for three hours in the day at 22months, say, she won't be tired at 7.30pm, so cc won't work.

Oh, and if you are currently feeding her at night I think you have to stop that before cc will work. Richard Ferber's book Solve Your Sleep Problems (which some people absolutely hate) was very helpful to me in understanding the 'mechanics' of baby sleep. He thinks it is unfair to cc a child who is used to being fed at night as they will be hungry out of habit.
Are you sure this isn't just because of the recent heatwave thought? My ds was waking up several times a night and wanting to drink because he was hot. Last night it was cooler and he slept through.

Controlled crying worked with DS but not with DD and I was at my wits end until I saw an article about a different approach - I think they called it controlled patting or leaving or something - which is basically:

Put them to bed and leave the room saying goodnight/love you etc etc

when they start crying go in turn them onto their side facing away from you, without making eye contact if possible, and then pat their back in a soothing way for a minute but not making eye contact, then leave again saying goodnight

If crying starts return after 2 mins and do the same, but patting for 2 mins

Next time wait five mins and do same patting for 5 mins

Next time wait 10 mins and do the same patting for 10 mins and keep repeating at 10 minute intervals never leaving them to cry for longer than 10 mins

This worked for me when nothing else did and she was about 8 months old, and now DD is 2 and if we go through a bad sleeping patch I always revert to it and it works for her.

HTH and I've been clear!

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GF makes the good point that before doing cc you should get your baby checked out by the doctor. She says this several times in her session with Mumsnet. High pitched screaming sounds like it could be pain (or indignance - depending on the age of the baby). Also it could get pretty exhausting crying for so long in this heat - could you have another go when the weather breaks?

I'm trying CC right now. Ds2 has been crying for 6 minutes now. I feel as if I've got him into it a bit though cause with the hot weather I've been giving him water or diluted milk & settling him.
I know I've got to be firm otherwise it'll get worse. He goes off OK but lately has been waking around now , then 11.30pm & sometime 3am. He's 12 mths & used to sleep thru

When I did cc I had already got ds off night feeds by stretching out the periods between feeds at night. When I had achieved this he only cried for 20mins at the longest stretch and that not screaming, more complaining. If he's got teeth coming through or an ear infection you need to tackle that first, too, obviously as BtheB says. For teeth a spot of baby Nurofen can work wonders.
Good luck.

I am doing cc now (up to 7mins). I have done it before successfully with my ds and it only took 2-3 nights. I had my mum come to stay for 4 weeks though and to try to minimise disruption to her I was always rushing in when ds cryed and taking him to my bed to feed - so now I'm back at square 1. I absolutely hate doing it, but I've researched the alternatives and they seem like they would take far too long to get results.

I could do with some advice though about when to start counting the interval as sometimes ds can go quite for quite a few minutes before starting up again. Should I count from when I leave his room or from when he starts crying again or should I restart the time after he has been quite for a few minutes but starts crying again?

I tried this with my dd at 5 and months but she wasn't ready, just got into a frenzy. But at 7 months it worked a treat. Try waiting a while, if it doesn't work first time maybe your babys aren't ready for it either.

Good luck!

Agree with Sambo M. Tried at 6months and it was a disaster. Tried again at 8months and it was easy and relatively painless.

I've just seen my year-old message on the other thread 'Is it possible to avoid cc'! It was 30minutes of crying apparently instead of 20minutes. Funny to see it again. Ds sleeps well now.

I've been told off before on Mumsnet for being a heartless mum but I did 'my' version of controlled crying when DS was 3 (yes, 3!) weeks old - I put him in his cot at the usual bedtime (7pm) and shut the door, he cried (not screaming)for 2 hours until he fell asleep, he has NEVER had a problem going to bed at this time since - now 2 and a half (he was still waking for one night time feed until 8 months). He also sleeps for 2-3 hours every afternoon and plays very happily in his cot when he wakes up.

I think CC will only work if you can bear to be tough enough, I know it sounds cruel to some people but I just chatted on the phone to a friend for a while at the time (in fact she kept nervously saying 'how's the baby' - if you are really worried about whether or not you are out of the room for 6 or 7 minutes do you think you can really cope with it?

Another point about CC - why don't the mums leave the house and let the Dad do it, often Dad is 'tougher' - instead of nervously waiting outside the bedroom door.

Clearly CC is a very contraversial topic, some people can do it, some can't - all I will say is that it worked for me and my DS.

I'm sorry to join this discussion late - apologies if this has already been done, but I don't know if I do CC or not. DS always cries himself to sleep and always has done. He's not great at daytime so it takes about 10 - 15 mins of crying. At night it is usually just a quick grumble, although sometimes it can take an hour or more for him to settle.

I don't feel tough or heartless, I just don't think I'll have any effect if I go back to him, I assume he just needs to cry himself to sleep. On the odd occasion when I have gone to him he has cried in my arms, and I've thought "what the point? He may as well cry in the cot instead and at least I can get on with things."

I am worrying about this now because he starts nursery when I go back to work in a couple of weeks (he's 7 months). Will they automatically rock him to sleep, or let him stay awake if he appears not to want to sleep (i.e. cries) for his daytime sleeps?

And if they do, will that make it harder for me, cos I just don't have the patience to rock him to sleep? But if I ask them to do it as I do, will I be disturbing other kids who don't want a screaming baby disturbing their sleep? (Oh, and I'm also just having one of those days when I'll worry about anything!)

I remember my Health Visitor saying CC works best when babies get to about 12 months old so I didn't really try it before then. My DS used to go to bed fine until he would have been about 7 months old & then suddenly one night he cried when I left him & I found the best strategy was to sit with him until he fell to sleep - if I tried to leave before then he screamed. I felt okay with this for several months until he awoke screaming in the middle of the night & it took nearly an hour for him to drop off again with me sitting beside him (I didn't like that!). The next time he woke and cried I did the cc technique (he was about 13 months old) - it was horrible to do but I knew once I started I had to finish it and over the course of 3 nights I managed to decrease his crying until he went to bed without me staying with him & he didn't cry. Since then he has been absolutely fine and goes off to sleep by himself - sometimes playing in his cot for up to an hour before dropping off to sleep. One thing I would say is to make sure they are well before attempting it - if they're poorly then you have to make allowances.

Fisil - I wouldn't worry too much about what the nursery do - they've had so many babies to look after they'll be used to dealing with a variety of personalities. Tell them what his routine is now & I'm sure they'll try & accommodate it. Whatever technique they use to get him to take his naps may not have any effect on how you get him to sleep - you may even find it helps! And if he cries, well if it's anything like the baby room where my DS goes to nursery, they'll be plenty of other babies having a good cry as well!

I did cc with my DS twins, it worked realy well with my one son but the other was a bit more persistent and would get himself in quite a state, so I did go in and pick him up and sooth him, as I felt that he couldn't settle to sleep if he was in such a state. It did work in the end though and they have always been realy good at going to bed, their now nearly 5.

Fisil, I certainly don't think you are in the least bit heartless. I think you are just letting your baby do what he needs to do. My son also used to have a little cry before sleeping - I just came to think it was his way of settling. And I agree, don't worry about the nursery. Let them do the worrying - it's what you pay them for

I was at my wits end by the time DS was six months old, we had tried everything to help him to learn to settle. He had also got into the habit of waking more and more in the night for extra bottles of milk as he had rather got to like the taste of it. With the support of our health visitor we basically went "cold turkey" on him and left him to it, not even going in after certain amounts of minutes since all this did was just get him more worked up rather than settling him down. He was very persistent and it took about two weeks of us hearing him cry at different times in the night. After that he gave up and cruel though this may sound he has been a very happy boy and excellent sleeper ever since. Now if he wakes in the night it is for a reason. We are expecting our 2nd in January and I will certainly do this again if I have to.

fisil, I had this exactly with my ds, who always used to cry himself to sleep (usually briefly). He would also wake and cry briefly during the night, which I generally ignored unless it was something out of the ordinary. I hated it but there wasn't really an alternative! At nursery, they don't leave them to cry but would rock teh babies to sleep in a big traditional pram. he never slept as well at nursery but it was just about tolerable, and it didn't have any effect on how he slept at home. Anyway I can't remember when it stopped, but now (20 months) he goes down in his cot really happily at naptimes and bedtimes, smiles and kisses me good night, and only cries occasionally if he is really overtired. He still wakes and cries in the night though, can't seem to find a way to stop that I guess I'm trying to say don't worry, either about nursery or about the crying

Thanks ladies! elliott, at the very minute you were posting this morning, we were at the nursery for our first induction session. He started to grumble so they suggested he had a sleep, and they asked how he liked to get himself off to sleep, and so they left him to cry, and all the other sleeping babies didn't care at all! Hooray! And as that was my biggest fear, I'm even happier than before about him starting nursery.

I think I should take up worrying professionally.

Fisil - glad to hear the nursery went well. Let's face it I think we all worry so don't worry about worrying! I worried when my DS went to nursery because he wouldn't take milk from a bottle (he was breastfed) so he just didn't have anything while he was there. Didn't do him any harm, but it didn't stop me worrying at the time.

Our son has always been a bad sleeper from day one. For the first 6 weeks of his life he averaged 6 hours sleep out of 24 hours, not in a row!

By the age of 5 months he was sleeping from 7 to 7 in his own room(big acheivement) but waking every 90 mins and being a niave first timer I was breast feeding him into submission. Sheer exhaustion led to us going cold turkey putting him down awake in his cot after his last feed and only giving water when he woke through the night.

It took 3 weeks of screaming to contend with, using the checking method of 1 minute then increasing 1 minute intervals to a maximum of 10 mins to see some improvement. Now at 7 months on a good night he'll go 7pm-3am in a stretch but wake every 60-90 mins until I give in and feed him(normally around 6am).

I find that settling him in the day is harder than at night. Today he cried for 20 minutes before falling asleep, where as in the evening he grumbles for 2 minutes.

Has anyone any tips for getting him back to sleep at 3am? He usually cries for a good hour then when he is asleep wakes up within 60-90 mins.

With our next baby we are going to put him/her down awake in a darkened room from 6 weeks and let them cry themselves to sleep. Feeding a baby to sleep is definitly a hard habit to break as we learned the hard way!

I did the patting thing with dd and it worked a treat - put dd down and spent around an hour going up and down the stairs to reassure, this only lasted about 2 weeks though and was well worth it as she now sleeps like an a baby (ha) and we don't hear a peep. I also had a light/music thing which lit up the ceiling with Winnie the Pooh and co and gave us chance to run off before she noticed.

Wouldn't have been able to do cc, 2 mins of crying and my heart breaks.

Also Lindy - dh is the softy in our house, he had strict instructions not to pick dd up, just pat her, and I would sneak up and see him cuddling her. Made up some lame excuse that she 'looked upset'!!!!

The controlled crying thing didnt work for us. Tried it when baby was 8 months or so, and she screamed the house down for three nights before we gave up. I felt so guilty for traumatising my baby like that. Now if I leave her alone in the cot or even on our bed, she screams like mad, and I just know its because of the controlled crying - she never did that before...

My dad says my little brother (now 17) was in his parents bed till he was about 4, and he says its normal to want to be with your parents, so to expect it. So am I resigned to having 3 in a bed or is there another way?

Mumpsie

Have you tried the "pick up, put down" method championed by Baby Whisperer Tracy Hogg. You don't leave them to cry, just pick up for reasurance and put back down when calmer saying Sleep time, repeating until baby goes to sleep. You don't leave the room and can reassure as soon as you feel you need to. Eventually they learn to put themselves to sleep. If you have access to Sky there is a series of programmes on Discovery Health or she has written books and has a website. (Am about to order her Toddler Book).

hth