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.

Secondong LIZS here, although we did it with leaving the room for 2-5 mins each time between picking up comforting - occasionally left a little longer but only if crying was "grizzly" type rather than screaming type. Worked in 3-7 days with 4 children in total, each at about 9 or 10 months old.

Hi Lizzs, Judetheobscure, I'm a new mum with a 10 week old ds and we've just tried the CC with some success. However, for daytime naps he tends to sleep for 30 mins or so and then waking. I know this nap isn't long enough for him (he used to sleep for an hour or more on my chest for naps before we tried CC). Do I try the CC again from this point and see if he falls asleep or do I take it as "this is the end of my nap and I don't want to sleep any more" ?? Or a guess a third option is to take it as finished and see if he gets tired again in an hour or so..? HELP PLEASE!

I didn't do controlled crying during the day. Just went with the flow and it fairly soon settled into a routine. 10 weeks is still quite young. You could maybe try patting him back to sleep after the half hour but I would probably get him up if he doesn't re-settle straight away - it will probably get longer as he gets used to sleeping in his cot.

Thanks. My DS is usually a good night sleeper besides getting up twice for feeds, but we've found the CC (which we only started two nights ago) really allowed him to settle straight away after the night feeds rather than being rocked, and appeared much better for it in the morning. It was taking only 5mins of tossing and turning, no crying, to drop off after the feeds!

The problem I have during the day is that he doesn't settle in his cot (which he's been in since birth) for naps and would only sleep on my chest, so I couldn't catch up on sleep or do anything else. I think I'll take it as "I'm not tired any more" and see how sleepy he gets in a hour or so. Atleast at night he knows he's supposed to sleep.. but perhaps isn't quite sure about the daytime naps yet.

It was a hard decision to do at 10 weeks..

Thanks for the help!

Karen- I find that the more tired they get the harder it is for them to fall asleep, too tired. GF says that no baby should be asleep for more than two hours at a time and should be sleeping roughly 3-4 hours a day between 7am-7pm with bed time at 7pm. Although i do not follow GF i do and rty and put 13 week old DS2 to sleep after two hours, when I see those tell tale yawns.

Can anyone offer some advice or comments ? we don?t know if we have a problem of not! We have just had our first baby (a boy) who is now 4 weeks old ? and totally gorgeous! We are trying to follow CLBB routines but at the moment no day is the same. Sometimes things go well and we have nice awake times coupled with good feeding and sleeping. Other times we cannot get him to nap after feeds during the day and he just cries all the time. My wife is breast-feeding him but the 11.00pm feed each day is now a bottle of formula (5 oz). He generally sleeps well after this feed ? sometimes for as long as 6 hours (which we totally love!). However, the problem seems to be the 7pm and 4am feeds, after which he just will not settle. He only seems happy if he?s sucking on something, which tends to be someone?s finger (not his!) because he has no co-ordination yet to be able to find his own fingers or hold a dummy in. Also when he does sleep, he usually falls asleep whilst feeding. We want him to be able to sleep after the 7pm and 4am feeds and we also want him to be able to settle himself to sleep rather than fall asleep feeding or sucking our fingers, so we are thinking about controlled crying. Is 4 weeks to early for this?

Daddy, not that I'm any wxpert since I've just been asking for advice on this page too!, but personally I think 4 weeks is too young for CC. We found making the decision at 10 weeks terribly hard and we've had success at night but still have short 30-40min naps in the day.

A baby of 4 weeks is still getting used to being "outside" and is most likely working out day/night still. We started seeing improvement with lots of things aroung the 4/5 week mark with our ds (darling son) (10 weeks now), including knowing when its night-time, smiling and playing lots more, etc. So aslong as nights are kept very quiet, no eye contact etc, and day naps follow with fun and games in the light, your ds should soon be understanding when he should drift off for longer.

I must admit we've never managed to get our ds to settle for the nught until a bedtime of 9/10pm. We found 7pm too early and he always wanted to play after that feed. He drifts off easily after the 1am and 4am feeds and is up for the day at 6/6:30am.

Goodluck! and isn't being a parent so rewarding and fun! Never realised it would be so good!

Forgot to add that our daytime routine, which he fell into himself, is:

Feed - Play - Sleep - Feed - Play - Sleep

The feed time got less as BF established, playtime gets longer after the feeds as he got older and sleep time pretty much kicks in about 1-1.5 hours before the next feed.

So during the day you may be expecting him to sleep when he might prefer tiring himself out playing.. Worked for ours.

daddyactually - just a tip I found work. My ds couldn't hold a dummy in so I tried lots of different ones. The only ones he could do it with are sold in boots and called MAW dummies. They are shaped around the mouth rather than flat with no raised bit round the teat.

Hope this helps.

By the way - we had no joy with sleeping through nights until he was 6 months and went in his own room!!! So u are v v v lucky to get 6 hours!

spikeycat - thanks for the dummy tip - we'll give them a go too!

Agreed 6 hours is a definite luxury - 10 weeks on still only get 2-3hrs between feeds if we're lucky!

No problem, these are still the ones we use (bad mother - he's 8 months now).

They do only do them in boots (and one other place I can't remember) and sometimes boots runs out

Hope they work for you, the flat ones just used to shoot out of his mouth for some reason!

Karen99 & Spikeycat - Thanks for advice / comments on dummies & routines, we'll try it all out. We do know that 6hrs is really great and we keep telling our ds what a good boy he is - trying to encourage him to continue like that! We'll see how we go over next few weeks....

daddyactually - we did cllb/gf with ds (one on Monday!) and he slept through from the late feed at 9 weeks. He did take a while to settle after the 7pm feed sometimes, but we never left him longer than 20 minutes if he was crying. If he was just moaning quietly, we just translated it as"I'm soooo tired, I want to be asleep now!". Otherwise we assumed it was wind (which it almost always was), lift him out of his cot in the dark and hold him upright till the inevitable humungous burp! If that was the problem, he would crash out immediately.

Does you dw express before the 11pm feed? I would recommend it because you can then bung that milk in the fridge/freezer and use it later or build up a stored supply for the 11pm feed itself. It'll also keep up her own supply for the rest of her feeds which is important.

bobsmum - sometimes winding ds is ok - other times nothing seems to happen so we assume he's ok. We know the high pitched cry when he's in pain from it though... Have tried infacol & just started a bit of gripe water which both seem to help. dw also has trouble expressing (using a battery pump) but keeps trying... in the meantime we try and keep formula to a minimum only using it on 11.00pm feed. does all this sound ok? any tips on expressing (can't believe i'm asking that!!!)...

daddyactually, have a look at the BF TALK pages, there are some really good comments.

Juat a quick note though, we found the following pump was really gentle, especially without the pump insert (gives you more room and works the same) and I'm still using it!

\linkwww.ameda.demon.co.uk/{}

karen99 - thanks will pass info on to dw! All this parenting stuff is so new, everyday presents new challenges - fun though!

Should have looked at the link before sending.. its the Ameda Lactaline Personal-Dual Breastpump on www.ameda.demon.co.uk/mailorder.html