Controlled crying advice - 9 month old

[clarkykitten]

Hi, I know this is controversial but we're doing a gentle version of CC with our DD who is 9 months old. She is BF and, until last Saturday I was feeding her up to 2-4 times in the night whenever she woke. After a particularly tough night on Friday I was completely exhausted and knew something had to change :( as it is affecting my health (I have multiple sclerosis) and my relationship with DH.

DD is still in our room as we have a 2 bed house and a 3yr old DS, who is in the other room. I decided to go cold turkey with the night feeds, so I have decided that I won't feed her before 6am. When she wakes in the night, we leave it a couple of mins to see if she'll settle then go to her, stroke her head and say 'sleepy time', then going after 5 mins, 10mins etc. DD can see that we are in the same room as her, and I had hoped that would help her settle better. Most of the time she settles back to sleep within 10 mins or so, but over the past couple of nights she has been waking even more frequently and crying out. In particular, she find it really, really hard to settle when she wakes at 4am. Last night, she woke at 1am, 2am, 3am and then was awake from 4-6am on and off, until I eventually fed her at 6am.

So, my questions are:

1. If I do CC and she doesn't go back to sleep before 6am when she is fed, is she just learning to continue to cry as eventually she'll be fed?
2. Do you think her being in our room is stopping her from settling?
3. Is there a chance she could be hungry when she wakes at 4am? Should I give her a top up dream feed at 10pm, for example? Or should I just feed her at that time and try in a few months to stop that feed?

I should mention that she has her last BF at 6:30pm and since we have started the CC, although she is still crying, it doesn't sound as 'desperate' as it used to. it is more like a low level moaning cry, so i think she is finding it a bit easier to settle, she just can't get to sleep! She is put into bed awake after her last feed and for naps and settles fine (no dummy etc), it is just the night wake-ups she struggles with.

Any experiences?

Thank you!

Hi, not an expert here, but we did CC with our 14 month old after advice from a sleep clinic.

Apparently sleep is shallower towards the end of the night - I don't know if that could affect how easy it is to get back to sleep? I don't know about the hunger thing - I was still feeding in the night up to at least a year old, but DS took a long time to start eating reasonable meals and also I am a wuss. If she's eating plenty in the day I expect she 'should' be able to sleep through without feeding. You could always try the dream feed and see if it makes any difference.

At 6 o'clock, if she's been awake for a while before that, maybe make a big thing that it's morning now - turn on lights, get her up, so she associates being fed with it being morning, not the idea that she gets fed in the night if she cries long enough.

Good luck, you must be knackered.

Hi, thank you for your advice :)

That's what I did today - put the light on and took her downstairs after her feed at 6am (even though she was yawning and I know she would have gone back to sleep!) Hard though, when she'd already been awake for a couple of hours. She's napping now.

Maybe I will try the dreamfeed and see if that makes a difference.