Controlled crying AAAAAAAAAAARGH!

[blackchloe]

Please help me. I am in such a pickle with this controlled crying game. I have done this for 3 nights on the trot with my 6 month old with no improvement. She wakes at 2am for a feed which is fine but I have introduced CC because she then wont settle back down to sleep. She had previously been coming into bed with me at 2am and she would settle immediately but only till 4.30am. So after extensive reading I decide to try CC. 5mins, 10 mins then every 15 mins. However she is a stubborn little thing and will not settle . This can go on for 3 HOURS! And then by that point she is ready for her next bottle as its nearly morning. Anyone got any advice? Should I pursue it tonight or just resign myself to the fact that this sleep training method does not work with her. I should point out that this is the last method available as I have tried all the other more gentler methods of sleep training. This CC method means she is exhausted in the day and therefore sleeping more which means she is not so tired at night.

As she can self settle in the day and at bedtime then I think something else is keeping her awake at night prob teeth so try some calpol or teething powder and see if it helps.

I agree with you on that I son't think leaving a baby to cry for 10mins is going to do long term psychological damage and am a bit at all these parents who have all these amazing non crying babies!!! You can't meet your babies every need every single time they cry and imo that is not helpful to you or your baby.

Thank you EricNorthmansMistress for your post. I think you are right and she may not be ready for CC. Your post also made me want to point out to others who are critical of my approach that my babies cries are not wails with tears etc. rather whinging.

banana 87 - please see previous post on space issues.

girleriend, no one said leaving a baby to cry 10 minutes will cause psychological damage. 3 hours or more however, is a completely different story.

banana87 - please see previous post. Whinging rather than wailing with tears for 3 hours with visits at least every 15 mins from myself. Do you think that the damage has been done? If so I might as well try it again tonight!

He's only 6. I don't know whether he's been adversely affected...sadly the risk is increased throughout childhood and the teen years so still too early to say. He found starting school quite tough, and was upset at me leaving him anywhere until he was about 4 and a half, but I don't know what he would have been like anyway.

Sleep deprivation is really hard, I was lucky that co-sleeping worked very well for me (perhaps too well, as 2.4 yr old only moved out of my bed in the summer!). Controlled crying would be an absolute last resort for me with such a little baby. Do you have a DH/DP who could share some of the night waking? Could you go to bed at 8 o'clock every night for a few weeks to make the early morning a bit easier to take? If I've read your op right you're FF, so are there any family or friends who could have DD for a night or two so you can get a full night's sleep occasionally? Is the dummy worth pushing a little more, particularly as it would also reduce the SIDS risk which might help reassure you if she does occasionally co-sleep?

I'm not criticising...I'm a lone parent of 3 and my main parenting rule is that you do whatever it takes (that's legal!) to preserve your sanity. I'm just trying to offer suggestions that might make night times a little less stressful for both you and DD x

Not for me to say OP. I would personally not pursue it and wait a few more months when you are likely to not even need to use a sleep technique because she will be developmentally ready to self settle at that time (especially as she is already self-settling at other times in the night).

ballstoit - Thanks for the advice, but I think that I need to reiterate that the issue is not with me not getting much sleep. I can get by on a few hours. The issue is not having a happy baby the following day after a bad night. Even when I have used co sleeping ( with me not sleeping!) she will sleep from 2- 4.30am in my bed and then be ready to start the day, which again is fine by me but leads to a grizzly baby for the rest of the day. I have a 5 year old to consider in all of this and some of my day has to be devoted to her too not just jiggling a grizzly baby round all day.

This attachment parenting preaching is driving me nuts. I am heading out of this thread. Good luck OP, bear in mind that many, many people have used CC without any of the scare-tactics used here actually showing up.

Thanks for your support MrFawkesMan :)

blackchloe I hope things go well for you

If you can settle her in your bed perhaps you could wait 5 or 10 minutes then put her back in her cot? I am having a fairly difficult time with my 8mo, compounded by the fact that we have paper thin walls and I can't let her wake my 2-year old so I sometimes do this or if she's not settling in our bed I have to go downstairs and rock her to sleep. So you're doing way better than me!

Thanks for advice DialMforMummy. Cant believe I missed Strictly tonight because of the furore on here! :o

AppleAndBlackberry - good advice . I have tried this before. Even slipped out of my pyjama top and sneaked it into the cot so she wouldnt notice, except she did and DH thought his luck was in! May have to try this again though! Maybe when DH is on nights!

Sorry - your comments on not being able to sleep in the day because of your 5 year old and being a 'walking zombie' indicated to me that the sleep deprivation was an issue for you rather than DD

TBH I don't feel I'm 'preaching' at all, just perhaps not giving the answers that you're looking for. Nor am I using 'scare-tactics', I'm informing you that there is research which suggests there are drawbacks to what you're choosing. Which were to much for me, but if they're not for you, that's fine.

Good luck.

CC does not teach a child to sleep when they are under 12/18 months old. It does, however, teach them that no-one will come to them when they need comfort/companionship etc.

I did CC with ds1. It worked. He is now 11 and has depressive tendencies. I know anecdote does not equal data, but I regret those few nights all those years ago, because I will never know if not doing it would have made a difference.

Sorry you've had so many slating comments on here. I completely get where you are coming from. We did CC between 4-5 months and I think because we did it early enough, it worked pretty much in one night (45 minutes of crying and I went in once at 25 minutes and if definitely made it worse!). I got a sleep consultant to help us and helped us construct a routine which meant we absolutely knew that hunger wasn't a factor (and even afterwards he wasn't starving at 7am). Anyway her advice was to be consistent otherwise you will confuse the baby and lose their trust iyswim. She said not to go in until 25 minutes has gone past and that in bad cases it could take up to a week, but very very rarely more. So, if I were you I would leave it longer or possibly not go in as it seems that if she's crying for 3 hours she knows that the crying is bringing you back in quite often. You've done 3 nights - seriously I would keep going hard as it is, once you stop it won't be so easy to try again and i would say much, much harder to fix this as she gets older

I've got an amazingly happy and content 1 year old now, who 99% of the time sleeps amazingly well until 7am every day so I think the whole damage theory is nonsense. He is completely fine, confident and happy and as you say well rested which is so important.

Good luck - if you want to message me directly please do. x

Just to add, when he does cry in the night I instantly know that something is wrong and go to him immediately. I have only needed to do CC twice in the last 7 months which goes to show you how effective it is. I can tell the difference between a tired child that needs to grizzle for 5 minutes and a child that needs something.

BillyBottom - what makes you say that about not teaching a child to sleep? How do you know that? Are you making a generalised statement based on your own experience? Or do you have access to some definitive evidence that is not generally available?

6 months old, really?

I thought CC was for 1 year olds plus?

OP I am very sad to hear about the death in your family, which of course will make you very anxious of co-sleeping. However, without wanting to push you to give the details, there are safe ways to co sleep. Have you read 3 in a BED ?

Having very little sleep makes life tricky, but it sounds like your LO is not quite ready for this approach, teething and so on is perhaps getting in the way of good sleep?

I would urge you to look at other options, and give CC a miss, it is quite full on for tiny babies.

Good Luck to you.

EricN - you're right, what I should have said was "my instincts tell me....."
However there is evidence that high cortisol levels can be damaging in young babies, and crying for prolonged periods causes cortisol levels to rise.

Despite my generalised statement based on my own experience :) controlled crying is not recommended below 1 yr. As much as there is no scientific evidence to prove it is harmful, there is none to prove it isn't.

OP when researching CC/CIO it's worth noting the distinction between 'evidence of no harm' and 'no evidence of harm'. Two very different things.

Leaving a 4 month old to cry for 25 minutes at a time? FFS.

RitaMorgan - where did you read that? I don't think anybody on this thread has said they do/did that?