Doing controlled crying now - DD seems to have more stamina than me...

[babybouncer]

DD is now 7 months old and given that she has only been sleeping for about 45-90 mins at a time during the night for the past week or so (she's never been a great sleeper - always woken two or three times a night) and feeding her back to sleep has been taking longer and longer, we've decided to try controlled crying. We started at 7 and fully expected it to take and hour, but its now 8:20 and she isn't giving up. She had a big dinner, a couple of ounces of formula and a full breastfeed. The room is not too hot or too cold. Does it just take this long? It's so much hard than I thought it would be...

I disagree that it's not a bad habit. It's a habit I allowed to develop (having to be fed back to sleep) and a habit I had to train her out of it (allowing her to self settle).

She doesn't just "seem" ok, she is ok! And so am I, having been left by my mum to cry it out. And so are my brothers. And many, many other people I know who were allowed to cry it out.

And if your whole household is exhausted from lack of sleep due to not wanting to let the baby experience one moment of (transient) distress, then yes. The baby does control that situation. Not consciously or wilfully, but control nonetheless.

I agree that CIO doesn't work for all families, but it does work for many, including ours. The OP is trying it, I'm encouraging her to stick with it because it will take a little time.

Dinosaurs

I would suggest you get hold of the No-Cry Sleep Solution asap, read it very carefully (it's a bit waffly so you do have to pay attention, there is a method there underneath the waffle) and then implement some changes.

You and your whole household are going to be seriously on your knees with tiredness if you'll soon have a new little DC who needs to sleep and feed on you constantly and a bigger DC who needs you to sleep with him! But you don't need me to tell you that. Very best of luck with everything.

Of course it's a habit - at a certain stage. There are lots of habits that babies get into - some healthy and some not healthy. At a certain age crying whenever you wake up, even for an instant, suggests that the healthy habit of just turning over and going back to sleep is not in place. The habit of calling for mum to help you get back to sleep is in place and will stay in place unless replaced by another habit.

Now of course in the early months a baby needs help and comfort to get back to sleep but it's really, really healthy for babies at a certain age to learn that they don't need someone else to help them get back to sleep. The jury is out on when that is - and I don't doubt that you can't do CC on a very young baby.

But always being on hand to help your baby back to sleep, month after month, may well end up in an unhelpful habit. My children are very good sleepers now and I do view it as a habit they have learned. My son (3) is going through the nightmares stage so that is disrupting things a bit and so I am on hand to soothe him and help him. But fundamentally his habits are good - he knows he can get himself to sleep and if he wakes up, will get himself back to sleep. IMHO these habits don't appear by magic - sometimes children need a little help to learn the long term good sleeping habits. I'm not saying at what age but I just wanted to chime in to say there are habits at work here.

Fruit, I'm not sad for your child - I was talking about CIO making me sad. CC is different as you know of course.

Not - no, the OP is doing CC which is totally different to CIO.

DrJohnsonscat, I found that these habits appeared quite by magic when mine were roughly the same age.

Both of them, and both were co sleepers, fed on demand since birth and until whenever really, and responded to pretty quickly if they cried.

It's just something that happens I guess. They self settle very very well and did from then onwards - perhaps it doesn't matter much what we do when they are small to encourage or discourage this. I always thought that being there when they asked was a good way to make them feel that perhaps they didn't need to ask, eventually, because it was a given.

I don't know though. Seems like they all get there in the end.

They appeared by magic with DD but not with DS. I don't think they do all get there in the end! I recently posted on a thread by a mum who spends an hour or two getting her 3 year old to sleep every night!

If it all happens easily (and like I say, it did with DD who was sleeping through with absolutely no intervention from me at 4 months) then great. Naturally I thought this was down to my amazing parenting until I met DS who needed a lot more help and structure but finally got there definitively at almost 2 (complicated by some medical probs).

I do think different strokes for different folks. I would never criticise anyone for CC or for co-sleeping. Co-sleeping sounds horrendous to me but it works for many so who am I to tell others what to do? All I know is CC helped in my house.

I agree different things work for different people. I would never presume to tell anyone that they should or shouldn't do any one particular method.

I don't think CC and CIO are totally different things. More or a sliding scale IMO. Some people do CC by going in every 2 or 3 minutes, some every 10 or 15, some more or less. With our DD, going in to comfort was more cruel, as she thought she was about to be put on the boob, then chucked a tantrum when that didn't happen. For us, it was sending mixed messages and did not work.

Some people can function fine on very little sleep. I am not one of those people, and my whole life was suffering due to exhaustion caused by bad habits I had allowed to form. 3 nights of persistence, an we were finally all able to get some sleep.

Result!

As I said, while I would hate co-sleeping and various other parenting techniques, I would never tell anyone else how they should raise their child, as it is THEIR child and unique set of circumstances. Others on this thread seem to think they have the right to judge. That's fine, judge away.

I just wanted to share my experiences with the OP to answer her question.