Controlled Crying - Question

[Jinty123]

My DH and I have just started controlled crying with our DD. She's 10 months old and has never been a very good sleeper. However, last year around September she started sleeping 10 hours straight every night. Then, in the middle of January all that changed and her sleeping has got worse and worse.

Last night was our first attempt at CC and when I collected her from creche she was totally exhausted as she hadn't slept the entire day. So putting her to sleep last night was not a problem and we didn't have to try CC.

But although she went down at 7pm, she was up again, like every other night, at 1am. My DH was on duty last night and went in and without a fuss managed to get her to go back to sleep. But not for long, she was up again soon after and that's when he started the CC.

Now, the problem started when she went quite after about 3-4 minutes of crying. So DH decided to wait 10 minutes and go in to see if she was ok. Only to discover, after the 10 minutes of quiet, that she was quietly sitting in her cot like a little Buddha watching the door. So he placed her on her back to sleep again and left the room. Some more crying and after 10 minutes of quiet DH went in to discover her once again just sitting quietly in her cot.

So basically what my question is, is what do you do when they don't cry, but just sit there quiet as a mouse waiting for you to come back in again. I think she learnt this habit at creche and I don't really know if there is anything we can do, or if we must just persevere with putting her back down every time and hopefully after a week or so she will learn to put herself back down and won't need us.

Any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jinty (mum to Kathryn - 29.04.03)

I haven't used the technique on mine, but I would imagine you stick to the routine of going in every 10 minutes or so. Controlled crying without the crying......If she is safe in her cot and not unhappy, you might just leave her to it?

I'd leave her if she's not crying. It sounds like she's staying awake waiting for you to come in so by going in you might actually be encouraging her to stay awake! At 10 months she can lie down again by herself so if she's not unhappy, I'd just leave her to it.

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Thanks for your input ladies,

I'm on duty tonight, so I'll leave her to it and see what happens!

oooo - let us know what happens!

I've never heard of CC without the crying before! Sounds very interesting...

I'm sure she'll get bored and settle herself.. then again she may start crying after 20mins or so after wondering where you are. We've recently just been through this and it varies night to night but averages about 5mins of crying before ds settles himself (8months). VERY RARELY does he drop off within a min. of being put in the cot as he just seems to want to stay up all the time. But it usually happens well before 10mins (after the first couple of nights).

Unbelieveable!!

Kathryn went off to sleep at 7.30/7.45pm without so much as a murmur and without her bottle or dummy!

She woke at 5am and I still thought it was the middle of the night, so in my zombie state I tried to get her to go back down again, until I reached for my cell phone and realised it was morning

Will see how it goes tonight - dh is on duty, thank goodness!

I am really happy for you. Have a lovely day after last night's long sleep Tomorrow she will sleep until 6

Yey !

Let us know what happens tonight!

My ds ALWAYS waked around 5am and then 6am, however, in the past months he's learnt how to resettle even after 5-10mins of 'playing' in his cot and we now get a luxury lie in of 6:30am ! Again it may be worth leaving dd and see what happens?

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In South Africa in summer 5am is wakeup time because the birds and the sun are already out! And we start work at 8am not 9

But last night was dh's turn on duty and I slept wonderfully. DD apparently woke 4 times but each time it took about 5 seconds and she was asleep again. So I told my dh that the next time that happens he must just leave her and see if she falls back to sleep on her own. She woke at 5am and I heard her for the first time, but she fell back to sleep until 6am - so you were right Fairymum :0

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