Controlled crying

[Haribolover]

The time has come at 9 months for CC. We have issues with needing feeding or rocking to sleep and some nights multiple wake ups. Naps are dire too as won't go down in cot and it's feed to sleep or buggy/car.

My questions are:

• do I do CC for going down or each wake up as well?
• still doing a night feed, do I continue this and if so how do I ensure it's a wake up for hunger?
• do I sort nights and then naps? Seems too much to do it all at once?

Sort naps, then nights.
Don't feed to sleep, at all.
A 9mo is not waking up hungry, it's habit / a sleep association.
No need to leave them to cry, just don't feed or rock. They'll cry, but you can comfort them - pick them up, talk to them, sing, whatever.

Read the first third of Dr Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems - I don't agree with the method but the information about sleep cycles and associations is invaluable.

It IS too much to do it all at once. Changing little by little is how I would do it.

I also think the opposite of the PP and think that a lot of Ferber is bad science and would instead recommend No Cry, Sleep Solution.

Following if you don't mind.

DD is a almost 11 months and we seem to have fallen I to a bedtime routine where we read, feed, cuddle, leave in cot to cry for 5-10 minutes, them rock to sleep.

We stopped night feeds at about 8 months when I realised she was only feed In order to sleep. If you don't think he's hungry, then refuse the feed and just cuddle. It helps if Dad is around to help with this bit.

Following this. I thought consistency was important so best to do all at once, so v interested in others experiences?

We started with the first nap of the day (on two naps at the time) and left for 2 min, 4,8 up to 30 and then repeat 30 until asleep (although we didn't need to go that long). Once we started we did it everytime he went down to sleep. Took a day (no night waking), and he has the occasional slide back but tends to only cry for a min or so about every 2 month's.

He had already dropped the night feed though, so maybe worth dropping that first.

Good luck

Lucy consistency is important but babies will distinguish between different situations. This can characterise the problem too. Eg when we sleep trained DD was self settling for naps and bedtime but needed milk when she woke in the middle of the night. What I'm saying is, be consistent in the same situation i.e. follow the same method for naps, but you can definitely work on those and then bed time and then night wakings.

Showtunes I've read Ferber and Pantley and the theory is pretty much the same, the method differs. And I don't agree with Ferber's method. Because he thinks a child has to fall asleep totally alone in order to self settle at all. That's what the timed intervals are designed to do - allow you to go in to your child, while increasing the likelihood that they will be alone when they eventually cry themselves to sleep. I never thought that would be the case, I never wanted to leave DD alone in distress, so I didn't, and my instincts were right.

I have started CC with my 8.5 months old this week! Not sure I can offer advice as I am so new at this but here is how I have done it.
At night time ( because we dont have the issue with naps) I have let him cry 5/10/15/20 mins with going back and stroking his head and comforting.

I was told not to hold him as the point of doing this is weening him off of needing something to sleep. My son used to wake up every hour and the only thing that would put him back to sleep was a couple of oz of warm milk. Exhausting. Anyway last night was our 3rd night and I started seeing some good progress...

So to answer 2 of your questions

• Yes I do CC for each wake up. I think consistency is the key. And by night 3 we have gone from 5/6 wake ups to 1/2.
• I dont know how much your 9 month old eats but if he eats like my 8 months old ( 3 massive home cooked meals a day with fruit or custard or a pudding after each and lots of water throughout the day and a bit of milk) he is not hungry. I used to be worried about that but then realised it was common sense. If I eat 3 good size meal a day and drink I dont wake up hungry at night. So you can ensure your son is not hungry at night if he eats/ drinks well during the day.

Wishing you tons of good luck!! X

Thanks guys. Was going to give it a few more days bit she just wouldn't settle tonight so it was feed/rock or CC so started it. DH is put but actually find it easier without him here as we tend to argue. 49 mins in and we still have tears. It will get better won't it.......
Not sure how to handle the wake ups. She can do a night without a feed but us tiny (0.4 centile) so don't want her dropping weight because she is losing a feed.

I was told not to hold him as the point of doing this is weening him off of needing something to sleep.

For us, this wasn't the case, though DD was SO fixated on milk (at nearly 2 she still adores her bottle ) our comforting her never actually comforted her! but she would wake and cry, and we would go straight in, pick her up, chat soothingly (!), shout at each other about what we were doing wrong, walk around, she would scream, when she calmed a bit we'd put her down in her cot, picked her up again when she was distressed - eventually she fell asleep (think the worst crying was probably about an hour). But we were always there in the room with her, always held her, that was important to me, and for us it didn't cause problems. But as I say, she never liked it much anyway

50mins and asleep. Hard but I survived and we've spent longer trying to get her asleep/rocking so not that bad. Let's see how the night goes....

Sounds good haribo. Best of luck for the rest of the night.

Great. These will be the longest / most difficult stretches. It improves SO quickly. Good luck tonight.

We've been doing controlled crying at bedtime, which seems to be working as I would expect really though it's still early days, but I'm still walking in the pushchair for naps so haven't done it all at once.

I think mine can also distinguish between bedtime and night feeds as for a while now he has self-settled after night feeds but not at bedtime (hence the CC, which we have only needed to do at bedtime). So I think we probably could do something different at night wakings than at bedtime if we needed to as he seems to know the difference.

We did this after the desperation of zero naps in a cot and then waking up sometimes 12 times a night.

We started with naps first- all naps in the cot to start with and no 'tricks' such as feed to sleep, rocking, white noise etc.

We put our baby down in the cot and then left the room for one minute. Then we just returned, picked him up but no real interaction and repeated. I think it was a bit of a mix of all methods but it really worked for us as I couldn't face true CC. It only took 2 days to crack the naps.

We then moved on to bedtime with this, repeating in the night and stopping feeding automatically. This took about 3 nights and he is now (mostly!) sleeping through. But 10000x better.

I don't think ours was true CC but it was what we were happy with. I felt awful at first but I just kept telling myself that my son will be happier after a nice, long sleep and teaching him how to get to sleep is a vital skill. He used to scream with tiredness for hours on end before and that was a lot worse guilt-wise!

Anyone dropped night feed to sleep with offering water? Dd just 6mo was on just 1 feed at night but gone up to 3/4 as she wouldnt settle back to sleep without a feed.

Last night I offered water instead of bf and she took an ounce or two and cried for less than 20 mins before going back to sleep (I was popping in our comfort on a regular basis) each time.

Just wondering whether she will still wake if I'm giving water and I should stop with the water or whether she won't bother to wake if I'm not giving bm.

Holdthephone: did you keep going back after 1 min each time, or stretch it out at all? Thanks!

We kept going back after 1 minute- just picked him up and placed him down again if he was standing or just patted his back/ tummy if he was lying down. No talking at all. Before I was running in, feeding him, rocking him or putting Ewan on so it was quite a change but he took to it really well.

We did go past 1 minute if he was just making general noises and not proper crying. These tending to just turn to sleep anyway but sometimes he will start crying again and then it's back to the 1 min.

Good luck- it really, really helped us (I started a thread called 8 Month Sleep Hell!).

Littlef00t we did that - she was having two full feeds at 3 hour intervals in the night at 9 months. Madness. Over the course of a few weeks I reduced the amount that was in her bottle, because though I was confident she wasn't genuinely hungry, she certainly was used to it and I wanted to be gentle (technique: start the night with a goal e.g. at the beginning she was having 6 oz bottles. So I would make a 6 oz bottle and take it from her mouth every 2 oz. If she cried, I would let her have it - i.e. it was a no cry process - but often enough she would fall asleep after 4/5oz. So then the next night I would start with 5oz. And so on.) We got down to an oz / a couple of sucks after a few weeks, and then offered water. She didn't want that at all, so that's when she cried, and we held her, and after the mythical three nights she was sleeping through.

If your DD does like water (or the comfort sucking) and wakes up for it, then to bite the bullet you'll have to offer nothing.

Just to say that we tried a similar method to the one holdthephone describes - repeated picking up and putting down. It really didn't work for us because he just got more and more distressed and agitated every time we did it, and he's done much better with CC (5/10/15 mins etc). Which is not to say that either method is right or wrong, just that different approaches suit different babies I think.

Thanks rootypig. Was impressed last night that we only had 20 mins of protest after 2oz of water when she normally has at least half a bf.

I'm hoping the fact she did protest after taking the water means she didn't particularly appreciate it and won't bother with it. Well we'll see how she is tonight. Made slightly more complicated by mild teething signs.

Fingers crossed. The theory behind CC is that you can't offer your child a substitute (cuddles, water) because that will become the sleep association. We didn't find that. DD had no interest in water, or in cuddles-!

For the people wondering about pick up / put down, we would just pick her up and hold her and walk around for a while. So it wasn't a jack in the box type thing. She would arch her back and struggle to get away when she'd had enough and wanted to lie down.

Rootypig, thought I'd update, appreciated your input. Water was the devils work last night lol, she batted it out my hand so just gave her a quick cuddle and put her back to bed. She screamed blue murder but stopped suddenly when I left the room and I didn't have to resettle.

Sounds like your LO with a hating of cuddles etc.

She woke 8 (cuddle), 11:30 (fed), 2am (cuddle), 4:45 (cuddle), 5:45 (self settled)

Although this is waking loads, I didn't have to go back into settle after first time per waking all night so success in my book.

Roll on Tuesday night...

Glad you feel you're making progress! can I ask why you're feeding at 11.30? DD didn't stop waking for feeds until all night feeding was eliminated..... hope dies last, as my Czech friend says - they're optimistic little things!

Well I was doing a dreamfeed at 10:30 and in the past that was enough to get her through to after 6am, so I was hesitant to drop all feeds at once as I thought she'd be hungry.

I gave up doing a proper dreamfeed a few weeks ago as I was so tired I couldn't stay up for it and started feeding her at her first waking after 10pm.

I was planning on dropping the early feed in about a week, once she's only had that and no other night feeds for about 10 days, but maybe you're right and that's why she doesn't self settle at every waking because she's hoping there might be food.

Last night was good, she woke at 8pm but cried/grumbled on and off for 30 mins and took herself back off to sleep. Fed at 10:30, 1:45 self settled, 4:45 cuddle then woke her at 7:15.

I'm thinking I might not pick up for a cuddle tonight and see if she'll go back to sleep with just a pat and ssh. She went straight to sleep after cuddle.

She's also eating loads now we've started weaning, so maybe dropping all night feeds is the way to go.

Rootypig what would you suggest if she wakes say 3/4/5 clearly hungry after dropping the early feed?

I don't know - I checked back and your LO is 6mo - we sleep trained at 10mo and so I was very confident that she wasn't hungry. I also differed slightly in that we kept the same number of feeds but reduced each one to almost nothing, iyswim, so that when it came to offering water she had essentially been having a few mouthfuls of milk twice a night (she woke every three hours like clockwork).

Only you can judge with your baby, one of the reasons we sleep trained later was because I simply didn't have the confidence to say she wasn't hungry at 6mo (DD is my PFB).

My advice has run out!