Controlled Crying

[Kinsie]

I know controlled crying is a controversial issue, but it has been recommended by my health visitor and I am at a point where I feel I need to give it a go.
I am prepared for comments about how cruel it is, and to be honest a few months back I would have agreed. But sleep deprivation is now taking a real toll on my mental health and I need to do something.

DS is 6 months. We successfully did pick up/put down at 4 months to help him transition from our bed to his cot in his own room, but the more gentle methods of sleep training no longer seem to be working.

He was exclusively breastfed until 4.5 months but we have introduced a bottle of formula each day on the advice of a paediatrician after he lost weight. Weight issues are now sorted and we have started weaning.

His sleep has never been great, but seems to be getting worse.
At the moment, we do bath time at 6.15pm, he's dressed by about 6.30pm and then I sit and breast feed him until he's pretty much asleep before putting him down, super drowsy but awake - usually by 7pm. Ideally, he would then have his formula feed at 10.30/11ish, but has taken to waking between 9 and 9.30 screaming and refusing to resettle without being fed so his bottle is getting earlier and earlier. This means I'm then up another 2/3/sometimes 4 times each night to breastfeed him back to sleep when he wakes.

Can someone please talk me through the steps of CC?
I absolutely do not want to leave him to cry it out, and the timings I am finding online seem to vary so much. Some say start with 1, 3, 5 and build up to 10 minute intervals, whereas others say 5, 10, 15, and others suggest build up to leaving for up to 20 or 30 mins (which just seems like CIO to me?)

Also, some say not to pick up but just comfort in cot for 2 mins before leaving, and others say pick up but immediately put back down?

Do I need to switch his bedtime routine round and do feed (bottle?) bath and then bed?

Everything I read seems contradictory, and I don't want to do this unless i am doing it right.

If I am confident that I have got the method correct, then I am prepared to have the balls of steel needed to try it for a week and see what happens.

Angry, you have a point.

However, if you're going to advise someone, who has come on here saying that they are going to try controlled crying as a last resort because they are losing the plot through sleep deprivation, to 'have a nap', then you should be aware that that phrase, along with 'sleep when the baby sleeps', is, in my experience, one that is going to make your average sleep deprived parent of a poorly sleeping baby pretty stabby.

Most parents don't like to hear their baby cry. They don't generally choose to do it if they have an easier option, such as 'having a nap'. Personally, I didn't choose controlled crying because I was just too damned busy watching Jeremy Kyle, or doing the laundry, to have a nap while my child slept peacefully in his cot in the day. A lot of babies who sleep badly at night also sleep badly in the day. 45 minute naps are very common. By the time you've settled them, got into bed yourself, switched your brain off enough to sleep (cruelly, this takes longer the more sleep deprived you are), it's time to wake up again. Or, they might only nap in a moving buggy or car.

By all means continue to advise sleep deprived parents to have a nap. It might actually be a viable option for a few of them. But please, don't be surprised or offended when you get sarcasm in response.

Not having a sleep when given the opportunity to, especially when sleep deprived and not even trying to nap, is a sign of Postnatal Depression.

PND can often go undiagnosed until baby is older.

Having unrealistic expectations (like young baby must be put into cot for naps, or baby must be self-comforting when actually too young for that) may also add to the anxiety and/or depression.

So suggesting the OP has a nap during the daytime is a very relevant and appropriate comment on this thread. The answer is relevant. The OP said she does nap as and when possible, so its by no means an irrelevant question.

Kinsie - it might be that you need to develop techniques for coping with the sleep you are getting, and maximising your sleep despite your dss poor sleep habits.

You probably need to be the one who changes to cope here, rather than expecting that your son will change.

Hedgeh0g
I wasn't surprised or offended. I know that sleep deprivation can affect your responses in all areas of life including when receiving advice, whether it is well meant or not. I have been there.
FATEdestiny thank you for putting it much better than I did, that was really where I was coming from.

Kinsie how are you getting on?

3andamdone, I'm sorry, I have only just seen that you asked how we were. Thank you for that, it was very kind!

I've just come back to this thread as I thought I'd update it in case it becomes useful to anyone else in the future. I certainly know I searched old threads for others experiences. This is a long post, but hopefully worth typing out in case it helps someone else later on.

I decided against doing CC at the time I last posted, as like FATE suggested, I didn't feel like I could be sure he didn't need the milk overnight.

Instead I decided to really work on our daytime routine and see if I could crack the daytime naps. A couple of weeks of hard work, but we got somewhere and DS started getting pretty reliable at going down for 1.5-2hrs at about 10am. I was then aiming for another nap in the afternoon, about 2/3pm, but that was a bit more hit and miss.

Fast forward to last week.....DS is now 7months and has a pretty reliable daytime routine. He has also taken to weaning really well, and is having 3 decent 'meals' a day, with milk feeds in between.

Overnight sleep was still pants though, so last week I reconsidered CC.
DS was (most of the time) self-settling for his morning nap so I knew he was capable of going to sleep on his own, and now he is eating lots during the day I felt more confident that he wasn't actually hungry at night....so I made the decision to try CC.

I've changed our bedtime routine a little. So rather than bath/lights off/feed almost to sleep/put in cot, I now do bath/feed with lights on/story/lights off/in cot awake.

First Night
I put DS down awake, he cried. I didn't pick him up, just put him back on his tummy (how he sleeps), gave him his comforter, and rubbed his back while talking to him calmly for a minute or so.

Then I left. Waited 1 min before going in and doing the same. Then 3 mins, 5 mins, 7mins and 10 mins. I'd already decided that 10 mins was the longest interval I felt comfortable with so would have done repeated 10 minute stretches after that, but in the end I didn't need to as DS was asleep by half way through the first 10mins.

After that, i said that if he woke up after 11pm I would feed him, but any earlier and I would do CC again to resettle.
He woke up at 10pm, so I did CC again, but this time it took less time and he was asleep again before the end of the 7min interval.

And then he slept til 4.30 am 😳 I actually woke up at 2am and went to check he was still breathing!
Gave him a feed at 4.30 and he slept til 7.

Second day/night
DS went into his cot awake and self-settled for his morning nap. I needed to do CC for his afternoon nap, but it only took 10mins or so in total before he was asleep.

He self-settled at bedtime, then woke at 12.30 so I fed him. I heard him wake at 3.30am but he settled himself within a minute or two and went through til 6.30am.

Third day/night
DS self-settled for both daytime naps, and self-settled at bedtime.
I heard him wake at 12.30, but he wasn't crying so I didn't go to feed him straight away and he went back to sleep within a few minutes. He then slept til 4am, when he had a feed and went back to sleep until 7.
No CC needed all day 😊

Fourth Night
I never expected DS to suddenly start sleeping 7-7 and go 12hours without a feed, but by this point was clear that he could go from bedtime til about 3/4am without milk.
He obviously needs 1 feed over the 7-7 period, and when he had it needed to be consistent or it would be confusing for him. So I decided that I'd rather do that before he wakes for it so that I can maximise my own sleep.

So since the fourth night, I've been lifting him out of his cot at 11pm and giving him a feed. He pretty much stays asleep while I give it, so once he's done I rub his back and talk to him just enough to rouse him to open his eyes. Then I can put him back into his cot awake, and he'll go back to sleep.

And since then, he has been sleep through from 11pm-6.30/7am!!!

We've had one night when he woke up at 4.30 and needed me to go and settle him, and a couple of naps where we've had to use the CC, but now it only takes a few mins and he's asleep.

It's amazing the difference getting some sleep has made to all of us. I feel like a new woman 😂

So, as I said at the very start of this thread back in January, I know controlled crying is a controversial subject. But for us, DS included, it has been so worth it.
Only really 2 mildly horrible nights, and since then we are all so much happier.

(I'm sure someone will come on and tell me I've permanently damaged my son, but whatever. This is MN, it's always going to happen!)

OP, you do sound like a different person, and I'm glad you found something that worked for your LO, and for you.

I do have to take issue, however, with the PP who said-

I think that you might be better off taking the "guidelines" with a pinch of salt, see what works for you and use what you read as a loose guide.
I really feel annoyed by the guilt-tripping posters who claim that CC will damage your child etc..

There is rather a lot of science (not guidelines, and certainly not 'guilt-tripping'- just empirical science) to back up the fact that, when left to cry uncomforted, the levels of the stress hormone cortisol can go through the roof in some babies which means that CC/CIO is not only detrimental to their health, it can actually be counterproductive / not work. You don't find out which category your child falls into until you try it and realise that you've just made your child upset and possibly ill for nothing. Or, like the OP it works and there are no obvious downside to it- happy days!

Some children don't seem to be affected by it so badly (and the older the child the better it often seems). Others, however (regardless of age), seem to become even more clingy and parents can find themselves back at square one in terms of developing a secure attachment, which is pretty bloody annoying if you've just spent half a year getting your tiny infant to trust that you'll always be there for them, and you then have to rebuild that from scratch.

So, while I do agree that there is NO place for guilt-tripping when it comes to things like this, I think that to dismiss the scientific evidence as guilt-tripping is rather defensive, and just not correct.

Much like every other area of parenting (including feeding), the issue of whether you let your child cry uncomforted is something that has to be considered in the bigger picture, and if a parent’s mental health is at risk from lack of sleep, then I would say that most probably trumps other concerns about what is a fairly small risk to the child's attachment profile, and not something life threatening like a mental health condition, or PND could be. However, you just cannot dismiss the scientific evidence as guilt-tripping, that's absurd.

OP, sorry to derail your thread a bit. It looks like you got exactly what you needed from this thread- lots of opinions and supportive advice from various parts of the spectrum of views on this matter, and you used your own intuition and knowledge of your child to make a decision that seems to have worked really well for you .

Well - that's the way to do it, isn't it!

Do you want to do controlled crying? At 6 months my DD sleeping was suddenly horrific so we started to cosleep and the difference was amazing.

I think the problem with any form for sleep training is that after every sleep regression and teething episode you have to start again.

Thanks citymole, yes, as it turned out posting this thread was very helpful. I did read and take on board every comment, and apologise if I came across as snippy to anyone. Sleep deprivation does funny things to people.

Like any parent I spend a lot of time doubting myself and making up this whole parenting thing as I go along, but I think I did the right thing on this one. I didn't go steaming in, I did my research, took my time and came to an decision that seemed to be the best option for all of us.

Thankfully it worked, but I take your point that had it not worked we would have been left feeling even worse. I guess I'd got to the stage where having weighed everything up, it was a risk I was willing to take.

Kinsie, you didn't come across as snippy at all to me!

Glad that you are getting some sleep- long may it last!