Can I please have your honest opinions on CC? HV is recomending I am not sure.

[eenybeeny]

My HV is recomending CC for my 6 month old.

Our problems with his sleep are these:

1. He only naps in his pram. He screams and screams when I try to get him to nap in his cot during the day.

1. He wakes up to 6 times a night for one thing or another.

1. He wakes anywhere from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. and is ready for the day.

Please give me any advice you have and let me know... is CC cruel? I really dont know. Normally, the thing is, when he cries I want to rush to him to help him. I dont know if I can leave him to cry. Please help!

Cruise- I agree with what you said before - 3 nights or so doesn't make a lifetime. But every parent I know who's done it has done it several times, especially if you do it for the first time at 6 mths, then after teething/illness, then different stages of development etc.
Sorry - have never really got into these big rows, but I suppose at some point its necessary to your MN membership to contribute to either a BF/FF debate or CC!
(am slinking off to rest now...)

thank you for letting me know that my child's emotional needs and well being are not my priority but my sleep is!

Has it ever occured to you that months and years of sleep deprivation in parents may ever so slightly affect their ability to emotionally connect with their children, make them depressed and hence be associated with depression in children in later years?

But these are all THEORIES. We can all speculate, sensationalise, theorise. But I find the anti cc theories can be quite insensitive to many parents being faced with extremely difficult circumstances - and to try and have the final say after my post about how positive I found cc for my family is a little juvenile.

why does everyone can on this pretence that cc is the only way to solve sleep problems/cure sleep deprivation?
there are ways of solving sleep problems which don't involve a few days of crying. if cc is your choice, then fine but it is a choice among many many other choices

Amijee
I wasn't having the final say - only just found the thread! I didn't realise the thread was 'closed' - I read the title asking for honest opinions so gave one.

And I think I did say we all quite easily feel criticised as parents - my post actualy said I would have done CC, its just I had other things I decided to try first. But I would do it because I agree with you - there's a level of sleep deprivation which is much worse for the parent-child relationship than CC. Which has of course occurred to me given that my child didn't and still doesn't sleep that well.

I'm sorry you reacted badly to my post. This thread was full of citations of different evidence and I wanted to add something I thought was relevant and that hadn't been covered. I'm glad you're finding CC is improving you and your child's life. I have and would advocate CC in situations where other things haven't worked, where wakign is a habit and where both parent(s) and child are suffering from sleep deprivation. Hope that clarifies.

thankyou kayjel for your level headedness

So glad I didn't get involved in another one of these threads, some people just never accept there are other methods which do actually work!

Daddyj, your posts are very interesting!

Amijee, I am really really pleased for you and your family. Wonderful news!

I don?t know whether you found this, too, but 7-11 hours of uninterrupted sleep don?t just work wonders for the mother, we found that dd was a lot more cheerful and alert once we had got there.

At the moment we are doing straight CC at 7pm (when she doesn?t go down at the boob) and CC with PP during the night (on the rare occasions when she wakes up and cannot resettle herself) and boob/pram during the day.
When she wakes up at 5 in the morning we sometimes take her into bed with us for her first feed of the day ? and then we all fall asleep together, which is nice.

And what?s particularly uplifting is that dw is now much more comfortable with CC and she has worked out her own CC with parental presence approach which appeals to her more than the straight version.

There is a method for everyone!

ScottishThistle, you are probably being wise there but hopefully this one will be over soon. Unfortunately, I have a couple more posts to add. I have been working my way through lots and lots of AP literature but I wasn?t going to post anything more ? until I saw kayjayel considered post. Really interesting and worthy of reply.
Nooo! Still no end to this thread?

Harpsichordcarrier, I respect your last post and I respect and agree with the message that it carries which is very different from your previous posts.

kayjayel, I will be very careful not to sound too critical of your post because I can see
you took great pains to provide information without causing offence.
Will try and follow your example. (For once! )

You say that CC has a place but only as a last resort. At the same time, again you repeat the claim that no one knows
what the long term effects of CC are and you suggest that there are good reasons for believing that they are possibly negative.

I have come across this combination of statements quite a few times on Mumsnet and elsewhere but there is one thing I don't understand:
Surely, something that might have any kind of negative effect on my dd's mental health will never, ever be an option. Not even as a last resort.
Can you explain to me why you would consider something as a last resort that you think might damage your child?

I have looked and looked for the evidence of this long-term damage but to no avail.
Even if it is only a possibly tiny risk factor there must be a way to quantify it, there must be someone, somewhere suffering from it.
Has there ever been a documented case of someone mentally ill due to being sleep-trained as an infant?
Why, kayjayel, after 50 years of Attachement Parenting theory has this damage not been
unearthed, documented, quantified? Why is the paediatric world completely relaxed about this?
They deal with children every day for a living, why have they not seen this damage and flagged it up?
Why were we issued with a strongly worded advice sheet on the risks of co-sleeping when we left hospital but nothing at all about CC?

You use some very charged words in your analogy with CC ? I can?t blame subsequent posters for taking offence:
Learned helplessness, hopelessness, depression.

How do you explain that none of us parents on these forums and none of the parents in the studies posted encountered any kind of symptoms that could be related to helplessness etc?

I don't want to be disrespectful to you but don't you think that the reason you can see the analogy is because you want to see the analogy.
It is a shame that you cannot really see the analogy with your own eyes because you have never done CC with your lo so you don't actually know what happens in reality.
You are not alone. From what I have read just about everyone who argues against CC has never done it and will never actually 'see' it for real.

We have seen it and I can assure you the effects are overwhelmingly positive.
You would probably argue that we have only seen the short term effects but why would our los suddenly become mentally unstable
when in the immediate aftermath and months after this 'traumatic' event they seem more than fine?

Your last point - once they can talk it is a different story - is based on a highly contentious AP assertion: that all cries are the same and all cries necessitate immediate parental intervention.
And I agree with you to a certain extent:
if a parent is not capable of distinguishing between different cries then Controlled Crying might well have a negative impact on the parent's mental health and they should not do it.

I hope my post was as measured as yours!
Thanks again for your thoughts.

daddyj - you did cc then? how was it? did it work? what age was lo?

We did it in stages, cruisemum1.

Tried cc at 2 months, failed miserably.
Before 3-4 months: cosleeping.
At 4 months, straight CC at 7pm, she would wake up between 1-3 for feed in our bed, co-sleeping rest of the night.
At 6 months tried straight CC during rest of the night, gave up after 3 nights. It was just before xmas so we thought, sod this for a laugh, let's just enjoy Crimbo!
From then on 1/2 night feeds until she was 7 months old - when we did straight CC during the night, this time we persevered, after 3 nights she was sleeping 7-6.

All beautiful until a month or so ago when she had a tummy bug, after disruption more or less back in the rhythm.
Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, I go to her and do my cc with pp thing.
And sometimes she wakes 5ish and we take her into our bed for first boob session of the day.

Hope tonight is good again for you, cruise.
You have been working hard at this.

Quote from DaddyJ. There is plenty of research out there that shows Controlled Crying is safe.

Show me where to look - am very interested.

The ones I would recommend are by Eckerberg who builds on previous research by France and others.
Another one you can find here .

For more please check this thread.

What do you make of it?

Has anyone ever seen anything on the effects on babies of frequent night waking vs 'sleeping through' in terms of broader well being and development? It seems to me that there are theoretical harms that could be done by cc, but also by broken sleep and we have to weigh them up. Does my 5 month LO feel the same as me through broken sleep - i.e. knackered and functioning below par? Does anyone know? It is worrying me at the moment that she gets so little continuous sleep and that maybe I'm inadvertently doing more harm than good by trying to be 'gentle' with her on this one! Or am I barking up the wrong tree??

lilysma - I don't know the answer but i wish I did! I am currently on the verge of cc owing to frequent night wakings. I am sure that my baby gets niggly when he is so tired. He certainly must feel the effects of lack of sleep . Difference is he can nap it off during hte day - no dishwashers to empty, piles of ironing to wade through, meals to cook etc, for my boy! (When he is older there definitely will be though - he will be a new age boy ). Surely cruel to be kind is an expression tailor made for controlled crying and suchlike

Lilysma, I share crossedwires?s view, your lo is unlikely to suffer greatly because she will catch up on sleep when she can.

Having said that, we have seen the contrast between 8-11 hours unbroken sleep and nights where dd wakes up even once ? and it is startling.
A good night?s sleep really makes a difference to her mood and her energy levels.

I would say parental instinct is key: if you feel lo is ratty and grumpy because of broken sleep patterns, it would be worth investigating options.

i don't want to fan the flames here, but i have a quick question - where does ferber 'recant' his advice on the age at which you can try cc? i have the 2006 edition of his book and he still says 3-5 months. sorry about crap typing, am expressing milk with other hand!

xed wires, how old is your lo?

I haven't a week to wade through all the replies, but to me your HV sounds crazy - six months is too young to contemplate something like this - actually IMHO CC is cruel and unusual punishment for simply being a baby and behaving like one. But I've got a hole in my teflon knickers so I would dare post that here

Lilysma, my suspicion was that the comment about Ferber only advising CC from 1 year onwards
was only posted to generate a little late night entertainment for me.

I have not got the book but on the website of the Children's Hospital Boston (where he works) he talks about 3-5 months, too.

And this paediatrician confirms that further .

DaddyJ - just read your message, thank you. You asked what my thoughts were on CC - hate it. I'm opposed to the leaving the room thing and coming back every so often because of the uncertainty from the child's point of view and the apparent 'learned helplessness' that I have read about as a result. I'm also against 'crying it out'. However I did let my ds cry his heart out for 50 mins while I gave up breast feeding one night (he'd never got to sleep on his own before). I was in the room though, trying to cuddle him when he'd let me. So this is a form of CC no doubt. Was interested about the research so will look it up.

MillBill, yes, we could not cope with the crying either during the day until I did something very similar to what you describe.
If you have a loooong 10 minutes I have posted a pretty comprehensive account of that.

DaddyJ - sorry only just seen post, and was so comprehensive wanted to reply.

just some little points -

1. big difference between risk factors and main effects - a risk factor can lay dormant. if sleep training is a risk factor it might be a tiny one, that is only activated if 1, 2 or 3 or even more other factors are present. i.e. sleep training might (and I mean might you're right there's no evidence) lead to propensity to depression if added to a mix of genetic disposition, experience of bereavement, other life stressors. I suppose I'm a bit more sensitive (and probably this does encourage me to see the analogy) to that as have a few extra risk factors that I can't do anything about.
2. no evidence because this is really hard to do. its same as there being very little on gene-environment interactions - its easy to find single-gene influences on disease etc but interactions are very tricky.
3. professionals often advise things without knowing all evidence - i work in the health service and there is no time allowed for study or keeping up to date - only nominally but waiting lists etc mean you have to prioritise. so don't assume people actually know more than you (sounds like you've done more research than most HV could). also - cc works in ST (as you've testified) and there is no clear evidence against it therefore if someone asks for help its a legitimate suggestion.
4. because of the very tiny risk, and the interaction, on a small sample (i.e. your own children or others, and in this kind of research a sample of 1000 would be needed at least) you don't see these kind of effects.
5. on the understanding crying thing - i've just seen lots of parents do it and a night later there's a tooth/illness. i'm also not 100% confident about what all cries mean.
6. why would I do it if i worry about it? - because of what others have said - sleep deprivation can (and has at times for me) cause much more immediate and serious problems (for me shouting, being too tired to interact, being unpredictable, dangerous driving) at which point you stop faffing about worrying about the long term what ifs and my image of an 'ideal parent' and do whats best for your child (which as I said could be cc).

Hope that clarifies, yes you sounded measured, hope I made sense!

Kayjayel, really fascinating reply, thanks very much for taking the time
Definitely food for thought there.

I am amazed that after all these posts there is still more to be added!

I will send anyone who needs advice on CC to this thread in the future!!
By the time they are finished reading it their child will be self-settling anyway