Controlled crying not worked on nearly 7 month old

[Kueh]

My 7 month old DS was never a good sleeper but it really deteriorated around 3 months. It got worse and worse until he would go down at 6.30 by being fed to sleep, cuddled with a dummy and put in cot, he'd wake up every 30 minutes until 9pm, would then possibly sleep 2/3 hours and then was up every 40 minutes to an hour. Sometimes reinserting the dummy would work but 9/10 it wouldn't.

So, a friend used a sleep consultant a few years ago and she swore by the technique which got her DD sleeping through in 3 nights and she was a worse sleeper than DS. Great! But when she sent it to me it was clear it was controlled crying which I didn't really want to do. But since she said it worked (and after reading threads saying it was a miracle and could be used after 6 months) I went ahead cold turkey on the dummy in case that was contributing to the problem and did CC.

We're now on day 11 and he's slept through once and is going down to bed much better. He's still up screaming for up to an hour in the night and his naps are sometimes as short as 20 mins where before he was starting to have at least one nap of 1hour plus. He still cries before every sleep and mentally I don't think I can take it anymore. Last night I cracked at 2am and took him into bed with me. I don't sleep well co sleeping but overall we both get more sleep than him crying a couple of times in the night for up to an hour and I don't feel like a shit mum . I've checked if he's too cold, too warm, he's not teething (although he is more grizzly during the day but I've put this down to tiredness).

I guess what I'm asking is can I still use controlled crying to put him down for naps and bed, then co sleep from the first wake up? And could the CC have caused the short naps?

I was sold on CC being this magic bullet that would be horrendous for three days but would ensure more sleep thereafter. It's still horrendous now, during the night at least, I can just about cope with 5 minutes before naps as that's less than he cried before with me there. I'm so mad that I've put us both through this and only seen a partial improvement, does anyone have any advice?

I wouldn't do cc on a 7month old personally,I would once the child is 1 though.

How much us he having to eat/drink during the day/ night

How many naps is he having in the day?

Is he still in with you or in his own room?

How many dummies have you got?

The person who "invented" controlled crying wrote quite a long book which had this as a last resort.

So there were other things to try first.

We tried sleep training with ds at a similar but it didn't work. In the end we just gave him lots of cuddles and tried gentler methods. We muddled through but were extra cautious because he had silent reflux so I didn't want to push it.

I won't lie, it was hard but he's nearly 8, he never got used to sleeping in our bed (because we would always settle him in his room and set up a comfortable bed in his room instead) but he never really slept well until all of his teeth came through and his reflux calmed down.

I tried various methods from the no cry sleep solution before this, and briefly tried PUPD but both seemed to make him angrier. This kind of was a last resort as I've been trying different things since three months.

He's feeding much better during the day since I started this because before he was taking so much milk in the night he would want to feed properly until 10/11am. I weaned him slightly early on the advice of my HV to see if that made a difference and he's now on two spoon fed meals for lunch and dinner (at which he eats a fair bit) and finger foods for breakfast.

At the moment he's having three naps of 20 to 30 minutes which I now is crap and not enough. I walk him to sleep for one of them so that we both have a break from crying! But that one is still short even if I carry on walking.

He was in with me until CC and the sleep consultant notes said that for it to work he had to be separate. So I've moved to spare room and DS stayed in my (our) room.

I was always loath to do CC but both my DH and DM thought it was a good idea and have been suggesting it for a while. I spent hours readbig threads on here and I thought it tipped slightly in favour of doing it. The thing that convinced me was that he was crying before every sleep regardless of what I did do thought if I could see it through the net result would be less crying overall iyswim? And that is true when going down to sleep but very very not true during the night

believeitornot is that Richard Ferber's book? I didn't realise his technique had 'levels', what kind of things are recommended before CC?

Sounds like he's really over tired.

Dame ok, so would you suggest more frequent naps? I find it really difficult to get more than 3 in as he won't go to bed if he sleeps much later than 3.30pm. Shall I just really limit his awake time and get to sleep whatever way I can during the day?

The thing is though, he's steadily resisting all other methods of going to sleep. He would never feed to sleep during the day, wouldn't be cuddled to sleep, wouldn't reliably sleep in his pushchair or cat seat for more than one nap. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get him to sleep more.

When he wakes up from his naps do you try and soothe him back to sleep again or is the nap over when he wakes?

My DD is 7 months old and was terrible at napping at first and would only nap for about 40 mins. When she woke we would go in and soothe her back down again and eventually she started getting into a routine of having 2 x 1.5 hour naps and 1 x 40 minute nap a day. If she misses any of these for any reason her sleep at night is shocking.

The other thing that has been really helpful for DD is having loads of dummies scattered around her cot (about 8 at the moment) When she wakes in the night and is flailing around she will 9/10 now find a dummy herself and pop it back in and soothe herself.

I also gently go shh shhh shhh to her while I'm getting her to sleep for her naps . When she wakes up during the night I do the same noise but without getting up and going to her. It seems to reassure her enough that I am there and again 7/10 she will settle herself down again.

The other thing we have learnt with DD is that during the night if we end up having to switch the light on for any reason, or talk to her other than shushing it's game over. She thinks it breakfast time and she is never going back to sleep again I have a little light next to my bed that only lets out a dim glow. It's enough for me to see what is going on but not enough to disturb her too much.

I think if you can crack the day time naps you might find that night time sleep gets much better.

If it make you feel any better DD has just learnt how to stand up in her cot so we have had no sleep for three nights so far as she is so bloody excited by her new trick. I think it's a 7 month thing to be bad sleepers sometimes as they are developing so quickly at the moment.

I don't know if this is helpful or not but DDs routine (7 months) is something like this:

Wakes 6.30am

7oz bottle 7 am

Up for breakfast 7.30 - has cereal and a bit of toast or scrambled egg and toast.

Plays until about 8.30 am

8.30 back upstairs for a nap.

Naps until about 10.30

Get up and dressed properly

11am 7oz bottle

Activity of some sort e.g. At home or go and do the shopping/ playgroup etc

12.30 lunch and half a soppy cup of water then a nap until about 2pm

2pm wakes and has a 7 oz bottle

Playing activities and snacks (baby biscuit and sippy cup of water) until about 4pm (6 oz bottle as well at this time)

4pm - 40 minute nap

5pm up for supper (just bits of what we are having) and a play with daddy.

6.30 upstairs for a bath and bedtime story and 7oz bottle

Bed at 7pm

Usually stirs around 11pm and is given a 6oz dream feed

Stirs again around 3.30 but will generally settle herself or needs dummy giving back.

Stirs again around 5am but will generally settle herself

It sounds like things are really tough for you with sleep, you have my sympathies, I really struggled when my one wasn't getting enough sleep and you could see from her mood that she really needed more.

One of the wonderful things about sleep consultants is that they look at your day as a whole and tailor their advice to your situation and style of parenting. So they would look at how much your baby eats, techniques you are and aren't happy with to achieve better sleep together with how quickly you want results before making a recommendation. They also make you keep logs once you start an intervention and discuss them with you every couple of days - if you fill out the logs completely honestly, they can show you where you may be going wrong. Using the guidance that was intended for someone else may be one of the reasons this isn't working for you as there may be subtle things you aren't doing right. Please don't feel offended when I say this - I was in the same boat when I attempted PUPD myself and then did it properly with a consultant but I can only see with hindsight the errors I made the first time.

You are completely correct that 10 days is too long for baby to be crying at every sleep when doing CC. From the information my sleep consultant gave me, it should work within 3 days and then you will generally find after a further 3 days they have an extinction cry where they make a final attempt to go back to not sleeping before having long term success. I haven't used CC myself but from what Ive read on here, that appears to be the general timeframe for success.

Another thing my sleep consultant made me do was get her to start to catch up on sleep over the course of the first day by doing pram naps with endless walking for 3-4 hours split into 2 naps. We then started the intervention that night (PUPD in my case), knowing she wasn't overtired when being put to sleep. We tackled the naps in cot one at a time so two naps continued in the pram for the first 3-4 days, and the longest nap and night sleep were in the cot. Once these were showing definite improvement, the morning nap also moved to the cot but we kept the last catnap on the move until she dropped it.

The thing is though, he's steadily resisting all other methods of going to sleep. He would never feed to sleep during the day, wouldn't be cuddled to sleep, wouldn't reliably sleep in his pushchair or cat seat for more than one nap. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get him to sleep more

I had this exact problem - my sleep consultant told me that there are certain times of the day where babies are more likely to fall asleep and they have natural rises in melatonin levels. They go to sleep and stay asleep much easier at these times. I was skeptical but to my absolute surprise, my daughter took to sleep training like a duck to water and fell asleep with barely any protest for most naps and nights once we started it. We are now 5 months on and I don't follow her routines any more but we have established sleep associations where she now knows I want her to go to sleep and there is no option but sleep so she does without protest.

I hope that helps explain why it hasn't worked for you so far. Ive learnt a lot about sleep after all the issues I have had with my daughter but I don't feel I am experienced enough to advise how to fix the problems you are having. They definitely can be fixed though and from my experience, I would recommend using a sleep consultant yourself, the difference was life-changing for us.

When he wakes from naps,do you immediately go in and get him or leave him for a bit? He needs longer naps not more I think. It's hard when they don't sleep

Are you being consistent with your methods? You say you've tried most techniques but he's only 7 months so have you tried lots of different things in a short space of time? If so that will be confusing for him. I would give it all a break for a week, decide which method you are going to use and stick to it.

Cracking naptimes tend to make night sleeping easier, read up on sleep cycles and put him down for a nap around 90 minutes from his last waking, even if he doesn't seem tired.

My now 20 month old has always been a wonderful napper and terrible night time sleeper, so I'm not sure the correlation between naps and nighttime is so clear. I know people generally don't like this view and are welcome to disagree of course, but in my experience, some babies are good sleepers and some are not. And those that are not, will eventually of their own accord, as part of their natural development. Myself and lots of people I met tried many different things (not CC for me though) and none of it made that much difference and made for a hugely stressed mama. I'm sure it's really not all your fault. I'd suggest trying to work more on getting as much support and breaks as you can to help you cope until your little one naturally starts to learn to sleep more. I sympathise hugely - it's just tormenting isn't it But she started sleeping at 17 months when I just accepted full time co sleeping and put her down each night in our bed - not for everyone but I sleep now which is wonderful.

Why on earth did you get rid of the dummy??

Try CC with the dummy. If baby wakes during the night, pop the dummy back in. Should work like a dream.

Thank you so much for your posts I've got a lot to think about!

Scowry once he's awake he's awake and if I try and get him back to sleep he gets v angry! I read this is a problem with short naps as it takes the edge of just enough they won't go back to sleep but not enough to make them fully rested.

Riddles really good point about the sleep consultant being individual to each baby. If when I got back to work in November it's still very bad I'll consider using one but I just can't afford it right now having already thrown hundreds of £££ at different products to help him sleep. Can you pm me a recommendation if poss?

Bifswyf possibly not as consistent as in an ideal world but given most things two weeks. The only thing I didn't really persevere with was cosleeping and the pantly pull out (only tried that with the dummy, not bf).

Wunderkind I know it seems kinda backwards getting rid of the dummy but he really did have a love hate relationship. He would constantly spit it out while trying to get to sleep and would eventually settle with it in, only to wake up at the end of every sleep cycle with it having fallen out (object permanence I guess) but it was never as simple as just putting it back in - as I said above 9/10 he wouldn't settle needed boob. Like Smellyjo my DS just does not like either going to or staying asleep

Anyway I've had a think and over the last two days have walked him relentlessly for every nap, even though it's taken up to an hour (and a bit of crying) for him to fall asleep I've been rewarded with naps of over an hour each time!!! I'm hoping I can break the overtired cycle and his overall sleep will improve and then will work on getting him back in the cot for naps. I'm still persevering with self settling when putting him down for bed and he's now sleeping from 6.30-1ish which is a massive improvement. He's still waking up every hour after that but I'm co sleeping from the first wake up so it feels a bit more manageable and I can live with myself! Like a PP suggested we just need to reset for a bit and try again (maybe with CC when he's older, maybe not) with some consistency. My ambivalence with CC may have led to me not doing it properly so I was doomed to fail anyway!

Thanks again

6.30 until 1 is fricking amazing!

Onwards and upwards hopefully

Brilliant news! Hopefully things are settling down a bit and you'll get more sleep.

I had one like this.

Ok firstly, I'm not opposed in principle to a bit of cc in certain circumstances

However, I think it's really important that you think about why the child is waking. An older child waking from habit or wanting to play? Yeah it'll likely work. A younger one hungry or upset st being alone? Maybe not,

My son was underweight and hungry and clingy. He had terrible separation angst, wouldn't take a bottle and just wanted to stick on the breast all night. We tried pupd and it made him angry. We tried every gentle method in the book. Eventually, I was nearly at breaking point because he was waking every hour and had done for months so we tried cc

It backfired spectacularly and looking back I can see why. He was afraid of being left. So us leaving him just made him terrified. The poor little guy was so scared he'd start howling if we even went upstairs- it set us back months.

7m is still young. My advice for you would be:

Provide reassurance in bucketloads
Do not try any method that leaves him alone
Co sleep if you're comfortable with it and can do it safely
Go to him - not immediately to every sniffle - but learn when he's awake and scared and just go and quietly, boringly, comfort him.
Give it time. Try again in a few months, not with cc but might weaning, give him to dad for half the night, feed only once, the rest of the time he gets dad and water and cuddles. There will be howling BUT it's not the same as leaving them alone.

Good advice from Anatidae, my son was the same, some babies are too sensitive for CC.