Lots of CC threads at the moment, got me wondering

[Othersideofthechannel]

does no one just leave older babies/toddlers who are old enough to understand the words 'It's the middle of the night, it's time to sleep' to cry until they fall asleep when they don't require a feed (or change or dummy retrieval or other practical parental assistance) but just need to learn to self-soothe and go back to sleep by themselves.

It's very common here in France.

Aloha is your blood boiling from the cc versus ap thread?

It is a tough one that.

Ah VVV i thought non-nutritive no milk transfer to pinch Kathy's lingo.

Okay - can we see it so that we can put your posts in to some kind of context then?

Aloha you do seem terribly cross and combative about sleep issues

Well, IIRC, I remember tiktok or possibly mears saying that there is milk transfer during non-nutritive sucking.

Must go look VVV - not arguing just musing. Was thinking about the limpet kids who like to sleep with nipple in mouth and tooth decay you see.

Aloha had a really awful time with her DS, was it? Waking many times in the night, not sleeping alone - still waking etc for months and months and months and months...its enough to drive ANYONE insane. I have been there. I cracked.

Well, do you think that might be because peopel are so insufferably smug and judgmental about it then? What was the quote I read here tonight about people not wanting to be parents at night? FFS.
It really, really pisses me off. And there are people out there really suffering who are made to feel absolutely dreadful by this rubbish.

Didnt think tooth decay and b/feeding were connected?

Yep that's kind of my point VVV.

I used to be woken up all night long. I'd sit there in bed, breastfeeding my ds, just sobbing and sobbing. It did NOT make me a better mother. It was fucking torture. And ds was miserable too. As for cosleeping, ds STILL at the age of five cannot sleep with anyone else in the ROOM let alone his bed. I remember going to stay with friends and him crying and crying about us being in the room with us, and dh and I having to try to sleep under scratchy blankets on lumpy, too short sofas while ds had a double bed and spare mattress all to himself in his own room. I find it SO offensive to say that we couldn't be bothered to be parents to him.

Aloha .

That sounds awful.

Aloha - where has it been said that it is because you "couldnt be bothered to be parents"???

You seem really overwrought about this. FWIW, I went through a snapshot of 10.5 months of this with DS. I was at my wits end adn suffering PND. It made not a jot of difference whether he was left or cuddled. I do understand what it must have been like for you. I hate to think someone has upset you about this.

But Aloha, we were discussing the situation Otherside describes, of people deciding that arbitrarily at 9 months a child should be left on their own to cry in order to learn to self-soothe, just because that was seen as a necessary life skill

I don't think anyone here was commenting on your situation or on your parenting

I may have missed something but I really don't think that was the case

It was completely awful. And ds would be very , very distressed because he was so tired but couldn't get to sleep by himself. He would sometimes wake every twenty minutes for a few minutes, or every 45 minutes (all night) for a few minutes or wake, say, at 1am or 2am and stay awake until 5am. I cannot describe how it felt. He would be in bed with me or dh and wide awake. He would be breastfed and be wide awake. And he would cry and moan at the same time. The moment he started to sleep well at night, everything changed. He was happier, we were happier, we were better parents. We could even, after a long recovery period, think of having another child. I ALWAYS go to my children if they wake crying in the night now because I know something is wrong. Then, nothing was wrong except he had no idea of how to go back to sleep by himself, and he was miserable with it. I'm sure people will say he would have got there himself, but the research indicates otherwise.

Ok, it's not just this thread, but a lot of stuff has been thrown around about people who want their children to sleep at night being inferior people and inferior parents. They are usually people who have absolutely no idea. Breastfeeding while crying and crying is not the most joyous experience of my life!

ALoha we are talking about people who are ignoring babies/children for their benefit. The specific quote was babies who are missing their Mothers needing to learn.

And I still say that babies who are missing their Mothers should get their Mothers simple as.

What about babies who are tired and want to go to sleep but don't know how?

He maybe would have got there by himself eventually Aloha, but clearly the situation was intolerable for you

whether he would have eventually have learnt to sleep through is beside the point, isn't it?

really no-one knows another parent's situation. You can hear about it but you can't live it. We're all different and handle things differently.

Advice to parents often conflicts (read any mumsnet thread). You do what you think is best/right at the time.

I had one Aloha it was absolutely shit..It did get better but I have no idea how.

I suppose for you he wasn't missing you but he was missing the abuility to switch off and as a good mother you tried to comfort him. How hideous to discover that he actually needed solitude.

My dd1 still sometimes needs help to get of to sleep so not like your boy but a similarly hideous sleeper.

I am so cross because there are people on this website whom I think are suffering like I did, and I just feel so upset to think of their misery being dismissed as a figment of their imagination or a sign that they are inadequate parents or they should 'get a cat because you clearly don't want a baby' or something horrible like that I read on another thread. I was so tired, so sad, I absolutely dreaded bedtime. In fact, I'd sometimes stay up for hours and hours because I know ds would wake up and somehow being awake was less of a torture than being woken from deep sleep, which sometimes made me feel physically sick. I'd say to dh when we went to bed, 'and now the torture begins'. I felt absolutely desperate. Dh and I shared it all and we were at each other's throats the whole time because we were so tired. I remember a friend of mine saying, 'Oh I don't mind being woken at night. It's only once every three hours and you give a two minute breastfeed and they go straight back to sleep' and I suddenly realised how different my experience was.

And yes, MrsApron - he needed solitude! Cosleeping made us all so miserable, yet we did it for months with dd and still do if she wakes after a nightmare etc. She's a totally different child. She didn't sleep well and it got us down, but it still a different experience entirely.

Sleep deprivation is the pits. It's stating the obvious to point out that it's commonly used as a torture method.

I know exactly what you mean about being woken from a deep sleep. I still find that very unsettling even now, and ds only wakes up probably once a fortnight these days, so I no longer have anything to fear on "oh here we go again" grounds.

I was speaking with a friend yesterday about this Aloha. She likes to rock her children to sleep and her dd fights it and has to be put down alone in the cot!

And of course I don't recommend any one size fits all method of parenting. I spend hours explaining things to my children, never hit, apologise if I lose my temper too dramatically blah blah blah
Maybe if I'd had a good sleeper I'd also think any kind of sleep training was barbaric. It's perfectly possible. But experience is a good teacher. And some children really do thrive on it. They want to learn to sleep by themselves and when they do, they just blossom. I have been known to cry when dh is trying to teach me something on the computer - pure frustration! - but I'm still glad I've learned it.