Your controlled crying experience

[girlmummy25]

My Dd is 7 months and has pretty much never just fell back to sleep after a night feed! She is wide awake in the middle of the night - an hour is a good night, a bad one is 2 hours.
Shes recently stopped even wanting milk in the night (formula fed) so it must just be that she is awake and cant get back to sleep or not tired even though if she is very tired at bedtime or nap she normally just goes to sleep in cot with minimal fuss.

I want to try controlled crying but im of course dreading it at the same time.

Please can you share your Cc experiences with how long it took to work please

Hey!

I'm going through the controlled crying at the moment with my 6 mo.

We are on day 4. First day she cried for 30 mins, 2nd day for 10 mins, 3rd day 15 mins, last night was night 4 and I fed her to sleep (we had a day out and she was sooo tired she would not fall asleep otherwise I didn't even let her cry).

It's heartbreaking to hear her cry but I know it's not because she is unwell, hungry or uncomfortable. She cries louder when I come in to check on her. My hands are shaking every night before she falls asleep.

So far, it became easier to put her to sleep. She cries, but before we attempted controlled crying it could take us multiple attempts and ~ 1 h to put her to bed EVERY TIME. Naps and night sleep. She started waking once during the night. It's been twice per night before, so night wakings wasn't our main concern. Also, she has been a terrible catnapper. She only catnapped with a rare decent nap here and there. For the last 3 days she had long naps every day.

Today will be our 5th night. We will see how it goes. Overall, her sleep slightly improved, but my heart keeps breaking at night still.

6 months is far too young, and 5 nights is far too long.

I did controlled crying with two of mine, once they were over 12 months. I did the Jo Frost method, where you leave them for 2 minutes, then 4, then 6 and so on. It took 2 nights and worked very well.

I’m not against sleep training, but leaving a 6 monther for 30 minutes is just cruel.

If they are ready for sleep training, it works very quickly.

If it doesn’t work very quickly, they’re not ready. Remember that a 6 month old baby has needs - not wants.

Oh god no, I never left her for 30 mins to cry. It's not called "abandon to cry" method.

As I said, before we started it would take about 1 h to put her down. And most of the times it would be mostly non stop screaming.

@tatasmum thank you for sharing! Mine is more the middle of the night that is going to be the problem!
Your crying time has reduced so well as like you said its less than when you actually had the baby in your arms!

Last night my Dd was awake for an hour and 45 mins :|
Didnt want milk again.

Im just knackered from it

We totally failed. Read lots of books. Tried for months but never settled. Probably did it completely wrong despite my best efforts (story of my life, try my hardest & completely fail). Rather regret the entire sorry episode.

Only good part is when DH refused to try any more. Our most intelligent move.

Acquaintenance talked about leaving her 11m old son to cry himself when frightened by fireworks "afraid she would give him bad habits again" if she went to comfort him. Just ugh. I know it works wonderfully for some.

I did it with DS when he was 10 months. Nothing else worked for him, we did 2 mins, then 4, then 6 then 10 etc It took 3 nights, night one got up to about 20 mins, night 2 about 10 and night 3 about 6 mins. It was hard but worked fine. He did regress a couple of times but we just did the same again. He was also awake for hours in the night - I feel your pain! We waited until he was 10 months as we were in Asia for 2 months from 6-8 months and I wanted to re establish routine etc and give it time to see if he would eventually get better at going to bed / not waking for hours in the night before doing cc. But if you're already at home and doing all that it's worth a try. Good luck

@seahawk80 your giving me hope!
So you done the controlled crying in the middle of the night also?
She has a little cold at the moment so im going to wait for that to completely clear then im going to try. I know how important consistency is so I know i must stick to it properly.
My poor neighbours are in for a treat

@girlmummy25 yes - I would do a night feed if needed but then put him down and did the cc. We bought wine for our neighbours!! We're also in a flat so when we did it when he was about 1 after a regression we moved him into the living room for a few nights so that he wasn't directly under a bedroom. Most people are understanding if you give them a warning along with wine / chocs!

Hi, we did controlled crying (Ferber) with our DD when she was 7mo. I was inspired to after I'd seen how well it worked for friends with their 8.5mo and they were in a desperate state so I always knew I'd do it if needed.

I looked at a lot of options and felt that increasing intervals would work best for DD. I'd have used a 'gentler' method if I'd have thought it would work for her but she's always done better being left to it rather than 'interfered' with.

First night she went down as normal at bedtime, woke about 2.30am, we left her for 5min then DH went in for 2 min, then increased the intervals she was on her own till she was asleep - took a total of 30min and she slept through till 8am. Next night she slept through on her own bar waking for a couple of seconds at a time. After a few nights of this I turned the volume down on the monitor and she slept through.

It hasn't been all pain sailing since (she's now 11mo). After a trip to visit family in November she was in the same room as us overnight, we disturbed each other and I ended up bfing her once each night. Then we got home and had really bad nights (up for 1-1.5hrs) for about 2 weeks. At first we were concerned she was ill so responded to her all the time. Eventually we realised she was fine and we were just supporting bad sleep habits. We went back to controlled crying and she's now sleeping right through again - in fact having trouble with getting her up early enough in the morning.

Yes she cried, yes it was hard to hear her cry, BUT if we hadn't done it every nap time/night time would still involve lots of tears that it doesn't now. We're a much happier family overall so it's tears now to save them later ❤️

Tips from us:

• Make sure you're ready and choose a method you can stick to, we did intervals and never left her more than 10min at a time, we tried to keep contact to a minimum when in soothing her to help her learn she needed to do it on her own. We knew this would suit DD best. If you know you're going to struggle e.g. not picking DC up then plan to pick them up as your method of soothing - that's ok. Need to stay in the room till they fall asleep - fine! There are a range of different approaches and you need to pick the one that suits you and DC and then stick to it.
• Get your partner on board. DD settles so much more quickly for him and still does now, I think she knows she's not getting fed!
• Get day time sleep perfect too, we turned down social stuff for a couple of weeks if it didn't fit into the routine so I could prioritize getting her sleep right.
• It took us a couple of days first time around, it took other friends of ours 2 weeks to see any results. All the stuff online says 5 days for results, be prepared for it to take longer and for you to need to stick at it.

Good luck

@chocodrops thank you thats so helpful!

@girlmummy25 just wondering, have you decided whether you're going ahead with controlled crying?

And also, as I have started already I'm just going to keep a record of our experience. Today is night 5. It took us 10 mins to settle. It wasn't all 10 mins of crying. I think she was quiet for about 8 mins then started crying. I went in to turn her onto her back and replace her dummy and she fell asleep.

@tatasmum im definitely going to try it but DD has a cold that shes getting over so once shes completely well I will do it.
Expecting her cold to be gone in a few day max.
Thats good! Each night is getting better for you!
Have you done it in the middle of the night yet and if so how did it go?

@girlmummy25 no, I'm feeding her at night. I feel bad about not doing it. I guess I need midnight cuddles myself :)

But tonight she never woke up for a feed. I could hear her looking for a dummy and playing with it a little at 5 am. She only woke up at 5 45 am. Then fell asleep until 9 30 am. I think it was a first lie in since she was born. And an awesome gift from her especially since I'm going back to work this week!

Just resurrecting this post for anybody who was watching it.
Im trying controlled crying but im picking baby up to comfort at the allocated times - I know your supposed to leave them in the cot but my heart cant do that just yet.

Im doing this in the middle of the night when she wakes because she will be awake for atleast an hour up to 2 hours.

Night 1
Total awake time of 1 hour - was crying on and off - some bad some not so bad

Night 2
Total awake time of 1 hour again but the crying was so much less! Probably not even 10 mins out of the whole hour

On night 3 tonight and im hoping we can cut the time down with less crying

Wish me luck