Failed CC, 15mth DS is now scared of cot - please help!

[DaddyCool]

We have a big problem. 15 mth old ds used to settle in his cot at 7 pm every evening. We would simply place him in his cot and walk out the room. He would fall asleep within minutes but he would wake in the night, once or twice.

To encourage him to sleep through the night, we tried CC (big mistake). It failed miserably. He was so worked up on one occasion he was actually sick. Within a few days he got ill, gastro-enteritis and a cold on top of that so we abandoned the CC and brought him in the bed with us.

Now ds seems scared of his cot and screams uncontrollably when we leave the room. It?s impossible to settle him. He can even fall deep asleep in our arms but when we lower him in, he immediately wakes up and cries intensely. We can spend between 6pm ? 9pm trying to settle him and even when he does fall asleep, it?s only for a few hours then I take him in with us.

Please help. How on earth do we repair the damage done by CC and get him back to where he was??

Oh you poor thing. Have you read Elizabeth Pantley's sleep book ? Could be just what you need right now. Has a section on making the cot a 'nice place' after cc. Good luck.

can you move the cot around in the room - maybe use a nigth light for a bit, maybe some soothing music.
Has he got a teddy to keep him company ?

you might have to sit in the room stroking his back or head for a while until he gets used to it.

Sorry to hear this happened DaddyCool. You are right you do need to repair the damage and regain your ds trust and confidence. It will take time and reassurance. Another baby expert who is not into CC is Dr Sears . His website is quite good and contains alot of information about sleep problems.

Can you move his cot into your room for awhile, if he is already sleeping in your bed?

Some Mumnetters have taken their babies to an osteopath for cranial work. Has often helped babies sleep through the night.

all the best

maybe that's why he started waking in teh night in the first place? because he was poorly although not showing any signs of illness.

if you don't mind having ds with you in room try and put his cot there, maybe he will settle easier this way.
by taking him in your bed because he will not settle in the night, you reinforce the fact that the more he cries the quicker he'll end up in your bed. you need to decide if you want him to sleep in the bed with you or not.

perhaps try and put him to bed at 8pm instead of 7pm and arrange as such that he has a lot of activities during the day (going to the park etc).

however, probably best not to try anything until you're absolutely certain he is healthy 100%, even a mere cold could unsettle him.

sorry i haven't got a magic solution. i hope it all gets better for you. good luck!

PS have a look on amazon for sleep books, maybe there's something with a good review...

Personally, I think it is more likely that he liked sleeping with you rather than he got scared of his cot. He may well be crying because he wants to sleep in your bed rather than because his cot is frightening to him. It's like, you'd only have to give a child chocolate for breakfast a couple of times before he will cry at the sight of porridge!
Alternatively I suppose he may associate his cot with being ill. Are you opposed to sleeping with him? If so, then I think settling him back in his cot once he's tasted the delights of sleeping with you (luckily my ds hates it) might be a longish job. I suspect you might have to stop bringing him in with you at night, but do something like staying with him by his cot until he goes to sleep, and gradually move your chair further and further away from the cot until you are eventually able to get out of the room.

Hi Daddycool

No solutions I'm afraid, but my 11 month old has exactly the same problem - he seems to hate his cot.....I'll be following this thread with interest. I have a copy of Elizabeth Pantley's book but have not tried anything in it yet. More a case of survival on very little sleep at the moment.

Hope some good advice comes to you via the oracle of Mumsnet!

i had same situation with my dd, to the point that we had to get her to sleep in our bed and transfer her once in a deep sleep!!

At about 16mths old, we moved her onto a matress on the floor with duvet and pillow, and told her it was a special big girls bed. She loved it and still does, admittedly she gets up in the early hours and climbs in with us, but at least she goes down to sleep well, and we get the majority of the night to ourselves!!

Message withdrawn

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's very much appreciated, keep em coming.

I do actually suspect the vomit was phlegm caught in his throat as a leftover of his cold but all the same (as you've suggested bloss) the whole thing was a little overwhelming as it was and the sickness was the last straw for us. We couldn't really stand to see him so upset.

Up until last night my 7-month ds wouldn't sleep for longer than a couple of hours at a time. I went back to work full time a month ago and started bringing him into bed at about 2am as it was the only way I could cope. As a result he now kicks and screams if I try and put him in the cot. The night before last I finally snapped. I put him in the cot and then told him I loved him, but he had to sleep in his cot. He screamed for almost two hours, but I stayed by him and picked him every 5 mins or so to reassure him and give him the opportuntiy to fall asleep in my arms. Every time I put him down he would wake and scream. He finally went to sleep on his own slept for 5 hours.

We went through the same last night when he went to bed. He only cried for 30 mins then went on to sleep for over 8 hours! When he woke I picked him up and cuddled him and then tried to put him back in the cot. He screamed again - but this time for just 30 secs before going to sleep for a further 3 hours.

I have tried everything else and this is the last resort. It seems harsh and is harrowing. DP had to hold me down at one point to stop me from going to him, but it does seem to be working. Because he sleeps in the room with us I don't feel that I am abandoning him and by picking him up and putting him down I feel that I am giving him a choice about how to settle. I think this is called compassionate crying it out. Hope this helps in some way.

You could also try sleep clinic as they will help you with cc. Ask you HV or doctor for advice. I think most health authorities run these, so they are free.

I just wanted to add something else to my last message. Your baby needs sleep just as much as you do, so it is important to get him sleeping well.

One of the reasons that I'd put off doing anything as drastic as cc was because I thought that he would be really unhappy come the morning, but he was really happy when he woke as he'd had a good stretch of sleep.

DaddyCool, he's not afraid of the cot, he's afraid of you leaving him in it and it's up to you to show him that there's nothing to be afraid of. He's only 15 months old and he will respond to your feelings completely. If you are upset about leaving him or anxious, he will be the same. My dd's 2 now but at 15 months for the first time in her life she started seeming very anxious at bed and nap times after having always been very happy to be left in her cot. It also followed a bout of illness in which I'd gone to her a lot in the night and cuddled and soothed her back to sleep. We tried all kinds of things (she hates co-sleeping so that was never an option) and it got worse and worse until she was waking for up to 2 hours at a time twice a night. Then we decided to do cc which was hard but nowhere near as hard as the month of broken sleep and crying we'd been through. I also changed my attitude and stopped going into her saying 'poor darling' kind of thing and said things more like 'hey now come on it's time to sleep now, mummy's tired, daddy's tired, you sleep in your own little bed' and it worked to be much more matter of fact about it. I still do this, I just never make it an option that she gets otu of the cot (unless ill of course or afraid by a noise like loud fireworks), she might say 'mummy get me up' but I always say 'no, you sleep here, it's the best place' and I think she appreciates it. As far as 'gaining her trust' goes I think being firm and confident that you know what you're doing and are in charge is kindest for everyone. Even if deep down of course you feel you don't have a clue , you have to decide on a course of action and stick with it. The most unking thing you can do for your ds at this stage is be half-hearted, one time taking him into your bed, the next trying to leave him. If you're happy with him in the bed and can't face cc then just go with that and get him in his own cot some time in the future.

I really do think that a strongly expressed preference can seem like fear or other strong emotion in a baby. My three year old just sobbed piteously in Starbucks because he couldn't have a muffin until after his bit of panini!! Tears, racking sobs, the lot. Which all got ignored, he enjoyed his panini and then shared a muffin with me. He was happy as larry afterwards and I certainly don't feel like a cruel mummy. Babies and toddlers go from 0-60 with nothing in between often. I think we often (and I am very much speaking from my own experience here) project our own emotions onto them. So vomiting as a reflex action through choking becomes 'vomiting out of fear', a cry of 'NO! I want to sleep with you" becomes "terrified of his cot" etc etc. I'm certainly not saying you don't know your own child, but I know for sure that when ds was tiny I used to panic about his feelings, often unecessarily. When we did cc when he was 8months, I was terrified he'd hate us in the morning, but you've never seen a sunnier baby than one who'd had a decent night's sleep.

I also agree that a show of cheerful confidence can sometimes work wonders, even if you are wibbly inside.

I read a sleep book that explains the core night method. That didn't work for us as ds was too old when I tried it, but there was some useful stuff in it about sleep. One of the things that I remember is that you need to let your baby know that you trust him to go to sleep on his own. By constantly going to him and putting him in the bed he thinks that he needs you to help him sleep.

otto, that book is simply called 'Sleep' but I can't remember the name of the author. I found it interesting when dd was very small.

That Elizebeth Pantley book looks really good. I'll no doubt get it. I would really rather try everything before CC again. We're still having the same problem with DS but he's still a bit ill and I'm not willing to subject him to CC again quite yet.

'Scared of his cot' was probably the wrong wording. It's obvious now that he simply doesn't want me to leave the room. We've tried moving his cot to a different part of the room but it didn't work. We considered putting him in a single bed but we don't think that's the issue here.

I really stuck it out last night but by 2am I gave up and agreed with DW to try something else.

Thanks for all the advice.

DC, for one, stop thinking of it as 'subjecting him to cc.' If cc isn't the option for you, fine, but it's not torture you know! Or at least it shouldn't be. I recommend you read, if you haven't already, a chapter of Richard Ferber's 'How to solve your child's sleep problems ...', called 'what your child associates with falling asleep'. It was brilliantly eye-opening for us when dealing with dd's 15 month-old sleep problem. Whether or not you do cc, his advice is so sound and really helps to make sense of what you're doing. He also says that there's no such thing as a 'sleep problem' unless parents and child are not happy with the situation. For instance, some parents might not mind their child coming to bed with them from 2am onwards and all sleeping well together. Some parents might find it a problem but if others feel that everyone sleeps well and happily that way then there isn't a problem. The point is that no-one but you decides if cc is right, or co-sleeping is right, it's what suits you all and keeps you all happy and rested.

Oh and I really wouldn't go for a single bed. We thought about that with dd's problem but I think it's far better to do the transition from cot to bed when the child is sleeping well rather than when they're struggling to sleep happily anyway.

DC, for one, stop thinking of it as 'subjecting him to cc.' If cc isn't the option for you, fine, but it's not torture you know! Or at least it shouldn't be. I recommend you read, if you haven't already, a chapter of Richard Ferber's 'How to solve your child's sleep problems ...', called 'what your child associates with falling asleep'. It was brilliantly eye-opening for us when dealing with dd's 15 month-old sleep problem. Whether or not you do cc, his advice is so sound and really helps to make sense of what you're doing. He also says that there's no such thing as a 'sleep problem' unless parents and child are not happy with the situation. For instance, some parents might not mind their child coming to bed with them from 2am onwards and all sleeping well together. Some parents might find it a problem but if others feel that everyone sleeps well and happily that way then there isn't a problem. The point is that no-one but you decides if cc is right, or co-sleeping is right, it's what suits you all and keeps you all happy and rested.

DC, you have my sympathy. We did CC with DS when he was 15 months, and it was one of the most harrowing experiences I've been through. But DH and I were at the end of our collective tethers, and we had nowhere else to go. After several weeks of CC, with DS crying in one room while I sobbed in another, he suddenly seemed to get the message (almost overnight) and we've had no trouble since.

What I'd say to you is this - I don't think your DS is afraid of the cot, I think he's learnt how nice it is in bed with you! And please don't think you've done him everlasting damage - my DS has always been a sensitive little flower (too sensitive for his own comfort, perhaps) but doing CC with him didn't leave him scared of going down in his cot, nor (several years later) is he showing any signs of being anything other than a completely happy and relaxed child at bedtime.

Haven't read all the replies thoroughly so hope I'm not repeating too much. I don't think you should think of the CC specifically as having failed. It is more likely that he became unwell and enjoyed the comfort of cosleeping for a while. His illness will have thrown out his routines and now he has a separation anxiety when sleeping alone. dd was similar at around 13 months when her excema flared up but once it was treated she slept much better again. we also tried CC at that time and felt very guilty when we realised there was a physical reason we'd not seen.

Have you heard of the Pick up/ Put down method advocated by Tracey Hogg the Baby Whisperer which is sort of along the lines of Prefernot's suggestion. Basically you comfort them in their bedroom (lights down, quiet, low voices) until they stop crying then put them back down, repeating until until they settle. You don't have to leave the room unlike CC, can pat him whilst he is in his cot to comfort him, reassuring him that it is time to sleep, if you don't want to be lifting him each time. As the cries subside you withdraw but can still sit in the room until he has fallen asleep. You could try it for a few nights and if you see no progress try something else.

Once you can get him to settle himself again you can work on the wakings, but it should then just be a matter or reassuring him in the same way.

Good luck

This is exactly what I tried last night LIZS but he's seriously stubborn. It went for about two hours and then we gave up. I'm going to try again tonight.

I know I should be vigilant but he really wasn't having any of it.

I can relate to "seriously stubborn" ! Good luck for tonight and hope you find a way to crack it.

LIZS, sorry if I gave that impression but I would never advocate the pick up / put down method. I think it's quite good maybe for very little babies but we tried it with dd before doing cc and as far as I can see it made everything LOADS worse. She just freaked out that we were picking her up and then putting her down again, it left her so frustrated. When we eventually did cc and insisted that she didn't come out of the cot, that she was in bed to sleep and to stay, she responded much better after the first moments of rage had passed .