Give me reasons why I should NOT sleep train my baby!

[Peridotty]

Hi! I have a 7 month old baby girl. She only sleeps whilst being held or being in the stroller. For every nap and every bedtime, I have to walk and jiggle her for about 5 mins to get her to fall asleep (this used to be much longer). She is down to 3 naps so it's doable now.
She sleeps 11 hours at night and wakes up a few times a night but settles very quickly back to sleep (comfort feed). Half the night I will sleep with her in my arms because I fall asleep myself but if I am awake then I will put her back into her cot.
Anyway she is 7 months old now and I thought that this was the best time to sleep train?
However, she cannot sleep by herself. I have tried. She will roll and get up, sit up, crawl about, bang her head on the sides, wail hysterically etc etc. It's just much quicker and kinder to just hold her for a few mins or feed her to sleep.
BUT sleep training sounds soooo good in theory. I just want someone to talk me out of it. It doesn't always work does it?

Thanks for all the replies!
We used to cosleep in this portable cot in the middle of our bed but she outgrew that. The side bassinets are too small for her now. I’m not sure what a safe cosleeping arrangement is? She seems to sleep a lot better when she is in my arms (can sleep 4 hours). I don’t have the duvet with me and I sleep in a superking size bed so there’s plenty of space. I agree she could suffocate or fall out of bed which are a couple of my fears, but despite my best attempts I do fall asleep.

I tried the pick up and put down method as well as shush pat before. It took forever and I’m not sure it works for her at all. All I got was a very sore back and screaming baby!!!! She would get increasingly overtired and upset and then both me and baby would be crying!!

If I put her down not completely asleep, she will wake up, roll over and sit up and then be completely awake and cry. I can’t keep putting her back on her back as she does the same thing again and again. I can see she is very distressed by it and reaches out for me.

I am on maternity leave so I don’t have to worry about work right now. I’m not mega tired in the day as my husband looks after her in the morning before 10am allowing me to sleep a bit.

I am interested in hearing about the psychological reasons not to sleep train or how it didn’t work for you. Did you ever have regrets doing it? My brain says sleep training is good but my heart says no!!

@InTheLongGrass could you tell me about the 2 weeks of hell?
@BathroomWork how was your experience? Why do you regret it?
@Keha I have pretty much the same reasons as you!
And for everyone where sleep training worked for you I’m so happy for you. I wish I had your strength!!!

I did CC with my daughter for bedtime and nap time when she was about 6 months, and overnight at 10 months. I have never regretted it for a moment. Simple bedtimes, 12 hours of sleep, happy baby, rested parents.

Safe co-sleeping guidelines here

DS was a nightmare to get to sleep, didn't stay asleep long, and didnt nap long (40 mins max).
At 15 months, I could put him to bed and get him asleep in 30 mins. He would wake once, and take 60-90 mins to get back to sleep. Would babble if someone was in the room, scream if on his own.
DH insisted we sleep trained. Plan was to go to him, cuddle, back into bed and leave. He screamed. Went back, cuddled, back into bed, leave. He screamed. Rinse and repeat for 2 hrs. DH snored through it unless I kicked him out to go see DS. I tried to stop, but I generally fell asleep on DS's floor so DH knew I'd not been following his plan. It was hell. I was so tired I wasnt thinking straight, or strong enough to get a coherent argument for DH. At 2 weeks DH agreed that it wasnt working, and that I could have my pseudo bed back on DS's floor.

We are a decade down the line, and I still remember it as a particular low point. The above makes DH sound awful. He generally isnt, a spent hours getting tiny baby to sleep. It was his plan to get over a chronically tired wife. Just happens it was a sucky plan!

Instead of worrying about falling asleep with her in arms why not just set your bed up for safe bedsharing? You’ll be less stressed and more rested. Sleep is developmental, it can’t be trained, all you’re training is them knowing you won’t soothe them. Little babies aren’t capable of solving any of the problems that wake themselves, they need us to help them.

There is a book with advice about how to gently shape your baby's sleeping without actually leaving them to cry. It isn't an instant fix, hough. The Gentle Sleep Book: Gentle, No-Tears, Sleep Solutions for Parents of Newborns to Five-Year-Olds by Sarah Ockwell-Smith.

Just sort of safe bedsharing OP

I don't want to stop meeting her need because it's inconvenient for me

I don't want her to cry that much (we did about 5 mins of pick up put down and she was purple, about to throw up and burst blood vessels, she really doesn't like cots or being separated from me)

I can boob her back to sleep most of the time quickly

I know from 25 months experience of being her mum she changes all the time, for the last week she's been waking 1-2 hours and not going back to sleep for a couple hours, she'd been fairly good for months before that. I used to be able to pay and shhh her to sleep but that doesn't work anymore but now she's starting to understand if I need her to stop boobing and will somewhat unhappily fall asleep need to me. I don't think sleep training would stick with her and I'm not doing it over and over.

It sounds like when you tried to do pick up put down you did it as a huge change.

If I had wanted to change from cuddling to sleep to not cuddling I would have cuddled until drowsy and put down next to me, then picked up and cuddled until drowsy and put down next to me - just something that was less than the usual cuddling. So that may be more of a half cuddle so to speak.

To go from sleeping when cuddled to being in their cot alone is a huge difference. You also spend as much time as needed every time you pick up getting them back to their relaxed and drowsy status. It's not just literal PUPD. You are picking up to satisfy their needs.

I actually you say you have to walk and/or jiggle her. So the first step is to hold and not juggle or walk. So you do the usual for long enough that she is drowsy but then stop short of her being asleep, then starts again if she gets upset etc.

Having seen many, many, many families go through sleep training, this is the overwhelming insight afterwards:
(Quoting a previous poster)

“Finally sleep trained at 20 months. It took a few nights and he now sleeps 12 solidly every night. My only wish is that I'd done it far, far sooner. I really thought my son couldn't be sleep trained. That I had to just accept it. I was wrong.”

Not all babies can sleep a “perfect” 12 hrs all night but I have never ever seen a baby whose sleep could not be vastly improved.

Why does it sound so good? Surely her taking a few minutes to fall asleep isn't that much of a hardship, and sounds like she's quite a good sleeper. Why the desperation to sleep train. Seems strange, but if that's what you want to do, do it. Why would you need people to tell you it's it's bad idea unless you already feel uncomfortable about it and want people to talk you out of it?

I looked into all the research about whether sleep training is harmful or not and basically the jury is out. Some studies show it made the children stressed (higher cortisol levels) and others show no effect.

If it’s going to work you have to be consistent. If your heart isn’t in it then being consistent with it will be difficult or impossible so you need to resolve to do it and stick it through. Otherwise it won’t work and you will have upset you and your child for nothing.

Everyone I know who sleep trained was delighted that they did BUT had to repeat it multiple times when their child experienced some kind of disruption - teething/illness/holiday. So it’s isn’t (always) a one time thing.

I didn’t ever want to leave my child crying (for my sake mainly) so we did pick up put down when he was 8 months to get him into the cot at the start of the night. We later did gradual withdrawal at about 15 months to help him fall asleep by himself with no one in the room which involved no tears whatsoever. He woke once in the night until he was 2 - we would just take him into our bed. Since 2 he’s slept through every night.

The only reason I can think of, is that you don't like sleeping yourself.

Because sleep training is not guaranteed to work? And the process can be painful and exhausting.
I tried sleep training with both of my kids, and failed both times. With my son, I tried controlled crying for 5 nights and he was still crying for hours on the night that I gave up. With my daughter, I tried pick up put down for 10 days, before giving up. I saw no progress really, in how often she wakes up during the night. And instead of feeding her a few minutes to sleep, pick up put down can take an hour and both she and I were exhausted!

Just cosleep until she sleeps through and then transition to a cot/ bed. My son co slept until he was about a year he was breastfed so it was easy for him to feed when he wanted in the night without me really having to wake up. At about a year he started to sleep through. We then moved him to a cot bed. I had to get in with him to start with and feed him to sleep but he did sleep through and eventually I didn't need to feed him!

Hi, my daughter is 1. I haven’t sleep trained and I’ve done exactly what you are describing. It worked for us. She has naturally got better but because of teething etc has her off days. I didn’t want to sleep train because I feel it breaks a fundamental trust between mother and baby. “I’ll come when you cry” - they give up and go to sleep coz they know you aren’t coming and as much as I know they won’t remember etc. I just think that’s heartbreaking??? It also doesn’t always work so you could break that trust and be no better off. My daughter is a menace and actually figured sleep training out pretty quick and just pleasantly sat and waited for me to return rather than get upset but did not go to sleep lol.

I'm on baby number 3 and I can't give you a reason why you wouldn't. Baby 3 is nearly 8 months old and have just started in the last couple of days. Have to say I did the other 2 at around 10 months and found it quicker/easier but don't know if that's a coincidence or the same for everyone x

• @BathroomWork how was your experience? Why do you regret it?*

My first experience was when I was really ill postpartum. I have Multiple Sclerosis and had a relapse, so was in a really bad way. I was desperately neurologically fatigued and really needed to have as much sleep as possible to let my body recover.

My first phone was in a bad way with silent reflux which actually hospitalised him at one point because it made him stop breathing (I'd never heard of this happening before but since then I've heard it's actually a thing). Added to that he was a forceps delivery and came out looking like a panda with purple circles around his eyes and very bruised chin. He must've been in a lot of pain.

So sleeping was a problem right from the start, and even during the day, I found all he wanted to do was suckle on me for comfort. I was desperate to put him down for my own well-being, and my health visitor tried to steer me towards being able to put him down. I appreciate this was completely the right thing to do, but nighttimes particularly were impossible. In the end, after trying bath time routines and late night feeds, she suggested we resort to a type of controlled crying.
Followed followed her instructions, we also tried gradual retreat, I remember sitting outside his bedroom door, crying my eyes out because hearing him cry out to me was unbearable. Every bone in my body wanted to go in and pick him up to comfort him because that felt instinctively natural to do, but I was so desperate for my own rest that I really wanted to see this through.

We tried for many nights, weeks actually, and I will admit that he cried for less, but he didn't stop crying altogether. And in the end I recorded his crying to play to my mum and show her how distressed this baby still is, and she said you have to stop because that's a child who needs his mum. I was so thankful for her saying that and I aborted it straight away, and I am glad to this day that I didn't try to push it any further.

I remember at the time being so glad but they say babies don't have memories of this kind of thing, but since then I believe they actually do. And that troubles me. I say that I think they do because I know that preverbal memories of child abuse (I have some of my own) I think our bodies store the memories, even though we can't make sense of them emotionally. And so now, I see attachment completely differently.

I'm obviously not likening the attachment of a child crying and being left alone to child abuse, but what I am saying is I don't agree that children simply will never remember. I think it's stored somewhere deep down in the unconscious.

10 years later my son was deeply upset with life. He was having problems with school work because of SN due to hypermobility, dyslexia, poor coordination, et cetera, and one day he just flipped and tried to kill himself. CAMHS were involved and when they took our history, blamed his broken attachment with me when he was a baby, saying that it would have put him in such a heightened state of anxiety that he hasn't got the tools to deal with it now, much later in life.

I don't think they were fair to blame me like that, and it took me a long time to get my head around that, but I do think there is a tiny grain of truth in what they said. I do wish I could have my time back. I do wish that I had realised this little baby will remember, and I think that I would have done things differently. I definitely would never have tried the weeks of crying for hours on end the way that I did. Goodness knows what that poor child needed that I wasn't attending to, even if it was just for a handhold, he's just a baby. How many of us go to hospital appointments and take someone with us because we want a handhold? If we can expect that as adults then surely we can give that comfort to a baby who has got no tools in their arsenal to help them otherwise?

That should read my first born not my first phone! 🙈

Buy a baby carrier. Ergo, Tula or similar. I’ve had 4 and they all napped great in there. Cosleeping meant we got loads of sleep at night. Babies are hardwired to need to feel safe in order to sleep well, sleeping safely together is our biological norm. Lots of studies showing raised cortisol from sleeping training, even after the crying has stopped, causes long term changes in the brain. I believe it causes greater risk of depression, mental health issues etc further down the line. Sometimes you need to do what you have to do though, no judgment. I used to go to bed early when they did when we were going through a difficult phase with sleep, resisted the temptation to stay up later so I could have time to myself and I was always glad in the morning. Solidarity, it’s hard!

@BathroomWork

* *@BathroomWork how was your experience? Why do you regret it?

My first experience was when I was really ill postpartum. I have Multiple Sclerosis and had a relapse, so was in a really bad way. I was desperately neurologically fatigued and really needed to have as much sleep as possible to let my body recover.

My first phone was in a bad way with silent reflux which actually hospitalised him at one point because it made him stop breathing (I'd never heard of this happening before but since then I've heard it's actually a thing). Added to that he was a forceps delivery and came out looking like a panda with purple circles around his eyes and very bruised chin. He must've been in a lot of pain.

So sleeping was a problem right from the start, and even during the day, I found all he wanted to do was suckle on me for comfort. I was desperate to put him down for my own well-being, and my health visitor tried to steer me towards being able to put him down. I appreciate this was completely the right thing to do, but nighttimes particularly were impossible. In the end, after trying bath time routines and late night feeds, she suggested we resort to a type of controlled crying.
Followed followed her instructions, we also tried gradual retreat, I remember sitting outside his bedroom door, crying my eyes out because hearing him cry out to me was unbearable. Every bone in my body wanted to go in and pick him up to comfort him because that felt instinctively natural to do, but I was so desperate for my own rest that I really wanted to see this through.

We tried for many nights, weeks actually, and I will admit that he cried for less, but he didn't stop crying altogether. And in the end I recorded his crying to play to my mum and show her how distressed this baby still is, and she said you have to stop because that's a child who needs his mum. I was so thankful for her saying that and I aborted it straight away, and I am glad to this day that I didn't try to push it any further.

I remember at the time being so glad but they say babies don't have memories of this kind of thing, but since then I believe they actually do. And that troubles me. I say that I think they do because I know that preverbal memories of child abuse (I have some of my own) I think our bodies store the memories, even though we can't make sense of them emotionally. And so now, I see attachment completely differently.

I'm obviously not likening the attachment of a child crying and being left alone to child abuse, but what I am saying is I don't agree that children simply will never remember. I think it's stored somewhere deep down in the unconscious.

10 years later my son was deeply upset with life. He was having problems with school work because of SN due to hypermobility, dyslexia, poor coordination, et cetera, and one day he just flipped and tried to kill himself. CAMHS were involved and when they took our history, blamed his broken attachment with me when he was a baby, saying that it would have put him in such a heightened state of anxiety that he hasn't got the tools to deal with it now, much later in life.

I don't think they were fair to blame me like that, and it took me a long time to get my head around that, but I do think there is a tiny grain of truth in what they said. I do wish I could have my time back. I do wish that I had realised this little baby will remember, and I think that I would have done things differently. I definitely would never have tried the weeks of crying for hours on end the way that I did. Goodness knows what that poor child needed that I wasn't attending to, even if it was just for a handhold, he's just a baby. How many of us go to hospital appointments and take someone with us because we want a handhold? If we can expect that as adults then surely we can give that comfort to a baby who has got no tools in their arsenal to help them otherwise?

How old was he when the HV suggested CC?

They said you can do it from 6 months onward

@BathroomWork

They said you can do it from 6 months onward

Yeah, by that age the bond should already have been secure enough that a few nights of CC wouldn't make a difference.

If you'd done it younger than that, or if the bond previously hadn't been properly established due to separation or MH issues, then maybe CAMHS would have a point, but if you did CC for a few nights with a previously well-attached baby at 6m, there's no way that caused your son's problems at 10, and I'm sorry they told you it did.

Wait, I've just reread and seen you did it for weeks. In which case your HV gave you some really fucking terrible advice, I'm so sorry.

My reasons:

• can be highly distressing and time consuming for parent and child despite very mixed results.

• 7 months is really young and the younger they are the even less likely it is to work.

• if you're anything like me, the constant worry about the small bit of research that says it's not good for them and my constant worry about their future mental health. (Yes I probably overworry).