Those who have done Controlled Crying...

[LydiaFTM]

...was it successful?

DS is 6 months old and nurses to sleep. We also cosleep and contact nap. He's starting nursery in March and I'd like him to be able to fall asleep better on his own or with less support. Previous, more gentle, sleep training attempts where we stay with him while he falls asleep haven't been successful.

I'm aware sleep training isn't for everyone and if we could avoid it I would but I'm not going to survive on current sleep levels on 8 hour work days. Plus he will be looked after by nursery and grandparents and I need reassurance he will be able to settle for naps without me there to nurse him. So please no judgment!

If it's worked, how long did your baby take to fall asleep on the first night? And how long did the whole process take?

Am I right in thinking on each check-in we spend a few minutes comforting DS without picking him up? I'm fairly sure it will reach a point where no amount of reassurance will comfort him in the slightest!

Did you use it for bedtime and naps all at once? Or start with bedtime?

Thank you!

You also don't need to deny feeds in the night, just don't use feeding to get them to sleep. Once they can get to sleep themselves they often sleep for longer chunks. My boy still woke for 2 feeds till about 10mo, then one... then none!!

Controlled crying isn’t just letting your child cry themselves to sleep

By the OP it seems this is what OP is looking to do.

Co-sleeping works for some people but to have your child breastfeeding in the night, 3 years on, is not something that would work for most people

OP already co-sleeps, I asked if she bed shared. OP's child is 6mo. Milk is their main nutrition, it's not about if it works for someone, parenting a 6mo is responding to their needs in a timely manner.

Despite all the comments on here, six months seems so very young for proper controlled crying... at that age, they're crying because they do actually need you, aren't they? Even if just for comfort?

No I don't think so. They cry because they are tired and want to sleep. (or want food or are in pain or discomfort etc). Maybe sometimes they want comfort. But generally it's a physical need. These will be mainly met by the primary carer of course and that is a requirement for development -I'm not suggesting that it doesn't matter who cares for them. But a tired baby wants to sleep. And if you can do something that enables that then great. But many mothers do everything they can for their baby but still find that by the time the baby is 6 months old there's nothing they can actually do to help their baby stay asleep and that's why people end up sleep training. I think the modern trend for attachment parenting and video baby monitors has made things worse as many babies are never given the chance to learn to self settle. In previous generations mothers would not have had the time energy or resources to respond instantly to the baby's every need. People used to have ten children or more and they had to work. The children had to work too by the age of 6 or so. Theres a very rose tinted view of non western parenting on here sometimes.

@SnackSizeRaisin

Despite all the comments on here, six months seems so very young for proper controlled crying... at that age, they're crying because they do actually need you, aren't they? Even if just for comfort?

No I don't think so. They cry because they are tired and want to sleep. (or want food or are in pain or discomfort etc). Maybe sometimes they want comfort. But generally it's a physical need. These will be mainly met by the primary carer of course and that is a requirement for development -I'm not suggesting that it doesn't matter who cares for them. But a tired baby wants to sleep. And if you can do something that enables that then great. But many mothers do everything they can for their baby but still find that by the time the baby is 6 months old there's nothing they can actually do to help their baby stay asleep and that's why people end up sleep training. I think the modern trend for attachment parenting and video baby monitors has made things worse as many babies are never given the chance to learn to self settle. In previous generations mothers would not have had the time energy or resources to respond instantly to the baby's every need. People used to have ten children or more and they had to work. The children had to work too by the age of 6 or so. Theres a very rose tinted view of non western parenting on here sometimes.

The issue is you have no idea if they do need you or not.

There is no point dressing it up, if you leave your kid to cry, you leave your kid to cry when they need you and when they don't.

SnackSize, when you talk of 'previous generations' I assume you're talking post agriculture, which is a drop in the ocean of time compared to the millenia that our species has been evolving for. The way we have organised our societies now, particularly in the West, is extremely different to how we organised whilst babies and mothers were evolving to adapt and respond to each other. You think whilst our ancestors were still very much in the middle of the food chain (which is when we did the vast majority of our psychological and physiological evolution) we had to risk attracting the attention of predators by leaving our extremely vulnerable young to cry on their own, just to get them to sleep 8+ hours a night!? Ridiculous. If babies needed sleep training for their development, we wouldn't be sat here having this debate as we are. Our species wouldn't have survived.

Breastfeeding on demand night/day, carrying and keeping our babies close 24/7 is not a 'modern trend', it is our biological norm and what babies expect.

OP, have you asked the nursery how they would manage your 6 month olds (very normal and to be expected) crying for you? If they don't have a good strategy for this already in place, don't leave your child with them.

Breastfeeding on demand night/day, carrying and keeping our babies close 24/7 is not a 'modern trend', it is our biological norm and what babies expect

This

Rubbish. In the rosy tinted version of reality whereby mothers have their babies attached to them constantly, you're forgetting the mother wouldn't be living by herself or in a 2.4 type of family. There would be grandparents, aunties, uncles and the baby would be getting attention from the different generations. That is an ideal for a baby but it isn't real life and plenty of dc have been taught how to sleep without it scaring them for life.

'Taught to sleep'!? Do as you must for your sanity, but don't pretend it has any benefits for infant development. Babies don't need to be taught anything other than that their caregivers will respond when they're distressed

I never taught mine how to sleep, he fell asleep when tired as did I. I remember being put to bed early when I was small and generally still being awake when parents came up to bed.

There is no point dressing it up, if you leave your kid to cry, you leave your kid to cry when they need you and when they don't.

You know your own child and when they are likely to be hungry, you do it at a time when they are well, you make sure they are not hungry, are the right temperature, have a clean nappy, have had sufficient daytime naps that they are tired but not too tired. You check them often to make sure they are not stuck in a strange position etc. They are safe in their cot. And they are only crying for a few hours in total over a few nights. After that they can sleep fine and you respond as normal when they cry. I did say it's not ideal to have to sleep train. But it's a short term thing only.

I never taught mine how to sleep, he fell asleep when tired as did I. I remember being put to bed early when I was small and generally still being awake when parents came up to bed.

You were obviously much older than 6 months though

We tried it and it didn't work. For those it does work for the baby is just ready - doesn't need to feed, doesn't need a cuddle. It's a rare 6 month old who doesn't need those things.

It's just horrible listening to your kid cry for you. And there is no evidence that it is a good way to get your child to sleep for longer, whereas there is some evidence from sleep studies in labs that it merely stops the children crying out at night. See Amy brown books for refs. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're distressed and not calling for you. But I wouldn't leave my kid to cry for more than a minute on the day. I can't see why I should think the night is any different.

Ferber etc was operating on no evidence either. It's all pure "expert opinion". Nothing wrong with that per se but there is other evidence out there which you might want to look at.
they all sleep eventually. My oldest woke every 45 mins for 6 months, then went to 1.5 hrs, then back to hourly til 15 months. Sleep training - abs yes we did it "properly" resulted in 2-3 hours of screaming. It just felt abusive. Some kids it doesn't work for

If your child is still waking at 1, 18mos, 2 years - it's totally normal.

@SnackSizeRaisin

There is no point dressing it up, if you leave your kid to cry, you leave your kid to cry when they need you and when they don't.

You know your own child and when they are likely to be hungry, you do it at a time when they are well, you make sure they are not hungry, are the right temperature, have a clean nappy, have had sufficient daytime naps that they are tired but not too tired. You check them often to make sure they are not stuck in a strange position etc. They are safe in their cot. And they are only crying for a few hours in total over a few nights. After that they can sleep fine and you respond as normal when they cry. I did say it's not ideal to have to sleep train. But it's a short term thing only.

None of what you say changes my view that: There is no point dressing it up, if you leave your kid to cry, you leave your kid to cry when they need you and when they don't.

I'm tempted to do cc with my ten month old. But he's absolutely fine at going to sleep by himself. Goes off in minute. No crying. But through the night he wakes up crying and wants a cuddle. He just can't self settle. He naps twice in the day and just goes to sleep then too? Would cc work through the night?

If babies needed sleep training for their development, we wouldn't be sat here having this debate as we are. Our species wouldn't have survived.

Breastfeeding on demand night/day, carrying and keeping our babies close 24/7 is not a 'modern trend', it is our biological norm and what babies expect.

I did breastfeed on demand, bed share with mine and he still spent a lot of time crying. He would wake up screaming every hour or more, in my arms. If Co sleeping resulted in a quiet contented baby I don't think anyone would bother with sleep training. Perhaps you have been lucky enough to have a baby that doesn't spend hours screaming with tiredness despite your best efforts. My first one didn't either. It's all very well being smug when you haven't experienced a really bad sleeper!

Your comment about the species is pertinent. Traditional societies are all about the good of the group not the individual. Troublesome babies were often abandoned. That's if they survived childbirth. In our society the model is that every baby is wanted and loved and valued as an individual. Which is a luxury that we have because our family, tribe, species is not fighting for survival.

None of what you say changes my view that: There is no point dressing it up, if you leave your kid to cry, you leave your kid to cry when they need you and when they don't.

I agree that you shouldn't do it unless you're sure that your baby is crying because they just want some sleep, and you trying to help them is actually making it worse. Having had a first child who was a naturally good sleeper, I did know the signs to look for. I probably would never have had the confidence otherwise. But there are sleep consultants and my health visitor was also quite helpful.

None of what you say changes my view that: There is no point dressing it up, if you leave your kid to cry, you leave your kid to cry when they need you and when they don't.

Hmm, but my baby didn’t need me, he needed to go to sleep and the closest association he had was to cry and want me to help him go to sleep. Sleep training just cut out the middle man and helped him make a strong association of white noise / cot / darkness be the association for sleep, instead of crying for me.

Sleep training isn’t for everyone, and that’s absolutely fine, but I’m always baffled on these threads when people say that their baby woke up every hour through the night until they were 18 months old / they still bed share and breastfeed in the night a 3 year old - that isn’t giving the child or the adult good sleep, that’s literally years of broken sleep. How is that better than a few nights of crying and then years of sleep through the night?

but my baby didn’t need me, he needed to go to sleep and the closest association he had was to cry and want me to help him go to sleep and this is the crux of it. Either you can or you can't withhold in this way.

I wanted to help my baby go to sleep if that was what they wanted, and then of course over time they stopped wanting me to help them anyway. I personally would not have been able to withhold whilst they wanted me.

@truthfullylying

but my baby didn’t need me, he needed to go to sleep and the closest association he had was to cry and want me to help him go to sleep and this is the crux of it. Either you can or you can't withhold in this way.

I wanted to help my baby go to sleep if that was what they wanted, and then of course over time they stopped wanting me to help them anyway. I personally would not have been able to withhold whilst they wanted me.

and then of course over time they stopped wanting me to help them anyway

Well that’s great for you, but for some children that association still lasts until they’re well in to toddler years. Many women have to work and don’t have the choice of being able to wake up every hour through the night, and I really don’t see how it’s good for a baby to wake that much either. Sleep is such an important brain development time.

Our second, from 8 months and weaned. Took three nights. In to comfort but lay down again every five minutes. Took over an hour the first night, reduced thereafter. He happily lay down and “talked” to his comforter (on camera) until he drifted off on the fourth night.

He’s nearly 19 now and I have to knock on his door to ask him if he’s joining us for lunch every weekend

This makes me feel so sad. These babies are so so young still. They are crying out for you!! As their mummy! I don't see how anyone could sit outside their nursery and hear them screaming and crying for you. It's horrid. I'm sorry.

And this comes from a mum of a 6m old baby- who feeds to sleep, co sleeps and I am KNACKERED. I still could not leave my baby to cry out for me. Savage.

squishyegg

This makes me feel so sad. These babies are so so young still. They are crying out for you!! As their mummy! I don't see how anyone could sit outside their nursery and hear them screaming and crying for you. It's horrid. I'm sorry.

And this comes from a mum of a 6m old baby- who feeds to sleep, co sleeps and I am KNACKERED. I still could not leave my baby to cry out for me. Savage“

Just the one then?

If you had three, in close proximity, and a husband working away from home to house and feed you all?

Actually, calling people “savage” is beyond the Paul.

Others shoes.

I do have other children and funnily enough my partner does work away a lot too!

Babies as young as 4 months old aren't crying to annoy you. They NEED you. Same as 6 month too. It's just really sad!!

@ShirleyPhallus, you can explain to a toddler what's going to happen at night when they cry, and their nutritional needs at night and breastfeeding relationship is much less important than a 6 month old. Using a CIO technique on a 2 year old is a lot different to a 6 month old.

The short cycles in which babies sleep is perfect for their development. My almost 6 month old who has always woke frequently through the night is developmentally ahead of my friends 9 month old, who has slept 12 hours a night without any waking since she was 4 months. Consequetive sleep has nothing to do with it, as long as they're reaching their overall daily amount of sleep needed, it doesn't matter if it's all together or not. They are supposed to wake frequently, especially in their first year. If a BF baby slept 12 hours, he would eventually starve as his mother's milk supply would be severely effected. Infant development is not negatively impacted by non consecutive sleep.