Talk to me about controlled crying

[RockAndRollerskate]

My 7mo is the most lovely chilled baby, but he does not sleep!

I am, as far as I can tell doing everything right. He is well fed with food and milk, he gets lots of interaction, outside time, I pay attention to sleep windows and so on.

I’ve tried Lucy Wolfe methods, but he won’t take the final feed at all until he’s in his pjs in his room.

HV mentioned I’m doing everything right and the only thing she can suggest is controlled crying, but wouldn’t use it herself. I’ve seen a lot of posts advocating it as it is worked so well.

So - sorry for the long read - can you tell me how to start, and what do I do. I also still BF him 3x a night (10, 2 and 5). What do I do about the feeding? I don’t think he’s really taking much with it.

For context, he wakes more than once an hour some nights between 10 and 5. He doesn’t sleep longer than 30min in the day.

A good night involves a stretch 2-5 but this is incredibly rare. Normally I have to resettle with a dummy or rolling him back over a lot.

Before trying controlled crying I would first try cutting out the night feeds. All of mine have pretty much slept through once night weaned, though they could all self settle beforehand.

Does he sleep on you? (Not saying that's a suggestion as it's not very sustainable for you)

My older DS didn’t night wean until about 15m! But I really don’t think he’s actually feeding, it’s comfort

@SmileyPiuPiu he doesn’t, he’s the least cuddly baby ever. He never cuddles in! Resettling involves turning to the side, dummy in and patting

I recommend looking up Lindsay Hookaway

If he is just feeding for comfort then I would just stop the feeds. You can offer water instead.

You need to read all the negatives too in order to make an informed decision whether you want to do it. The science is against controlled crying. I know it is knackering getting woken up, but the science is what it is.

Ah I mean that's good you don't have the contact nap issue but I was going to suggest trying to recreate the cuddle experience with sleeping bags. What you need is some kind of machine that can continuously pat!! Anyway, best of luck, remember this too shall pass x

We did CC. I made sure she was well fed. Dry. Nice and warm. Everything blacked out. Etc.

We did 1,3,5 intervals. It never effected our lo as some people suggest she still calls me in the night if she needs me. She just had a bout of illness and she still called us when she needed us.

As your BF, and if possible I would send the oh in. As lo will likely smell you. I'm not saying don't feed in night. You might find that comes naturally once you done cc.

Your lo doesn't sleep longer then 30mins at one time in day??

That's flat out not true.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200310193305.htm

Doesn’t sleep longer than 30 minutes a the entire day?!

I implore you to not do cc. There is evidence to suggest that the baby stops crying because they give up believing anyone will come. It's heartbreaking.

@Debbiedoodah but that's just one study, and it's self-report. Any other studies I've come across are similar. Personally that's not enough to convince me, I'd like to see some more evidence that comes from a different data collection method (though don't ask me what - I'm not that bright! I trust some clever scientist can come up with it!)

No skin in this game myself as I just know CIO wouldn't work for my own baby, so I've never tried it. I don't have much of an opinion. But I just find these conversations interesting 

Thank you all for your responses.

To clarify - he will nap 3-4 times a day but rarely longer than 30min in one go. Sometimes longer if I’m there and work really hard on resettling or in the pram etc

It worked wonders for us. My DC never felt abandoned, they knew I was right there. I just refused to get them up. In the end they realised night time was for sleeping. They still knew they could call me if they were ill or had a nightmare or something.

I was sleep trained (by full on CIO I believe, no checking on me at intervals). Never ever in my entire childhood did I think my parents wouldn't come if I called. Obviously I don't remember before the age of 3 or so, but it seems unlikely I'd have stopped believing anyone would come, then suddenly started believing it again.

I've also never met anyone with a sleep trained baby who doesn't cry in the night sometimes if they're ill/ teething/ etc.

Hey OP, you've asked for ideas on how to start so I'll not get into the debate on whether to do it (worked wonders for us)

I agree with others that stopping BF overnight will also help but you may find breaking the link between feeding to sleep actually sorts this out for you. We actually also ditched the dummy at the same time as part of the reason our DS was waking was as his dummy kept falling out so we replaced with a comforter instead

We used the gradual retreat method which was great for us. I'll outline below but if it's not working after a few nights (I.e seeing progress) then you might want to try Ferber

-Have a really simple and consistent bedtime/nap routine. And I would feed 15 mins before bed and gradually try and increase this to 30 mins. Bath/story/sing a song/give comforter. Whatever works for you, just keep it the same. Try and keep baby awake in the feed!

-Sit a chair right next to the cot so they can see you. Sing goodnight and put them in their cot. Then repeat the following

1. shush, sing, hum, whatever works to soothe constantly
2. Put your hands into the cot to pat/stroke baby and comfort. Do this for 30 seconds. Then remove your hands for 1minute. Throughout this, you can use your voice.
3. continue the above pattern until baby is asleep but if they aren't upset or crying, stop putting your hands in

Night 2

• Do as above but only put hands in to comfort if baby is upset, if not, just use your voice

Night 3
-repeat as above but move your chair back away from the cot and only get up and go over to sooth with hands if required (sticking to the 30 seconds/1minute)

Night 4
-repeat but move your chair out of sight and don't use you hands, but continue to soothe with your voice

Night 5
-put baby down and say goodnight, soothe for 30 seconds with your voice and then stop and sit in the chair out of sight of the cot

Night 6
-at this point, you might be able to put baby down and just leave for them to settle themselves. If not, repeat night 5

It's a bit longer than the Ferber method but we started with this and it worked for us. I should add that our DS has had several regressions and we've then used the Ferber method as he already had the skills to self settle, this also worked very quickly for us.

Good luck OP

Please don't listen to people saying not to do it and it's damaging etc, this is completely untrue, I recommend you to have a look at a Facebook group called "safe sleep and baby care, evidence based support" it's completely evidence based and offers countless peer reviewed proven research evidential studies and articles on the subject, I would suggest that if you're on the fence, do the research and make your mind up as to whether it's something you want to do or not.
When you do controlled crying or cio your baby doesn't stop crying because they stop thinking you'll come to them, simply untrue, I did cio with my son in the end after months of avoiding it due to feeling guilty etc but in the end the situation was unsustainable for me, maternal/paternal mental health is so important and often overlooked, you need sleep and time to yourself too. And I will add that my son has no issues crying out for me, since we sleep trained he has generally put himself to sleep easily and slept through the night EXCEPT from a couple of occasions when he was unwell, too hot or too cold or had pooped, so he clearly knows I'll still attend to him.
It may help to reframe your thinking slightly that babies will cry out of protest sometimes rather than upset or sadness etc, and if all their needs are met (fed, clean, warm etc) then their crying is because they are having to do something that is alien to them and tricky for them to figure out (self settling).

Also, it's ridiculous for anyone to suggest that letting a baby cry for a very short amount of time on a few occasions is psychologically damaging, what happens when they cry for half an hour on their car seat because they don't want to be in there? Or when you're cooking tea and need to leave them to it for a short time? Babies cry, it's literally their only way of communicating.
If you're an affectionate, attentive, present parent, leaving baby to cry to learn to self settle at sleep while do any harm.
Check out the group.

Oh and just something extra, most of the research that suggests baby stops thinking someone will come so stops crying is generally based around very old soviet era studies done on babies abandoned in orphanages where the conditions and quality of care was horrendous and babies were actually effectively just left to their own devices for huge periods of time over an extended long period of time, left to cry if they were in pain, hungry, soiled etc, basically neglected and as a result most grew up with some pretty substantial attachment issues, as you might expect to be the case.
This is completely different to an attentive, loving parent making sure all babys needs are met then allowing them the opportunity and space to learn to self soothe and occurring a few tears in the process.

I think naps are part of the issue - if he's not sleeping enough in the day that can lead to poor sleep overnight too. At this age I was using wake windows and moving from 3 to 2 naps (down to 2 around 8 months I think). Maybe focus on helping him to have longer day naps and self settling there and it could help at night too.

We did this with ds, he's sleeping much better now but I regret the CC. He started sleeping though when dd was born.

Perhaps don't be so definitive then. You initially said 'the science says' as if there had been a comprehensive meta study on it with a definitive conclusion. There hasn't and you shouldn't mislead people.

@Debbiedoodah In fairness to @Belephant it wasn't her that made that definitive statement but another poster.

(But I agree with you that the original posters comment is flat out not true!)

Oops sorry @Belephant !