New study shows sleep training is safe

[LapinR0se]

I know baby sleep is a very hot topic but given there is so little proper evidence for or against sleep training, I was interested to see this headline: ^Baby sleep interventions are ‘safe’ and important in stopping infant insomnia -
Pediatric sleep experts recommend controlled crying and 'cry it out' options^

www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/974138

I clicked through to the actual research, which is here (only the abstract, you need to pay for the full paper): www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022347622010009

The reason I am posting this is because I believe the more informed we are, the more confident we can be in our choices as parents. I hope it helps someone.

Sounds all about the parents, their sleep their bonding, their depression- not about anything long term on the baby. I'd want more evidence than that if I was to do it

Parents completed online questionnaires regarding their infant's sleep, their own sleep, daytime sleepiness, depression levels, and parent-infant bonding. Infant sleep was assessed via objective– albeit exploratory– auto-videosomnography data obtained from the 14-days prior to survey completion.
Oh please, absolutely no study into the things that actually matter here, just how long they’re sleeping. No monitoring of cortisone levels, stress, long term development etc.

No evidence of harm and evidence of no harm are very different things.

I don't think that's the same @Kindofcrunchy not everyone can bf. I do but would rather give formulate than let my baby CIO. I really think it is selfish parents who do that in most circumstances.

It looks like that study was largely self-reported - which is massively problematic, no parent is objectively going to say that they felt they'd damaged their own child - and also that it looked for immediate signs of "damage" - no brain scans/nothing on future brain development, which is the usual criticism of sleep training in any form.

There's also nothing to confirm that the children that were sleep trained didn't wake just as much as the others, from a quick skimread.

From someone who would selfishly love sleep training to be safe, because I am TIRED - this proves nothing at all.

Yeah I would use this study as a green light to say it’s safe at all.

I already knew it was safe, all 3 of my dc were sleep trained at 6 months. Now 32, 27 and 14 years of age, they are healthy happy well adjusted people - who love their sleep! 😁
What I do remember was how much more content they were once they were sleeping through, and they seemed to eat better too.

Formula is safe when used correctly. Nobody should feel any guilt for feeding their child.

Wouldn’t obviously!!

If you ignore the obvious methodological flaws (parents are hardly going to report that they are less bonded with their infant after using sleep training methods for example)

The most interesting part of this study is that while ‘unmodified extinction’ which we should remember is literally walking out, shutting the door and leaving the baby to scream and ‘modified extinction’ ie more traditional controlled crying did improve infant sleep, they made no difference to parent outcomes such as sleep, depression etc. Surely most parents who use or consider these methods do so because they want more sleep and this suggests that they apparently don’t work.

There is no study of medium or long term outcomes so we still don’t know if sleep training is ‘safe’ or even effective over time.

Neither would I but I did sleep train my DC when they were babies.

And neither should anyone feel guilty for sleep training.

Indeed, it's based on self reported questionnaires. It's not really answering what you think it is @LapinR0se

Formula is still milk which nature designed for calves, though.

I can access the whole study. It doesn't prove much at all.

The only thing this research proves is that Nanit user parents who sleep trained didn’t feel less bonded to their baby, and absolutely nothing about the baby bonding to the parent.

Is there a way of measuring how bonded a baby feels to its parent?

I’ve also read the entire study. Self-reported studies aren’t very well respected in science. I don’t believe the results - but then I also don’t believe in sleep training. It might work, but I think it’s cruel. People can argue the toss all they like, if you feel it’s cruel, you feel it’s cruel and you won’t do it.
All babies sleep through eventually

We tried it with our first son at 4 months. We put him down in the cot and closed the door.

He cried.

DH set an alarm for 10 minutes. He was still crying when the alarm went off. We walked slowly up the stairs and, just as DH put his hand on the door handle, he stopped crying, rolled over and went to sleep. He slept for 12 hours straight.

The next night he cried for a couple of minutes and slept right through.

After that, he'd stopped crying by the time his door was closed.

He's slept 12 hours every night since then, except when poorly.

Our second son is exactly the same, but didn't even cry for ten minutes on the first night.

I really can't see how ten minutes of crying is going to have any negative long term consequences.

I think when people hear “sleep training” they assume you have left your baby to cry themselves for a length of time.

Much of the time it does mean that, in my experience.

Not mine nor anyone I know in real life, it’s about creating the optimum sleep environment.