Controlled crying- seemed to have made things worse

[Darklava09]

Our DS2 is 16 months and sleep over the past few months has been difficult. Still like to be rocked to sleep etc and bedtimes was taking hours to settle despite being tired- mainly overtired!

over Xmas decided to do controlled crying. Went like

day 1- 20 mins
day 2- 10 mins
day 3- 2 mins
day 4- 90mins
day 5- fell asleep on me watching tv
day 6- asleep on me again whilst winding down

the 2 days he fell asleep on me he slept through. The first time ever in his life so I thought actually without all the crying and hysterics maybe he will be ok to be able to be put to sleep on us first and then transitioned over.

now when we try and put him down when asleep he wakes as soon as he is put in his cot. No matter how asleep he looks or is as soon as his head touches the cot he wakes but yet is fine if he is lay down in our bed. Night 3 and he is refusing to go down in his own bed.

every nap now he will not sleep in his cot and is doing the same- waking as soon as he is put down. When napping today we tried to just leave him when he was grizzling- turned into full hysterics and would not settle despite being tired. DP blames controlled crying saying it’s ruined his routine and made it worse.

I feel like he’s got a negative association with his cot now and do not understand why/how he knows the difference between being placed in his cot and our bed.

not sure where to go now and what to try. Any advice. DS1 was an amazing sleeper so not had this before. DS2 also suffered a lot with reflux and allergies so needed a lot of comfort through the nights.

advice for a tired and worn down mommy! :(

do not understand why/how he knows the difference between being placed in his cot and our bed they will feel completely different!

If he sleeps in your bed, is this not the solution?

@watchfulwishes not long term. He’s too big and wriggly for the 3 of us to fit in. We often get a foot or a smack in the face which isn’t ideal in the middle of the night.

He’s stressed and panicked. Controlled crying is ok if it works very very quickly but usually it’s distressing for parent and child.
They eventually work out you aren’t coming back and go to sleep so it will ‘work’ in the end.

Perhaps try moving your day back an hour. Waking up, nap time etc and then lots of physical activity in the afternoon. Catch the tiredness before they become over tired.

I’ve never had a child who settles easily at night so I know it’s tedious but I’m not a fan of leaving a child to cry. There’s lots to try. Whilst you’re trying they often just outgrow the phase.

You let him cry for 90 minutes? In his cot? And now wonder why he has a negative association with it?

This.

Controlled crying goes two ways:

Baby gives up trying, because s/he learns that adults don't come. Baby goes quiet.

Baby gets more upset with being left and gets anxiety problems.

Both are very good reasons why 'controlled crying' is a bad strategy. Both affect brain development and have long lasting effects.
Always respond to your baby.

thats a very long time to leave a child distressed. He must have felt very helpless. Even if you do not agree with the reason he is crying, he is crying for a reason and you basically told him (by leaving him so long) that his needs were not important and you were not going to respond to them.

not a fan of this controlled crying. I would say any more than 5 minutes is very unkind to a distressed child who is unable to meet his own needs.

For me the solution was to sleep apart from DH for a while. The baby wanted to sleep in bed with us and there wasn’t room for 3 in our bed. So we put a double in the baby’s room and I slept in there with him for about a year until he was ready to be put to bed on his own without crying.

I admit it wasn’t ideal sleeping apart from my DH. But we had reached the point where we were so desperate for sleep that we were willing to sacrifice sleeping together for the ability to actually get some sleep. And now DS is older it’s handy that he has a double bed, because we can get under the duvet to read together and if he’s sick someone can sleep with him to look after him.

Co-sleep with baby in your bad (bed guard on DH side) and DH sleeps elsewhere (single bed in nursery?) until DS is older and you can try transitioning into a bed in his room.

I tried sleep training very briefly (gradual retreat) and it was a total disaster, if you have a child that needs a lot of physical reassurance to sleep well then you just do I think. Its not anything you've done/not done it's just their personality. It's not ideal and I would have preferred not to co-sleep but everything else just cause everyone to be upset and exhausted!

In the grand scheme of things it's for such a short period of time, I'd just do whatever gets you all some sleep!

DP blames controlled crying saying it’s ruined his routine and made it worse.

DP is correct. I agree with prior posters too that controlled crying is awful. I also think “sleep training” is selling false hope to knackered parents. You cannot sleep train a baby/toddler.

So the 20-90mins of leaving him to cry himself to sleep will have ruptured the trust he had in you both as caregivers. You will need to earn back his trust by responding promptly to his cries. He is also going to be clingy and this episode will push his independence back. The cot is now a trigger for the trauma, you might as well get rid of it. See if you can get some sort of side car bed to place beside your bed or a child safe double bed for you/dad to take turns sharing with him in his room.

@ttcnumber2x He wasn’t left to cry for a whole 90 mins. He was grizzling then if he wouldn’t settle after a few mins I’d go in and reassure him, cuddle, lay back down, leave the room and repeat… this went on for 90 mins. He was t crying the whole time at all.

and for the poster who said something along the lines of respond always. The issue is I do and probably quicker than most because as soon as he rouses I’ve always jumped in and picked him, rocked, shushed him and now he’s so reliant on that. His attachment to me is so strong that he hates going to anyone else.

@Sunshinegirl82 we was thinking of getting a floor bed in his room and transitioning him into that. That way it’s a new space similar to ours which allows easier access to him if he wakes and once he’s asleep.

Lot of utter tosh on this thread as per any thread about controlled crying. What you are doing will have no effect on your baby's development or trust of you at all. What will definitely affect a baby's development however is poor quality/broken or not enough sleep.

However it sounds like you messed up by letting him fall asleep on you for two nights in a row before you had really got the self-soothing established. As you've identified, he's become reliant on you soothing him every time he can't get to sleep immediately and controlled crying can allow him to learn to self soothe.

And controlled crying does work if the child is old enough. I did it in 4 nights with my non-sleeper and both his and our sleep became so much better along with his daytime moods etc.

However I think you LO needed a bit longer and the falling asleep on you probably messed it up so he now will not sleep in his cot.

I'd start again. Get into a really good routine with it, bath, book, bed etc etc. at same time every night. Always in cot. Stick with it. Don't let him fall asleep on you until you've really got him established.

@TooHotToRamble thank you for your advice.

on the nights we did do it, when he did rouse I didn’t immediately go up to him and he was gurgling away and then fell back to sleep after 2-3mins.

the days he slept through though his moods the following day was so much better he was so bright and happy the difference was shocking.

i agree with him falling asleep on me has probably took it back as it’s not consistent. What did you do about naps? We was just focusing on night time sleep before tackling naps? reason being is we both work full time and when we’re not here his Nan would have to get him off to sleep or the nursery and they both help him to sleep which I don’t mind.

With my DS1 he just was put in his cot from a young age and he would drift off whereas ds2 is not like that at all and needs the help with white noise etc.

Settle to sleep him in your bed and then go and sleep in another bed and leave him sleeping in your bed. That’s what I did. No need to bother with a bed guard but I did remove the pillows until age two.

@Orangesare I’d have to put something on the sides as he’s rolled off the edge once and I’ve found him half hanging out a number of times as he’s a right fidget in his sleep.

thwre isn’t really anywhere else to sleep unless we put a mattress on the floor in his room but if I’m doing that I may aswell get him a floor bed.

@TooHotToRamble

Sorry, but you’re peddling outdated advice from a century old method proven to be harmful.

OP, please read this 2022 up to date article which has the current advice of 6 Consultant Doctors:

www.bellybelly.com.au/baby-sleep/cry-it-out/

as well as this article
www.bellybelly.com.au/baby-sleep/controlled-crying/

This website is totally biased towards "gentle"parenting etc... which is fine for some.
Stating that controlled crying create damage in babies and affects bonding and attachment is pretty bold because it is extremely difficult to measure. How can you measure impact of CC in the short and long term? There are so many other factors involved that singling out only how a child goes to sleep is just not enough. This is why you can probably find studies that contradict each other about that.
Measuring cortisol levels is one thing but how do you make the link to temporarily elevated cortisol levels and "damage"? When a toddler has a tantrum because they don't get what they want, is this damaging too?

Yes it’s biased towards what actual experts advise, which is hardly a bad thing.

Doctor Margot Sunderland is the Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health in London. She’s also:
An Honorary Visiting Fellow at London Metropolitan University
An Associate Member of the Royal College of Medicine
A Child Psychotherapist with over 30 years’ experience of working with children and families.
Sunderland is also the author of over 20 books in the field of child mental health, including the best-selling book, ‘What Every Parent Needs to Know‘

Professor James McKenna
Professor James McKenna is the Endowed Chair in Anthropology and the Director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame.

He’s a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been a member of many medical advisory boards.

During 30 years of work dedicated to mother-baby sleep, Professor McKenna has published over 139 scientific articles in journals on co-sleeping, breastfeeding, evolutionary medicine, and SIDS.

He lectures not only to parents, but pediatric groups, and has published a book for parents, Sleeping With Your Baby.

Dr. Howard Chilton, MBBS, MRCP (UK), DCH
Doctor Howard Chilton is a Consultant Neonatologist at the Prince of Wales Private Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney. He also has books published, including Baby on Board.

Professor Helen Ball Ph.D., MA, BSc.
Professor Helen Ball is a Professor of Anthropology and Head of Department, as well as the Director of Parent-Infant Sleep Lab (established in 2000) at Durham University.

She pioneered the translation of academic research on infant sleep into evidence for use by parents and healthcare staff via ISIS, the Infant Sleep Information Source website.

Tracy Cassels PhD
Tracy Cassels has a Masters in Clinical Psychology and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology. She also has a background in research and statistics, so she well understands what research is telling us — and she even teaches it. Tracy’s academic works have been published in many peer-reviewed journals, including Psychological Assessment, PLoS One, Personality, and Individual Differences, Midwifery, and more.

Dr. Frans Plooij Ph.D
Doctor Frans Plooij, Ph.D., is the president of the International Research-institute on Infant Studies (IRIS) at Arnhem (the Netherlands).

Dr. Plooij has served as Vice President for Information of the International Society for Human Ethology, and Vice President of the Institut European pour le Développement de tout les Enfants (IEDPE). He is on the editorial board of the journal Ethology and Sociobiology, and is a member of the panel of assessors of the Journal of Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

This

I would suggest you do wider reading on CC

Repeated maternal non-responsiveness to baby's crying during postpartum and infant neuropsychological development: The Japan Environment and Children’s Study, May 2022
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213422001016
“The “sometimes or more” group of “ignoring the crying baby” from six months to three years reported relatively consistent significant associations with developmental delay in communication (maximum adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 1.456, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.261–1.682), gross motor (maximum aOR: 1.279, 95% CI: 1.159–1.411), fine motor (maximum aOR: 1.274, 95% CI: 1.113–1.457), problem-solving (maximum aOR: 1.178, 95% CI: 1.104–1.256), and personal-social domains (maximum aOR: 1.326, 95% CI: 1.255–1.402). The adverse effects of “leaving the baby alone at home” disappeared in many domains by the age of one.”

OP I don’t have the answer for you, but the replies are maybe getting a bit removed from your actual situation. If your baby is up all hours of the night, distressed and won’t settle, then that is not good for them or you. Ignoring your baby for hours on end wouldn’t be good for them either but that’s not what you’re proposing to do.

I think you have to make a judgment about your baby and family to decide whether a long term co-sleeping approach is realistic for you, or a more structured approach that leads to earlier independent sleep. The fact that you’re agonising over this shows how much you care about your baby, and as you say their attachment to you isn’t solely based on this one thing.

Good luck from another sleep deprived mum xx

Hi, I’ve not done the controlled crying with mine but she also wouldn’t settle unless she was being cuddled. We transitioned her to a toddler bed at 14 months and then we lay on a pillow next to her bed so she fell asleep next to us but not transferring was needed. Game changer for us.
It might not be the right next age for you, but could be something to consider. If the bed is low enough to the ground or a mattress on the floor then there’s no risk of falling.

@Sixofseven we’re considering taking the side off his cot as it’s quite a low cot bed which is half the issue as it’s such a long way down when we’re transferring. it’s quite low to the floor but still not sure if it would be ok for him. Might look into a bed guard.

@Darklava09 ours was a cot bed which you could transform into a toddler bed. When we took off all the bits and made it a toddler bed it was much lower to the ground than we expected. Then we put two big pillows next to it in case she rolled out, which she did. She often didn’t even wake up though! So we’d roll her back in and tuck her in before we went to bed.