Have just let my baby to cry it out. He was on his playmat, feeling VERY frustrated that he wasn't able to crawl as quickly as he would like. I was mumsnetting & got carried away reading through this debate. Consequently, I didn't respond to his frustrated crying for eeeerrrr.... a few minutes .
That was a joke. Before you jump on me.
Anyway. First of all, I felt really disgusted by some posts here such as 'poor poor baby'. Well I have to say 'poor poor Elli' for having to read through all this hysterical stuff. I have to say, the thread got interesting after a certain point (at least interesting to me)...but at the beginning the whole thing was ridiculous. The poor woman was trying to find a way to get her baby to sleep. We've all been there. We haven't all necessarily tried crying methods... but for god's sake, she's a sleep deprived mother, deserves everyone's support, regardless of whether she co-sleeps & bfs on demand or does sleep training. It's not as if sleep training has anything to do with the romanian orphans (again, ridiculous to even mention the two things in the context of the same thread).
Someone was asking about the Weissbluth book, if anyone has actually read it. Me, me, me: being the bookworm I am, I've read it (have also read NCSS by Pantley). I think Weissbluth's book has been misinterpreted in this thread (again part of the hysteria again CIO found here). His book has loads of interesting info on sleep. In my opinion, its badly structured & basically badly written- has way too much info & it's impossible to find the useful bits esp. as a sleep deprived mum. He does advocate cry it out (and, I think, he advocates an extreme form of it, basically close the door & leave the baby to cry for however long it takes). But he also suggests all sorts of other methods too, & certainly doesn't just say 'ok CIO is THE method'; rather, he believes CIO is a necessary option in SOME cases, usually the hardest to crack ones.
Anyway. Personally I haven't & couldn't & wouldn't let my 6 month old cry. For many reasons. NONE of them have to do with believing that will damage him. I simply do not buy it, not by any stretch of the imagination, that it causes damage to leave a much loved & well cared for baby to cry for specific amounts of time (well obviously not all day & all night, as then we're moving to romanian orphan territory) There simply isn't & couldn't be any research that could prove that kind of thing. I'm talking about normal, everyday families here, not extreme situations such as the orphans in Romania. How could you prove such a thing? Hhhmm?? Please do show us the research. No research to show? Interesting. Because there isn't any. And by the way, there is, I know, lots of attachment theory research that talks about cortisol levels etc. They're mostly based on animal studies (IMO not relevant for human babies). They're also largely ideology & much less science. Again, I don't believe any science could ever convince me that ONE THING (leaving a baby to cry for a few nights) can damage a child, with long lasting effects, when this child is otherwise loved, cared for etc. Really, I find the whole idea completely ridiculous, it's very naive to isolate one thing from the whole complex thing that is family life & to talk about longlasting damage. The one thing we do know is that the baby obviously doesn't have fun when he/she is crying. (Which is one of the reasons why I don't do it, I don't believe in permanent damage because of sleep training, but I don't want my 6 month old to be unhappy now, if I can prevent it in any way). Making the leap from a baby being unhappy now to the baby having long lasting damage is pure ideology (and hysteria) and has nothing to do with science or even with rationality. Again, before you all jump on me, I'm talking about sleep training, which means crying for a few nights. I'm NOT talking about leaving a baby neglected (in various ways, including crying) for months on end.