Is anyone out there PRO controlled crying please????

[gd1976]

I have been advised by my HV to do controlled crying. My 6 mth old wakes every 45 mins sometimes more, somtimes less in the night. Having spent weeks ruling out all the usual things- hunger, cold, hot, dirty nappy, wind etc. we think he just wants us to go in and put the dummy in. He often sleeps without a dummy but in the night if we go into him when he starts crying and put the dummy in he goes straight back to sleep.
I would like to try controlled crying, but having done some research on mumsnet it seems everyone is very against this and seems to think it will have a lasting pyscological effect!
I would be grateful for some advice...

gd, we did controlled crying with DS when he was 8 mths old - his sleeping had been getting worse and worse, we co-slept for a while but even that had stopped working.

I was very dubious and reluctant to do it, but the night we decided to go for it was the night we found out I was pg again! Desperate times call for desperate measures!

First night 1 hr and then he went to sleep, 2nd night, 45 mins - he's slept 7pm til 6.30am ever since (except for bashing himself on the cot but that's another thread!).

We went in every 5 mins to reassure him he hadn't been abandoned and that we were there, but it was time for sleep.

It doesn't work for every baby though - quite a few mums on my post-natal thread have been trying it over the last few weeks with varying success, and some 2nd time mums have said that it has worked for one of their DCs and not the other.

I think part of the bad press with CC is that some people get it confused with 'crying it out' which is a whole different ball game (basically put your LO in cot, walk out, shut door, and ignore until they sleep ). That, IMO, is very cruel .

I did it with DD for my own sanity as she was a terrible sleeper and it worked wonderfully. We had a couple of nights where I felt awful but stuck to it and by night 3 or 4, it was starting to work, There was no hard crying, just grumbling and it never took longer then 15 mins.

Go with what timings you're comfortable with. I did 3mins, 5mins, 10mins, 15mins so on. We hardly ever had to go beyond 10mins.

Not long after doing it, she slept through and it also sorted her daytime naps (after a while).

Be consistant and strong with it. If you cave in, the crying will have been for nothing and you will feel worse.

Good luck!

This worked for us with DS when he was 13 months.
In that time we had tried everything else.He woke several times every night.
We decided to move him to his own room and only left him for 5 mins at a time.
It took 40 mins of 5 mins intervals the first night,the second night was awful and we spent most of the night going to him every 5 mins.
The third night he slept through 7 til 7 and has done since Christmas with the exception of maybe two or three nights of waking once,grumbling a little then dropping back off.
We were amazed at how well it worked TBH He is a much happier little boy .

Hi. We did this with DD around the 6 month mark and within three nights we were all sorted and bedtime was a dream from then on. DH was stronger than me (he'd done it with his older kids) but now I know it works I'll be prepared to do it with DS should we feel it's necessary. We would find that after illness or disturbed nights from teething we might have to reprise it briefly but it was nothing like the first time and she seemed to remember pdq what it was all about.

DS (only 15 weeks, bit wee yet!) has been buggering about a bit at bedtime last few nights and I've been rushing in with boob several times before 9pm. Tonight though, having already gone in once after bedtime to feed him, I thought 'this is silly' when he woke again. I wanted to read DD a bedtime story so I just opened his door, said a few reassuring things from the doorway and went in to DD's room, door also open. He cried for a few mins but he must have been able to hear the story, and by the time I was three or four pages in he'd gone to sleep. If we do need to use CC with him I know there's a chance it might not work - I've been surprised just how different two children can be - but IME you can tell within three nights if it's making any difference.

Good luck!

I did CC with me DD, but she was much older at 20 months old and we had tried many other things that were not as traumatic as CC.

I personally wouldn't think of using CC with a child under a year old and would probably wait until they were capable of being told and to understand what was happening and why.

6 months is IMO way too young and I don't tink a professional shoud be advocating such a method at this point.

I have just moved my 6 month DS into his own room. I have had 4 nights of sleep, by which I mean more than 3 hrs in total a night, since October 7th.
I spent the first night asleep on the spare bed with Ds from 3am.
DH has gona away for a few days so I am taking the opportunity to sort of CC DS.
The second night I got tough, spent 2hrs up and down and only managed 4 hours of broken sleep.
Last night. BF DS at 1am then put him down and he slept through until 5ish.
That is a real result in this house.
We have 2 older DD's, so I was worried about waking them up. But so far they have slept through the noise. Not that there has been alot of noise so it hasnt been too bad.
Very sad to listen to your baby cry when you know all you have to do is pick them up.
I had to do something as I keep nearly crashing the car, my legs are like jelly most days all because I am absolutely exhausted.
Good luck and keep with it. Sleep is so important to everyone.

after 10 months of waking every night with our first child we resorted to controlled crying. our son cried for 2 nights up until 25 mins the first night then 20mins the second night. he has slept through since then unless he's teething. i would recommend controlled crying and don't think it is cruel if you have exhausted all other possibilities and are exhausted yourself and are thrying to get a good nights sleep after almost a year without it. 2 nights of crying isn't going to harm my child i would say he's happier now and we all sleep a million times better. I'm still tired though!

I think everyone that tries CC does it because they're very sleep deprived, and their child doesn't know how to self settle. My opinion is that in these cases- when there are sleep association issues, like dummy dependence in your case- doing a version of CC that feels comfortable to you can be a life saver. As for it being 'damaging'- well I think if it's done properly it cannot really be damaging. By 'properly' I mean the parents doing it step by step, to a level that feels comfortable to them, & being able to follow through (because it's very easy to backtrack, in which case it'll become even harder next time).

My own experience was similar to yours. DS had a dummy dependence problem which only got worse & worse. He is now 9 months, but until 2-3 weeks ago he was basically waking every hour, crying for his dummy. We would replug it & he would fall asleep again. The situation had got so bad that both DP & I were dreading bedtime every night, & were close to depression (and desperation!) Finally we made the decision to ditch the dummy, & do it cold turkey:

--the first night DS cried on & off for an hour, with me mostly with him sh-sh-shing him & patting him.
--Second night 40 mins with me going in every 5 mins or so
--Third night 20 mins
--Fourth night he just rolled over & slept!

I also want to add that he stopped waking in the night (for his dummy but even for milk) from the 2nd-3rd night. Since then he's basically sleeping through, we sometimes hear him babbling away to himself but then he self settles.

This was such a big change in our lives that I can't quite believe it myself. I felt so down, so tired, so desperate; as for DS he was cranky & always seemed slightly tired, & now he actually seems much happier. Basically he's sleeping SO MUCH better & I really dare anyone to say how that cannot be better for him (and of course for us).

I won't pretend that CC is an easy option. It's not. It can be hard at moments. But for us it was much easier than we had thought, we never got much crying at all, and most of the crying was a 'self-settling' kind of crying, more 'on & off' than full blown screaming.

Anyway. When I hear people saying they're 'against CC' I usually think 'well they haven't been sleep deprived enough'. If they had been they would rethink their views IMO. And if not, I really am seriously curious what is the benefit of a whole family being so sleep deprived they can't think straight? Isn't that far more damaging, in the long run, to the whole family's health (mental & physical)?

Believe me it will not scar your child for life! I have done it with dd1 from 2mths, she took 4 nights before sleeping 2230-0700 and has been fab ever since. DD2 I listened to the ladies on hear and wondered if I was being too harsh, didn't do it until I was desperate when she was 8.5mth. 1 week later she slept 7-7. Both are happy,confident children who sleep well.

Just do it IMO
Well rested children learn far better. I can always tell children who don't sleep well, they tend to be the ones constantly crying/tantrumming all afternoon, or school age ones with poor concentration/ not listening.

I did it at 9 months with my ds, I was completely exhausted and everything was such hard work. It worked after about 3 nights, I wish I had done it several months earlier.

My son now sleeps like a dream, (well until 6.30 ), there was certainly no lasting damage!

FWIW cc is far less damaging for babies under 1yr than over 1yr because they don't have a long enough memory. Children over the 1yr mark are more likely to have negative associations because they remember crying in bed.

TBH, with ds, it was me or him at the point we tried it. I was in pieces due to PND and him waking every hour in the night.

So tried it. First night. 15 mins. Me going in each five mins. God I was all over the shop in tears.(him and me on either side of door)

Second Night. 5 mins. Still in tears (him and me)

Third night 2 mins.(him) Then silence. Blimey. Then silence all night long.

Had tortured myself for so long. Life ain't perfect. If it works it works. It saved my sanity and ds is fine (and he can tell his therapist all about it if he isn't).

Life is full of compromise. We cannot possibly do everything the way we are 'supposed" to do all the time. we muddle along and try.

As worldsworstmummy says 'life ain't perfect'. Very true... For months I tortured myself (and my DP) trying to do what I thought was best, co-sleeping (which didn't help, we still woke), keeping DS's dummy, working on other aspects of his daily routine hoping in vain that our sleep problem would resolve itself. Well actually it only got worse & worse. I couldn't STAND the idea of letting DS cry, & I was dead against the idea of taking away his dummy, thinking 'well we gave it to him, we can't take it away, its his' etc.

Some months down the line & LOADS of sleepless nights down the line, things just changed & DP & I realized that at some point you either take steps to teach your child to self settle or you don't & live with sleepless nights for the indefinite future. I am simply not convinced by the argument that babies outgrow this. I've heard of too many stories of insomniac toddlers & children. In any case, for us ditching the dummy & doing it cold turkey (which did involve some crying, of course) was by far the best thing we've done, it saved our sanity, it helped our relationship, it made DS happier & calmer, it made us feel more energetic & happy in the day etc. I could go on.

If I have a second child I think I'll be very careful with sleep associations from the start- when I say from the start I don't mean under 3 months. But things like a dummy, I wouldn't use with another baby, I simply think it can go so very wrong. (But then never say never when it comes to parenthood!!)

I have a CC question. At the moment I either bf my 7.5 month old ds back to sleep, or my DH or I pick him up and rock him till he's settled before (attempting) to put him back in his cot. On bad nights he's awake every 1 to 2 hours till I give up at 2ish and he sleeps perfecly next to us. My DH is taking over a little more but I want to know how to calm ds without picking him up. If we go in a place a hand on him he pushes it away when he realises we're not picking him up, likewise with shhhing and talking. I give up too easily because it feels hopeless going in at all if it only makes him cross, but I obviously can't leave him screaming for ages. I have another ds so lack of sleep is beginning to grind me down, but it's also why I give in and bring him into our bed, at least we all get some sort of sleep then!

Strike1, really sorry to hear you're having such a bad time with sleep. DP, DS & I were the same. DS used to be (until this previous month) such a bad sleeper that every single night he ended up in our bed. TBH for the first 6 months we co-slept which was a choice, but after that it gradually became a necessity, just to get some sleep!

To be honest, in your situation there's no easy answer I'm afraid. Your DS has a sleep association issue. He's used to being bf to sleep, or rocked to sleep. Which means he's of course not going to like it if you try to change his habit / pattern (no one, adult or child, easily takes to big changes like that, and how someone sleeps is a big change!) I'm afraid there's not much I can offer. You can do one of 3 things:

1. co-sleep
2. try the gradual retreat method (I think it may be a good option for you) or the Pick up / Put down method. These options may involve a bit of crying as well
3. do a gradual controlled crying which might give quicker results

You can do whatever feels more comfortable to you, but I don't think there's an easy way to calm your DS down without actually making a plan & sticking to it...

Really hope things get better soon

I am. I did it at 8.5 months following practically no sleep that entire time. Took 3 nights and was a god send. I was planning to go back to work at 10 months and I really couldn't function on the odd cat nap. Ds would go to sleep at 7pm, wake up at 8pm, go back to sleep about 9pm, wake up at 11pm, go back to sleep at 12am, wake at 1.30pm and then stay awake until 5am. Every night, no matter what I tried to do to change it. Should add that I'm a lone parent so I had to deal with this every night on my own.

I didn't leave him for long when I did controlled crying but I did leave him and then went in, no eye contact etc. Gradually left it longer and I was amazed on the fourth night he slept through for the first time since a one off when he was 6 weeks old.

Lots of people I know were against controlled crying but I am so glad I did it as I recovered my life and had some sanity.

Ds is nearly 5 and no long term effects at all.

I am 6 days into a CC plan with my DD, I just wondered if anyone had any words of support/advice. She is 8.5 months and we started this last week as her sleeping had reached the point where I was going a bit crazy - awake 5-6 times in the night, many times in the early evening, multiple feedings and hours of shushing, rocking, patting etc - you know the drill!

Well it is working very well - last night I went to bed early and apart from sneaking into her room twice in a paranoid, is-she-still-breathing kind of way, I had 8 hours of consecutive sleep time which is the first time since I was pregnant. It feels very good.

But I still feel terrible about the way she got to sleep in the first place. I hear most people saying CC works in 3 days. When I first put her down at 7, she cried really loudly until about 7.45, obviously I went in at intervals but it breaks my heart to see her so upset. Do you think she will come to accept it soon? Or will it always feel so cruel to put her in bed? Her daytime nap is excellent now - not a yelp of protest. I just feel awful but don't want to crack - that happened once before and was back to square one!

Sorry for the ramble - basically what I'm asking is: does anyone have experience of CC taking longer than 3 days to work? Thanks! Anna

Anyone doing CC at the moment? Would be really happy to hear someone else is having the same hellish guilt and torturous 'worst-mum-in-the-world' type feelings as I am (oh dear that didn't come out right!!)... Anybody...?!

I'm not doing CC at the mo, but have done it with my now 2 1/2 yr old. He was 8 months old and would only sleep at night between feeds if he was held. If I dared to put him back in his cot after a feed (asleep) he would wake after 40mins and I would either feed again or rock to sleep. I was exhausted and i'm horrified to admit was not enjoying being a Mum. I was ill, my husband and I were struggling in our relationship and the baby was unhappy. Things felt really bad.

A friend suggested controlled crying and after a few weeks of more sleepless nights wondering if it was the right thing to do... was it cruel etc.. I decided enought was enough. I'll not go into detail about the approach I took, but it did work and fast. I cried for longer than the baby the first night. He slept through the night right from the first night. My issue was with day time naps. He didn't seem to get the idea as quickly (it went on for weeks). Night times weren't so bad as I at least could be sure he was tired etc.

My advice (if anyone is interested) is decide what your rules are and then stick to it. Don't give in on a difficult day otherwise you have put yourself and the baby through a whole lot of stress for nothing.

My toddler still sleeps well. He finds his cot a happy cosy place to be. I still put him down for a nap after lunch for an hour. If he decides he is not tired enough he sings and chats instead.

Have got an 8 wk old baby. Fingers crossed he doesn't get into the same bad habits, but if he does I wouldn't hesitate to sleep train again.

I did cc with ds at nearly 7 months. He was waking almost hourly in the night and needed me to settle him, often with a bf to get him back to sleep. I think by bf him or by cuddling him to sleep I was giving him a sleep cue that made him dependant on me to get off to sleep meaning every time he stirred in the night he needed me to help him sleep again.

The cc was the only way to teach him how to get to sleep by himself. It wasn't that bad. Just let cry for a few minutes, go in to show you're nearby, then leave cry for a few more mins leaving the gaps longer and longer between visits. It is horrible to hear your baby cry but for us it only lasted one night, total 45 mins and then he slept through the rest of the night and has been a good sleeper ever since (except when ill).

It took dd2 longer than dd1 because dd1 started settling herself from 6wks where as dd2 had me feeding her to sleep in the core night if she woke at 6mths. I tried water instead which didn't help. Tried shushing with no results, patting ditto and both together didn't work. Went back to swaddling and CC which worked after about 1 wk. Now she is 13mths and only wakes if ill/teething. She likes her bed so much that if I say 'are you tired, do you want to sleep?' she rubs her eyes and points towards the stairs! So definately no bad associations!

annatee, how are you getting on??? your pre-cc situation sounds very similar to mine and i'm thinking of trying it.

Just had to post on this thread to tell you all about the past week. After 11 months of no sleep, I was truly at my wit's end - although DS would go to sleep on his own quite happily, he would wake anywhere from 2 to 6 times a night for BF. I knew he didn't need the milk any more, but was just after the comfort. I desperately didn't want to deny him comfort and knew that there wasn't anything 'wrong' with this behaviour - he's perfectly normal.

However, it got to the stage where I was starting to get annoyed with him (clearly not his fault!!) and resent getting up etc. I'm also desperate to give up BFing and the whole situation was making me really miserable. I've tried the NCSS but couldn't make it work for us.

So, last Friday, DH and I took the plunge with CC. DH did the hard bits - i.e. going in and seeing the crying child. He reassured me that DS was fine all the time and I told him how well he was doing. DS was up for 2hrs 20 mins but that was it for the night. I felt awful, even without seeing him.

So, on Saturday we prepared ourselves for another crying session... but it never came! He slept from 7.30pm until 6am and has done every night since!! He has never ever done this before!

I am certain this was the right thing to do and all three of us are so much happier as the result of a good night's sleep. I really didn't want to do it, but I now realise that sometimes you have to make decisions about what will ultimately be best for your DCs and this was.

what are the 'long term' effects of CC supposed to be??

i have used this method with my dc and haven't noticed anything 'odd' about them just wondered what they are?

Sorry to have disappeared! Good things to report here as well though, which is why I haven't felt the need to (obsessively!) visit the sleep forum so often!!

CC worked a treat for us as well, although not as quickly as for you Wibbly! That sounds great. But I also was convinced feeding was a habit with my DD, she is a total tubster so def not needing more nutrition - I used BF 3-4 times a night, while co-sleeping and totally knackered, in a desperate attempt to get her to go back to sleep.

Those memories have faded so quickly! After a week (totally heart-wrenching, don't get me wrong, but I just focused on the crippling tiredness we were trying to ease) she has gone from waking up nearly every hour to sleeping from 7 (tonight she's gone to sleep at 6.40 after a short moan) til 6/6.30 am, sometimes later. It is a little miracle for me, I am definitely a changed woman!

It was hard, and she still has a crying session every so often. But I understand now that she didn't have the skill of self-soothing, and now (although I know we have forced her to learn this) I know that she can get herself to sleep when everything is ok around her. It is such a relief. Good luck with it!