Sleep training

Like I said, do your reading up and reach your own conclusions (unless you're a scientist yourself!) IMO there's no right or wrong way to do it (Though obviously some things are beyond the pale) Personally I can't stand the 'it didn't do us/them/me any harm way of thinking about it without doing research, and for me personally my problem with crying it out isn't just about chemicals in the brain, I don't want to leave my baby to cry for a couple of evenings so that they get to the point where they stop crying because they know no-one's going to come to them.

As I said, other parents read the research and reach different opinions to mine? That's just fine.

n/a, did you decide what to do, did you have another crack at it this weekend?

no. i think my wife is going to take her to her mom's house next week. btw she checked out the newest edition of Ferber's book, and the whole intro is about how he thinks he has a bad rep as the "cry it out" guy, and what he really believes in is "controlled crying," which doesn't really sound that different from the no-cry methods we read about. also he says he regrets not writing more about co-sleeping in the past.

she'll come home all set.

Fingers crossed here that she will.

I agree that Ferber was portrayed as the bad guy, from what I've read he definitely doesn't recommend the traditional cry it out method, I feel quite sorry for him really.

Did you read any co-sleeping books beforehand? I didn't really co-sleep with A, he slept in the moses basket next to the bed though he did often end up staying in the bed with us. I'm thinking that it would probably be safer to do it properly this time and need to find a good book or two to read...

"I don't want to leave my baby to cry for a couple of evenings so that they get to the point where they stop crying because they know no-one's going to come to them."

I'm more into my baby learning to sooth themselves to sleep so my wife and I aren't waking up every two hours to reassure him. Feel like both of us are better parents when we aren't exhausted.

"As I said, other parents read the research and reach different opinions to mine?"

What research exactly are you talking about? I've read a bit on this and I don't believe there are any studies which indicate that controlled crying/CIO sleep-training/sleep-scheduling cause "brain damage" or whatever nonsense baby fear mongers are been pedaling this week (look closely at any of the research papers cited for example by Dr Sears and you'll find every one of them basically address either a) babies who experience severe trauma and neglect or b) babies who are already on the extreme end of fussy/crying). The only study I've heard actually on this subject at all is one done in Australia recently which basically concluded that controlled crying results in better rested infants and saner parents.

Right, crying it out is not the same as controlled crying and all the other methods out there. Crying it out is closing the door on your LO and leaving them to it. I've done sleep training, A has cried, just not with me shutting the door and leaving him to it. Thought I'd made enough of a distinction, but obviously not.

And as for the role cortisone can play on a baby's brain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/21/leaving-baby-to-cry-brain-development-damage And there's a section in 'The science of parenting' book that I can't find much of a reference to online http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Parenting-Jaak-Panksepp/dp/0756618800

Have to go and pick A up now otherwise I'd see what else I could point to.

I really don't think we feel all that differently, just a misunderstanding over terminology...

Penelope Leach doesn't cite one study which claims controlled crying or CIO causes brain damage (because these studies do not exist). That Sunderland book is similar nonsense, I imagine, although I confess I haven't read it. I have read <a href=http://www.askdrsears.com/html/10/handout2.asp>;this</a> which gets cited quite a bit with Sunderland and it's a <a href=http://mainstreamparenting.com/2008/06/25/of-sources-and-straw-houses-the-annotated-dr-sears-handout-on-cio/>;joke</a>.

The question is not whether or not cortisol plays a part in brain development. It's whether or not the limited crying present in cry-it-out causes deleterious effects on infant brain development. And again every study indicates that it does not.

Penelope Leach doesn't cite one study which claims controlled crying or CIO causes brain damage (because these studies do not exist)

Oh, I must have missed the bit where I said they did. Silly me. Except I have never said that CIO causes brain damage.

Alex, do you actually believe that CIO is an acceptable method of sleep control, as opposed to controlled crying, or are you just arguing for arguing's sake?

"Except I have never said that CIO causes brain damage."

Hey you cited her article, not me. It sez it right in the url. Also you alluded to "recent studies about the effects of prolonged crying on a baby's brain", I assumed you were talking about her "recent studies".

I think people should do what they find works for them. But no I don't think even full blown night/nap time CIO is "unacceptable" in principle.

honestly the idea of "let them cry until they stop" seems like it could be - depending on the situation - i.e. if they're colicky or whatever that could be... two hours? - horrendously disturbing for the parents, regardless of whatever's going on with the baby. my own breaking point is probably 15 minutes at the outside.

listening to yr kid cry while you do nothing = the feeling that time has stopped

even so, it must be done, at least to some extent, if they are ever gonna learn to sleep without you

i definitely feel bad about letting her cry for any extended period of time. i feel like if i was going to do a real cry it out method, it would have had to have been when she was really little. but now that she's 7+ months and understands connections a little more, i think just leaving her in her crib in the dark with no response and no phase-in would make her think either that something was wrong or that she was in trouble, making it less likely that she would fall asleep. i think my wife is going to do one of the graduated methods where you let them cry a little longer each night before responding and soothing.

^^^that was mostly what we did but even then you still have to sit through like 10 straight minutes of crying. and then 15 straight minutes of crying. and then 20 straight minutes of crying. etc. then eventually it stops and they only cry a little bit before putting themselves to sleep each night.

and then eventually they don't cry at all.

nick, cole was around 7-8 months when we started the cry it out with him.

Hi.

We're going to get a pack n play for the sleep training, take it home afterwards and set it up in the nursery, and then switch her to the crib a little while later. Fingers crossed!

Vicky, I did do quite a bit of reading about cosleeping before we had the baby. I was really into attachment parenting a la Sears/Motherhood Magazine and still mostly am, but something had to give. As it is, I can't ever leave the house in the evening. No one, not even Nick, can get her to sleep. There are lots of other reasons, but anyway, yeah, I'm kind of shocked by how much I'm feeling Ferber.

thats how it started with cole, and we didn't do co-sleeping. we rocked him to sleep for 7 months, then my wife went out for the night and i rocked him for 4 hours straight and he would not sleep. I got in the car with him and drove around for an hour and he passed out. The next night, we started the cry it out/ferber.

"when my wife went out for the night and i rocked him for 4 hours straight and he would not sleep"

Ouch. I'm joke around that Dalton can't stand my touch because when I lay him down to sleep he's out in minutes whereas he tortures my wife for like half an hour plus sometimes.

he'd fall asleep for two minutes, wake up, cry, fall asleep, wake up cry. I put him in and out of the crib like 15 times. I was ready to pull my hair out.

KitCat, I'm with you on something having to give! I always fed A to sleep but it was the two hourly waking that drove me insane, to the point where I'd be walking through a park and just burst into tears I was so tired. So yeah, night 'weaning' was started when he was around 7 months old. I didn't totally night wean him, but definitely tried to ensure that he wasn't just wanting a snack out of habit! I hate how people assume that attachment parenting is rigid and can't involve any sleep training at all, it's crap. It's just how you do it.

In fact I hate the labelling that happens. You decide what works for you, some will be one style, others will be something different. Does it matter so long as you and baby are happy? I hadn't heard of attachment parenting until A was over 12 months old. It sounds as though it's quite similar to how I like to parent, but some of it is very different indeed.

I feel like the biggest issue I have with attachment parenting is that the many its biggest proponents (both in print and even more noticeably on parenting message boards--not a dig at anyone here seriously) strike me as completely crazy/inflexible/judgmental (not that mainstream parents on message boards are anything to write home about either--although I can understand their knee-jerk defensiveness a little better). Which is too bad because most of AP I find personally really compelling (it largely was how my mother parented me and how my wife and I are parenting out son).

parents can be self-righteous about just about anything

lol too true!

How did this end up going (we are rapidly approaching to the "okay you're in your room for the night and we'll see you in the morning" point ourselves)?

it seems to have worked well. it was very successful while my wife and baby were at my mother-in-law's. since they've been back, we've had a couple of nights where she fell asleep very quickly and slept through most of the night without much fussing, and a couple of nights where she was a little fussier off and on (but still slept on her own). we're still figuring some things out, like what conditions are necessary, how quiet we have to be once she falls asleep, and the timing. right now we're tiptoing around the apartment and whispering once she falls asleep, which is kind of annoying. the main problems we're having now are 1) she's been waking up really early most mornings, like around 5 a.m., which is only about 9 hours of sleep, and 2) she won't nap in the cosleeper at all, no matter how tired she gets. for 1) we're trying to figure out if 9 hours is just the max she'll sleep or if other things are waking her up and she'll sleep longer once take care of them. for 2), I guess we'll need to get some blackout curtains for the nursery and then just work harder on training her to nap in the pack and play.

fyi we ended up using the Ferber method, though as I noted above, it's not really that different from the no-cry methods. basically he gives you a table of times where each night you let them cry a little longer before going in and soothing them, but I think even at the longest, you're only letting them cry for 20 minutes.

Yeah I've read a fair portion of the Ferber and Weissbluth books now. We're probably starting with Ferber (when I see we, I mean me, my wife despite being even more exhausted than I am has an absolutely visceral reaction to hearing the baby cry so she's sleeping upstairs for the nights while I am doing this) for at least the recommended 7-9 days. I'm not looking forward to it, but it beats where I'm at and so far our various "no-cry" interventions appear to simply be making him cry more.

thats what we did nick...well done.

http://soundcloud.com/rickjamesbiotch/go-the-f-k-to-sleep

not feelin that

it seems self-congratulatory, like these parents who never stop telling you how hellish their nights are, how they haven't slept well in ages, yada yada.. and ooh look at you mr big grown-up, using bad language! naughty naughty!

I really think it depends on the kid. I remember agonizing over the ferber and cry it out methods with beeps because she just wouldn't sleep. we were very anti co-sleep but only because we were scared she would suffocate if we rolled on her or the covers and blankets were over her or some retarded fear like that. She would often take 2 hours or more to go to sleep and would wake at 1 or 2am and be awake until 5 or 6am. We eventually got a bed in her room and started taking turns sleeping in there so we could jump up and soothe her the second we heard any peeps out of her and she would never quite wake up enough to get into another four hours of rocking. Anyway, when she finally went from crib to bed she would just walk into our room and get in our bed, sometimes unnoticed, and fall straight back to sleep. Now she is 4 and this is still the case. She always starts off in her bed but id say 13 out of 14 days she ends up in ours. Except for getting kicked in the stomach, neck and face a billion times a night if you happen to end up with the feet side of her (she always ends up perpendicular somehow) I still love knowing that I'm going to go to bed and not be up in an hour for the next 4 or 5 hours. I assume she'll get embarrassed by sleeping with us at some point so I don't worry about it anymore.

Now Henry is 19 months old with zero sleep training and he falls asleep in 5 minutes and sleeps the whole night in his crib probably 80-90% of the time. Go figure.

For me this is all about what can be done to make sure you as the parents get enough sleep because everything unravels very quickly when that's not happening. I wonder now if this isn't an industry making a lot of money from parents sleep deprivation and fears that their kid must be able to do this by this time. Societal pressure is going to take over at some point for most things. Beeps was late with potty training too because she just wasn't interested but when her 2 and 3 y/o classmates started calling her a baby because she was the last girl in diapers things turned around pretty quickly.

our girl has always been pretty good about sleeping, only waking up in the night when she's sick, really. the lame thing currently is that she wakes up in the morning screeeeeeaming bloody murder. i don't even mind the 530am wake-up (well, i mind a little) but the high drama of a screaming 22 month old is a seriously terrible way to begin the day. once you go in there, she's happy as a clam. hope this phase doesn't last too long!

yeah youve got a terrible two. wait until she freaks out so much her eyes glaze over like she has no idea where she is or what anyone is saying. joys!

also Henry slept from 9:30pm - 2pm. SIXTEEN HOURS. Jealous much?

whoa, that is an intense night (and morning and afternoon) of sleep! he must've partied pretty hard the night before.
since i wrote that, she's actually gotten a little better. slept until 645am this morning, woke up pretty happy.

No-one told me that you'll never get solid sleep on a continuous basis anymore. lolololol. Thank god (or rather contraception) we only have two: we always seem to have a kid in our bed. Or two. hahah. I don't really understand why people get all "OH BUT YOUR PRIVACY". Uh, we got kids, I am perfectly okay with them sleeping in our bed. I know sleep deprivation sucks but it is soooooooo sweet to see your kid sleeping next to you and being able to cuddle. Anyway, I do have to say that the first two years with Elisabeth were sheer hell. I tried the CIO method (at four months I think or was it three?) because I was really freaking out. I couldn't do it anymore. Not my thing. I do realize that maybe I did run to her too quickly and didn't give her a chance to fall back asleep. But yeah first two years: HELL. At one point I cried regretting breastfeeding because she wouldn't stop waking up and also didn't want to stop BF. (She did at 13 months finally.)

we don't co-sleep, but yeah, when i get to see her sleeping it's one of the best things ever.

Now that he sleeps on his stomach watching him sleep is really funny. A lot of ass straight up in the air.

I don't really understand why people get all "OH BUT YOUR PRIVACY".

some people like the sexing

True, but what parents are getting busy at 4 am anyway. I wish the anti-co-sleeping brigade would just be honest and cop to being tired/not horny.

i'll cop to being selfish. it's my room, and i want to sleep! i don't want my kid squirming around all night and kicking me in the face. it is unreal how much noise and movement a sleeping child can make.

^^^OTM

we're going into round 2 of sleep training this week, out of town again. basically she sleeps in the crib all night now but usually wakes up a couple of times between midnight and 6ish, often have to give her a second bottle to get her to fall back asleep, although at this age (1+ years old) they're supposed to be able to sleep through the night without nursing. basically she's fine as long as she stays asleep but if she wakes up she doesn't know how to comfort herself back to sleep. so my wife's taking her to her mom's this week to do some "cry it out" time for a few days (can't do it in our apartment due to neighbor issues probably mentioned upthread)

I read this thread whenever I feel broody. It's a great contraceptive!

haha

n/a have you tried a dummy, or putting her thumb in her mouth? that can work. it's true that she doesn't actually need the milk. i think after like 3 months or something they don't actually need to eat during the night. tiny stomachs!

She doesn't really have a sleep crutch other than us, unfortunately. No thumbsucking, no pacifiers, no "lovey" or favorite stuffed animal. We've tried to get her attached to a toy that could calm her down but it hasn't taken.

I recommend Dr. Weisbluth, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child," for pretty much any sleep-related issue. Some stuff may seem hardcore - they call him the Sleep Nazi for a reason - but everyone will end up better in the end. Kid in their own bed, you through the night in your own. There's basically no transitory kid behavior - from bottles to pacis to sleeping in their own bed - that can't be fixed with a solid routine. So much of it is, honestly, growing tolerant of screaming, because that is their primary mode of communication at that age. They're not mad, they're not unhappy, they're not uncomfortable, necessarily - they just want your attention because they want milk, or to sleep in your bed, or something else, dammit! And they'll keep doing it until you stop giving them what they want. And then they sleep through the night like angels. It's all about taking the plunge and enduring the cry it out.

(Admittedly, it's hard to listen to them cry it out! I had no trouble sleeping through it, but my wife had to wear earplugs and sleep on the couch for a couple of nights.)

ugh i wish we could do the cry it out thing without having to worry about our neighbors being dicks about it. baby's sleep has gotten totally erratic and weird over the past few weeks, i've ended up sleeping in the armchair in the nursery with her on top of me several nights recently. last night she only woke up once during the night but then woke up for the day at 4:30 this morning. this isn't sustainable but we're not sure what to do about it.

what's the worst your neighbors could do?

colds will always be rough. best to embrace chaos and regroup after recovery. there's truth in some of the continuum concept stuff, but their description of western hospital birth is outdated. for example, I think most hospitals do skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth now, if it's safe. the appeal to evolution within the text also feels a bit overplayed. we would not have evolved into today's low infant mortality rates without the modern hospital birth. for the whole population, there must be an optimum somewhere between the hospital and continuum concept birthing center approach. on a case by case basis, I would never judge someone for doing whatever works for them (if it's safe for all of course).

we did sleep training at around 6 months. I stayed up for all of one night, soothing the baby every so often but never picking him up. he has slept through the night (when not sick) ever since. lately he wakes up around 4:30 or 5AM, though, which is a separate problem. strength to all struggling with it itt. I'll be joining you once again here shortly.

I finally read that link about the Continuum Concept. As mentioned above, I think conventional wisdom of western practices now are certainly somewhere in between. My take on these things is that there is no one right answer and you have to pick and choose and see what works. Our hospital was very much about skin-to-skin.

As I mentioned above, we would've been happy to follow that concept, or "attachment parenting", but our baby wouldn't let us! I've read a lot about fussy/"spirited" babies, that something like 17% of babies are just born wired a certain way where she was very very hard to please. We were forced into sleep training as the only way to allow her to get any sleep...and likewise us.

Back to the continuum concept link, we do have scheduled naps, and somewhat scheduled feedings, but based on her needs as well. I think that page presents two extremes that don't really represent the reality. Yes, cry it out and interval checks and things like are needed, but I wouldn't say we "belittle or punish" her for crying!

I am possibly about to embark on some kind of sleep training. after half term. and after the teeth are through. I am dubious that anything will work but I gotta try something. we still rock him to sleep and he's almost a toddler.

Since the posts above…she’s been great. Around 1 year she finally got good. There were some bumps but for the most part she sleeps from 7:30 pm to 7:00 am give or take whiteout too much fuss. And 1 nap at 12:30 which was sometimes over 2 hours but a few weeks ago she hit a regression caused by mental leaps and only sleeps around an hour. Sometimes less. She doesn’t scream but she lies in bed singing and telling stories. I think her mind is just a mile a minute.

Still I consider ourselves lucky after a hellish first year. Being forced into training has gotten us to a point where she’s now a better sleeper than most. At least at night and her nap. She still won’t just nap anywhere.

With ophelia it went so easy, but elisabeth was three hellish years. I was a zombie. Literally didn't know if it was day/night. I wonder now if I just should have done co-sleeping. I feel guilty. :-(

I never got into co-sleeping despite trying it as the only way to get sleep some nights.

So with my eldest, turns out in retrospect he was a great sleeper. We had an awful first 3 months with him, colic/awful screaming most nights, but it eventually settled and he was sleeping through, 12 hours, by about 9 months. Because I still thought of him as a bad sleeper every little blip worried me that he was regressing or whatever. At one year he had a period of being awake about 2-4am and would only be rocked and couldn't be put down! But he's a super sleeper, has been since he got over that.

The baby wasn't so bad to start with and is veeeery slowly improving but every tiny thing throws him. The worst issue is the rocking to sleep. I'm sure with the eldest I just put him in his cot and waited for him to fall asleep. The baby just screams if you leave him in the cot.

Oh and the 5 month and 8/9/10 month regressions were bad

So Casper is a nightmare at sleeping, and he's nearly 13 months now. Emma's broken. What can we do?

Context: he slept quite well as a small baby in the first 4/5 months - only waking 2/3 times a night for a big feed, which was way better than Nora. Then diagnosis, steroids, chemo, 50+ nights in hospital etc blew that out of the window.

Since November he's been on the new treatment and effectively not poorly from his disease - no steroids, no chemo, only one night in hospital (with a temperature) since then, so we've been able to establish something close to a normal routine.

Since January he's been in a cot alongside Em's bed (our bed; I'm still in the spare room), which is open and level with Em's bed for easy access. He wakes every 1-2 hours in the night, and some of those wakings are still relatively big feeds. We put him down circa 7 and he's normally out by 7:30/8pm, but he pretty much never gets through to 10pm (our bedtime and his meds time) without waking at least once and needing settling. Those wakings are happening less often and he is settling quicker overall, but it's still rubbish.

I generally take him and his sister downstairs about 6am so Em can have 90 minutes extra unbroken while I give them breakfast and get Nora ready for nursery.

Em desperately needs some longer periods of unbroken sleep.

Because of his illness and everything we've been through we're very, very loathe to put him through anything stressful like harsh sleep training. He's also, despite his very cheerful demeanour in photos, a stroppy little bastard who cries immediately if he doesn't get what he wants (and then stops instantly if you give him the tinfoil / duplo / toast / sharp kitchen knife / whatever he was reaching for etc etc).

We're generally 'gentle' and baby-led in our approach, but pragmatic, to a degree. What can we do?

I'm leaving off until the 1-year-crazies (technical term) subside tbh. both of mine had periods of waking for HOURS around the time they turned 1, so C is still doing that. Also dropping a nap and has constipation a lot so I think that can wake him.

I can send over the notes I got from someone if you like that I'm planning to use? They sound a bit ambitious though...

Oh and C was a total chilled out baby but now is a totally stroppy demanding DIVO too.

I've read plenty of anecdotes that imply that the babies that are easier sleepers at the beginning are eventually not. Opal was a nightmare for most of the first year forcing pretty early and pretty intense sleep training but for the last year (she's nearly 2) she's been fantastic at night. The ferber style interval sleep training is a pain but it might work and isn't as harsh as extinction/cry it out. It took a while but worked for us.

does he feed every time he wakes? Mine used to be ok with a 11pm feed then just being rocked by me/ his dad in future wakings but recently won't stand for that and screams for a feed much more often which is often just for comfort as he doesn't actually feed much and just tries to get away (then cries for milk if you let him )

my understanding of sleep training is all about the crutches, and any time you feed a child to calm them/put them to sleep, it's going to reinforce the association. By that age, so long as they're getting their nutrition, kids should have no problem sleeping through the night, so when they're crying to be fed after bedtime, it's not really because they're hungry.

yeah I thought we got out of that habit but somehow we've gotten back into it for the sake of getting some sleep.

so. it begins. I'm timing it so one of the worst nights should be when I'm out...

you might be surprised! when we did "ferberization" i think it literally took like 2 nights and then it was done.

yeah it's like two-three nights that really suck and then it's ok

starting with holding him but not rocking, for a couple of nights. The tough bit will be leaving him to sleep in his cot.
He's toddling around now! I mean, not now. But in general!

ferberization took us several attempts over several months and each attempt lasting for a few weeks! I think she just had to be ready. Now it's a breeze.

Birds tweeting.
Sunlight playfully peeking through the curtains.
The strange experience of waking up in the morning of my own accord and not too a screaming baby...
(really it's raining and I expect the recycling lorry woke me up but still, he slept 8 hours after a few evening wake-ups and didn't have a night feed...)

it's probably coincidence though, that and having pooed loads in the day so that wasn't waking him up. I hardly think one evening has changed anything, but I'll take a win where I can!

so - I never genuinely thought it'd work - but - touch wood - it seems to be going well. Far better than I ever expected!
We (mainly him indoors) have done 3 days of putting him down in his cot (rather than letting him get to sleep in our arms). Staying with him, singing, shushing, putting him back down 100 times. No feeding after bedtime too (which is why he's doing it not me).
First night - an hour of screaming and crying before he tired himself out, then another hour or so when waking up at 11pm. Pretty horrible but then he slept until 7.30.
2nd night - about 20 mins crying at first but not as bad as the first night, then about 10 mins when waking up around 9pm then slept til 6.30! 9.5 hours which is unheard of.
3rd night - got up lots when trying to put him to bed but didn't cry much. couple of short wake ups and one long one.

Next step is to not stay right by the cot but we'll see...

Ferberization didn't really work for us. I think a lot of it is about the kid.

I just looked at the wiki for the ferber method and i feel this sentence: "A few babies are capable of sleeping through the night at three months, and most are capable of sleeping through the night at six months" is lacking an all-caps drudge siren CITATION NEEDED.

yeah, we tried it at six months. We tried it for three or four painful weeks. We made a second attempt a few months later that did temporarily work but wore off when we moved. K has had persistent sleep problems since. With E we just co-slept and she naturally transitioned to sleeping on her own around a year and is much less anxious at night. But I really believe it depends on the kid, because I know co-sleepers who were still in the bed with the kid at 6.

Ours has just turned 3 and we're still in with her. We never tried ferber or anthing like that, she wasn't waking a great deal or for long periods but it was persistent and ultimately it was easier to be in the room with her and shush her back than actually having to get out of bed to do it. Obviously she's institutionalised to it now and it's hard to see how we'll break it, but otoh it's not so bad when she doesn't have a cold or whatever. Which of course is most of the time.

I keep reading it as 'febreezisation'

my baby is 13 months btw, I wouldn't really bother trying much before that (with my two) let alone at 3 or 6 months!

Birds tweeting.
Sunlight playfully peeking through the curtains.
The strange experience of waking up in the morning of my own accord and not too a screaming baby...

The first time that happened for me I ran to my kid's room in a panic, assuming some horrible tragedy had befallen him during the night.

haha! I've been there.