Sleep training

also i have horror stories from my brother and his wife, who co-slept and had to "forcibly evict" their 3 year-old who still wanted to nurse throughout the night. that freaked us out enough to move j to a crib eventually in his own room around 6 months

― marcos, Thursday, September 12, 2013 1:53 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, we co-sleep and don't really have this problem. Maybe because we didn't really breastfeed, but my girl's almost 3 and sleeping with her doesn't bother us a bit. Our boy slept in the same room with us consistently until he was like 7 before we started to ween him off. I mean, as with all aspects of parenting, different people and kids are gonna have different results.

xp: if my girl falls asleep ever during the day, she's up until at least midnight. we've had an official no naps policy for almost a year now.

When are kids supposed to stop napping? Fuck.

Seeing the crazy sleep habits of the kids (and parents!) of some co-sleeping families we knew was definitely a factor in our decision not to do it, but it's so anecdotal, and I know a lot of people make it work. Anyway we were also terrified of crushing her and the few times we tried having her in the bed we couldn't fall asleep. We've occasionally had her in the bed on the road now and it's much easier because she's huge and not easily crushable.

K does seem to like sleeping in the bed with us, or with mom anyway, she seems kind of indifferent to sleeping in the bed with me.

evie seems to be in a transitional phase re: naps where if she takes a nap, it's a pain in the ass to get her down at night, but if she doesn't, she's loopy and passing out at 6:30. i assume she still takes a nap at school but i'm not sure.

Our worst phase was when she was getting tired around 3 or 4 o'clock, which was right when my wife would have to take her on a long car-ride to meet me as I was getting off work/she was heading to work.

Yeah I pretty much can't tolerate K by the late afternoon if she doesn't take a nap, sorry K.

IANAP(yet) but I was reading about sleep regression after aero's post either here or in another parenting thread and could that be part of the problem? I don't know what impact that would have on your approach but if it seems to fit, it might at least give you some hope for it being temporary.

I very very vividly remember being a small child and 1) not being able to go to sleep unless a parent was in the room with me and 2) getting up and getting in bed with my parents at every available opportunity (I even remember climbing out of my crib). It was 100% about being scared/anxious about something and there was such palpable relief at being nestled next to a parent. It was like toddler Xanax.

― carl agatha, Thursday, September 12, 2013 3:37 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the fear of throwing abandonment on top of the anxiety stopped us from doing any kind of cry it out. both of our kids are nighttime worriers and frequent nightmare havers. Just last night bee appeared saying she had had a nightmare that she was at her grandfathers house but the house included a room from our house (our ex-office/spare room filled with crap). Her father was standing at the door to this room yelling RUN! RUN! RUN! This morning she woke up very fretful her grandparents would not show up for grandparents day lunch at her school. Poor kid. So much fretting over nothing.

<3 poor thing!

i mean the cry it out may well have worked fine but really i dont have the stomach for it. My parents were very anti-co-sleep and i was a very very fretful kid who had multiple nightmares per night. it wasn't an option to wake them up so i ended up pretty alone and fearful all the time getting 0-3 hours sleep a night. i cant risk even the slightest chance of that.

Yeah, I have memories of some dark, dark nights of the soul at age 4 or so.

Also, specific memories of two things that were on my parents TV when I went downstairs to tell them I missed them. One was a blonde woman in a white bikini. The other was an explosion!

I had a sleep with the light on phase around ages 4-5, but it subsided. K is relatively well adjusted and non-anxious so far, but I'm a little worried at what's going to happen when we move in a couple of months and she gets her own room.

Marcos, nip it in the bud. Do Ferber.

^^^^^

lifesaver imo.

I didn't see any immediate bad results from the sleep training we did though, and in fact once she hit about 14-15 months she started actually asking to go to sleep when she was tired, like she actually gets annoyed if we prolong putting her in the crib too much.

Obvs can never really know if there was some deeper trauma from it though.

that's one of the joys of parenting, never knowing if something you're doing is causing lifelong trauma until it's too late

you can only hope that they can convert that trauma into artistic success. it's the best you can hope for.

Anxious kid high fives to sunny and how's life.

FYI I don't think my parents did anything to make me anxious as a kid (all of their traumatic parenting mistakes came later lolol). My mom has told me that she went against all of the parenting advice of the day about not picking up crying babies, etc. I just had a lot of trouble on my tiny mind.

I find there's a lot of nuance to all these things that isn't really covered by any of the advice books/methods, whether Sears, Ferber, or the French asshole who runs Tribeca Pediatrics and whose name I have probably deliberately blocked out (he advocates full cry it out at 2 months). For example, there are different kinds of cries, especially when they get older and more cognizant, and you start to learn the differences. So I find the Sears idea that if you don't respond to every cry you're somehow sending a message to your child that his needs don't matter a little hysterical, and at the same time I find the idea of not responding as a policy very cold and gross. And there are also certain kinds of cries that are just hysterical, overtired or overhungry cries where your "response" doesn't matter unless it's food or putting them to sleep.

that's one of the joys of parenting, never knowing if something you're doing is causing lifelong trauma until it's too late

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, September 12, 2013 5:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol otm sadly

I find there's a lot of nuance to all these things that isn't really covered by any of the advice books/methods, whether Sears, Ferber, or the French asshole who runs Tribeca Pediatrics and whose name I have probably deliberately blocked out (he advocates full cry it out at 2 months). For example, there are different kinds of cries, especially when they get older and more cognizant, and you start to learn the differences. So I find the Sears idea that if you don't respond to every cry you're somehow sending a message to your child that his needs don't matter a little hysterical, and at the same time I find the idea of not responding as a policy very cold and gross. And there are also certain kinds of cries that are just hysterical, overtired or overhungry cries where your "response" doesn't matter unless it's food or putting them to sleep.

― #fomo that's the motto (Hurting 2), Thursday, September 12, 2013 6:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also otm

we feel like J is in a transitional napping place right now. he still does a short morning nap around 9am or so, and a longer afternoon nap from 1:30-3pm roughly. we're thinking we'll eliminate the morning nap pretty soon, though J can still be crabby enough that it seems necessary for the time being.

The long afternoon nap is a beautiful thing. I think my enjoyment of life went up like 50% once that happened -- you have more time do do stuff with the family on weekend mornings cuz you don't have to rush back, and then you get a nice long afternoon break.

yea i'm excited about going down to one nap. i remember when we we're still at 3 naps a day and it seemed like you basically couldn't do anything (though we took a lot of long walks with J sleeping in the ergo). going down to 2 naps seemed like our day totally opened up, though it doesn't feel that way anymore

Obvs can never really know if there was some deeper trauma from it though.

― #fomo that's the motto (Hurting 2), Thursday, September 12, 2013 4:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i seriously doubt it. i know a lot of my fears relating to this I project on them.

For example, there are different kinds of cries, especially when they get older and more cognizant, and you start to learn the differences.

This is definitely key.

Beatrice was such a terrible sleeper as an infant. she'd sleep for max an hour at a time. Usually more like 10-20 minutes. We ended up buying a miracle blanket after trying pretty much everything else and she got a solid 8-12 hrs a night from that point on. Even when she grew out of it she maybe woke up one a night.

ha, the miracle blanket! it's amazing: 1) how much things change week to week, month to month, in that first year; and 2) how much i totally forget about those earlier changes! i had to think for a few minutes, "miracle blanket, miracle blanket, i know i've heard about this" and i google it and remember that, oh yea, we put J in that swaddle every day in the first 3 months. lol

it really is a miracle!!

its the only thing i give at baby showers and it never ever gets used. im not sure why. i did give one to pp's best friend and his wife fairly recently and when their kiddo was a few months old we got a 2am text just saying "THANK YOU"

miracle blanket never did anything for us, at least no more than standard swaddling, but i know it works for lots of people

we've started a new routine where we put her down but only stay in her room for 10 minutes (telling her how much time is left), then we leave, we close her bedroom door most of the way but i sit in the hallway where she can see me but can't talk to me. it's still an incremental move to her going to sleep by herself but this way i can play on my phone while waiting for her to fall asleep instead of just sitting in the dark, which makes it more tolerable. she had an epic tantrum the first night but since then it's been pretty smooth.

I have no idea why I started reading this thread, but a couple of my friends have been won over by this. I had to google it to even find out wtf it is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Easidream-Ewan-the-Dream-Sheep/dp/B0040JSN7Y

xp yea as i mentioned we used the miracle blanket all the time b/c it was much easier to get a cozy swaddling wrap than by using a regular blanket. so we appreciated the 4 or 5 blankets we received as gifts from people

lol naps, after the first six months we should have been so lucky

as to "sleep training": I'm just glad we made it out alive and still married.

^^^ this

never thought to see if there was a sleep training thread on ILX. Here's what I just posted to some private facebook group:

Hello, Dad here looking for some help for my wife and our baby Opal. Sorry for this epic post but this seems like a great community and I thought I’d reach out.

Opal has been a “spirited”(fussy!) baby since birth. Initially she’d only sleep on one of us, she hated the bassinet no matter what we tried. We moved onto careful co-sleeping (mattress on floor) and that was ok for a little bit but eventually Opal would just be up every 20 minutes kicking and fussing and crying, so nobody was getting any sleep.

So around 4mo on the recommendation of our pediatrician we did a full cry it out training in her crib in the nursery. Everybody said “oh it will take 2 nights, maybe 3”. Over a week later she was finally sleeping through the night, however she would cry and scream every time she went down, and she would only nap while being carried outside in an ergo…no crib, no stroller, just walking outside, which got very trying for my wife. A month later she was still screaming to sleep and not napping well.

SO, around 5 months and a week we hired a sleep consultant. She gave us good tips and helped come up with a Ferber-style interval training program to try to fix nights and get naps going and it was pretty successful. Within a few weeks she was going down around 6:30 and sleeping until 6-ish, with 1 night feeding around 1 or 2 am. She finally started napping however never long enough.

The real problem through all of this is even when it was going well, she would cry and scream her head off overtime she went down, every nap, every evening! Usually less than 15 minutes (if more in the evening we’d soothe her without picking up and that would work).

So we felt like it was working and was trying to accept the fact that maybe she’s one of those babies that just has to cry like crazy every time they go to sleep. But then the sleeping habits started to get worse again.

We hit 8 months and think we’re dealing with an 8 month sleep regression (and it wasn’t perfect before that), plus she’s definitely teething, and maybe transitioning naps. Then last saturday was daylight savings time and she got a cold this week, so it’s been really bad!

We know the cold will pass but we’re trying to figure out why her naps are so short, often we’ll put her down and she’ll cry for 15 minutes, sleep for 20, then wake up crying.

I’m not sure what other information is helpful, she doesn’t have any sleep crutches (we think), she nurses a while before she goes down. We have a simple ritual and there are days where she’ll have been up for a few hours, she’ll rub her eyes and yawn, we put on the sound machine, read a little bit, sing a song, she seems sleepy, we put her down awake…and soon as we leave she cries for 15 minutes. We get her home and she sleeps in her crib for every nap. Her third nap is often nonexistent, it seems like she’s transitioning, but the first two naps are still often really short. We feel like we’re struggling with several issues at once and not sure what else to try.

Sounds like you're having it pretty rough, my sympathies. It's awful when teething & a cold & everything hits all at once. Our daughter is 20 months now and she's always been a terrible daytime napper, taking ages to go down and then waking like clockwork after 25 minutes. I think she was a bit older than yours, maybe a year, when we spoke to a sleep consultant and really tried to sort it, with modest results. In theory the problem was that she wasn't connecting sleep cycles so we had to try and help her do that - in practice that involved being in with her and, before she was due to wake up (either by timing or by her breathing becoming louder/shallower), starting to 'sh-pat' - rub her back (she was on her front by then) and go 'shhhh', and keep doing it as she woke up in the hope that a) she would go back to sleep and b) longer term she would managed to do it without assistance. We had some success with a), b) not so much. She did start to nap for longer but we pretty much always stayed in with her, maybe she did go a bit longer without assistance or go back easier if she did wake but we never achieved the dream of getting quality down time while she slept for an hour or more unassisted. Writing this it's incredible how much I seem to have forgotten given that it seemed to occupy our every waking moment at the time! I think at the beginning we really did have to persist with the sh-patting, even if it seemed like she was wide awake & upset and would never go back she eventually would, even if it took another 10-15 mins; gradually it got better till you could rest your hand on her just in in case but she barely woke or went back easily if she did.

thank you, that's interesting, but goes against some of the theories of sleep training, where you're creating a crutch and she won't be able to go back to sleep without you there. We do that at night if she wakes up and screams for over 15 minutes, go in with the interval check and pat and shh, but she's too alert during naps. If she even goes down soon as we walk in the room she lifts her head alert and crying!

Dan, firstly sorry to hear this, sounds terrible and have seen friends and relatives going through the same, takes such a toll on everyone.

I have an odd perspective on this as my wife is Chinese and first few years of our children's lives were in China with her family. Coming back to the UK we were surprised at all the sleep training stuff our friends and my family were talking about, this is completely unheard-of in China, but then we found out they kept their babies in different bedrooms, structured days to what seemed like an insane amount, followed huge lists of arcane, often contradictory rules - it all sounds like following an instruction manual for an exotic pet, not doing the very normal thing people have done since the start of time. Not saying it was easy for us, anything but, but I'm not sure how it's such a traumatic experience for all of us over here when we are awash with people who are supposed to be studying it. I'm not really a "wisdom of the east" guy usually, but really sounds like we've got something wrong in this particular case.

So anyway, a hippyish friend has said that our experiences tie in to this - http://www.continuum-concept.org/cc_defined.html - cannot vouch for it personally at all, but she swears by it, though it looks like a complete lifestyle transplant for a couple of years at least. Worth a look if you are desperate at least.

thank you, that's interesting, but goes against some of the theories of sleep training, where you're creating a crutch and she won't be able to go back to sleep without you there.

yeah well that's more or less correct; although we haven't really chanced it she probably could go for an hour or more without us there now, but that's after the best part of a year and dropping down to one nap.

Continuum concept, attachment parenting, gentle parenting, I would imagine many western parents looking for answers have come across those or similar ideas. That's more the route we've gone down, partly from inclination and partly because although naps were bad she wasn't really much of a crying baby at all & it really would have felt wrong. At the risk of sounding judgmental I do think we in the west are too quick to try and force routines & separate sleeping - I think we can all agree that capitalism is the real enemy here. (otoh I'm sure not every Chinese baby sleeps happily through the night either!) At a certain point I'm sure you have to try whatever works for you as well as for her and it sounds like you've reached that point, Dan, I hope you find something that works.

To be clear our older son didn't sleep through the night until he was nearly 2, but it was alright, he needed a feed or to be held, we'd all be back to sleep within half an hour. But when I hear my sister describe nights taking care of her baby it sounds like a nightmare.

we were theoretically ok w/ attachment parenting but it didn't work. Our baby was so fussy that she wouldn't even sleep, she'd kick and scream through the night causing neither her or my wife to get any sleep, which just wasn't tenable.

now both her and I have a bad cold so it's a bit of a mess around here!

We thought we were finally getting somewhere with nights - more or less sleeping through till 4am - then she got a cold and it all went downhill. That was over a month ago and she's only just getting better!

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. :-(