"Cry it out" is not a well-defined term

[roneal]

@cutin I feel this. Right now were on day 4 of our 2nd attempt at sleep training our 15 month olds. We tried a couple methods around 7 months and it was no exaggeration, nightmarish. Both babies were completly dysregulated and inconsolable. This time around is a tiny bit less traumatic but there's still plural cumulative hours of crying and a night when prior to sleep training there was only the short "I need you" cry. We are also all getting far less sleep than previous.

Not really sure what to do since the last few nights haven't been going well and naps, the real reason we wanted to sleep train, have become non-existent. I've gotten some pushback from family and friends that my babies' "poor" sleep" is a product of introducing bad habits (nursing/rocking/cuddling) and not sleep training. I have also seen similar ideas online. At the same time, neither baby seems emotionally equipped to fall asleep without a trusted adult present. I think for some people, sleep is just scarier and more difficult to come by. Also, that some parents mistake their baby's good sleep as good parenting choices, and not the baby's innate preferences .

 

[cutin]

@roneal 15 months was a bit of a shit time sleep wise for both of my older kids (my youngest isn't that old yet). I noticed sleep advancements that seemed to actually stick from around 18 months. FWIW, I think the idea that "bad sleep is caused by bad sleep habits" is made up - I don't think there's any evidence behind it. It's convenient and oft-repeated because it's easy to believe, it seems to make sense, it makes people feel good if they happened to be on the "right" side of it, AND it fits nicely into a "buy my sleep course so I can tell you everything you're doing wrong" narrative.

I like Lyndsey Hookway's writing on sleep, although she does not advise on any sleep training at all, I think her content is useful. In case you want an "expert" that doesn't follow the whole bad sleep this good sleep that thing.

 

[imingtown]

@quantumcreation I could have written this myself. My son is a few days shy of 10 months. I'm kind of at a loss for what to do. He will fight sleep for hours if you let him and it sucks because once he's overtired he doesn't want to be held or rocked or fed or really comforted in any way. He's done this since he was 5 months old. We just started letting him cry up to 15 min but that doesn't always work. As I'm writing this I'm literally listening to him cry after my 3rd attempt to put him down for his nap.

 

[mikalmo]

@quantumcreation I had to fight it too. People saying it's abuse, or harmful is very damaging.

 

[mythriilesque]

@lamberto I think it would be great if parents would just realize that every baby is different and needs different things (within reason, I mean there's people who claim their child needs spanking and of course I don't support that). But we had the opposite experience that you had: we tried desperately with attachment methods, but our baby was having none of it. Didn't want to sleep in our bed (we did this for a while and transferred her after she fell asleep, it worked initially then she just refused to fall asleep in our bed), didn't want to cuddle to sleep, didn't want to be rocked, didn't want us to walk around holding her. We exhausted all of that until we realized she was just wailing herself to sleep for more than two hours every evening. Went to an expert for advice who said it was best to sleep train, and suddenly it took only 5 minutes and now most nights there's no struggle at all. If she wakes up during the night she does want cuddles and we give that to her. If she's not feeling well and wants cuddles she gets them. But usually at bedtime she just doesn't want to sleep and wants to keep playing and practicing standing up, and then falls and screams because she's too tired to do it. Sleep training was what was best for our child, and not sleep training was best for yours. If we could just see that babies are different, I think there would be way fewer mommy wars.

 

[vf6cruiser]

@mythriilesque I am literally having all of this exact same issue right now. Baby used to nurse to sleep but now he won't. He used to consistently fall asleep if we bounced with him on the ball but now he doesn't. We used to "give up" in the middle of the night and would let him bedshare with me (mom) and we would sleep together, even though the position I had to sleep in exacerbated the pelvic floor pain I had (and am still in PT for). But now he won't sleep in bed with me at all (he squirms around and it's like he can't get comfortable or something???). He won't rock to sleep, doesn't care about me singing (quietly) any kind of bedtime song, and has always seemed to be super unresponsive to "Shh"ing.

A lot of these things used to work, but since he learned to crawl and pull to a stand (a couple weeks ago) it's like all the rules have changed and nothing works at all anymore. He doesn't cry himself to sleep, but it does take a lot of persistence on our part to get him down.

We did use Ferber around his fourth month for a couple weeks, and his sleep improved for the first week, but in the second week it got bad again (difficult to get to sleep, many nighttime wake ups). We stopped when it felt ineffective and settled for the new "norm" of his sleep. We tried Ferber again when he was about 6 months for another two weeks and had the same results. We stopped. Randomly his sleep improved for about two weeks (easier to put down, fewer night wakes). Then it nosedived back to him being like a newborn at 7 months. We tried the pick up, put down method and saw some gains and we continued doing it up til now (he's 8 months and a few weeks old). It feels like it stopped being effective a couple weeks ago but we've been sticking with it. He isn't horrible to get down for the first sleep, but he's still waking up anywhere from 3 (which is fine) to 8 times a night (which is killing us). Some nights he's gotten to a point where he won't sleep unless he sleeps on us.

Nothing has felt effective for our son. We didn't want to do full extinction CIO, but we don't know what else to do at this point. We are chronically sleep deprived and it's causing ripple effect issues.

What sleep training did you try that worked for your baby?

 

[ackors]

@vf6cruiser I have no advice since we are still in the thick of it but I wanna say I feel this so hard and I'm so sorry.
I really hope you find something that works for you and your family.

 

[grace4nan]

@lamberto If it makes you feel better my kid is sleep trained and he sleeps better than he used to, but he doesn't sleepy great. He's very inconsistent but we're all getting more sleep than before, but not a ton of sleep.

 

[katrina2017]

@mikalmo I think it all comes down to how we interact with our child on a day to day basis. I know I am a loving parent, if she needs me i’m there. If she cries, i give her comfort. She’s sleep trained. I know I couldn’t function properly and be happy running on E everyday, so I don’t regret it. A better rest makes me a better mom.

 

[grace4nan]

@mikalmo I cant believe the comments being left in this thread on science based parenting. Your anecdote is not science. What your therapy sessions revealed about yourself are not science. I am just stunned. Yours is the only reasonable comment I've seen so far.

 

[mikalmo]

@grace4nan Yeah. I'm really disappointed that this sub is called science based when it's filled with confirmation bias, anecdotal storues that apply to nothing regarding the subject at hand, and when I've asked for Peet record evidence to back a claim previously, was given the equivalent of magazine opinion pieces with weak sources. There doesn't seem to be any moderation to the group other than on the "evidence required" posts.

 

[katrina2017]

@mikalmo You have to report rule breaking posts and comments. Nobody on earth has the time to go through every single response on every single post here. I always see people complaining about all the nonsense on various posts but no reports whatsoever.

 

[lamberto]

@mikalmo I mean, what would you prefer - a sub where only peer-reviewed studies are linked? Can we not have discussions at all? I like engaging with posts from rationally-minded folks, and sometimes (often) that strays beyond ‘x study says parents should do y’.

Like it or not, parenting is messy and the science behind this stuff is not as clear cut as many would like it to be.

Also, your original post that I responded to was on a thread about the difficulty of finding a common, agreed-upon definition of cry it out. No one asked whether anyone should or shouldn’t do any form of sleep training. I spoke up on the off chance another parent reads your comment and thinks, oh gosh, I just need to keep trying to sleep train. My response is basically... maybe, maybe not, and maybe let’s cut the judgmental attitudes on both sides.

 

[mikalmo]

@lamberto It's supposed to be an evidence based group. People rarely provide actual accurate evidence. I'm speaking in generalities.

No one has to sleep train. Literally no one is forcing anyone to sleep train or not.

However, it isn't cruel, and it's not abuse. That's the thing everyone says when it's brought up. That was the point of my comment because when I commented 3 people had already posted that it was cruel and abusive.

I'm not judging anyone that doesn't sleep train as long as they aren't calling people that do sleep train abusive, uncaring cruel parents, but I will judge if someone feels they HAVE to forgo sleep in order to "comfort" their child in lueue of sleep on both parts. Because that's not true, there are options. And a pediatrician should be involved.

 

[rockhopper72]

@mikalmo

I'm really disappointed that this sub is called science based when it's filled with confirmation bias, anecdotal storues that apply to nothing regarding the subject at hand, ...

It's supposed to be an evidence based group. People rarely provide actual accurate evidence. I'm speaking in generalities.

So... I don't mean to be rude, but you've left 13 comments in this thread, and I don't think any of them contain links to supporting research...

 

[mikalmo]

@rockhopper72 I'm taking about when I've asked for evidence. There isn't a lot of data regarding sleep training, there isn't even good definitios of sleep training, or what CIO means, like the OOP said. I've asked in previous posts when people claim is abuse.

What evidence would you like me to provide, i can't provide evidence that sleep training is or isn't abusive, there's some brief data that controlled crying methods don't cause harm, but it's old, so i don't feel it's super relevsnt? What evidence should I have asked for? Because there's no evidence showing that it's harmful. But there's a lot of anecdotal information to shower it isn't harmful, I've never seen credible anecdotal information showing it's harmful.

Oh wait, you just wanted to argue on reddit, didn't you?

 

[lamberto]

@mikalmo Agreed. By the time I came to the thread those comments you mentioned were already being downvoted, so I guess your post seemed to jump out of nowhere to me. And admittedly I am a little defensive about attachment parenting from the aforementioned arguments with some relatives.

 

[mikalmo]

@lamberto I just said "unpopular opinion" I wasn't down voted on the patent thread. I see what you're saying though, but I don't believe in being judgemental towards people that don't sleep train. I'm only judgemental towards sanctimommies

 

[katrina2017]

@grace4nan Then report it so we can find it and remove it?? Novel idea I know.

 

[grace4nan]

@katrina2017 That's fair. But just go through and report 90% of the comments on this post? I feel like a curmudgeon. Much easier for me to just unsub. I also don't feel it should be on mods to make this the community it should be.

If you sub to science based parenting, post in the spirit of it. That's more my disappointment.