Feeling alone in not sleep training

@keithparagon My NCT group includes some first and some second time parents and the second time parents sleep trained their babies at 4-6 months. Now other mums in the group are struggling with sleep and she's singing the praises of sleep training and it's so hard to keep my mouth shut. But I'm not walking in their shoes so I don't want to tell them what to do. Luckily my husband is as anti-CIO/sleep-training as I am so we are united on that. What baby wants, he needs, and he gets :) but I know what you're saying, it hurts my heart to think of all these babies crying without being cuddled.
 
@keithparagon We’ve been cosleeping since week 2! Both of my sils coslept although one isn’t happy about it, and husband’s mom, and my cousin…it happens more than we realize because people don’t talk about.
 
@keithparagon In the UK there’s a walking group called blaze which are country wide, and I find loads of the mums in these outdoorsy type groups much more chill in relation to things like sleep
 
I have plenty of sleep training friends too, I just don’t bother discussing sleep when you don’t need input. When people ask how it’s going for me I laugh and just say terrible and don’t bother going in to more detail
 
@keithparagon I live in the US and it's so prevalent here that I literally started blocking social media pages of sleep consultants to train my algorithm. It's particularly hard now that I'm in the trenches of a 4 month sleep regression but I stand by my choice!

If you're interested in content infantsleepscientist and babyslepscience are the only pages I follow. Both are outlines how night wakings are normal and developmentally appropriate. They also talk about how responding to baby's needs overnight is natural and will not "doom" baby's sleep
 
@keithparagon I didn’t sleep train my eldest and my youngest is only 3 months. I’m from the West Midlands.

Any way, my eldest is 20 months old, he’ll be 2 in October. I never sleep trained him, when he was 12 months I simply transferred him to his own room and still to this day, stay with him until he falls asleep.

My mother never sleep trained any of her kids either.
 
@keithparagon I live in Canada and a FTM of a 7month old. Last week, we had a playdate with my neighbor and her 2 momma friends, and I felt left out when they talked about how they sleep train. When they asked me, I told them that I don't sleep train my baby yet because I don't think we need it rn. My baby sleeps 12hr straight, with no night feedings, he been a good sleeper since day 1 and had stretch his sleep since he was 3 months old. We are room sharing, his crib is right beside our bed. I don't have to nurse him or rock him to sleep, he can sleep on his own, as long as he can see me or his dad on the bed, he's good. And they said even my baby is a good sleeper, I should give him his own room and sleep train him. But I personally don't want to rush him to sleep alone, and I don't want to mess up our routine. I will be planning to sleep train him after his 1yr old birthday. So you are not alone for not sleep training. Just do what works for you.
 
@bryanlove Omg are so lucked out with a baby like that and even then they want to sleep train? My second was uo every 2 hours, screaming for half an hour and only settling with me walking around for that half hour straight up. He only started sleeping through around 2 years old. And I thought I was lucky with my first, she slept through from around 1 year old
 
@keithparagon I don’t care what other people do, I’m very confident in my decision not to sleep train, but I only arrived at this point as a second time parent. However, I will get very irritated when a parent boasts about how amazing CIO is and how it was their best decision (as if to suggest that their parenting is better than mine) only to find out that they needed to retrain and they are stuck inside the house riddled with anxiety over their child’s sleep because god forbid a nap is 10 minutes late otherwise it disrupts their ‘system’. So I just don’t talk about sleep to anyone nowadays, not to friends, strangers or the pediatrician. We’re all trying to do the best we can for our children, some people actually think that sleep training is doing their best. In extreme sleep situations I do think that it can actually help the family, believe me I know what it’s like to be so sleep deprived that having to parent and drive and operate a stove was dangerous for both myself and baby. I twice almost crashed my car from months of getting 3 hours of broken sleep a night - and I twice almost killed my baby in a car crash.
 
@keithparagon I agree with your overall vibe here, it's really hard for me to hear about people venting about their babies waking up to eat as if it's not natural, even acceptable, behavior.

I just find it so sad how little grace is given to babies to just be BABIES and grow, change, be individuals and need support.
Click to expand...

Yes.

Yes, yes yes yes yes yes.

I have to tune out — "la la la la la, I'm not listening" — when I hear parents vent about their babies waking up (alone in the crib) and crying (where's mom or dad?), awake for so long at night (on high alert maybe?? that adrenaline spike from being without a warm body, maybe???) ... I don't have the words.... But these same people miss out on hours of sleep at night... 😟

I cannot count on my hands the number of times my little one roots in her sleep or wakes (briefly) to nurse, only to calmly fall back asleep. It's sooooo often. And it's what I consider good baby sleep. They're EXPECTED to wake up.
 
@keithparagon I’ve been really surprised how sleep training is the expected norm! I have zero judgement of people who sleep train, but as you’ve said - I don’t understand people who behave as if it’s as important as playing with your child, or as if you’re neglecting a “skill” that should be taught. People don’t realise that (healthy babies) still wake through the night, but they just don’t call for you if they know you’re not coming.

A lot of it is amplified by sleep trainers pushing this narrative though- a friend of mine was told by a sleep trainer than her toddlers tantrums were because of his “sleep deprivation” waking through the night to feed. She sleep trained (successfully) but obviously he still has tantrums BECAUSE HES A TODDLER!!
 
@keithparagon You are definitely not alone, but I also feel this way in the US. It made me angry reading your post. We are biologically wired to respond to our babies' cries for a reason. I have to just excuse myself from conversations when sleep training comes up.
 
@keithparagon Yeah, it's the same with breastfeeding, cloth diapering, BLW, bedsharing, baby carrying and many other topics. To such extent that my ex felt we were the aliens and that even if our choice was ultimately the logical one, it wouldn't hurt for once to be more "mainstream".
 
@keithparagon UK here too, and ten months in and we're still contact napping and co sleeping. I decided during pregnancy (actually long before that) that I would never sleep train a baby, and I think everyone is surprised that I actually stuck to my word, especially since we dealt with four months of him waking every hour.

I had a conversation with my BIL the other day who is expecting their second baby and he said they would probably do cry it out as they did with their first. They don't even know if the baby will be a good sleeper or not! Their first was an awful sleeper, and was held for all day and night sleep for four months before they did CIO, so I can understand why they felt the need to do it, even if I disagreed with it.

And I feel like every conversation with my parents ends up with them commenting how I "need" to get him to sleep independently (why?) and "let him cry for a bit". Meanwhile I've responded to every single cry his entire life, and last night he did a seven hour stretch, which should be impossible according to sleep training advocates.
 
@sampson99 This is what gets me about the sleep consultants. So many of them say that if you feed or rock to sleep then your baby will ALWAYS need this to get into the next sleep cycle and you must sleep train or they'll never learn how to do it.

But if your baby ever sleeps more than 45 minutes then they've clearly managed it somehow. We're not at 7 hour stretches yet at 9 months (hopefully that day is coming!) but on a good night like tonight he can do 3-4 before he needs a feed and cuddle to get back down. Which as you say, should be impossible.
 
@keithparagon I also live in UK, and my partner had kids from first marriage and they did sleep training. When our daughter was born, he told me to sleep train and I heard other mums saying that also. But I did not. So do not listen to others or feel yourself alone. It is your baby and you know the best
 
@keithparagon I'm also in the UK and have felt this way too, it's so sad to me that it's totally normal and acceptable to leave a tiny baby to cry when as an adult, I wouldn't expect my loved ones to leave me distressed and alone in a dark room!

My baby has been a very challenging sleeper and I still struggle with the sleep deprivation now he is 9 months. He sometimes still wakes 8 times a night. But I could never just leave him to cry, I couldn't physically do that to him.

I have a friend who told me about putting their 4 month old in his own room and how it was hard to listen to him cry...

If it feels completely unnatural then maybe it is?!
 
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