What happens to poor sleepers who aren’t sleep trained?

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ebveloz

New member
I’m curious what happens to infants with parent-led sleep associations (I.e. need support falling asleep after each sleep cycle) who are not sleep trained. However, I’m not looking for the pros and cons of sleep training :) I can find lots of info on that online but having trouble finding out more about my more specific question. Thanks!

ETA: I’m curious about the downvotes? Is it because by nature, the answers to my question are anecdotal, not scientific? I strive to take a science led approach to parenting (alas I’m a right brained artist which is why I love learning from this community!) but have found sleep related topics to be quite divisive topic. My own understanding of the research based aspect of infant sleep and sleep training comes from Medina’s Brain Rules for Baby. I’m coming to this topic with an open mind and see the benefits of both sleep training and not sleep training.
 
@ebveloz There have been a few studies that have shown that any impact achieved for sleep trained infants and toddlers compared to non sleep trained disappears by age 2.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...al_Infant_Sleep_Intervention_Randomized_Trial

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23516146/

The discontented baby book goes into the current research in good depth (advocating against traditional sleep training methods). This write up also provides a good summary of the existing sleep training origins and research including pros and cons: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies
 
@ebveloz I think there needs to be some differentiation between poor sleepers and frequent wakers.

It’s biologically normal for babies to wake regularly. This is very different to not getting enough sleep or not getting refreshing sleep. There is no evidence that sleep training improves sleep (E.g. source) for the baby - plenty of evidence of parents noticing fewer wake ups, getting better sleep themselves, having improved mental health, etc (E.g. source). Arguably this makes them better parents, which is better for the baby, but there isn’t a statistically notable improvement in sleep quality created by sleep training.

Sleeping in one block per 24 hours is a social/cultural construct, rather than a biological need. There are plenty of cultures where sleep comes in two blocks - night sleep plus a siesta. There is evidence that for hundreds, if not thousands of years, adults would sleep for a few hours, wake to pray, have sex or read, then go for a second sleep (E.g. source). The milestone we seek of a baby sleeping through the night simply wasn’t a thing only a few hundred years ago.
 
@ebveloz I want to point out the massive selection bias around sleep training.

ADVICE YOU MAY GET: “We sleep trained and it wasn’t that bad, and our toddler is a great sleeper, definitely do it!!” —> their child is naturally a good sleeper so sleep training was easy.

ADVICE YOU MAY GET: “oh yeah we tried sleep training but I guess we didn’t try hard enough, we had to repeat it twice and then we gave up. I wish we’d stuck to it because he still doesn’t sleep very well.” —> Their child is naturally not a good sleeper and it’s not their fault.
 
@seditthis Also the flip side:

ADVICE YOU MAY GET: “We never sleep trained and it wasn’t bad at all, and our toddler is a great sleeper, you don't need to do it!”

—> child is a naturally good sleeper AND/OR parent isn't particularly bothered by broken sleep and has a different idea of "good sleeper" to average.

ADVICE YOU MAY GET: “We sleep trained and it didn't even work! It was terrible and traumatic, sleep training is so cruel!”

—> child is naturally not a good fit for sleep training and it's neither the parent, nor the method's fault

Totally guilty myself of giving the first piece of advice in my own post - but I have more recently realised that my capacity for coping with broken sleep is unusually good, plus I have been lucky enough not to have to work full time while my kids were young and I have low expectations of myself so I am not trying to Do All The Things on little sleep. I just do less and that is the season of my life and it's OK.
 
@seditthis I tried the same things with both my children one didn't sleep through the night until he was at least 3. The other slept well enough from early on. I can literally just say "go to sleep" and she rolls over and closes her eyes.

They have both always been early risers though. They are now just turning 2 and 5 and last night was the first time they both slept until 7. I, of course, woke at 3.30.
 
@ebveloz I don’t have a source to quote but I think eventually in the absence of a medical condition causing a sleep disorder (like sleep apnea or severe separation anxiety) everyone eventually learns how to settle themselves back to sleep. (I don’t think my high school classmates were rocked to sleep every 2 hours lol!)

Anecdotally, my 9 month old baby has been supported to sleep since we brought him home and he can resettle himself between sleep cycles if he doesn’t need anything from us.
 
@rbshekar Thanks! I'm currently sorting out my own (likely physiological) sleep issues and am testing for sleep apnea soon. Fingers crossed my girl doesn't inherit my deviated septum! So far she doesn't seem to have any such medical condition but it is something that I monitor.
 
@ebveloz Anecdotal- We have an 18 month old. There are good nights and bad nights but he mostly sleeps through the night with maybe one wake up due to a puffy diaper or gas. We didn’t sleep train. We’ve been told by pediatricians and other sleep experts that by 3 (usually earlier) there’s not much of a difference in how children sleep between those that were sleep trained and those that weren’t. The majority of evidence out there is that sleep training is not harmful (when done properly) but not sleep training isn’t harmful either. The main takeaways when it comes to sleep science is not to feel bad if you choose to sleep train because there is no proof/evidence of lasting damage but other than that, it’s up to you how you want to raise your family and the end results have little to do with how you chose to address baby sleep.
 
@ebveloz My kids weren’t great sleepers as babies or toddlers but they’ve all been great sleepers as kids. We enforce sleep hygiene and regular bedtimes and they get a decent amount of physical activity during the day. They also aren’t allowed in our beds once they are in their own beds at night. It’s easier to enforce boundaries and rules once they actually understand them.

A family member sleep trains all her kids with extinction when they are 3 months old and her kids are terrible sleepers. They take hours to fall asleep and are up before it’s light out.

There are also so many con founders. I gently sleep trained one out of four of my kids and he was the best sleeper as a toddler and baby. But I tried the same method with a different kid and gave up. So he’s probably naturally a better sleeper. Parenting practices and kids personalities are going to really impact how a kid sleeps both as babies and as kids.
 
@ebveloz Depends on what you mean by “poor sleeper.” I have always found my baby to be very normal — he woke a few times a night, needed some support to get back to sleep, longest stretch gradually lengthened, wakes gradually lessened, contact napped while young, gradually stopped needed contact. But when I peek in the sleep training sub, I see people describe my exact baby as having an “awful sleeper.”

I never expected my baby to be independent from birth, or as an infant at all. I mean… he’s a baby… that’s kind of the whole thing about babies: they are dependent.

We did a lot “wrong” — co-slept (co sleeper, occasional bedsharing but usually separate sleep surfaces) from birth intentionally, breastfed to sleep, contact napped intentionally, didn’t use black out curtains. We did layer sleep associations like music to fall asleep (we switch it off after he’s asleep), bonded him to a lovey around 11 months, white noise machine.

Now he’s 16 months old and we do a quick bedtime routine (pjs, teeth, books), and he always falls asleep with either my husband cuddling him usually or me nursing him occasionally if husband can’t, his sleep music playing quietly (beautiful album by Christina Perri), white noise, his lovey, and he sleeps on a twin bed next to our bed. It takes him 10-15 min to fall asleep, he sleeps 5+ hours, wakes 0-1x a night and needs 10 min cuddle with husband or nurse with me, sleeps another 5+ hours. His overnight sleep is usually between 10-11 hours. He wakes with the sun. He takes a 1.25-2 hour nap midday that my husband always lays with him for 5-10 min (he’s usually quicker to go down for a nap than bed.)

We’ve never let him CIO or done anything sleep training related, other than incorporating music/lovey/white noise. He had trouble with my husband putting him down for bed (not naps) when he first started to do it around 4-5 months, but he adjusted after a couple weeks, and we shared bedtimes about 50/50 from 5-13 months (then my husband took over 90/10, because I was newly pregnant and my nipples were so sensitive it was hard to nurse even 10-15 min! Now I’m half way through my pregnancy and my nipples aren’t as sensitive so we do more like 75/25 and my husband does his naps.)

All children will eventually sleep through the night (unless they have some medical issue, which does happen, and would impact them regardless of age.) Some well meaning family/friends have said he will “never sleep by himself” etc. but… I think it’s been pretty worth it given he sleeps 5-10 hours alone in his own bed, needs comfort for 10ish minutes a few days a week, and he actually enjoys laying down for naps/bed. He will giggle and get excited to lay down, pull a blanket with him, pick a lovey (he has 2), he loves doing his bedtime routine, and he doesn’t fight bedtime or naps at all. Sometimes he even asks to take a nap, when he’s tired early. So for us, doing a child-led approach to sleep has paid off.
 
@ebveloz Anecdotal: with my first baby, I nursed to sleep at every wakeup until I weaned him at 2.5 years old, then transitioned to snuggling to sleep. I'd also cosleep in his bed after wakeups at night. By his third birthday, he was sleeping through the night with no intervention needed. He's almost four years old now and he still snuggles to sleep (with husband now) and sleeps through the night.
 
@ebveloz Just my experience, my oldest is four, I never sleep trained, I nursed her to sleep until she weaned at around two years old, then I cuddled and sang her to sleep. She was a terrible sleeper, waking several times throughout the night from a few months old. She just gradually started to sleep longer. Going to bed has never been a problem, she goes happily and calmly, and usually sleeps 8 or 9 hours straight. She’ll occasionally wake up, but if I do need to go in to her it’s only to help her get her covers back of or something. Sometimes I sit with her while she falls asleep still, sometimes I don’t, i let her decide what she needs each night.

My youngest is three months and we plan on doing things the same way.
 
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