I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about infant sleep. Though I write about a lot of things, this topic comes up more than any other. One of the things I have struggled with recently is trying to understand why so many people speak about the need to turn to cry-it-out (CIO) or controlled crying (CC). It’s as if there are no other options available to them, though clearly there are and I’ve shared gentle sleep resources here. In pondering it further, I start to wonder if those of us who speak out against sleep training may be inadvertently setting families up to fail. Hear me out…
Imagine, if you will, a mom who knows she has to go back to work at 3 months (or 6 months or a year or whenever). She is dealing with the sleepless nights because she can nap during the day. She’s up with her baby, cuddling and enjoying the strange new clock that’s been set for her. A little tired, yes, but she manages as all new parents do. Then at 3 months, she returns to work. Suddenly the demands of work mean her brain is functioning in a different way than it had been when she’d been home with her baby and the lack of sleep at night isn’t being made up for in naps or even just relaxing days at home on the couch with her baby. Add to this, her baby is having to adjust to the separation and is more stressed than usual, leading to more fussiness. Books have told her that her baby should be sleeping through the night by now but her baby isn’t, so she’s waking at night for feeding sessions and cuddles, then struggles during the day, with a cycle that just gets worse and worse as the week goes on. On weekends, she can catch up a bit, but there are still tons of things that need to get done and so it doesn’t really help and by the time Monday hits again, she’s still exhausted. She looks for help and is met by well-meaning people who say, “Just wait it out – it’ll pass” or “Don’t worry, all babies do this, but you have to just plow through – I did!” So she keeps going and going until she simply can’t anymore.
Too many parents end up in this cycle, or one similar to it. They persevere through it, week after week, with the stress, tiredness, and resentment building up until eventually they simply can’t take it. Something has to be done. And it has to be done now.
This is where those gentle options many of us preach go out the window. They take time. And when parents are at the end of their rope and can’t handle any more night wakings, they want whatever fix will work now, regardless of what it may include. So doctors and friends and family say you need to use CIO or CC. One week, a few days and you’ll have your sanity back. Who can argue with that? And so they do it and sometimes it works (sometimes it doesn’t) and they become the ones to recommend it to everyone because finally they have some sleep and can function again.
But let me propose something different. What if instead of waiting until one is at the end of their rope, we encourage parents to try gentler methods that will take longer when they know they either need a certain schedule or start to show signs of frustration, anger, resentment, etc. towards their child over the sleeping situation? What if we told them that it was okay to start working on guiding sleep before they hit the wall? And that by starting it earlier, they could do it in a way that better respects their child and won’t leave them feeling awful as they listen to their child scream and cry for them? And what if they knew that these gentle methods don’t ignore their child’s needs and most won’t end with a baby sleeping 10 hours uninterrupted at night (because that’s often not biologically normal unless forced via other means – though some parents do have these deep sleepers) but may reduce the wakings from 10 a night to 4?
I do fear that parents keep going with something that isn’t working because they think there’s no alternative and so they keep looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, not knowing that light may still be a couple years away. In line with the vicious cycle idea, parents don’t think of gentle alternatives and don’t want to use the harsher ones (e.g., CIO) so they keep going with something that isn’t working until they feel they can’t. And then they turn to the methods they wanted to avoid earlier because that’s all there is and when it “works” they become ones to support it and recommend it to other parents in this situation.
If we keep only telling parents “It will pass” without being honest that sometimes that time can be a long time and sometimes it might not work for them and their family, we’re setting them up to hit a wall and resort to the one thing we’re trying to put an end to: non-responsive sleep training. Although many of us would prefer to see families use the wait-it-out method and let children find their sleeping pattern in their own time, we also have to be practical that that isn’t going to work for all families. As such, we need to not only offer gentle alternatives, but make sure families know about them with the time needed to do something about them and the fact that they will make things better but still include that you respond to your child’s needs so that attachment isn’t compromised.
So if you see a family starting to struggle, it’s okay to suggest they look into something to help them as a family. In fact, by presenting this option earlier than “necessary”, you may be saving a family from dealing with the heartbreak that often accompanies our modern sleep training practices.
If you are struggling with sleep issues and are interested in gentle sleep resources, you can see a list of options here.
When I have explained our wait-it-out style, I find myself focussing more on how we (parents) got creative about us getting sleep in AND be there for our daughter. Taking turns attending to her (when she’d let us), using and family/friends help so we could catch naps, car rides (one can nap while the other parent drives), etc. Because as the above already speaks to: it’s too simplified to just said all we did was “wait it out”.
OMG loving this! YES YES AND A MILLION TIMES YES! I narrowly avoided CIO with my first (mainly because I was a SAHM with a supportive spouse who would help me find time to sleep and was crucial to our successful night weaning sometime after 18mo). Even before my baby was a year old though I started thinking about checking out “The No Cry Sleep Solution”. However I couldn’t believe the criticism this most AP of sleep guides would get in the crunchy circles I was part of! This is like the gentlest method yet ppl still acted like it wasn’t AP enough:/ I finally did read it though and it was a God send! Among others things, sleep in particular seems like a giant p*$$ing contest in the AP community. It’s like “oh you gave up cuddling with your kid each night just to sleep? Ugh you must not really love them…”
Even naps- omg naps have been my saving grace and yet I see so many in the AP world kind of dismiss me for wanting to keep my now 3yo taking daily naps as long as possible, like I’m not mom enough or something for needing a break and chance to rest:/ That started from like under 2yo too so not just realistic more experienced moms trying to get me to have reasonable expectations. Naps are not her favorite but they do help a lot!
I think sometimes we get so caught up in the idealism that we forget the importance of being pragmatic. I’m expecting again and for years now have been saying that TNCSS is going to be my bible from day 1 when I have another. So many little things that could have been prevented really became big issue after my first baby’s first few months.
The biggest I think was the whole “oh it’s NATURAL to let baby fall asleep at the breast!” TNCSS book says this is ok to do but it’s essential to make sure it isn’t baby’s ONLY way to get to sleep. I really get so PO’d when I see that meme about it going around- yeah nursing to sleep is all fine and dandy when baby is a newborn but when it’s a 12mo screaming in your face every single night and naptime just because you try to pull away for a bathroom break, it’s NOT pretty!!! I get there are some catty MILs and such that give those kind of dreary conventional warnings but there is some wisdom to helping baby establish good sleep patterns BEFORE it’s an issue and it’s a lot more likely a mom will keep breastfeeding if she’s not required to be a human pacifier every night all night. Sorry if that’s not perfect enough for the uber-crunchy crowd but for my sanity, it was worth it. The Pantley Pull Off was absolute GOLD- gold I tell ya! It’s possible to easy up on the AP ideal without going full out Babywise:/ The more we realize that the better for babies and parents everywhere!
I just want to add that for some families falling asleep at the breast is okay because it works for the *family* (mine being one of them), but when it doesn’t work, you need to find gentle alternatives. You’re right – sleep shouldn’t be a pissing contest! It should be about making sure most (if not all) families have gentle sleep experiences. If we don’t advocate for that, we’re setting families up to fail and that just sucks.
My one year old is up at 12 am 3 am and 7 am to nurse like clockwork. We co sleep and I have fantastic sleep. It was only before I found this site that I had trouble. That’s because I felt I was doing something wrong by encouraging him. I used to resent it and thus work myself up everytime he woke. Since he turned 8 months I brought him into my bed and its been fantastic. He is a baby who needs alot of cuddles and just doesn’t sleep well on his own.
I do want to night wean by 18 months though, I just don’t see myself doing it for longer than that. Would you say 18 months is a good age to try and night wean? Once you can explain to the little ones?
I’m so glad the site has helped 🙂 I think night weaning is going to be dependent on where he is and where you are. You may not need to do anything as he may be down to 1 nursing or less at that point. And if not, then you can definitely do it unless you know of a reason not to. The Dr. Jay Gordon link in the Gentle Resources post is a night weaning link!!
I teach newborn care at a hospital. Most of our parents are going back to work at 3 months (sometimes 6 wks!) and I think this is an excellent point. we talk about the no-cry sleep solution as a gentle option at the 3 month mark but you make a really good point. the 90 minute baby sleep program seems to work for many families and does start very early with no crying. what are other resources? thanks!
Julie – you can click on the link at the end for other resources. Included are books by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, Pinky McKay, and Dr. Sears, amongst others 🙂
I’m currently reading Non Violent Communication by Rosenburg which is an AMAZING parenting tool. It has helped me think a lot about the whole family’s needs and about working out ways that they can all be met gently.
This goes for breastfeeding and other night time parenting stuff, for sure…. HOWEVER….
I also think if most parents understood the true nature of how babies sleep we wouldn’t have this idea of “sleeping through”. Although some parents have strong needs, due to back to work scenarios etc, others feel the need for drastic measures because of expectations placed on them by family members and even here in the UK, health proffesionals. There is a sense that a baby’s inabilty to sleep well is tied to our competency as parents.
annother gentler resourse for introducing early is “the lull a baby sleep plan” by kathryn Torbin.
It didn’t work for me, as my bub has always seemed scared of sleeping in general..(growing out of it now at 11months) and so wouldn’t sleep alone, but I remember the basic principles being good. I think it was a bit pushy on the ‘your baby must sleep this long and at this many times per day’ front, but overall I would say it is worth a look
I’m still having issues with the way my 4yr old sleeps. She was a co sleeper was then slowly transitioned now own bending a room she shares with her ill bro. She wakes 5 out of 7 nights a week on a good week and will fuss and cry loudly till everyone is awake and might do this once or twice a night. We’ve tried all sorts even trying to encourage her to bed share with her bro as I have a new infant I’m nursing. She recently started school and everyone said oh she’ll be a whole New kind of tired bet starting school sorts her out….. It hasn’t.
Can you talk to her about WHY she’s crying and waking? You need to get to the root of the problem – if you ignore that, nothing will change regardless of what you try (or it will change for reasons you don’t want). You need to find out what is bothering her about her sleep.
This post has bothered me since it came out. I couldn’t put my finger on why. But it bothered me so much that I’ve been drawn to come back to it time and time again to figure out why something that seems so innocuous is getting my panties in such a bunch. And I think I’ve figured out why, so please bear with me while I try to put into words what I can’t really even pin down in my head.
I would have been this mother. The one going back to work very early, with a child who would be considered a very poor sleeper, persisting on little sleep (3 hours total, broken, on some consecutive nights) with a ‘high stress’ job that leaves little room for mistakes, and desperately wanting to AP a baby I knew I would eventually experience long daytime separations from. By 6 weeks, I was working 60 hour weeks again, where I would wear my baby to work, breast feed all day while standing at a lab bench, responsible for two full time jobs happening at the same time so that I could manage to only put my child in care a few hours a week while I blitzed through chemical and radioactive work too dangerous to do around a little one. And at the time, one of my most common thoughts was a despairing “this isn’t working, I’m so tired, what the hell am I going to do”.
And if I had read this, this foretelling of my future where I would eventually get to “the end of my rope”, “lose my sanity”, and resort to methods I didn’t/don’t agree with, from a source I trusted implicitly, I would have sleep trained my baby, albeit gently. And it would have been completely unnecessary. And I likely wouldn’t even know that I should regret it and miss holding a napping toddler or nursing my son through the night. Because as much as I don’t believe that gentle sleep training will damage a baby, I also believe that wio, that consistently and frequently demonstrating to my son that I can be depended on to meet his needs when I’m there, no matter what time of night, is beneficial to attachment, especially for the working mothers this post targets, who lose out on a lot of that daytime bonding.
My son would have had to shoulder yet another insult as a result of me working. And that makes me angry at you, person that I’ve never met over the internet, and sad for the other moms who are currently in the position I was in that will now perhaps gently train their children to not ask for cuddles or milk from mommy while they drift off at night or when they wake in the dark. Because they’ve been given the impression now that the feelings of exhaustion, despair, and resentment will only get worse until they crack, when many, many times that isn’t the case. It gives the impression that successful WIO-ers never feel these same frustrations or are somehow better capable of coping with them, when I would posit that the *majority* of women feel these emotions and are capable of getting through it.
This post would have changed the way I had parented. And knowing what I know now, at 15mo postpartum, that gives me one of the deepest feelings of sadness I’ve experienced in a long time.
Ashley, that’s a very interesting perspective, but I also don’t think it’s a universal one. And of course, I never want to say everyone should do it (I personally used WIO), but for the people that do see themselves hitting a wall. But one thing that is missed in your belief is that the gentle methods are equal to not meeting needs and that’s not the case. Depending on the book or the source (did you read the methods linked at the bottom?), it can be as innocent as not sleeping with boobs out for babe to smell all the time to co-sleeping to increase quality of sleep, but one thing all these books support is responding to the needs of your child. The only night weaning suggestion on the list is a method that is clearly for children over the age of 1 and only if it’s really a problem and even then only for a set period of time at night and not when things like teething are happening. So the point of the gentler methods may even be to decrease wakings by 1 a night or increase a stretch of sleep from waking after each hour cycle (which I have known people to experience) to 2 hour cycles. They are very different from the goals of sleep trainers and often if a family can move from 7-8 wakings a night to 3-4, they are in a position to continue with that for as long as a child needs it. The mistake is believing that gentle methods have the same goal of sleeping through the night without signaling that popular sleep training books include. Obviously I should be more clear in this though and will consider a revision.
More than that, I would still worry about the many who do crack. The popularity of sleep training books tells us we should prepare people earlier. AS I mentioned in the gentle resources post, the very first thing should always be about education of normal sleep and resetting our expectations. Only then can a parent truly decide if they are beginning to resent the lack of sleep. And this brings me to my final point which is that parents who are hitting the resentful stage with their child are probably not bonding as we’d like. So we have to be careful about making sure parents feel they can make changes safely if it’s negatively affecting their attachment with their child.
Thank you for your comments though.
I am the mother of 6 kids, now ranging from 19 years down to 6. We were AP all the way, the whole nine yards despite a lot of criticism & judgement (especially when BabyWise or Growing Kids God’s Way was released unfairly condemning AP). I breast fed each baby on need (I hate the term demand) for around 2 years give or take, we slept with them (one son actuality loathed sleeping with anybody…he just needed a face cloth lightly covering his face and his dummy after he had fed and he drifted off beautifully – so easy for me!). We picked them up when they cried, lots of sling stuff, sleeping on my chest and falling asleep on the breast. Dream feeding was one technique that saved me many nights, feeding baby when I knew he needed it without actually even waking him up. But I have also suffered from exhaustion at the lack of a good 6-8 hour sleep without interruption. Would I change anything with hindsight…no, nothing major. I’d be kinder to myself though and less kind to my hubby and his sharing of the load. So a little of what I’ve learned, I’d like to share as your blog brought back many memories and I’d probably have found it helpful and supportive back then. The biggest thing that helped me stand against the constant & relentless question of “Is he sleeping through yet?” (no matter what ages my babies were) and yes, our society does somehow link sleep to mothering competency which is silly, anyway, the biggest help was doing research on actual sleep rhythms & cycles in adults, children and babies. Once I understood biologically how a baby’s sleep needs and cycles differ to my own as an adult, and how they work together with the natural routine of breastfeeding and how long my milk took for my baby to digest etc, I realised and understood that to simply try and foist an adult’s sleep cycle onto a baby of any age because truthfully, it would be more convenient for ME, I could work with my babies and not against them. We became a team and I didn’t get so angry and frustrated because I understood and accepted where my baby was naturally at. The clearest example of this that I can share is when my fifth child was born profoundly Deaf. By the time he was a few months old I was completely exhausted. I could handle the 3-4 hourly wake up pattern at night to feed, but he would NOT sleep for longer than 20 mins during the day. It could take me 45 minutes to “fight” with my 6 month old to get him to sleep for 20. I was desperate. So I researched sleep and Deaf babies. I found a research paper talking about how lovely and relaxed Deaf babies’ brains are because they don’t have all that noise of the shopping mall, school yard, vacuum, washing machine, dogs, cars, TV, radio etc etc constantly stimulating their brains and exhausting them plus all the visual stimulation too (and we can overdo that with constantly hanging things in front of our baby’s nose lest they aren’t constantly “learning” something). The paper said that Deaf babies don;t need any where as much sleep as a hearing baby does, so don’t stress if your Deaf baby isn’t sleeping much. I stopped fighting with him and again, accepted what HIS needs were. I started doing things differently with him from that day. I was still tired yes, but much more relaxed about it which helped hugely. Education is the key. Babies aren’t little adults. If we understand why something is happening, it makes the what easier to accept I think, which impacts the how we do it. Unless you have 6 children, it is a relatively short time of “sleep deprivation” that will end as they grown, but I agree with you about he gentler methods earlier on rather than the drastic CC. IF we can just accept that babies aren’t little adults who have the same biological development level as Mum and Dad with regards to sleep especially, it’s very helpful. You may not get a lot more sleep, but it gets rid of the resentment and frustration (most of the time) and that makes you more relaxed, which relaxes baby. And lastly, find that thing that lulls baby to sleep and USE it. We’ve used the car drive around the block, the boob, the facecloth, hair tickles, music, baby in car capsule on top of the tumble drier, slings and many other things! Sorry about the length of my comment (essay)…who knows, just reading this out load might put a few to sleep!
I just have to say that this article completely undermines and under-represents the level of sleep deprivation that some of us have had to deal with. I find the term “fail” in the first paragraph insulting. To have practiced these methods does not mean a parent has failed. There are many parents, including myself, who even when not having the added stress of going back to work, have struggled with mind numbing sleep deprivation. Mothering at home all day is not all roses. As a mother of premmie twins with reflux and PND I challenge these parents to come and relive my experience of almost no sleep day and night for 7 months. Every child is different and even a parent of many children may not have had the experience of a child who is the most resistant to sleep. I love the idea of AP but I challenge these parents to show me how to achieve that with MY two incredibly bright, joyful but demanding children. I should not be made to feel less of a parent because of this. My children are loved whether I sleep train or not. at the end of the day, THAT is what we should be telling parents! This is a simplification of a very complex and varied issue which requires varied responses to individual families and children.
I can see why you might feel the way you do about this article, words like “fail” are very emotive and imply a certain degree of personal responsibility for the situation. It might have been better to say that parents who turn to crying-based sleep training are *being* failed.
It isn’t clear based on what you’ve written whether you were aware of & tried a range of gentle sleep training techniques before turning to CIO/CC – if that was the case, and the “less gentle” sleep training was a last resort, then clearly you haven’t “failed”, you tried everything you reasonably could and found yourself in a situation where CIO/CC really was the only option left to you other than continuing with the extreme sleep deprivation. If you weren’t aware of all the alternatives (or weren’t aware of them at an early enough stage to put them into practice before things reached crisis point), then you are in exactly the situation that this article is talking about, being failed by both the CIO advocates AND the anti-sleep-training types, because you were not made aware of the gentle methods early in your children’s lives when it could have been prevented from turning into an extreme problem, and were left feeling that CC/CIO was your only option. Again I need to emphasise that doesn’t mean you were personally at fault for what you felt compelled to do, you can only do what you know about and are capable of doing in the situation you find yourself in, and obviously by the time the problem has got so bad that you are suffering really extreme deprivation then you are so incapacitated that you just don’t feel capable of the effort & patience required for the gentle methods.
If you didn’t know about all the gentle sleep training methods then you were let down, you didn’t personally fail. If doctors, parenting experts, other parents, the media etc all promoted gentle sleep training more than the less gentle methods then perhaps you never would have found yourself in the situation you were in: feeling like CC/CIO was your only option, literally for the sake of your sanity. I’m sure no one here would minimise the devastating impact of sleep deprivation – those of us who have experienced any degree of sleep deprivation know just how bad even relatively minor sleep deprivation can be and realise that must pale in comparison to 7 months of severe lack of sleep. Personally I have seen a close friend become increasingly mentally unstable after struggling with her daughter’s sleep problems for a very long time so I’ve seen for myself what it can do to a person. I have huge amounts of sympathy for a parent who finds themselves in that position and turns to CC/CIO. But none of that means the basic point of this article is wrong – it would be failing parents in a similar position to you to pretend that it’s fine to train a child to sleep by leaving them to cry for extended periods of time, I know it is upsetting to hear but there is increasing evidence that it may be harmful, and at the very least no good evidence that it isn’t harmful. It would be doing parents and children a disservice to just avoid mentioning this for fear of hurting people’s feelings. But it is also failing parents like you to minimise the problem and suggest that waiting-it-out is the best alternative to crying-it-out; gentle sleep training needs to be promoted as heavily as the non-gentle methods. No parent should ever find themselves in a position like you did, where the choice is either doing something that might be harmful to your child or continuing on a path that is unequivocally harmful to you (and by extension possibly your child). Don’t get angry with this article, get angry with the society we live in that fails to properly support new parents, fails to provide them with the information they need to make informed choices, and fails to recognise the struggles they face.
I honestly have found the parents that go into parenting supporting CIO are usually lazy. This is just my experience & others could have different views. But I will leave you with this:
http://www.nannytomommy.com/2011/04/cio.html
WWe felt pressure to sleep train from family, friends and child health nurses. We didn’t know we didn’t have to, we tried sleep training our poor sweet girl when she was 4 months…d the pressure was on us from all sides, we kept trying for a month before we all started feeling depressed, and so we started lying to friends and family instead and cuddling our sweet sweet girl to sleep, and sleeping with her. only much later did I discover EP and a few other anti cio pages to comfort and support our decision.
I think one of the hard things is knowing which of the gentle sleep strategies to try. WIO and CIO are obvious, but all the stuff in the middle is more gray. And most moms don’t have the energy to try program after program.
And that’s a great point – trying different programs IS hard, but I hope that as more people try more gentle methods we’ll get more information as to the types that are more likely to work with different types of kids and sleep “problems” (quotations as often it’s a problem for the family, but not the child).
I agree with very early education on this subject as I honestly believe most parents don’t like the CIO option.
At 6wks postpartum we had a sleep consultant talk to our coffee group and it was the best thing. Simple techniques which work for most babies.
I read a book recently on gentle sleep training (can’t remember the author) which talks about different personality types needing different techniques. For example the more sensitive types need way more cuddling.