- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Attachment Parenting
Frustrated and exhausted re: No Cry sleep method
I'm feeling so beat down, exhausted, emotional. I'm at my wits end. I haven't had a good nights sleep in six months. I know this isn't uncommon. I had resigned myself to thinking that exhaustion comes with being the parent of an infant and my philosophy was to not let him cry even for a minute, so I just needed to deal with the night wakings by nursing/rocking/holding him down for sleep and at every night waking until he grows out of it. Now I am realizing I'm doing myself and disservice (starting to resent him and chronically exhausted) and probably him by having such stressful sleep patterns throughout the night.
I bought the No Cry Sleep Solution and have been trying some of the techniques but I'm not seeing much progress. He was up about a dozen times last night. Each time, we pick up, sing, rock him back to sleep, put down and then he pops back awake crying, and we repeat the process over and over and over again. This can't be good for him and it is not working for me anymore.
Problem is that I can't reconcile the my two goals - no crying and teaching him to soothe himself back to sleep. They seem to be in direct conflict. I feel lost on how to deal with this. I'm about to do what I never said I would do and look at a sleep training approach like Ferber.
How do I teach my baby to self soothe without crying or is this not possible at this stage given the sleep associations I need to undo?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Frustrated and exhausted re: No Cry sleep method
Before you try anything, are you sure he isn't teething or hitting a major developmental milestone? Either can seriously mess up sleep. If he's up 12 times a night I think it's safe to assume there's more at play here than sleep associations.
How long have you been doing the NCSS? We did it with DD around 14 months... and it took a solid month to two months before we noticed a difference. NCSS can absolutely teach him to soothe himself back to sleep, if you do it to the letter and give it time to work.
What if you split nights with DH? That's what helped us deal with the exhaustion the most. I'd go to bed early and DH would deal with putting her to bed and any wake ups after 2am. After 2am I'd take over. That way we both got a chunk of uninterrupted sleep.
DD2 8.22.13
MMC 1.4.17 at 16w
Expecting #3, EDD 1.29.18
He hit the 4-month wakeful and learned to roll over and that is when the night sleeping went downhill. In desperation I started bedsharing, which started the all night nursing back to sleep. So I think we are not dealing with developmental milestone issues anymore, and he isn't teething. Each night is different; last night was particularly bad. The "best nights" are when he wakes every 2-3 hours!
I'll give NCSS a little more time but I'm not sure how much longer I can give it without feeling like I'm losing my mind.
THis is not going to be a popular answer on this board, but here is my experience. My DS was never a good sleeper. He still isn't the greatest. At about 7 months, I could no longer handle the sleep deprivation, and he was a cranky child.
I did the CIO/Ferber method for bedtime and bedtime only. He knew it was bedtime and although he cried, I was surprised by how quickly he figured out what was expected of him.
That CIO period lessened the nighttime wakings, but didn't eliminate them. I always tend to him in the middle of the night and cuddle him back to sleep. My argument to my DH was that you never know why he is waking up in the middle of the night, and I could not let him sit in there to cry if he was scared or sick.
Today he is 13 months old and STTN about 2 nights a week. The other nights he has one wake up and I cuddle him back to sleep. Works for me, and I feel like I balanced the need to teach my son when its bedtime and how to fall asleep with nurturing his need for comfort.
MMC 3.30.16
I have a similar story, though LO is only 7 months and still a frequent nightwaker. I tried some No-Cry techniques around 3 months, and they worked great (putting her down increasingly drowsy). 4 months everything went to h*ll. Fighting bedtime, waking 20 times a night (no exaggeration!). I tried rocking her, nursing her, swaddling, paci, and she would fight me for hours, screaming and crying.
I finally gave up and put her down awake when she was fussing/crying one night and I was at my wit's end, and she was out in about 10 minutes. Technically I guess we inadvertently did the evil 'extinction' CIO (except I was in the room with her, with silent tears streaming down my face while I lay on the floor next to her crib), but frankly, it involved a lot less crying. If you read the books associated with CIO, none of them advocate letting LO cry into exhaustion and therefore sleep. They don't even use the term CIO. They advocate giving babies the chance to self-soothe. Sometimes this doesn't work and babies cry for hours, but sometimes it works like a charm with very few tears. My kid puts herself to bed for naps and nighttime with no crying, and only fusses if she's overtired. I dare anyone to tell me that what I did was 'crueler' than having her cry hysterically for over an hour while I tried unsuccessfully to rock her and nurse her to sleep. Like PP, I still get up for her nightwakings.
FWIW, I honestly believe most people how maintain that CIO is evil in all it's guises no matter the circumstance just don't understand how awful it is to have a terrible sleeper. I would rather let my kid fuss to sleep than accidentally drop her in the middle of the night or get into a car accident or whatnot.
ETA to fix typos & for clarity
I dare anyone to tell me that what I did was 'crueler' than having her cry hysterically for over an hour while I tried unsuccessfully to rock her and nurse her to sleep.
That is what I am struggling with too. It isn't like he goes back to sleep peacefully as soon as I pick him up (although I do admit that the boob does do that but I am no longer willing to comfort nurse all night long). I keep thinking about what I read in one of Sears' books that crying in a parent's loving arms is different than crying alone; however, it is crying and none of us seem happy or well rested so is this working?
I'm a firm believer that you know your baby best and you need to follow your instincts. If it feels right, go for it. If not, keep searching for another solution. If you are worried about LO crying alone, you could try the PU/PD method from the Baby Whisperer. I haven't tried it but essentially you pick them up without comfort (no rocking or sushing) when they cry. Then put them down all the way into the crib. If they cry again, give them a few minutes, then pick up again and put down once they are calm. You might have to do it hundreds of times over the course of a few nights but it teaches LO that you are there but gives them the chance to put themselves to sleep.
My unsolicited advice is that if you are going to do any kind of sleep training, make sure your LO is on a an age appropriate schedule, well rested, and with an established bedtime routine. These will minimize crying. My feeling is that it's better if LO isn't crying more than necessary simply because parents have kept them up too late or overstimulated them right before bed.
GL. I really sympathize with the lack of sleep. I feel like I'm always teetering on the edge of depression because of it.
We had a very similar experience and I am glad we did it. It is not at all how I wanted things to go, but I wasn't sure what else to do. I frankly couldn't handle any more months of soothing LO every 45 minutes. It just didn't work for me. Your entire family matters and you have to weigh the costs and benefits of every decision. For me 20 minutes of crying (with checks) for 3 nights was well worth getting to sleep a whole 3 hours in a row.
In my experience, you're onto something here. Many people on this board will not like the advice I'm going to give you, but it worked for me.
IMHO, all forms of "sleep training" are basically the same from the child's point of view. No matter what "method" the parents use, the child begins at square A: (relying on a parent's soothing to fall asleep) and winds up at point B: (soothing herself to sleep). The journey is the same to the child. The only thing that's different is the length of time it takes and the suddenness of the transition.
Even adults have sleep habits. For instance, I always read before I fall asleep. If I'm in a situation where I can't read a little before turning out the light, it makes me cranky, and I have a harder time falling asleep. As an adult, I know that I will eventually drift off, but the only way I know this is from experiencing it and living through it. Your baby doesn't know this, and the only way your baby has of expressing her dismay at this situation is by crying.
"Ferberizing/CIO" accomplishes sleep training dramatically, over a short period of time. Your baby will certainly feel stressed for a few nights. You may feel guilty and upset as your child adjusts to a new way of falling asleep on her own. A "no cry" solution will accomplish sleep training over a longer, more drawn-out period. As you're discovering, it doesn't necessarily mean that your baby won't cry. Rather than feeling guilty, you may feel resentful that this process is taking so long, and that you are being deprived of sleep for many nights.
Your child will learn the same skill and experience the same discomfort either way. If I were you, I would forget trying to find a way that's easy for your child. All ways will be hard on the child. Instead, find a method that you think will be most do-able for YOU! Think about the best time to begin the sleep training, and then proceed and don't give up until your child is sleeping well.
I used two different methods with my own kids. The first time around, I inadvertently created a sleep nightmare that went on until she was about a year old. After a lot of dithering, I wound up just pulling the plug on the night nursing and dealing with some crying. With baby #2, I stayed on top of it at an earlier age, and gradually trained him in a less dramatic way. With #1, I used something closer to Ferber; with #2, I would say I was closer to the "no cry" method. Both sucked, frankly. It's just a hard thing to deal with. Hang in there!
The No Cry sleep method doesn't literally mean NO crying. I think a bit of working it out is necessary.
Like many of the PP's I ended up having to do full on CIO at 7 months for my own sanity. After 3 nights she slept amazingly and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. In the moment though, I felt like the worst person ever. A week later I was singing the praises of letting them cry. It was night and freaking day.
Francesca Pearl is here! Josephine Hope is almost 3!
Have you read the Baby Whisperer? There are some things I didn't like, but her pick-up, put down method worked well (and within a week) with my younger daughter.
Unpopular on here, but DD1 was ferberized. She was waking up 10-12 times a night for MONTHS (from 6-9 months), I had gone back to work and I just couldn't do it anymore. She was miserable and tired, I was miserable and tired. Ferber worked for us within 3 days and she started sleeping (and continues to be a great sleeper at 4). I think sometimes graduated crying methods can actually be a solution for sleep problems.
We just used the /Jay Gordon method with Dd (at 17 months) and have seen results. She would not respond well to typical CIO methods so I pushed through the sleepless nights until I felt she was old enough to understand the process.
It is not uncommon for infants and toddlers to not sleep all night, contrary to how it feels when everyone else is talking about their sleeping kids.
I really liked the sleep chapter in Raising the Spirited Child. Just changing Dd from footed pj's to t-shirt/diaper for sleeping gave us 5 hour stretches instead of 2
House / Baby blog
This exactly, except we waited until LO was 11 months old to do Ferber because we were waiting for sicknesses and teething to stop. We had tried every other method out there, including NCSS, before resorting to Ferber, and I never regret that choice.
I have a blog and it isn't about babies or motherhood or my life. It's just about eating, drinking, and traveling: Explore and Eat