Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:My babies weren’t bad sleepers they were just human babies! Without sleep training (meaning let your baby cry) both my babies were sleeping through the night (12 hours with one dreamfeed).

They are both great little sleepers now at 3 and 5. Both go to bed easily and happily and have no anxiety issues (which I think is tied to too young sleep training).

Lol. You have absolutely no idea at 3 and 5 if your kids will have anxiety.

I know they don’t have anxiety now like several kids in their classes do.
And only old people use “lol”.

DP. As the parent of a child with severe anxiety I suggest you get away from this idea that your child does not have anxiety because you're such an awesome parent. It's genetic. We really have a terrible attitude towards mental illnesd in this country, and you are part of the problem.

DP. Look, a child not sleeping and being up every hour or few hours for years can’t be good for anxiety.

Oh is that your medical opinion? Look lack of sleep is definitely bad for health (I am pro sleep training) but there is no evidence of long term harms from either sleep training or not sleep training. There is no need for you to stigmatize mental illness in this debate, so just stop.

No, it’s common sense. Restorative sleep is important. Your child not sleeping cannot be good for them.

Again, I am pro sleep training. We sleep trained successfully, and our child has severe anxiety. Research shows sleep training does not impact long term emotional health, one way or the other, so while I agonize about many of the decisions I've made as a parent, that is definitely not one of them.

Look, assessing the quality of your parenting based on whether you sleep trained is stupid enough. But blaming other parents for their children's anxiety because of some judgement about whether they sleep trained or not, is stunningly ignorant. But I guess that's just how you want to be.

Australian researchers, who published their findings in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, found that of 225 six-year-olds, those who participated in sleep training when they were babies were no different in terms of emotional health from those who did not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-infant-sleep-training/infant-sleep-training-has-no-long-term-effects-study-idUSBRE8890JP20120910

It's not about sleep training per se; it's about infants getting enough sleep (by whatever means).

https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/508055

Key Messages
Sleep pattern changes dramatically in early childhood.

Establishing a healthy sleep pattern in early life is very important for child development.

Sleep plays a critical role in learning and memory, emotional regulation, and related brain structure development.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440010/

Infant sleep is a particularly interesting field of research due to its dynamic trajectories, the developmental changes that occur during this period, and the interaction with other developmental domains. More specifically, we reviewed the association between infant sleep and cognition as well as physical growth. From the reviewed literature, we conclude that sleep plays a key role in those domains with its maturation paralleling, preceding, as well as resulting from interactions with cognitive and physical maturation. Exact mechanisms have not been the focus of this review and still remain to be understood; however, the maturation of central nervous system structures like the hypothalamus or the neurotransmitter system underlies both cognitive development and the regulation of sleep/wake cycles.84

https://www.childrenscolorado.org/conditions-and-advice/conditions-and-symptoms/conditions/sleep-deprivation/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Can all those who want to argue about sleep training please leave the thread? I posted the way I did specifically because I didn’t want this thread to get detailed with another tedious sleep training debate. There are SO many places you can go argue about that!

Please just post your experience if you didn’t sleep train. No advice please, just experience. Thank you.

Yeah we get it - you are a selfish mom and won’t teach your child to sleep.

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Anonymous wrote:My babies weren’t bad sleepers they were just human babies! Without sleep training (meaning let your baby cry) both my babies were sleeping through the night (12 hours with one dreamfeed).

They are both great little sleepers now at 3 and 5. Both go to bed easily and happily and have no anxiety issues (which I think is tied to too young sleep training).

Lol. You have absolutely no idea at 3 and 5 if your kids will have anxiety.

I know they don’t have anxiety now like several kids in their classes do.
And only old people use “lol”.

DP. As the parent of a child with severe anxiety I suggest you get away from this idea that your child does not have anxiety because you're such an awesome parent. It's genetic. We really have a terrible attitude towards mental illnesd in this country, and you are part of the problem.

DP. Look, a child not sleeping and being up every hour or few hours for years can’t be good for anxiety.

Oh is that your medical opinion? Look lack of sleep is definitely bad for health (I am pro sleep training) but there is no evidence of long term harms from either sleep training or not sleep training. There is no need for you to stigmatize mental illness in this debate, so just stop.

No, it’s common sense. Restorative sleep is important. Your child not sleeping cannot be good for them.

Again, I am pro sleep training. We sleep trained successfully, and our child has severe anxiety. Research shows sleep training does not impact long term emotional health, one way or the other, so while I agonize about many of the decisions I've made as a parent, that is definitely not one of them.

Look, assessing the quality of your parenting based on whether you sleep trained is stupid enough. But blaming other parents for their children's anxiety because of some judgement about whether they sleep trained or not, is stunningly ignorant. But I guess that's just how you want to be.

Australian researchers, who published their findings in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, found that of 225 six-year-olds, those who participated in sleep training when they were babies were no different in terms of emotional health from those who did not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-infant-sleep-training/infant-sleep-training-has-no-long-term-effects-study-idUSBRE8890JP20120910

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Can all those who want to argue about sleep training please leave the thread? I posted the way I did specifically because I didn’t want this thread to get detailed with another tedious sleep training debate. There are SO many places you can go argue about that!

Please just post your experience if you didn’t sleep train. No advice please, just experience. Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did your baby/child’s sleep ever improve? Either naturally or with non-CIO methods? My baby is 7 months and our lives have completely fallen apart from lack of sleep. I’m too tired to detail all the problems and how bad it is. I don’t want to sleep train but feel we have exhausted everything else, so I’d like to hear only from those who didn’t sleep train and eventually saw improvement to see if realistically there is any hope.

Please do not suggest obvious things like white noise, styles of sleep sack, wake windows, solids, etc. we have Tried. It. All.

Feed your baby when he/she is hungry and comfort when they’re scared. Your reaching the point where your baby gets object permanence and it gets better.

Sorry, OP. It is rough now. But in my experience gets better once the baby knows you will attend to their needs. Are you exclusively breastfeeding? Have you started solids? The more the baby eats and drinks during the day, the longer he’ll sleep at night. It will happen.

Until then, any chance of getting some help in do you can sleep?

Unfortunately we had to let paid night help go because baby developed severe stranger danger and would scream for hours and hours when anyone but us put her to sleep. So my mother just moved in with us to help short term. We started solids and baby is playing more than eating so far but I’m hopeful eventually it will help. I combo feed breastmilk and formula but usually EBF overnight out of convenience. Considering night weaning to see if it would help (baby also has CMPA and I am so sick of the dairy free diet. I do not like breastfeeding anymore).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just ignoring the pro-sleeping training people for now. No energy to explain why I don’t want to. I appreciate your opinion.

We tried co-sleeping. It was even worse with baby seeking the breast all night, waking every 5-15 minutes and ending up hysterical with exhaustion by morning.

You do not want to sleep train. You do not even want to hear about it. You do not want to hear about so called obvious things to try. So what exactly do you want? All I can say is, your baby needs sleep and it is up to you to help provide her that.

+1

Good-quality sleep for lots of hours every day is essential to brain and other development. OP, if your baby is waking up "hysterical with exhaustion" then you are depriving him/her of precisely what s/he needs for development - it's as if you are feeding the baby McDonald's food or denying him/her the ability to roll over or crawl or whatever.

You need sleep, but more importantly, your baby needs sleep.

Anonymous wrote:Not sure my story will help but I think we have similar perspectives, OP.

I wasn’t able to breastfeed and that guilt only strengthened my resolve to never sleep train. I also think being able to feed a full bottle of formula at bedtime made it easier to get long stretches. Both children technically slept through the night by 6-8 months. I devoted a huge amount of time to the bedtime and nap time routines (lots of bouncing and rocking, no evening babysitters, sunlight in the am, nightly bath with same massage oil, etc.) until they were about 2. Both are now great sleepers who rarely need support. We never bedshared but roomshared for several months with crib in our bedroom—I think that made the transition to independence easier.

There are times I’ve calculated the endless hours spent rocking and popping in a pacifier in the middle of night and wondered if I was crazy. But I would do it again because I can’t stomach the alternative. We know so little about the infant brain and our cultural expectations seemed like a mismatch with what my babies needed. Just a generation ago pediatricians and laypeople thought hitting children was not just fine but actually beneficial.

All this is to say that things can improve and there are many of us who didn’t bedshare or ebf who chose not to CIO. That said, I never experienced round the clock wake-ups every two hours…I wouldn’t fault someone for doing what they need to in that extreme situation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just ignoring the pro-sleeping training people for now. No energy to explain why I don’t want to. I appreciate your opinion.

We tried co-sleeping. It was even worse with baby seeking the breast all night, waking every 5-15 minutes and ending up hysterical with exhaustion by morning.

You do not want to sleep train. You do not even want to hear about it. You do not want to hear about so called obvious things to try. So what exactly do you want? All I can say is, your baby needs sleep and it is up to you to help provide her that.

Anonymous wrote:It also doesn’t help those struggling with anxiety to not try and do whatever we can to set the stage for lower cortisol levels, strong attachments, etc. But it’s much easier to go on about stigma than actual put the work into treating babies and children as they deserve.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Can all those who want to argue about sleep training please leave the thread? I posted the way I did specifically because I didn’t want this thread to get detailed with another tedious sleep training debate. There are SO many places you can go argue about that!

Please just post your experience if you didn’t sleep train. No advice please, just experience. Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:A toddler, sure—but a 6 month old doesn’t need “boundaries”. I hate when people project the latest self help jargon onto babies!

OP, here’s a general rule. Those who are actually proud they CIO can’t be dissuaded. They are not the types to self reflect or second guess but rather to “get on with it”. This parental temperament probably benefits their children in many ways as they go through life…just not for the first year.