Controlled crying question

[bobby's bear]

For the first 8 months of my little ones life she was awake every 45mins- 2hrs overnight. We co-slept from her first night wake and so she fed to sleep whenever she wanted to. Two weeks ago I realised I was at breaking point with exhaustion so we decided a change needed to be made. Having tried some of the gentler methods without success we opted to try controlled crying, allowing her a dream feed at 11pm and again if she woke anytime after 5am (depite the fact that she is going great guns with BLW and so probably doesn't need night feeding at all!) For the first 5 days it worked brilliantly with the longest she cried being 15 mins on night one and after that grizzling for no more than 5 mins and the settling to sleep and by night 5 she went 7-5 without waking, fed at 5 and then slept until 7. So we thought we had it cracked..........we went away for the long weekend and she was fine with only a few brief night wakings. We have been home 2 days and things have got mugh worse, she is now screaming at full volume every 45 mins but when I got in to shussh her I get big smiles. Last night she screamed on and off for 2 hrs despite me settling her every 10 mins or so, eventually at 2.30am I cracked and brought her into bed with me, at which point she decided she didn't want to sleep at all and cooed, giggled and stroked my face until 4am!

So what I am wondering is... is it normal when using cc to get regression? There doesn't seem to be anything else wrong with her (no sign of teeth etc) so has she just worked out she needs to shout louder / scream to get attention? Will it get better as I am not sure I can cope with the screaming or her feeding and playing all night!

[supergolden88]

short answer (bouncing baby as I am typing) is yes you can regress and need to go back to CC.

but I would also look at how much she is napping and whether you need to reduce her nightime sleep by putting her down later. All babies experience a wakeful period (my boy is pretty awake between 3-4am) but your daughter sounds as if maybe she is not that tired. Also maybe she is learning a new skil that is keeping her brain active.

this too shall pass

[bobby's bear]

She is a terrible napper too (today she had 2 x 30 min sleeps all day) but maybe the new skill thing is it as she has just started sitting up unsupported in the past few days. We'll she how tonight goes!

[Fuschia]

My understanding of cc is that it's not A magic wand that stops a child waking but a policy for how you respond

Most people I know who use it find that there are periods of crying from time to time rspecially from a determined child

[Jacks50]

Poor you!! I feel your pain.

I have three children and they've all been terrible sleepers (probably something I did wrong) and we've had to do cc with all three, which, like everyone I absolutely hated.

It sounds like your daughter is waking at the end of each sleep cycle so she's just struggling to put her self back to sleep, in which case I guess the answer is to go back to cc.

We did CC with my third child about 6 weeks ago but we used something similar to this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vtech-Baby-Bear-Sweet-Dreams/dp/B0041M5USA/ref=sr_1_99?s=baby&ie=UTF8&qid=1304541384&sr=1-99

which we hadn't used with the other two and its really made life alot easier. we only used the sound part, not the lights. she goes to sleep at bed time with it so its like a sleep prompt. If she wakes in the night and cries, the music starts and most of the time (touch wood) she goes back to sleep.

We tightened down on the bedtime routine when we started the cc thing too. Tea at 5, (late feeding can cause waking in early evening apparently) some milk at 6.30 ish, then a quick, 5 min bath, (something about raising body temp then it falling again produces the sleep hormone) quick dry and dressed, then a bit more milk and into bed.

I think the idea is to make going to sleep at bed time as easy as poss so she gets the hang of it on her own, which will help her fall asleep on her own when she wakes from a sleep cycle in the night.

I've really rambled on! I"m so sorry. Its a big topic for me though having been through it so many times so I like to share it with anyone who will listen! and I'm not a great example as our baby was awake at 5.30 this morning so we put her in our bed and she went back to sleep!

good luck and remember its all just a phase and will soon pass!

[supergolden88]

yes persevere if you can with CC - not good to change things around now unless you are happy to do so. And if it is a really wakeful period perhaps she will realise instead of screaming she can play/chat to herself. But dont go in every ten minutes - go in at 5/10/15/20* etc. *or whatever is the longest you are comfortable with.

The night nanny that helped with CC a few weeks ago was against all mobiles/music etc. especially in the middle of the night as that may make baby MORE wakeful and playful. She was also against white noise but I have not followed that bit of advice - we have a wave white noise app on my iTouch through the night and during naps. It probably does not make any difference to the baby but it helped ME sleep when he was still sharing our room and it drowns some of noise of the household.