Sleep – No Training Required

As a new mother you hear all sorts of things about sleep. There’s something perverse about the one thing that you crave above all else is the one thing your baby seems incapable of doing. And it’s the number 1 question (are they sleeping through the night) you are asked by other parents and non-parents alike, as though it’s some kind of barometer of your skill as a parent.

And it’s easy to become polarised between cry-it-out and non-cry options. If you have a troubled sleeper, you will be tested on the strength of your convictions. Will you still be an advocate of gentle sleep methods when your baby is 6 months, 1 year, 18 months and not sleeping through? Or will you decide that at some point anything is worth a try. Everyone has a breaking point and there’s a reason sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture.

I’ve always believed that cry it out ‘works’, but had reservations about why it ‘works’. Do they learn that no matter how upset they are, they won’t have their needs met and that they are powerless? Or is it just as its proponents would argue – a good way to teach independence and self sufficiency.

One of the things that really resonated with me on the non-cry-it-out side was that all humans have a fight or flight reflex. But babies can’t do either of those things and they do require their parents to regulate their emotions and part of that is parenting-to-sleep.

My parental instincts led me down a path of co-sleeping, parenting to sleep and babywearing. While Riley wasn’t a horrible sleeper, she certainly wasn’t easy. At 12 months she was still waking about three times a night.

One of the main critiques you hear about not using sleep training is that if you don’t use some form of sleep training they will never go to sleep on their own or sleep through the night. This gives poor sleep-deprived mothers visions of having a 5 year old and still having to cuddle or pat them to sleep.

But here’s a secret, it’s not true! By 14 months, Riley was going to sleep on her own (thanks toddler bed) and by 18 months she was sleeping through the night (reliably, at last). And today, she fell asleep on the couch without her nap-time routine, a sneaky bottle or any other prompts, completely on her own.

Not that I’ll be giving up her nap routine, which involves me telling her that it’s nap time, her yelling ‘No!’ with surprising vehemence, me taking her to the bedroom tantrum and all, we have a cuddle and then straight to bed. It usually just takes the one time. But occasionally I’ll hear the slap, slap, slap on the door. And we repeat.

But nonetheless it’s a nice milestone to reach. And I get to feel a little bit smug the next time somebody tells me that you need to let babies cry it out. That is, until I have another baby and the learning curve starts all over again.

Tagged as: controlled crying, cosleep, cry it out, sleep