Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Did your child ever sleep?

My younger dd was my car screamer. In hindsight, I think that it was motion sickness. That never occured to me until she was old enough to tell us how sick she was in the car (and she started vomiting non-stop on car rides, plane rides, etc. when she was older). While she wasn't throwing up in the car as a baby, I do wonder if the screaming was related to feeling poorly.

My younger DD has SPD, although we didn't know it at the time. She screamed nonstop any time she was in her car seat. When we had to make longer trips, we'd stop every hour to rest her lungs and our ears. It got much better when she turned one and we flipped her carseat around, although she still didn't like being strapped in.

She also didn't like to sleep. I could only get her to nap by putting her in the sling and walking up and down our street for 45 minutes or so. By the time she hit 17 months, she gave up napping entirely. She didn't need much sleep at night either, but at least with co-sleeping I could nurse her and mostly sleep at the same time.

Now, she actually sleeps longer and more soundly than she did as a baby or toddler. We only have going to bed issues every two or three weeks, so there is hope.

RE: NCSS

Your kids didn't loose it totally when you tried to remove the nipple before they were completely asleep? I sorta assumed DS was pretty normal about that... just that most people have more guts to push it than I do. If I recall correctly NCSS does discuss that some crying is ok, oh, now I'm all confused.

I still try, ocaisionally, but if I unlatch him, for any reason, at any time, it's a big fight. He will almost always unlatch when I ask him to, though not always instantly, I just can't do it unilaterally unless I'm ok with fighting over it (which sometimes I'm totally ok with). I pretty much have to wait till his jaw muscules relax when he's falling asleep, and he has to know ahead of time it's my intent to do so, or he'll wake up and cry when I move away (even if no part of his mouth is still touching the nipple).

To DS's view, it was exactly like ferber, because if my nipple wasn't there -- my arms, my voice, my breath, etc, the whole package -- but especially the nipple, he was alone and affraid in the dark. He still feels this way, only now he can articulate it. I didn't quite realize until he did start to be able to articulate it, though I certainly had some idea.

Timing nursing sessions was a similar bust, for similar reasons, he felt completely abandoned. He still does, if I try to limit nursing, though he's better able to cope with it now, especially when he's fully awake, rested, and basically happy.

He can fall back to sleep in his father's arms. So we've pushed that a lot. But if he gets too fully awake, that doesn't work either without a lot of crying. He _will_ cry it out in his dad's arms after 2-3 hours. And he can now go to sleep by himself, it's just really hard for him, and generally counter-productive unless he initiates the idea. He started trying hard to get himself to sleep when he was about 6 mos old, but I can't remember the first time he managed it, maybe about 18 mos, I know he did it once AT 18 mos, so within a year anyway. I'm actually incredibly proud of him for the effort and self-controle he has shown in trying to learn to fall asleep by himself. It's one of the reasons I get frustrated by the "teaching them to sleep" arguments... I KNOW how hard he tries, and how much he wants to be able to do it.

Meh. Blech. Yuck.

-Mich

I put these parts together because IIRR a jaw relaxation was part of what I was paying attention to, to know that I wasn't doing it too soon - so it's possible that my "not completely asleep" and your "falling asleep" are the same point actually! It's so long ago I'm not sure, but I think DS's jaw would relax at around the same point when he stopped actually getting milk; and it makes sense that he wouldn't like being interrupted earlier.

I vaguely remember being confused about how this was supposed to work; I've long since given away my copy, but yes, I think she may say something about some crying being OK. I never found an intermediate between "losing it" as you say, which was obviously (to my mind) not what she meant as it wasn't getting him closer to sleep, and no crying at all if I got the timing right. Given the title of the book I was happy with the latter and took it as a sign that I was doing it right! But I think she did present a picture of the baby being taken off, protesting sleepily, being put back on, repeat? We never saw anything like that, though I think I read posts from people who did (I was on a yahoo group that discussed baby sleep including, often, NCSS, at one point - no idea whether it still exists); at any rate I believe it exists.

You say "alone in the dark" - have you experimented with light levels? I did read some stuff about this being bad for eyes, but this was something we gave up on very early; we set the light level to what DS wants. Just recently (he's now 7) he talks about having overcome his nictophobia, if I have the word he uses, so as now to be able to go to sleep in complete darkness (e.g., when we all share a hotel room and it is 2 to 1 wanting darkness!), but he still prefers a low light on.

Do books have a role in your DS's bedtime routine? He's not far off the age that my DS was (2y10m perhaps?) when we added in the "now you can look at books for as long as you like" step, which was how he learned to put himself to sleep. Once he was in bed I'd read 2 books to him, then breastfeed him, take him off as discussed, and if at that point he opened his eyes and looked awake, I'd take it as a sign that he wanted to look at books for a bit, tell him that was fine, make sure he had the ones he wanted (they were typically heaped up around him anyway) and leave. Quite often there would be a shout of "can someone come and lie down with me?" a bit later; generally DH would go. The rule was that someone would lie down with him if he asked (I think this was important in his being willing to let me go in the first place!), but only if he was actually trying to go to sleep - he didn't get the choice of someone to lie down with him while he was reading (or "reading"). Gradually less lying down with him was needed, and less often, and it came to be routine that he'd want to read after the last breastfeed, and they all lived happily ever after. YM, of course, MV.

FWIW, mine were sleep-trained (second baby was more "check and console" than hardcore CIO) and they both began to be this way after STing (before STing they both had to be dead asleep before I could leave the room). IMO this is actually what it means to be able to self-soothe. DD's bedtime has been low stress for absolutely ages and ages--she often will ask to go to sleep before it's technically lights out time (8 pm--she is 7). DS's has been mostly low-stress with occasional bits and bobs of anxiety about the dark for ages, too. We did let him sleep with the light on for a while.

Although we did sleeptrain, I absolutely agree that is not for every family or for every baby. I found it very difficult, even though our experience was pretty easy. However, I will note here that I have read the research and there really isn't any convincing scientific anti-CIO research. Rather, there is a lot of evidence that sleep issues in children result in problems for children and parents both. Of course, there are multiple ways to resolve sleep issues, but it seems like most people I know have gone with "It will pass...," but sometimes it really hasn't. I have seen this issue do major harm to mothers and marriages both, so know that I am speaking with GREAT compassion for how hard it is, and yet with sincere concern.

I absolutely agree that sleep issues can result in problems for both children and parents. I think it may, I'm not sure, be true that for some families sleep training is the best thing - I certainly would not condemn any thoughtful parent who decides that for their family at this time it's the best thing to do. And yet, I absolutely would not under any circumstances have ever done it myself (and no, I did not have the kind of easy sleeper who never puts such a resolution to the test). I agree there's no good scientific evidence against it; but we wouldn't really expect there to be, for the kinds of harm (long term psychological) some people hypothesise it to cause; very difficult to study, and as far as I know, nobody ever has studied it. I still remember how I felt, crying in bed at night (much older than a sleep-training baby, but the pattern had been set: crying was ignored). Before I had a child, I stayed with friends who were sleep training their child at the time. It was terrible (doubtless because it set off PTSD in me: I don't think it was extreme by sleep training standards) and for many years I used to come back to that memory when I thought about having my own child. Finding out about attachment parenting, i.e. finding out that I didn't have to do that, was for me a crucial "aaahhh..." moment in feeling as though I might be able and want to be a mother. For as long as I thought you had to be prepared to do sleep training, I knew I couldn't do it.

My guess is that in and of itself, sleep training probably isn't harmful, although some parents like me are sufficiently traumatised that they can't do it, nonetheless. What can be harmful, I'm morally sure, is using it as the first step into a style of parenting in which it's OK to ignore children's expressions of need. Parents who have adopted that style are, however, most unlikely to be on a board like this which is dedicated to meeting children's needs, so: I don't mean you!

Actually, though it's not definitive, there have been a few small studies on attachment of infant and young children who were and weren't sleep-trained. IIRC, the sleeptrained babies were just as attached (no evidence of harm done by STing) and the parents were happier and rated the children's behavior as improved. Of course, none of these were long-term.

I have this general review bookmarked (this stuff is relevant to my job):

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079209001154

"Whether managing infant sleep problems by minimizing parental interactive behaviors at bedtime leads to insecure attachment is unknown. Studies measuring proxies of insecure attachment (i.e., child behavior through the Child Behavior Checklist and maternal report of infant attachment through the Flint Infant Security Scale) suggest otherwise.[16], [17] and 18 However, definitive studies incorporating validated measures of attachment (e.g., Strange Situation Test) and physiological measures (e.g., cortisol) are warranted. Unfortunately, a recent attempt to conduct such a study in South Australia failed, due in part to community members opposed to behavioral interventions for infant sleep undermining recruitment (personal communication Dr Gradisar, Flinders University, South Australia). A second study of infants who took part in an earlier randomized controlled trial of behavioral strategies is underway with outcomes at child age six of child sleep, behavior, and salivary cortisol and parent mental health.19 We await these results with great interest."

also of interest:

"Persistent sleep problems in infancy predict maternal depression at child age two years.23 Managing infant sleep problems has been shown to consistently reduce maternal report of depression symptoms in uncontrolled and controlled trials.[12] and [24] Thus there is a large overlap between infant sleep problems and maternal psychopathology and evidence to support both directions in a transactional model i.e., that maternal mood may affect infant sleep and that infant night waking and problems settling may lead to maternal depression and anxiety. However, most studies have used maternal report of child sleep and maternal mental health leading to concerns about report bias. Depressed mothers may view their child's sleep more negatively but this almost certainly reflects the impact of the infant's sleep on the mother's life and her perceived need for help with her infant's sleep. Maternal report of infant sleep is a reliable indicator of infant sleep habits, as validated against overnight infra-red video recordings and actigraphy[25] and [26] but whether this holds true for depressed mothers is unknown."

I'm aware, in general terms, of what's out there, yes; it's just that it is not convincing enough to me for me to say that ST is definitely harmless. Beware of the false dichotomy "ST or poor sleep", too - we've been discussing NCSS which is one more alternative, and cosleeping is another; while neither works for every family (any more than ST does) both work for many. IOW, evidence that poor sleeping is harmful is not evidence for ST being a good idea.

Oh no, I definitely agree that many methods can work and NCSS is one of them. (We tried it. Didn't work, though our issues weren't really covered in the book.) Cosleeping works for some, though anecdotally I know a lot of cosleepers and very few who seem totally happy with the situation. (I coslept with my babies when they were infants, FWIW--we didn't ST till about age 1.)


Well, I think the evidence for poor sleep being harmful is much stronger than the evidence that STing is harmful. So if other methods have been tried and failed, and the family is being seriously impacted, then in those cases it does follow, IMO, that STing becomes a good idea.

I'm talking about really poor sleep, though, not just run of the mill occasional problems.

My girls do not sleep much either. My big girl told me a long time ago it was because "my brain won't stop moving". This past weekend, I had two nieces over and even after jam packed filled days of activity, the other two girls crashed and mine was up! Exhausting...no advice, just a ~hug~!!