Some babies are naturally great sleepers. The parents of such paragons should give thanks each day on bended knee and never mention this fact to other parents. But as many as 40 per cent of babies continue to wake through the night past a year; for the parents of these babies, what's the bottom line? Controlled crying is horrible for everyone - but if it works, and the whole family gets more sleep, is it really a problem?
She lives in rural NSW, and when she gave birth to her first son, she took a very natural approach to sleep. But, I guess, with a second baby, you don't see your [early childhood] nurse so often, or any health workers - I think that probably increased my vulnerability.
But nevertheless, when he was three months old, I started this 'wonderful' routine. Within three or four weeks, Ben "was more often than not crying himself to sleep while I sat outside the room and cried as well. Within two months, we had a baby who was waking five or six times a night; a baby who was petrified to go to bed; would not let himself go to sleep anywhere else but in his cot: never in the car, never in the pram.
So the sleep training that was supposed to maintain this wonderful sleep absolutely destroyed his sleep. Jo stopped the routine after four months, but "I feel it has caused damage," she says. Part of this problem may have existed at birth, says Jo, "but at the very least, controlled crying has exacerbated sensitivities that were there. Howard Chilton would agree.
That's the threat-and-reward part of the brain: it responds to fear, food, contact. Whereas the frontal lobes - the intelligent, thinking part of your brain - are not connected at all. So we adults can take the impulses from our limbic system and say, 'No, that's a cardboard tiger, calm down. There are up to a thousand connections a second being made in your first 12 months.
Part of that wiring-up is genetic. But part of it is environmental Stress is part of your environment, and it triggers the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
Cortisol, particularly, has a really negative effect on neural connections. It has almost no ability to mop up cortisol, which means it will always, even as an adult, have a higher level of background stress, get panicked and upset more easily, and find it harder to calm down. He pauses. You're good at being calm, and when you get put under stress, you're good at getting yourself back to a calm state quickly.
Plus, when babies are reassured and soothed and comforted, their brains get flooded with reward hormones Beta-endorphin and dopamine have been shown in the lab to enhance brain connections. So our brains are being permanently shaped, at least in part, by how we're being comforted at night, before we're even one year old? It's hard to believe such a fundamental thing could be happening so quickly, and so irreversibly.
You can modify the basic system, but it takes a great deal of deep cognitive work - and I often wonder how good any rewiring actually is. The basic stuff about stress is done by one year. But the first three were by far the worst - it was totally brutal. Both my partner and I were going in and out, but after a while, going in just seemed to make her worse, so we got really tough and just let her cry till she fell asleep. One night, that took three hours.
Even now, however, six months later, "on average, we still have one night a week where we have to let her cry herself to sleep once in the night. But it does seem to have made her more confident and settled. I would never have done it if I'd thought, even after one night, it was doing her any harm. You've got to stay confident and remember you're doing it out of love: love for them, and also for yourself.
I just feel like this big cloud lifted from my life. Postnatal depression is at the heart of the controlled-crying debate: if a baby doesn't sleep, neither do its parents, which is a risk factor for depression, which is terrible for everybody.
One of the most famous studies about controlled crying, in fact, was conducted in Melbourne in to assess the impacts of baby sleep on maternal wellbeing. Results showed that controlled-crying-trained babies taught "progressive settling" or "camping out" from eight months of age did sleep slightly better than their non-trained counterparts, but by two years old, those improvements were statistically insignificant.
In the original research, there were no measures taken to see how the babies themselves were affected by controlled crying. But in , researchers published a follow-up of 70 per cent of the original subjects.
This time they assessed child mental health, too, via cortisol measurements. Hiscock, for her part, suspects that "when you do these strategies, babies' cortisol levels do go up, but after they start sleeping well, they go down. So is that temporary rise detrimental? In an otherwise healthy family? Probably not. Chilton agrees. Some experts claim that it may make children feel abandoned which could cause them problems in later life, however there has been no evidence to support this yet.
A follow-up study in from the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry showed that controlled crying was a safe technique and did not cause long-lasting harm to the child, their relationship with their parent or their mother's health. And have comfort food or feel-good films at the ready! It's tough, and you'll still be sleep deprived for a time, but it will be worth it in the long run.
All babies and toddlers are different, and for some learning to drop off on their own is a matter of just a couple of evenings. For most children that normally sleep well, it's about days which is still not too bad.
With children who struggle with sleep, it can be a hard one, lasting up to two weeks. If you find controlled crying just isn't for you and your baby, there are plenty of other sleep training techniques you might want to give a go. A guide to baby sleep regression. What is white noise and how can it help your baby sleep? Dressing your baby for bed. An age by age guide to understanding your baby's sleep cycle.
Week by Week. Prev Next. We create our articles with NCT antenatal teachers, postnatal leaders and breastfeeding counsellors, as well as academics and representatives from relevant organisations and charities. Read more about our editorial review process. Is it OK to let a baby cry?
Read time 8 minutes. Email Post Tweet Post. What is controlled crying? What is self-soothing? What does the evidence say?
What are the arguments for and against controlled crying? PROS Some parents find that controlled crying works relatively quickly, often within three weeks Matthew et al, Some babies who learn to self-soothe early in life turn into better sleepers over the course of their first year Mindel et al, ; Early Intervention Foundation, Some experts have suggested that self-soothers are less fussy as babies, and have fewer tantrums as toddlers Mindel et al, Carrying out controlled crying can be stressful.
Some parents find it goes against all their instincts to repeatedly not pick their baby up if they appear to be upset. Controlled crying can create a lot of noise, worrying about other family members or neighbours can add to stress levels. How does controlled crying work? STEP 1: Put them in their cot, sleepy but still awake. STEP 2: Say goodnight and leave the room. Are there any alternatives? Is there anything else I need to think about?
Further information Our support line offers practical and emotional support with feeding your baby and general enquiries for parents, members and volunteers: Show references. Murray L The Psychology of Babies. Information you can trust from NCT When it comes to content, our aim is simple: every parent should have access to information they can trust.
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