Charly, I am really glad that you had success and have peace with your decision. I have found that the gentle approach has worked wonders with my boys. Perhaps I have been lucky, but it is really great having kids that go to sleep easily and never having had to put up with the awful stress and distress of any form of CC (or whatever you want to call it).
This is a personal opinion, but I feel like we (as a society) are too busy in our lives to raise kids to be kids. Babies didn't used to need to be "trained" to sleep as there was a community to help out raising the child, and the parents didn't have to get up at 5am to go to work the next morning. It starts with trying to get a child to sleep through the night before they are biologically ready, and continues. Then it's "teaching" them to be good even when we've dragged them around the country side. Making them rush to get ready in the mornings. When do they just get to be kids and do things in their own time, as the individual people that they are? It is sad that society doesn't recognise the value in supporting parents to be parents. If it did, babies waking in the night would be tolerated, as it should be. And babies would be allowed to learn to sleep without having to upset themselves first. This is speaking very generally and is not talking about any specific situation.
I agree with you MR. If I had some support around - I have NONE at all, I would probably be way less stressed about the amount of sleep we get. I never get a break from my kids. I don't have anyone else to take Jaz to school so I can sleep just a bit longer. I have noone who can take Bri for the day while I catch up on sleep I didn't get the night before.
I don't really mind if Jesse wakes through the night if there are blocks of sleep in between. Every 1 - 2 hours just isn't enough & thats when I decided I needed to teach him to self settle. I don't care if he doesn't sleep through, but I know as he is my son that he's not getting enough sleep for him when he wakes like that through the night.
& I think babies do need to be taught to sleep. Weather it be CC or rocking, they still have to learn to go to sleep, otherwise they stay awake too long & get overtired & just get more upset. I've rocked my son for two hours without him going to sleep.
I've paced my lounge room for hours on end everynight with my DD2 when she suffered from colic & would cry til 3am. I was the one who had to teach her to go to sleep earlier. If I had've let her go to sleep when she was ready, she'd still be going to sleep at 3am. I've got her back to between 9 & 10pm. I'm happy with that for now, but I'll still have to get her ready for school in 18 months. Which will involve teaching her to go to bed even earlier.
We are responsible for our children. We have to teach them almost everything else, why not teach them to sleep better as well if we can?
I have a friend who's daughter used to sleep good at night. When her DF was working night shift, she'd wake the baby to keep her company. Her DD starts school next year & still goes to bed at 11pm. The same as when she was born.
OK. Sorry Ben, I said before I wasn't coming back in here. I should've stayed away. I really hope you've found something thats helping. My advise is to try anything you both agree on that works for you & Meg. Only you two can decide what will work & whats right for you guys.
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