sleep research - can you help

[liliva]

Dear All

I am about to start some private research into what works and what doesn't as far as sleep solutions are concerned. As a mother of a sleepless 9 month-old babe myself I have great motivation for doing this! but I'm also interested to see which of the multitude of sleep solutions on the market actually work and I haven't come across anyone who's done a survey to see which are the most successful and which are complete duds. When I've got enough answers (it would be great if I could collect at least 100) I will share the results with everyone else on the mumsnet network.

If you have ever tried any of the following with your baby, could you contact me by posting a message here.

1. Elizabeth Pantley's no cry sleep solution
2. Tracy Hogg's methods: shush pat or pick up put down and easy routine
3. Dr Ferber's graduated extinction method (also known as controlled crying)
4. full blown extinction, or Cry it Out (where you shut the door and leave them for the whole night to cry it out)
5. Scheduled awakenings (where you wake them up 15 minutes before they normally wake up - Tracy Hogg also refers to this as 'wake to sleep')
6. Any other methods

but please don't write to me about a certain GF that we're not allowed to mention. And also, so I don't get the mumsnet team into trouble, please can you not be too harsh about anyone else's methods, could you just say:

a) Did it work?
b) How many times a night was your baby waking before you started the sleep training method and
c) what was the improvement you saw by the end of the period of sleep training?
d) How old was your baby when you started the method?
e) How long did you pursue the method for?
f) How did it make you feel, putting that particular sleep training into practice (on a scale of one to five, where one is "awful - I'll never do it again" and five is "a very positive experience")
g) How difficult was it to carry out (on a scale of one to five where one is "I found it next to impossible" and five is "very easy, like falling off a log")
h) How much help did you get from your partner in all this?

thanks so much in advance everyone, for your help.

I look forward to reading replies

best wishes
Liliva

[WriggleJiggle]

Went back every 5 minutes to resettle until she was asleep
a) Yes it worked.
b) 2 or 3 times
c) she could go to sleep on her own. Now 2 months later she can wake in the night and resettle herself
d) 4 1/2 months when I used it to get her to sleep in the evening. 6 1/2 months when I used it to resettle her during the night
e) Started out of desperation at 4 1/2mths when she stopped feeding to sleep.
1st night - took 15 mins
2nd night - 45 mins
nights 3-7 - between 15 and 50 mins
Then for 3 weeks she was consistant at needing 15 minutes i.e. two returns to resettle
Now she either goes straight down or needs 1 return to resettle.
f) HATED the first night - 1, disliked the next couple of nights, now dead easy - 5
g) as above
h) lots of physical and verbal support

Sorry for rambling! Hope it helps.

Oh, never read the book on it - just got advice from other mums and mn.

[lucy5]

I never tried any, just did my own thing.

[hotpot]

Hi I did Tracey Hogg Pick up put down & easy routine
a) yes!!! (but is recommended from 3 months onwards and her latest book "...solves all your problems" divides the sleep methods into age ranges)
b)several and feeding although not hungry
c)he slept through and was able to settle himself at night
d) 8 weeks
e)took less than 1 week
f)back breaking but 4
g)again 4
h) DH is an absolute star and incredibly supportive - it makes or breaks it I think

Having said all this ds2 is on Elizabeth Pantley NCSS he is 6 months (was poorly from birth so took a completely different approach to the whole thing) and exhaustion from having two children means that we are happy to take a more time consuming approach because having several nights of no sleep would be a killer for me and DH - I am SAHM.

[Hattie05]

I didn't read any of the books, but tried out Tracey Hoggs pick up put down method after seeing it on tv and also had a terrible experience with controlled crying where dd fell out of her cot in a tantrum.

I can't answer all your questions, but will give some answers in this explanation hope thats ok.

Dd slept through the night from 3 - 7mths. Then started to wake frequently to which i responded with breastfeeds (too tired to try anything else). Soon this impacted on her ability to go to sleep without a feed so i tried pick up put down. No it did not help.
We started to co-sleep with frequent bf's during the night.
At 15mths i couldn't get her to sleep in her cot at all, tried controlled crying and as i say she fell head first out of cot, so cot was removed the next day and we used a matress on the floor.

This is when the pick up put down type of method really did work, gradually withdrawing the amount of comfort i provided and moving myself physically further and further away from her bedside until eventually she could go to sleep alone and would stay in her bed when i left the room.

[liliva]

Thanks so much Hattie, Hotpot, lucy and wrigglejiggle for your replies. This is fascinating. I'm keeping a record of responses and will report back as soon as I get a few more.

Please everyone do keep sending me your successful or unsuccessful experiences with sleep training methods.

thanks again

lily

[nannyme]

Hi there

I'm a sleep trainer and behaviour management consultant.

I don't post on this section very often because I get bombarded with requests for advice on another forum I visit so I only lurk here.

Anyway, saw your post and thought you might be interested in my experiences. Do CAT me if I can help.

[taylormama]

i used TH's shush pat with my LO when he was about 9 weeks old for his naptimes not night wakings as he was hard to settle in the day ...

a) Did it work? NO
b) How many times a night was your baby waking before you started the sleep training method and
c) what was the improvement you saw by the end of the period of sleep training?
d) How old was your baby when you started the method?
e) How long did you pursue the method for? 2 weeks
f) How did it make you feel, putting that particular sleep training into practice (on a scale of one to five, where one is "awful - I'll never do it again" and five is "a very positive experience") 4
g) How difficult was it to carry out (on a scale of one to five where one is "I found it next to impossible" and five is "very easy, like falling off a log") 2
h) How much help did you get from your partner in all this? none - he was at work in the day when i did it

The method is easy to put into practice but absolutely did not suit my LO's temperament as it totally over-stimulated him meaning it took him ages to settle. In the end i swaddled him for a while which was brilliant and then when i wanted to stop swaddling i used my own sleep training which took 3 days to work. He can know settle himself for all his sleeps and sleeps through the night (from 21 weeks old). He has good sleep habits (fingers crossed!)

[liliva]

Thanks to people who replied but I'm afraid I got too few responses to call this any kind of a survey! But just to sum up - one person had success with Tracy Hogg's Shush pat, two people didn't succeed with her pick up put down, but one of these had better luck later on with the same method. One person seems to have had success with controlled crying and one person just did their own thing - no mention of whether this worked or not.

thanks again people who got back to me

all the best
liliva

[riab]

Here's my answers:

1. Elizabeth Pantley's no cry sleep solution

read it but it didn't make any sense

1. Tracy Hogg's methods: shush pat or pick up put down and easy routine

Yes

1. Dr Ferber's graduated extinction method (also known as controlled crying)

Yes

1. full blown extinction, or Cry it Out (where you shut the door and leave them for the whole night to cry it out)

nope, never just left him.

1. Scheduled awakenings (where you wake them up 15 minutes before they normally wake up - Tracy Hogg also refers to this as 'wake to sleep')

Nope

1. Any other methods

replacement, gradually replacing his sleep prop of being cuddled to sleep with a teddy

a) Did it work?
all did to an extent, CC has had the best results so far but i had to do the Shh Pat and relacement stuff first so he was used to going ot sleep with me in the room. Then we did CC.

b) How many times a night was your baby waking before you started the sleep training method and
from 8mo - 13mo 1-5 times a night, now he either sleeps 7-5am or wakes once at 3-4am and back to sleep til 6am. Occasionally (once a fortnight) we get a bad night but his teeth are coming though left right and centre

c) what was the improvement you saw by the end of the period of sleep training?
see above
d) How old was your baby when you started the method? 8mo, he slept through from 13 weeks to 7 months (sorry but it was she who must not be mentioned's methods at that stage which worked for us)
e) How long did you pursue the method for?
until it worked!
f) How did it make you feel, putting that particular sleep training into practice
None of them were upllifitng experiences but i'd say that the CC was the hardest simply because you have to keep going back in. So you can't relax in between. You have to stay alert to keep to the timigns which is hellish at 3am.Mind you Shh pat became impossible to do past about 9 months as he just sat up again and giggled, we relaly found you had to leave the room for him to get the message that it wasn't playtime. Shh pat also required more physicat effort, leaning over the cot etc.

g) How difficult was it to carry out
see above

h) How much help did you get from your partner in all this?
quite alot, he did a few nights and was totally suportive about whatever we were doing.

[popeye123]

Hi Liliva,
I suppose it comes under number 6 - but you don't specifically mention the "Go with the Flow / No nothing" method. I'm concerned that new Mums reading your thread will assume that you HAVE to do something to get babes to sleep. Is this something your reasurch might cover, I'd be very interested to see how this compares to the others.