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Comment by 0xEFF | Hacker News Reader

It's curious years of good nights of sleep and a happy child enrages you.

We sleep trained our son at 7 months. He cried for 90 minutes the first night, then slept soundly until 7 am. The second night he cried for 45 minutes then slept until 7 am. He didn't cry the third night. Every night since he's slept peacefully from 8 PM until 7 AM and asks to go to bed when he gets tired. He's happy during the day unless something obvious is distressing him. Most notably he's happy and peaceful from 5 PM until 8 PM when I see other parents suffering from witching hour and unexplained melt downs.

Isn't a few hours of discomfort in exchange for years of good sleep and happiness a good trade off?

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We had the exact same experience. A few nights of crying (we didn't totally abandon her, just a did a peek in and say goodnight again (no picking up the baby) after 5 minutes of crying, then 10, then 15, etc) for a few nights. Daughter has slept through almost every night since then, she just turned 4.

Sleep training (which involved some degree of "cry it out") was a life saver for us.

I did it at 3 months. I did it because my wife couldn't handle it, and she had gone back to work. The only reason I did it was because our baby wouldn't let us put her down a lot of the time. She'd sleep just fine in our arms...and then we'd put her down and she'd instantly cry. It was...stressful.

It (largely) took one freaking day. One day's worth of naps. She didn't even cry, just "cried out" to be held. First a few minutes, then 5, and she didn't reach 10. To our utter amazement, she largely stopped waking us during the night. I was not expecting that at 3 months.

...I did kind of miss our late night "well, might as well turn on the TV and watch Star Trek" times together.

I've had people get judgmental when I've explained that process, but I often hear parents that have their two year olds waking up in the middle of the night for feedings. That's utter insanity.

In my experience, when someone thinks they should be able to do it, but can't do it, and suffers from the consequences of that - you'll get that kind of reaction. Not saying it's what's happening here, but I've seen it a lot.

Difficulty getting themselves to get their kids vaccinated (the screaming or crying is hard!) is a big factor behind the antivax movement, IMO.

What enrages me is how it's become accepted as 'the right way' for parents in my culture, along with other "techniques" like feeding schedules, where many people end up essentially starving their child without realizing it, and then wonder why they can't sleep through the night. What I know to be true is that infants are completely dependent on their caretaker/s, and they cry to communicate what they need when they need it. Ignoring this feels wrong to me - so I don't do it. I understand that different families have different needs, and that work schedules make things more difficult than they were in the past when children were raised communally. Every family needs trial and error to figure out what works for them, and yes some infants will sleep better alone. What I take issue with is the industry around this that has convinced what seems like most parents that this is The Best Way.

> Isn't a few hours of discomfort in exchange for years of good sleep and happiness a good trade off?

It could be - that's a decision for each family to make. I will point out that many families think their baby is sleeping through the night - when what's really happening is they are still waking up repeatedly but have given up on crying (accepting that nobody will come to help them).

Your judgement of other parents is the problem, both in this thread and in our broader culture of parenting in the United States today.

Feeding schedules aren’t starving children.

Please focus on what yields the best outcome for your family, and assume other families are doing the same without judgement.

Try replacing your rage with curiosity about all the factors of modern parenting.

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