New research reveals high levels of stress hormones in babies left to cry themselves to sleep leaving new parents with a dilemna

AS IF the sleep-deprived husks of humanity otherwise known as new parents didn’t have enough to worry about, new research has emerged to plunge them further into a baby-brain stupor about how to get their screaming bundles of joy off to sleep.

Until now it’s been a fairly straight choice between two schools of thought. There are the “controlled crying” advocates – acolytes of Edinburgh baby guru Gina Ford – who recommend leaving babies to cry themselves to sleep in a bid to establish a sanity-saving routine. Then there are the other more touchy-feely “breastfeeding-on-demand with the baby in bed so they can feed themselves to sleep” proponents, who swear by the work of childcare expert Sheila Kitzinger.

A third group, which we can probably sum up as the “slept right through the bell and dog ate my baby books” lobby, muddle through with some elements of both.

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Now, however, ground-breaking research from Wendy Middlemiss at the University of North Texas has added a new twist to the debate. According to the study, published in the Journal of Early Development, babies settled using the controlled crying method might appear to be sleeping peacefully, but high levels of hormones in their bodies indicate they are still stressed. In fact they feel just as stressed as if they had remained crying and not fallen asleep at all; they’ve just learned that crying is pointless.

So is this the scientific study that finally tips the scales in favour of the touchy-feely approach? Is the great baby debate now over?

Middlemiss and her team studied babies aged from four to ten months over consecutive nights, monitoring levels of stress hormone cortisol, as they were left to fall asleep without comfort from a carer. By the third night of the study, infants were found to have cried for a shorter period of time before falling asleep. However, the levels of cortisol in their saliva remained high.

“Although the infants exhibited no behavioural cue that they were experiencing distress at the transition to sleep, they continued to experience high levels of physiological distress, as reflected in their cortisol scores,” said Middlemiss.

“Overall, outward displays of internal stress were extinguished by sleep training. However, given the continued presence of distress, infants were not learning how to internally manage their experiences of stress and discomfort.”

Does the frazzled parent care as long as the wailing has stopped? Did our parents care about cortisol as they legged it down the hall to leave us to sob ourselves to sleep? It never did us any harm did it? The half of the world’s population who favour sleeping with their babies might disagree.

These days, with research and advice bandied about like nipple shields at a breastfeeding workshop, the net result just seems to be confused parents feeling guilty and damned whatever they do. Pick up your crying baby and cuddle them in bed with you and you’re a lazy, hippie slapper who will probably roll over and suffocate said baby. Leave them to scream themselves into a shuddering exhausted bundle and you are a routine-obsessed Nazi who selfishly puts their own needs first.

According to Mumsnet founder and CEO Justine Roberts, there are few more controversial subjects on Mumsnet forums than whether and when to use controlled crying as a sleep training method.

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“For every parent who thinks that controlled crying is barbaric, there is another who feels it saves her life and a third for whom it simply didn’t work. It’s best not to beat yourself up too much when some new research suggests that the method you chose is likely to turn your beloved firstborn into an axe murderer because in a couple of years there’ll most likely be some more research vindicating your choice. And if you’re truly at your wits’ end with sleep deprivation, that can’t be entirely healthy for your family either,” she says.

With this new research, the terms of the great debate of how we nurture and rear our children have certainly changed. Mumsnet’s forums are working overtime now that the debate has extended further to discuss whether the routine junkies and brave parents who have managed to endure the torture of the “crying to sleep” method should stop congratulating themselves over their snoring babies, because those wee mites’ cortisol levels could well be higher than a mother of twins whose MRI scan has just revealed she’s expecting triplets.

Entrenched views are, however, difficult to shift. According to Edinburgh mother-of-four Deborah Green, babies may feel stressed during controlled crying but only in the short term, and the long-term gains will leave them much calmer overall.

“I would think a longer study would show the stress levels went down. The babies probably are stressed, but they can be stressed while somebody makes up a bottle, or if you’re in traffic and can’t breastfeed. It’s about trying to make life easier for everyone. If I gave my children what they wanted when they wanted it, that wouldn’t be very healthy for them or me because I would have nothing left to give.”

So successful was controlled crying with Green’s first child, Jasmine, now nine, that she and her husband Jamie went on to do it with siblings Hamish, eight, Jonathan, six, and two-year-old Harris.

“I couldn’t have all that chaos and be stressed out,” says Green. “We started when Jasmine was about six weeks and knew that her breastfeeding was established. We allowed her to cry but went in to reassure her regularly without picking her up. She knew we were there and quickly became an amazing sleeper. It worked, but it’s not easy. It’s a very emotive thing because your maternal instinct is to pick the baby up. We thought it was better to do controlled crying early on than leave it until later when it’s more difficult.

“First-time mums need to know they’re not bad mothers if they leave a child to cry because it can make them less demanding, and I think healthcare professionals avoid the issue because it’s too emotive. It’s the first step of giving your child independence.

“However, I don’t want to guilt trip others who haven’t done it,” she adds. “You have to look at your family circumstances and do the right thing at the right time for you and your child.” «

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