When my baby Clarisse was 2 months old, one of my friend said I’m going to spoil my baby for attending to her whenever she cries during the night. She said I should just leave my baby on the bed and let her cry herself to sleep. Similar to what her sister does in the US, that is to train babies to sleep on their own. This way, the baby will learn to “self-soothe” and will not develop sleep associations that require someone else to put him to sleep. They even have a name for it - The Ferber Method, after Richard Ferber, America’s best-known expert on infant sleep. Also commonly known as the dreaded ‘Cry It Out’.

Well, two nights ago, we went out for a drink with her and again she brought it up, “still waking up and tend to your baby’s whims and fancies?”. She couldn’t resist another round of parenting lecture.

I began to read up about Ferber’s Cry It Out method sometime ago and indeed, it sounds like a good thing to train infants sleep independently. On the other hand, you’ve gotta be able to bear your baby’s heart-wrenching cries during the first few nights or more. Honestly, I couldn’t do it. The few instances when baby Clarisse cried for me during the night while I was busy to attend to her, I knew I couldn’t bear ‘feberizing‘ her.

I will own up to the fact that I’m biased against Ferber’s Cry It Out as well. I’m not alone it seems. There are mothers I personally know of who doesn’t practise Ferber’s Cry It Out method of sleep training on their babies. The main reason is of course the intolerable crying.

Pro-Ferber and anti-Ferber camps exists. There’s tons of professional studies and research done from both perspectives. You could probably do a search and find enough information to read for days on this topic. However, I couldn’t be bothered with it after a while. After all, as professional as it may sound, pro-Ferber and anti-Ferber studies are simply assertions on what’s going on in an infants mind.

Here’s what bends my decision to avoid Ferber’s Cry It Out:

• I believe infants cry during the night because they’re hungry, not sleep problem. To deny them of breastmilk throughout the night, 8 to 10 hours on a stretch, seems like a very long gap indeed. If you really want to give Ferber’s Cry It Out method a try, forget about starting them as young as they can, unlike what my friend said. Suggesting I’d start feberizing my baby at two over months is way too early. It is recommended that babies below the age of 8 months old receives sufficient night time nursing simply because they need it. The earliest time you start subjecting your baby to Ferber’s Cry It Out sleep training is 3 to 4 months of age.
• Sometimes, when I do not nurse my baby at night, my breasts feel engorged and this could risk breast infection. And I can’t seem to pump my breastmilk out despite numerous attempts.
• “If you as a mother fail to train your infant to sleep on their own, you’ll end up having to wake up several times a night and nurse your baby”, that’s what I was told. Seems to me that one of the huge benefits of feberizing infants is to provide night time relief for mothers. In my case, I could afford to make up for lost sleep by taking naps during the day. I guess that’s one priviledge I have that allows me to give Ferber’s Cry It Out a miss.

I tend to keep my opinions to myself and do what I believe is right. And sometimes I could be dead wrong. I am strictly on the fence when it comes to taking Ferber’s Cry It Out baby sleep training method apart and engage in factual exchanges.