Controlled crying was in.
Controlled crying is the most effective way to sleep-train babies over 6 months.
The jury hasn't even been called on whether controlled crying or routine parenting could adversely affect a baby's brain.
And yet Macpherson is hugely sympathetic towards parents who use controlled crying, "since a mother who is sleep deprived often finds it difficult to mother properly, or work.
Having worked in the NHS with new mothers experiencing postnatal depression, I feel controlled crying is good for mothers and therefore probably fine for babies".
In short, I realised that controlled crying looked like the worst thing in the world when I was sleep deprived myself, and a perfectly reasonable compromise when baby and I had both spent a nice night in our beds.
A 2002 BMJ study of 156 mothers of babies between six and 12 months showed that babies who underwent controlled crying for two months slept better, according to their mothers.
Teaching new mothers how to use "controlled crying" techniques, sometimes known as Ferberizing, can improve not just the babies' sleep, but also the women's well-being, a new study reports.
Then, after finally getting some decent sleep, having given in to controlled crying regardless and got her to sleep through the night in two nights flat, I would think: "Hang on – of course my husband wouldn't cry himself to sleep – a 40-year-old man with full access to the English language uses tears for something significantly different from tiredness".
Disciplinarian advice has alternated with liberal advice ever since: for every Gina Ford advocating controlled crying, there has been a liberal antidote – a Dr Spock or Penelope Leach – although sometimes it is hard to distinguish the liberal from the prescriptive: British psychologist John Bowlby, for instance, was liberal about children's behaviour, but less so when it came to that of mothers.
But a small new study adds to the growing body of research that supports the popular method known as "graduated extinction," or controlled crying, as safe and effective.
