Parents of small children have to make a lot of decisions. Issues like breast or bottle feeding, whether to let your under two watch Cbeebies, should you stay at home or work, what school should kiddo go to…. Every step along the way involves parents deciding what they feel is best for their child.
I find the bigger stuff easier than the day to day issues. Hubby and I are pretty much agreed on nutrition, schooling, TV watching, activities and so on… But the day to day decision making is harder. My little people test the boundaries of my decision making hourly. From my nearly four old who wants, wants, wants NOW, to my nearly one year old who’s happiest stuffing toilet paper down the loo when I’m not looking, I am constantly checking my reactions, deciding how to respond.
I have a rule I follow when making decisions, which I learned from Suzy Welch’s book, 10-10-10 and it works. Basically, whenever I have a decision to make, I ask myself what the consequences of my decision will be in ten minutes time, in ten months time and in ten years. Hence the title, 10-10-10. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re in London this week, exhibiting at Top Drawer, a very fun trade show. And I’m staying at my parents’ house with the boys. The three of us have been sharing a room since Friday night. It’s noisy here. Aeroplanes, car alarms, police sirens… stuff we’re not used to in peaceful North Devon.
So we’re not sleeping too well. In fact, I’m barely sleeping at all. It must be me in the room with them or something, but they seem to keep rousing and then fully waking. “Mummy, what’s that noise?” says Laurie about four times a night, causing Frankie to open his eyes and promptly wail. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve found it surprising to read in the media this week about the “clash” between Nick Clegg and Gina Ford over her baby feeding and sleep routines. Such an unlikely pair to be thrown together in headlines like “Nick Clegg Vs Gina Ford”.
If you’ve missed it, you can read about it in the Daily Mail, the Guardian, Times Online, the Independent and the Telegraph! It seems that Nick dismissed Miss Ford’s routines as “nonsense”, having tried to follow one of her books with his first born. And Miss Ford has replied by saying he insults “the parenting choice of more than 2 million British voters.”
I’ll be honest, I was bought Gina Ford’s “The Contented Little Baby Book” by a well meaning friend before Laurie was born. I remember having no idea what it was all about. But then, I’d never had a baby! Read the rest of this entry »
Looking back over 2009, there were many highs, a good few lows, some stuff I’m proud of, and some regrets too. Of course the birth of Frankie was my highlight of 2009. The achievement of labour followed by the silent moment with my newborn as he fed for the first time in hospital, his head warm and new against my chest.
I could enjoy it more this time. Not so overwhelmed and vulnerable as I felt when Laurie arrived three years earlier. But the first time was perfect in a different way. I remember gazing at Laurie in absolute awe as he slept between John and I, both crouched either side of him on the hospital bed. In that utterly peaceful moment, we just did not have a clue about the chaos that was about to commence. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve been following the progress of Josie George in her journey to help little Kai sleep through the night, well… the verdict is in. He can do it!
Josie and I looked at two approaches to teach Kai to sleep well on his own – 1) Leaving him for short periods of time, returning to reassure him until he falls asleep. Or 2) Staying with Kai whilst he falls asleep and gradually moving outside of the room over a several nights.
Because Josie has been working to improve Kai’s sleep for many months, she knew he would respond best to the approach of gradually withdrawing her presence at bedtime.
A couple of nights into the plan and she wrote a blog post that was enough to put anyone off going any further. He was pretty much awake from 2:30 until 6:30am.
But by night four, Kai slept through the night with just a brief awakening at 10:30pm. It’s really wonderful to read about the impact of this on Josie. Kai is nearly 18 months and he has never slept through the night. And yet, after a lot of support from Josie, plus some serious perseverance and consistency, he showed his mummy he could do it.
There’s still work to be done, behaviours to reinforce. The following two nights weren’t so good. But then he did it again. That’s twice in one week! Now that Josie and Kai know he can sleep through, it will be easier to improve things until Kai does it so often that Josie just takes it for granted!
So if you’re considering tackling your baby’s sleep problems in the New Year, Josie’s success might just give you the encouragement you need!
I actually feel quite sad saying goodbye to the old one. I was very fond of the little sheep and stars.
But to provide you with more resources, a greater range of products and make life easier for our trade customers… we needed a site that could grow with us.
We’ve worked really hard with our designer and also our web development company, Motion Pixels. Big projects like this are always much more work than you think at first… but thanks to a great deal of commitment, here we are.
So take a look around. And tell us what you think! It remains a work in progress so your comments will help us make it even better!
When my first little monkey, Laurie arrived, he didn’t sleep. Which of course started me on the journey to where I am today…
One of the things I found hardest was the questions from everyone, all of which followed the same pattern. “Is he good?” “Does he sleep?”
Which, for the first couple of months was fine. Because people smiled knowingly and nodded companionably. We were all part of the same club. They’d been there… Read the rest of this entry »
Two recent product launches in the US have me asking… why?
Firstly there’s the WhyCry Baby Cry Analyzer, which promises to tell you why your baby is crying. And then there’s a new iPod application which apparently translates your babies cries.
Having once been a terrified new mum with no idea what to do, I can see how there might be a moment when I’d have loved one of these. But I personally feel that this steep learning curve is all part of being a new parent. We have to come a long way very quickly, but actually learning to tune into our babies and listen to our instincts is the very beginning of parenthood. Read the rest of this entry »
New research from MindLab has found that men and women are likely to be woken by different sounds.
For the study, volunteers slept in a custom sleep environment and were exposed to different noises. Researchers monitored their brain patterns to see what most affected the volunteers.
The research showed that women are much more likely to be woken by the sound of a baby crying than a man. Since my husband has always slept through my newborns’ screaming at 2am, I have no trouble believing this. But here’s the interesting part of the research. Read the rest of this entry »
Researchers in Israel followed 85 mums through pregnancy and the first year of their babies’ lives. They found that pregnant mums who believed babies should learn to self settle had babies who slept better at night than babies of mums who felt newborns crying at night should be soothed and comforted.
Basically, the study (published in the Child Development journal) found that the more parents “intervene” in helping their babies to sleep through the night, the less well their babies sleep. The results show that mums who teach their babies to self settle have better sleepers.
The Independent’s headline today, “Screaming babies – it’s all Mum’s fault for fussing”, is naturally designed to grab the reader’s attention. But it’s unnecessary to interpret the findings in this way.
The results of the study don’t seem to me to be “new”. Most sleep experts will say that the key element of teaching a baby to sleep is helping him learn to “self settle”. And I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch for us to assume that a pregnant mum’s belief about how to respond to her crying baby in the middle of the night will probably follow through into her parenting after her baby is born.
It doesn’t surprise me to see that whilst the study suggests that the more we leave our babies alone at night, the better they will sleep. The Independent’s coverage of the report goes on to refer the reader to advice from James J McKenna, who advocates co-sleeping and argues that expecting infants to self-soothe is at odds with their basic biological and emotional needs.
It seems to me that this conflicting evidence continues to leave parents confused. On the one hand we shouldn’t leave them to cry because of the damage it can do. On the other hand, by soothing our crying babies in the middle of the night, we’re just making their sleeping habits worse.
And aside from the guilt we feel about the impact of our decisions on our babies, we’re also coping with sleep deprivation, which makes it so much harder to make decisions and stick to them when woken for the fifth time during the night.
And it doesn’t have to be so black and white. It is possible to teach a baby to sleep well without leaving him to cry for hours alone. It takes time and guidance. Just like everything else he needs to learn. Through boundaries, fairness, love and tenderness we support our little ones as they learn how to crawl, talk and walk. How to behave in social situations and how to read and write. We potty train them, teach them to ride bikes and build towers. Much of this is instinctive. When to be firm and when to be tender, when to enforce the boundaries and when to let them slide a little – these are things which we find ourselves learning as we go along.
For me, sleep is just the same. We should teach our babies healthy sleep habits. The sooner, the better for everyone. But we also need to be realistic in our expectations of what our babies can do. Just as a toddler’s behaviour won’t be perfect all of the time, nor will a baby sleep through the night every night without fail.
