The recent media coverage of Penelope Leach’s new book, The Essential First Year – What Babies Need Parents to Know, has focused on this sensational headline –
“Crying-it-out Harms Babies Brains.”
This media coverage is tough on the sleep deprived mother who hears that on the one hand that, if she doesn’t do something about her sleepless baby, he will probably grow into a sleepless child who will have problems with his weight and/or behaviour. And on the other hand, if she allows him to cry until he figures out how to fall asleep by himself, it may harm his brain.
I think it’s safe to say there’s a middle ground, which might be called “common sense parenting”. As parents we are faced with choices that we have to make on behalf of our children on a daily basis and these choices have to take into account the needs of our whole family. (more…)
In another life, before children, I worked in Human Resources, so I’m always interested in the changes to employment law that come through in April each year.
The legislation to introduce additional paternity leave and pay will be effective for children born after 3 April 2011. This new law will mean dads can take off three months’ paid leave at the end of mum’s nine months so that she can return to work. He can also then take a further 3 months’ unpaid paternity leave.
I can see this legislation is a good thing for families. Especially since it increases the time that mum and dad can spend with their new baby – although the statutory maternity/paternity pay is unlikely to come close to the income most parents earn when going out to work.
When I left work in January 2006, a naive mother to be, I’d already filled in my maternity plan. I was going back to work six months after my baby was born on a full time basis. I was even viewing the six months off as a bit of a holiday! (more…)
Napping seems to be one of the most difficult challenges parents face with their baby’s sleep and I can understand why it’s frustrating. A long day with a tired baby is no fun for anyone.
Now, new research has confirmed that sleep is an integral part of how infants learn more about their world.
We have understood for some time now that babies and children need sleep in order to learn. And another study, carried out by psychologists at the University of Arizona-Tucson has found that babies who nap in the day are more likely to exhibit an advanced level of learning known as abstraction. (more…)
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. (more…)
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.
