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.
