Here Are Some Lies People Tell You About Infant Sleep _ Sweet Madeleine

7/27/2019 Here Are Some Lies People Tell You About Infant Sleep _ Sweet Madeleine

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11/21/13 Here are some lies people tell you about infant sleep | Sweet Madeleine

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Before I posted this, Adam peeked over my shoulder, saw the title and said, ‘”Oh my god, stop writing about infant

sleep. No one cares.”

If this statement applies to you, SORRY NOT SORRY THIS IS MY LIFE, ADAM!

Now for our regularly scheduled mom post.

I know that many of you don’t have babies yet, or have babies that are younger than Olive – I am

writing this post for you.

When O was about four months old I remember taking her to a talk put on by the local library. Each

week they hosted different speakers, and this particular week featured a public health nurse speaking

about the unique nature of baby sleep. It sounded interesting and I needed to get out of the houseand talk to real grown up people that didn’t shit their pants, so off we went.

At the beginning of the talk all of the moms went around the circle and introduced ourselves and

described our baby’s sleep patterns. Many moms expressed frustration and/or insanity at the lack of

sleep they were getting, but because at that point O was sleeping like a rockstar I just said she was

sleeping well and was interested in hearing the talk.

I did, however, happen to mention that I typically nursed her to sleep, and at that point the speaker

interrupted me to let me know that nursing a baby to sleep was not good. Not just not recommended ,

but like NOT. GOOD. at all, ever. Period. Her sternly angled eyebrows added extra emphasis.

She was pretty clear about the fact that all in all of the popular approaches to baby sleep, and all the

books written by all the experts, the common thread was that “sleep props” like nursing impede a

baby’s ability to self-soothe. She told me that Olive would never sleep through the night if I

continued putting her to sleep this way.

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I nodded, because everything I had read – by all of those experts in all of those sleep books – agreed

with this statement. And that’s what I do in the face of confrontation, I nod and smile.

But despite my robotic nodding, I didn’t agree.

Olive WAS sleeping through the night, despite the nursing. And she DID wake up and go back tosleep, I could hear her several times a night – waking, talking to herself and then rolling over and

drifting off.

But I sat there and nodded because who I was I, a first time mother with a four month old, to argue

with a nurse (not to mention all of those experts?)

Complicating matters even more was the fact that I happened to be, at that very same moment,

nursing O to sleep because it was her nap time. As the introductions moved on to my left, I guiltily

unlatched her, and then spent the next forty-five minutes walking her and bouncing her and trying to

hear the nurse over her cries because she was tired and wasn’t done and I had stopped nursing her

because I couldn’t bear to be doing it wrong.

The next day we tried a mild form of sleep training, involving some bullshit thatthey call Pick-Up,

Put-Down, and I call HORRIBLE. I was supposed to hold Olive, and when she looked drowsy, put

her in her crib. If she cried I was to pick her up, hold her until she had JUST calmed down, and then

put her back in her crib. Aaaand repeat.

The idea is a no-cry sleep training. In reality it was 45 minutes of lots of crying – from an exhausted

baby who just wanted to be snuggled, and a confused, frustrated first time mom who didn’t

understand why what she had been doing was wrong, but desperately wanted to be doing it right.

At the time that this all went down – the nurse and the talk and the day of failed “sleep training”- I

remember feeling incredibly helpless and confused. I was scared that they might be right, that I might

be ruining Olive’s ability to self-soothe and she would be a horrible sleeper and rely on nursing as a

“sleep prop” forever, and never be able to go to sleep on her own. EVERRRRRR.

Looking back now though, as the mother of a one year old, I mostly just feel angry.

What is this bullshit? Why do we do this? Why do we voluntarily subject ourselves to sitting in a

room full of people, being told we are doing it wrong simply because a handful of self-proclaimed





experts with books to sell say so?

You can’t sell a solution if there isn’t a problem, and in the past fifty years we have increasingly

categorized what amounts to normal, human infant sleep as a problem needing to be solved.

Experts, and books, and exorbitantly priced “Sleep Consultants” have proliferated and because weare terrified new parents with bags under our eyes the size of Samsonites we eagerly open our ears

and our wallets to find a solution, any solution! And we are frustrated. We’re frustrated because our

expectations are out of whack, and our expectations are out of whack because we are being sold lies

-LIES I tell you!

Here is one lie: The secret to a three month old sleeping 12 hours straight is just $20 away.

Another lie: It isn’t normal for an infant or toddler to wake up a few times a night.

And one more lie: It is now, and has always been, customary for humans to sleep in solid 8-12 hour

increments.

Enough of these lies! I call bullshit! I want the truth! I can handle the truth!

This series of articles published in Psychology Today was honestly the single best thing I ever

stumbled upon as a new parent.

It is totally worth a read – all six parts – but if you are text-averse like Adam, I can sum it up for you

by saying this:

“Infant/toddler sleep is erratic, unpredictable and doesn’t conform to our expectations.

Children’s sleep habits have evolved to best serve the child, even if they don’t make sense to

the parent. Adjust your expectations, not your child’s sleep habits (within reason).

Don’t stop being a parent at night.

And y’all, seriously, stop being so crazy with the books and the shushing and the picking up

and putting down and the intervals and the living by the clock.”

The whole series of articles made me feel as though I was getting a good, old-fashioned wallop of

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201302/normal-human-infant-sleep-feeding-method-and-development





common sense from some stern lady with a wooden spoon, but the line that stuck with me the most

from the whole thing was this: “…one long-term study looking at child sleep between 3 and 42

months found that there was no stability in night wakings or even sleep duration…”

Guys – there is no pattern! There is no rhyme or reason or explanation! It does not matter if you

sleep train or don’t sleep train or nurse to sleep or rock to sleep or whatever. Just give up! Adapt,react, give in. You don’t have to train your child to sleep, you don’t have to enforce rigid guidelines

and you don’t have to stop nursing your baby to sleep out of misguided fear, perpetuated by experts

looking to make a buck.

Here is the truth, from a mom who has nursed her baby to sleep for more than a year: It is easily one

of the best parts of our day.

It is an indescribably sweet feeling to sit quietly with her as her eyes flutter and her breath slows. I

love that pause, that stillness, and honestly, there’s a reason it works so well. Night time breastmilk

contains tryptophan, the same chemical found in turkey that makes us feel so drowsy after huge

thanksgiving dinners. (and even as adults, what is the old wives remedy for insomnia? “Have a glass

of warm milk…”)

More importantly than all of that however, and this is the part that makes me mad thinking about my

scared, impressionable new-mom self: They were wrong.

At twelve months old, nursing is absolutely not the only way Olive can go to sleep. Grandma can

give her a bottle and rock her and she will drift off without any fuss. Adam can snuggle her and she’s

out in five minutes. And recently, miracle of miracles, there have been a few times that I have put her

into her crib awake for a few of her naps and at bedtimes, and she has rolled around for a bit, talked

to herself and then fallen asleep. BY. HERSELF.

It doesn’t happen every time, and now that I have share this information with The Internets, I have

ensured that these events will never, ever repeat themselves, but I was told that this would never

happen period because of the sleep props, and the bad habits, and my horrible, terrible, lazy parenting

with the bedtime nursing.

For months I felt guilty, instead of content, every time I sat there with her and watched her drift off.

And guys, that’s why I’m angry, because no mom should feel like that for nourishing and comforting

her child.





It’s hard being a new parent. Not just because of the incredible changes affecting every facet of your

life – your career, your finances, your home and your relationship – but because everyone has an

opinion. About everything you are doing, and more importantly everything you are doing wrong .

Not being able to breastfeed is heartbreaking, but being constantly guilt-tripped over it is worse.

Being up all night with a baby is challenging, but being lectured on all the ways you are ruining your

child’s future sleep patterns when you admit it, is worse.

So here’s what I recommend to all of you new parents or soon-to-be parents, or someday far away in

the verrry distant future parents: Read the article I linked to above, and have zero expectations. You

might have a baby that sleeps, you might not. You might have a baby that tricks you into thinking

they are a sleeper and then messes with your mind by suddenly stopping the sleeping, like Olive did.

But regardless, when someone asks you how your baby is sleeping, smile and say “Like a baby”.

That will be the truth.

And so is this: It’s normal for a baby to sleep 9 hours straight. It’s normal for a baby to be up every

hour. It’s normal for your baby to do the former one night, the latter the next (and it’s totally normal

to feel like an insane, husband-hating, coffee-chugging, borderline-emotional-wreck while this is

happening.)

*****

Here’s another thing, while we are on the subject of truth telling. Two months ago Olive went

through a week long stretch of waking up every 1-2 hours at night. I call this, “The Dark Time”.

The Dark Time happened to coincide with deadlines for the final draft of my book, and every

morning as I hauled myself out of bed, I wanted to gouge my eyes out simply because the eyeballs

were taking up valuable space that could have been filled with more coffee.

It only lasted a week or so, but it felt like an eternity measured in 1-2 hour segments. Sleeps that were

never long enough, and eyes gritty like sandpaper. I was like, “Oh my god. They were RIGHT. She is

EFFED. EVERYTHING IS RUINED FOREVER NO ONE WILL EVER SLEEP AGAIN

MISTER FERBER WHERE ARE YOU WHEN I NEED YOU?”





The thing is, the week after The Dark Time, Olive began crawling, started standing unassisted, and

then popped out two teeth.

And her then her sleep went back to normal.

You see? There’s a reason for all of it,I promise, even when we don’t understand. It’s not our job as

parents to understand, it’s just our job to parent. That’s all.

All we need to do is respond to our child’s needs, even when they need things at 1 a.m. And 2 a.m.

And 2:30 a.m. and every single other a.m. that you didn’t know existed.

It doesn’t make sense and it gets better and then gets worse and the nights seem long and the

crying oh god the crying , but the dawn always comes. The sun always rises.

http://madeleinesix.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/20130924-002301.jpg





And that, my friends, is the truth.

Here Are Some Lies People Tell You About Infant Sleep _ Sweet Madeleine

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