Redefining Sleep Success

I'm a bad parent.  Felix wakes up 4, 5, 6 times a night.  Thus -- bad parent.

Right?

I'm not sure when or why sleeping through the night (shortened to STTN on parenting forums) became a benchmark of parental success.  The ability to sleep for hours and hours without waking is seen to be a sign of a healthy baby, healthy habits, good parenting.  If your baby doesn't sleep "well," never fear!  You can take your pick of literally hundreds of sleep training methods (ok, there may not be hundreds, but that sounded better than "literally tens"), peruse thousands of articles on baby sleep, read testimonials on every trademarked program out there (but to find the true secret to its success, first you have to buy the book or DVD).

I get why there is such a demand for these programs, I really do.  But the truth is that we've created our own problems through our cultural standards of infant care.  The problem isn't that babies wake up a lot.  They just do, they're supposed to.  They have tiny tummies, they need to eat frequently.  Even when they get older, frequent waking is assurance that you are still near and they are still protected.  Even the best sleepers will go through phases of frequent waking with every bout of teething and every growth spurt.  The problem is how we perceive and handle their wakings.


In our house, when Felix wakes up, I simply roll on my side, scoot him in close, latch him on, and we're both back to sleep within a minute or so.  I don't even open my eyes.  I don't look at the clock.  In the morning, I wake up refreshed, not sure of how many times we woke up.  I don't need caffeine to get through my day.

That isn't the norm.  If you're like most American families, the baby probably sleeps in his own space, probably in another room.  You probably hear his cries over a monitor and need to get out of bed, walk to another room, pick him up and feed him, then get him back to sleep, then walk back to your room and get re-settled.  Let's say that takes 20 minutes.  Let's say you do that every two hours (normal for an infant).  No wonder you're tired!  Let's say you also have a full-time job and can't afford to be a sleep deprived zombie -- if that were me I'd be shelling out big bucks and trying every sleep training method available (or hiring a professional sleep consultant -- yeah, they exist).

In that situation, something has to give.  It isn't a sustainable cycle.  The problem, though, is the idea that something is wrong with the baby, and therefore, it's the baby's habits that must be changed.  There is nothing wrong with a baby who wakes up at night.  The baby is doing exactly what nature intended it to do.

Babies are vulnerable.  They are utterly helpless without you.  They are hard-wired to need you near, because without you, they die.  This is especially true at night, when they are especially vulnerable.  When they wake up and cry, they are expressing a need for something.  Food (they have tiny little tummies and need to nurse often), a dry diaper, or security, touch, help going back to sleep, or probably a combination of those.  Most of the time we have no problem meeting the first two needs, but often the second set are not classified as "needs" and we try to skirt around fulfilling them.  We think they should "self-soothe" and be able to get through twelve hours without us.  We run afoul when we try to impose our adult expectations of sleep on babies (placing adult expectations on children is a running theme in my view on parenting, but that's for another post).

Babies have much faster sleep cycles than adults.  They spend more of their time in periods of light sleep where there are easily woken.  Again, as helpless little things, this allows them to reassured of their safety.  Waking up and being immediately comforted assures them, and the parents, that they are safe.  It establishes a base of trust between parent and child; they know that you will meet their needs.  It allows them to get enough food and stay hydrated.    

When mother and baby share a sleep space, mom's sleep cycles align with the baby's.  Mom's sleep cycles shorten and her light sleep phases coincide with the baby's.  This means that when the baby wakes up, she isn't waking up from a dead sleep.  In fact, a lot of cosleeping moms (myself included) report waking up before the baby starts to stir.  And when the baby does wake up, it's a very fast interaction during which mom barely needs to open her eyes.  For us, I'd say most of our night wakings have us back to sleep in under a minute.  The result is that, excepting the worst of teething nights, I wake up refreshed and rested, even if I've woken up with the baby five or six times.

Now, shouldn't that be the mark of sleep success?  A rested family, rather than an arbitrary number of hours?

I probably don't need to tell you that sleep methods involving cry-it-out and "self-soothing" techniques are harmful to the baby.  Common sense should tell us that, but fortunately the science is around for when common sense fails us.  CIO type techniques only "work" in that they teach the baby that you will not respond to their cries.  When they finally go quiet, they are not usually asleep, but rather shut down and withdrawn.  Babies should not ever have to give up on their parents.

Now - cosleeping is not the answer for every family.  There are legitimate contraindications to bed sharing.  If either parent has been drinking or taken medications that put them in an unnaturally deep sleep, or is a smoker, they shouldn't sleep next to an infant.  If the baby is a newborn and not being breastfed, then bed sharing may not be a good idea.  Breastfeeding mothers cosleep differently than bottle feeding mothers.  Breastfeeding mothers naturally cocoon the baby with his head at breast level, arm above the baby's head and knees tucked underneath, and they don't turn their back to the baby.  By contrast, bottle feeding mothers tend to sleep with their infants as though they were adults, with the baby's head level with their own, on or near a pillow, and without their sleep position influenced by the baby, meaning they often turn their backs.

There are some more personal objections to bed sharing, and for those families there may be an in-between solution like room-sharing or using a co-sleeper side-carred to the bed.

There are so many arms to this topic that I couldn't possibly touch on everything I'd like to.  There is so much more science behind the benefits of cosleeping (rather, the detriments of sleeping alone).  The point I'd like to make now, though, is:

>>We get too wrapped up in our children's sleep habits
>>We view night waking as "bad" when it is biologically normal
>>We think that the sooner they sleep through the night the better, when it shouldn't matter
>>When sleep is problematic, we aim to change the baby rather than ourselves.

I hear about exhausted, desperate mothers at the end of their rope, using methods like Ferber because they don't know what else to do, when the answer could be as simple as accepting the normality of the situation and bringing the baby into bed.  We make our lives more difficult by trying to adhere to unfounded conventional wisdom that tells us that babies should sleep alone.  They shouldn't.

Resources:

Dr Sears FAQ About Sleep Problems

Dr Sears Sleep Safety (including safe cosleeping)

Dr Momma Baby Sleep Resources
     >>The Science of Sharing Sleep
     >>Cosleeping and Biological Imperatives