From JJ:
Thanks for your interesting critique of the CDC press release and study.
From Adrianna Joanna:
My mother co-slept with me until I was nine years old from about age two. I chose to leave my mother's bed on my own. Co-sleeping is not for everyone, but most people can co-sleep withou any problems, and I get really irked when people talk about how my mother endangered my life or whatever.
I REALLY hate it when people say that it's bad for the child's character to co-sleep. It makes the child spoiled, the child will always be dependent on you, etc. What the hell is spoiled anyway? It's one of those loaded boogeymen that everyone has their own idea of, a word that I hate to use.
More broadly, I HATE the kind of error that you site. That an increase or decrease in numbers reflects an actual increase in cases as opposed to greater awareness or a shift in reporting standards. I also hate it when people accompaniy reports of such fallacies with snarky social commentary. I hate it even more when people try to refute the fallacies with equally false, and usually highly offensive, propositions. The study of mental illness is an excellent example of this.
It's one thing to be offensive while making a truly valid point, although that's not somthing I necessarily recommend. It's another to be offensive and claim to be informed and bold in your ideas when really, you're just a moron.
Do we have any other co-sleepers hear? Do you ever get grief from these types?
Believe it or not, world, some things just aint your business.
From Lee Passman:
It really irks me that this is just a propaganda site in which Amy talks with herself under various fake nicknames. Amy doesn't have a medical license, and she should not give medical advice, which is just propaganda for those signing her paychecks.
From Susanne:
Lee, I am most assuredly and decidedly not Amy. I don't care if you want to believe it or not, but that's the truth. A Sarah has corresponded with me offline and knows enough about who I am personally to vouch for the fact that I am not Amy. I live halfway across the country, for crying out loud.
What's so interesting about the sock puppet charge is that it's not a very effective debate tactic, is it? WHy don't you actually add facts or well-reasoned opinions into the debate, instead of pretending that if you witness several people who disagree with you, that they all must be one?
From Susanne:
WIth all due respect, Adrianna Joanna, you have indicated that you have significant problems in relating to the outside world, and you've never even told your mother that you loved her. Maybe your mother had little choice but to sleep with you to keep you safe, or maybe she was just desperate to establish some connection with a non-verbal child. So you'll have to excuse me for not particularly finding your argument "I did it and I'm just fine!" particularly compelling.
From Esther:
Whoa there.
I just finished reading the article mentioned in full-text (ordered it from the library last night along with the thimerosal study and the breastfeeding one). The increase in SUID cases attributable to suffocation is clearly due to diagnostic shift from the SIDS group to the suffocation (AASB) and unknown groups, much in the way the apparent rise in autism cases corresponded to the drop in other psychiatric diagnoses such as mental retardation. But that just means that those relatively high infant suffocation rates were there all along - they were just mistakenly attributed to SIDS rather than the actual cause, and perhaps once more stringent death-scene investigations were required to arrive at a SIDS diagnosis, the coroners were finding evidence that babies who would have formerly been classified as SIDS deaths were actually suffocation victims. And this by no means exonerates accidental suffocation as a by-product of bedsharing - on the contrary.
While we can't know exactly how much of the increase in the suffocation category was due to bedsharing because of the large proportion of missing data on the 2003-04 death certificates, the fact that the largest known cause of suffocation (table 3) is overlaying (exclusive to non-crib sleep surfaces), that the largest known category of deaths occurred in adult beds (27.5%), and that over 50% of the deaths occurred while bedsharing is suggestive there is a correlation. Add to this that the CPSC also came up with increased infant suffocation death in adult beds (Drago and Dannenberg 1999), and that the peak months of age in which AASB occurs correspond almost exactly to the interval in which bedsharing babies, even in nonsmoking conditions, are at increased risk of dying from SIDS/SUDI as compared to non-bedsharing infants (0-3 months)...it's very suggestive that bedsharing in those early months does predispose infants to suffocation death.
You can possibly claim that some or all of these deaths were due to "unsafe" bedsharing (though you'd be hard pressed to prove it with such incomplete info except in cases where sofas, waterbeds or soft bedding were involved), but given the big picture, it is, IMO, highly likely that bedsharing played a role in these deaths.
From Esther:
Hmm...have I now proven my bona fides to Lee Passman because I disagreed with Dr. Amy's conclusions? 
From A Sarah:
Wow, Lee Passman, sounds like you find this blog a complete waste of time. One wonders why you would stick around. The internet is so big... and if you think that in this conversation the most vocal people are just Dr. Amy in disguise, then surely you'd be able to find a discussion that suits your needs better? What's interesting about hanging out at a blog where a mad doctor talks to herself using different names?
From A Sarah:
(Oh, I also appreciate the critique of the CDC study although I'm less able than many hear to understand the substance of it. In any case, it's gratifying to hear that, as in so many things, there is more to this study than meets the Associated Press. And yes, I have corresponded with Susanne. But there's a point where someone is not going to believe anything you say, so why waste the electrons, you know?)
From Adrianna Joanna:
"WIth all due respect, Adrianna Joanna, you have indicated that you have significant problems in relating to the outside world, and you've never even told your mother that you loved her. Maybe your mother had little choice but to sleep with you to keep you safe, or maybe she was just desperate to establish some connection with a non-verbal child. So you'll have to excuse me for not particularly finding your argument "I did it and I'm just fine!" particularly compelling."
That's okay. I'm not offended, and no, I don't find the "I did it and I'm just fine!" line of reason compelling either. After all, most people who smoke don't get lung cancer, but there is a definite correlation to be worried about.
I only wrote about my experience to make the point that people are very judgmental sometimes of parents or children who co-sleep, that it's not a death sentence and there are valid reasons for doing it.
In fact, what you wrote about my mother is just the sort of thing that people who are opposed to co-sleeping in general need to hear, I think.
From Ericacrochets:
I think it's especially interesting that "back to sleep" may not actually work. For decades mothers have been told that all babies must sleep in a certain position, on tummy, side, and now back. Wouldn't it be nice if it turned out that babies could just sleep in whatever position they preferred like any other human being?
From Kneelingwoman:
I'm not Amy-in-disguise either; you can find me over on my own blog. I like this piece, Amy, and I have a more personal note to add, actually, so I may e mail you if the address listed here is still correct.
From Rena:
See, Dr. Amy, you can say plenty without access to direct home-birth research. 
From Rena:
Dr. Amy, have you considered attending this conference in March?
http://www.birthconference.org/S...Page.asp?
id=198
From Amy Tuteur, MD:
Rena:
"have you considered attending this conference in March?"
I was invited to speak at the conference and said that I would be happy to debate any of the celebrity homebirth advocates.
The organizers thought it would be easy to find someone to debate me, but that was not the case. Most refused outright. One agreed, but then backed out.
By the way, the organizer of the conference is Robbie Davis-Floyd's significant other, so I wouldn't be surprised if the conference has an undeclared agenda.
From Kim:
In the business world we call this blog post "double-dipping."
From Emma B:
The problems I have with co-sleeping aren't so much about value to the child as about negative effects on the parents. I've watched several of my own close friends unwillingly co-sleep with toddlers and preschoolers, and all of them feel that it's been detrimental to their marriages. One marriage actually broke up largely over intimacy issues, and both parents feel that the co-sleeping was a major factor. (However, most of these friends didn't start out co-sleeping -- the kids were in cribs as babies, and later started climbing into the parents' bed.)
Sure, you can be intimate in places other than the bedroom, but it's not as natural or as private, and my small-number-n unanimously agrees that the frequency goes way, way down. I think it's important for a marriage to have some literal and metaphorical private adult space, and that's harder to achieve when the bedroom belongs to the family. It's also hard for many women to sleep deeply and well with children in the bed, especially children who may be nursing in the night.
My four-month-old is co-sleeping right now, in a sidecar crib unless I fall asleep nursing him, and will continue to do so until he reliably sleeps through the night. It's better than a 3 AM trip upstairs, but I can't wait to get him out of our room, and neither can my husband. I hear every last snuffle and murmur the baby makes even from the co-sleeper, and if he's in the bed, I hardly get any rest. We can't snuggle and talk in bed at night because it wakes him up, and we both really miss that. It's kind of all about the baby right now, and while that's OK in the short term with an infant, it's not something we want for years to come.
From Esther:
About that conference...good lord. Were they trying to see how many strawmen they could stuff on one webpage?!
And I'm dying to know who initially volunteered to debate you and then backed out, Amy.
From Liz:
That webpage exemplifies everything - or most of the things - I see as wrong. An open-minded conference he intended to improve things for all women - what a good idea! Iron out the problems, find commmon ground. Except it is nothing of the kind. It is propaganda and hyperbole heavily selling the usual agenda. I can't decide whether it is laughable or tragic that they claim not to have one. Create a set up where no responsible scientist or medic would be seen dead, then, presumably, there will be a huge hullabaloo about how this prestigious "conference" agreed that NCB was the answer to everything. Lots of preaching to the choir, lots of enthusiastic and dedicated followers, no change in the real problems.
From Holly:
We bed-shared out of necessity, and most of the time the babe was in my husband's arms or on my husband's chest, not mine. I can't sleep with babies. Occasionally I was so sleep-deprived I would latch one of them on and doze off, but it never worked for me. Thankfully it worked for Avram, so we did get some sleep as new parents. Our second was in our room until he was 7 months old. After 3-4 months he was almost exclusively in his own crib in our room. I don't think it cut down on our intimacy at all. We have always had an active sex life. I think it's mostly personal preference. I'd just as well have sex on the bed as the couch, the floor or the shower, but I can see how some prefer the bed.
From Ericacrochets:
I must say that it's annoying, as a co-sleeping parent, to hear rumors of how detrimental the practice is to my sex life. Apparently, some people can make it work, and others can't. I have not found it to be a burden to either leave the bedroom or put the child in another room.
Children interfere with a couple's spontaneity and privacy. They are also exhausting. Anecdotally, I have known of people who use co-sleeping as an excuse to avoid being intimate with their partner. The co-sleeping is a result of their lack of desire rather than a cause of it. "Sorry, little Jimmy's in the bed--not tonight, dear."
I think if a person is motivated to have sex, they will. "Oh, look baby's asleep in bed--race you to the living room." Vs. "I just can't get in the mood when we're not in the bed, honey."
"I've got a headache, I'll take an Aleve, and maybe sex will provide some "natural" relief too." Vs. "Sorry, honey, my head hurts."
(Oh, god, did I just recommend a medicinal purpose for sex? I vowed never to do that in the masturbation thread.)
I will say that it helps to buy a house and furniture when you already have children. Because then you have a better idea of how close you want the bedrooms to be to make nighttime parenting easier. A person also might look for different things in couches if they needed them for purposes other than TV. : )
From Susanne:
"I think if a person is motivated to have sex, they will. "Oh, look baby's asleep in bed--race you to the living room." Vs. "I just can't get in the mood when we're not in the bed, honey." "
I agree with your observation, Erica, but I'd also say: If then you're in the living room / kitchen / whatever and not with baby, then what the heck is the point? If people want to claim that it's un-intimate for Poor Sad Baby to be left alone in a crib while parents are in bed ... well, baby's equally as Poor Sad and Left Alone if he's left alone in parents' bed and parents are in the living room whooping it up. (And parents should be whooping it up! No arguments there!)
From Ericacrochets:
Well, assuming that the parents' have made the bedroom safe for the baby, they seem to sleep better there, possibly because they don't realize they are alone? That's just how mine have been. Some babies don't seem to like sharing room/bed with the parents. I never intended to co-sleep--that just worked out the best way for us all to sleep. Like the Sears family, we just slept better that way. I know someone who did intend to co-sleep but found her son couldn't sleep well in the same room with them.
I'm in favor of doing what works out best for the family and balancing the children's needs with the parents. I certainly don't feel sorry for babies who happily sleep in their cribs all night.
From Adrianna Joanna:
About babies being left alone in cribs as opposed to being left alone in the parents' bedroom, I suppose it depends on how long the couple engages in sexual relations. While the relations are taking place, then it doesn't matter where the baby sleeps, but when you go back to bed, it does.
This isn't exavtly the same as co-sleeping, but the effect is the same. A lot of parents wait until their child is sleeping, and then they leave them alone to do something else. The idea was just to comfort the child while they were awake.
From lurker:
"Some babies don't seem to like sharing room/bed with the parents"
I have to agree with this. Just in my experience with my two children, they're like night and day.
My first couldn't seem to sleep if he wasn't touching me in some form (which didn't stop our sex life, because before he turned 8 months I was pregnant again. oops!)
My second on the other hand, he seemed to be a light sleeper, so if I moved or snored or whatever it would wake him up. He did best in the bassinet besides our bed, and now sleeps all through the night in the "kids" room just fine. While my first still wakes up needing a snuggle. He's a sensitive child, very huggy and lovey and if co-sleeping is what works for him... for now, it's fine. We are trying to get him to sleep in his own bed. some nights it works, some nights he comes crawling back into our bed at around 1am. I figure, hey. I'm the mother, why not mother him in the way he's needing it?
From lurker:
"If then you're in the living room / kitchen / whatever and not with baby, then what the heck is the point?"
so are you saying that "co-sleeping" parents just never leave their babies alone?
frankly sex doesn't take THAT long to conclude that you just shouldn't need to co-sleep at all.
From Rena:
So will you be speaking rather than debating, or just not attending?
From Jen:
"So will you be speaking rather than debating, or just not attending?"
Not Amy, but I believe she was ONLY going to go if they could find someone to debate her...is that right, Amy?
From Susanne:
"A lot of parents wait until their child is sleeping, and then they leave them alone to do something else."
Well, you can do that the easy way, in their own room. Or you can do it the hard way, which is to train them that mom / dad have to be right there, and then once you've trained baby in that, and toddler shows no sign of leaving, then you can go on internet boards and complain about how you can't get child out of your bed and whatever will you do? Talk about creating your own problems. I'm into simplicity and not creating problems in the first place.
From Liz:
I don't have any view on co-sleeping - if it works for you, do it seems rational to me. So long as you don't beat other people up with the superiority of your choice, who knows or cares? Emma Bs point about loss of intimacy seemed sensible to me but clearly it doesn't deter the rest of you. What I do care about is dodgy research, or research which misrepresents its conclusions. I didn't like the Back to Sleep campaign, as it seemed counter-intuitive to me, but was prepared to accept that there was some solid ground for promoting it. Now it seems maybe not. I suppose it is unrealistic of me, but I would like research that could be relied on and press stories that were not "spun".
From Liz:
I must say that it's annoying, as a co-sleeping parent, to hear rumors of how detrimental the practice is to my sex life.
Sorry, but really curious. Why is it annoying?
From Holly:
From lurker:
"If then you're in the living room / kitchen / whatever and not with baby, then what the heck is the point?"
so are you saying that "co-sleeping" parents just never leave their babies alone?
frankly sex doesn't take THAT long to conclude that you just shouldn't need to co-sleep at all.
ROFL. Yeah, if it *is* taking you that long, maybe some viagra or cialis is in order.
And besides, we co-slept because our kids didn't give us a choice. If we wanted to sleep, the baby was in our room or bed. Period. They would start out in their bassinet, but by the time they woke up for their pre-midnight feeding, they would refuse to go back in it. It wasn't about "oh, poor baby, sleeping all alone." It was the baby saying "Don't you put me back in there!!!"
From Liz:
I must say that it's annoying, as a co-sleeping parent, to hear rumors of how detrimental the practice is to my sex life.
Sorry, but really curious. Why is it annoying?
I wouldn't necessarily say annoying, just funny. As if anyone knows what goes on in (and out!) of my bedroom. For the short period I was on prozac we dropped down to 2-3 times a week, but kids? Co-sleeping? No. I guess it does for some people. We just haven't had that problem I guess, and honestly I haven't met that many co-sleeping parents who do have that sort of issue.
From Susanne:
It's rather ironic to hear you say "as if anyone knows what goes on in and out of my bedroom" right before you tell us how many times a week you had sex when on Prozac and then you tell us that you know that it's not a problem for many other co-sleeping parents. If we don't know what goes on in your bedroom, how do you know what goes on in theirs?
"And besides, we co-slept because our kids didn't give us a choice."
Who was the parent, again? It's not that they didn't give you a choice. It's that you decided you were going to give in and then you got stuck with it and then tried to portray it "having no choice." Of course you had a choice.
From Susanne:
"frankly sex doesn't take THAT long to conclude that you just shouldn't need to co-sleep at all."
"ROFL. Yeah, if it *is* taking you that long, maybe some viagra or cialis is in order."
Uh, taking a long time isn't evidence of "bad," nor is it evidence that medications are needed.
From Jolene:
Like Ericacrochets I also get insulted when people imagine that they know something about our sex life, or motivations for co-sleeping. I take it as a sign that they are not very creative.
"Well, you can do that the easy way, in their own room. Or you can do it the hard way, which is to train them that mom / dad have to be right there..."
Of course you could also re-write this the other way. A new parent could train their baby that mom/dad will not be there when they wake up/need them. Which is easiest depends on a lot of factors. It was a thousand times easier to co-sleep than it was to train them to sleep alone when they were newborns. Not to mention hauling my a$$ out of bed multiple times a night to stagger down the cold hall half asleep when they needed feeding.
Not having a nanny/house help means co-sleeping is usually the easy way out. At least for those first few months.
I'm imagining your personal circumstances made sleeping in their own room easiest Susanne. You were well rested when Babies came home from the hospital. You had night time help. You didn't breastfeed.
It's a good idea to pause a moment before judging others for not taking your "easy way".
From Holly:
I refuse to let my child cry it out when they are under a year old. I just won't do it. I don't think it's compassionate parenting. And of course, this also played a part:
"It was a thousand times easier to co-sleep than it was to train them to sleep alone when they were newborns. Not to mention hauling my a$$ out of bed multiple times a night to stagger down the cold hall half asleep when they needed feeding."
From Ericacrochets:
"Sorry, but really curious. Why is it annoying?"
Maybe I'm easily annoyed? I guess it doesn't really matter.
From Ericacrochets:
Suzanne wrote, "Well, you can do that the easy way, in their own room. Or you can do it the hard way, which is to train them that mom / dad have to be right there, and then once you've trained baby in that, and toddler shows no sign of leaving, then you can go on internet boards and complain about how you can't get child out of your bed and whatever will you do? Talk about creating your own problems. I'm into simplicity and not creating problems in the first place."
And what do you do for the 5-pound premature baby whom you've been told isn't supposed to cry because it uses up too much energy, but he cries unless someone is holding him night and day? Really, I'd genuinely be interested in the solution.
From Liz:
5-pound premature baby whom you've been told isn't supposed to cry
Crikey! Mine was a 3 lb 9 oz premature baby who screamed blue murder for ...a very long time. Held or not. In and out of NICU.
From Holly:
From Susanne:
"frankly sex doesn't take THAT long to conclude that you just shouldn't need to co-sleep at all."
"ROFL. Yeah, if it *is* taking you that long, maybe some viagra or cialis is in order."
Uh, taking a long time isn't evidence of "bad," nor is it evidence that medications are needed.
I see. I bet a good lubricant and/or some "toys" could help spice things up a bit in this arena. I'd visit your local sex shop. They can be very helpful when you're looking for something new to add to your repertoire.
From Adrianna Joanna:
Well, you can do that the easy way, in their own room. Or you can do it the hard way, which is to train them that mom / dad have to be right there, and then once you've trained baby in that, and toddler shows no sign of leaving, then you can go on internet boards and complain about how you can't get child out of your bed and whatever will you do? Talk about creating your own problems. I'm into simplicity and not creating problems in the first place.
Who said it was a problem? To me, and to a lot of others, it's a compromise to wait until a chlid is sleeping and do something else. And doesn't this imply that because something might cause problems that it cannot be beneficial and shouldn't be done?
I do not think that allowing a child to cry it out is compassionate parenting. If the child really needs something, I will give it to them. If it's not a pressing need, I will compromise. I do need time to myself, and I need sleep. That sounds fair to me.
Bottom line: co-sleep or not, it is your choice.
From Holly:
From Ericacrochets:
Suzanne wrote, "Well, you can do that the easy way, in their own room. Or you can do it the hard way, which is to train them that mom / dad have to be right there, and then once you've trained baby in that, and toddler shows no sign of leaving, then you can go on internet boards and complain about how you can't get child out of your bed and whatever will you do? Talk about creating your own problems. I'm into simplicity and not creating problems in the first place."
And what do you do for the 5-pound premature baby whom you've been told isn't supposed to cry because it uses up too much energy, but he cries unless someone is holding him night and day? Really, I'd genuinely be interested in the solution.
Erica, The solution is simple. Here are your choices:
1) Let your newborn infant cry until they vomit/pass out/fall asleep from exhaustion.
2) Hire a private nanny.
From Susanne:
"I'm imagining your personal circumstances made sleeping in their own room easiest Susanne. You were well rested when Babies came home from the hospital. You had night time help. You didn't breastfeed."
I agree I was rested when they came home from the hospital (as "restful" as trotting back and forth to an NICU for 6 weeks can be), but I never had nighttime help in the least, so I don't know where that assumption is coming from, at all. I did have a husband who was an equal partner in getting up with them in the middle of the night, but that's simply part of being a father, nothing noteworthy.
Given the importance of sleep to functioning, however, I think it's misguided to assume that women should just put up with interrupted, broken sleep with baby in bed if *for them* putting the baby in a crib is more restful, because they heard somewhere it's better. People should do what works for them. I find it interesting, though, that parenting boards are chockful of women who are now having the problem of getting a child out of their bed, which tells me that it might be a short-term solution to getting more sleep that winds up blowing up in one's face.
From Susanne:
Erica, The solution is simple. Here are your choices:
1) Let your newborn infant cry until they vomit/pass out/fall asleep from exhaustion.
2) Hire a private nanny."
Who said anything about crying until the baby vomits / passes out? It's typical overwrought emotional mommying, however, to assume that not co-sleeping equals baby crying at top of lungs down the hall for hours on end til baby passes out after realizing that no one loves him and he might as well grow up to be a serial killer, maybe he'd get some attention then.
What, no such thing as a normal, content baby, who enjoys his bath, feeding, playtime, lullaby and then contentedly settles in and goes to sleep? Maybe fusses a minute or two, but no big deal? I think there are some women for whom it makes MOMMY said that baby is in crib, so therefore they train baby to need other people to fall asleep. Hey, not my house, so that's their problem. Literally.
From Ericacrochets:
"I find it interesting, though, that parenting boards are chockful of women who are now having the problem of getting a child out of their bed, which tells me that it might be a short-term solution to getting more sleep that winds up blowing up in one's face."
This is true. I'm not sure this has as much to do with infant co-sleeping, although it can start that way. A lot of times, parents who did everything "by the book" STILL end up having their toddler/preschooler running into bed with them at night and then can't figure out how to get them out. The experts will tell you to walk them back to bed, even if you do it 100 times a night, but obviously, most parents are going to get worn down at some point and give up.
There ARE various solutions to getting a child out of the bed, and all children will want to leave EVENTUALLY, before they hit puberty, but it's a complicated problem in large part because small children have difficulty adapting to sleeping all alone--it's simply not something that was required of them for most of our evolution. I think the problem has gotten worse because today so few siblings even share rooms.
Some children have a much stronger urge to sleep than others, and sleep overtakes them, and they seem to adapt to whatever sleep situation life throws at them with little prodding from their parents.
From Holly:
My older son has been out of our room for over 3 years (he's 3.5), and about a month ago we started having a problem with him coming into our room at night. I am confident it has nothing to do with the fact that he slept in our room for the first 6 months of his life, and everything to do with the fact that he's scared of the dark.
From Ericacrochets:
"What, no such thing as a normal, content baby, who enjoys his bath, feeding, playtime, lullaby and then contentedly settles in and goes to sleep? Maybe fusses a minute or two, but no big deal?"
Susanne, so much of this has to do with individual temperment. There are such babies as the ones you described. And there are other types of babies, who resist sleep. If you're really interested in this, you might do some research in temperment. Some people fall asleep easily--sleep overtakes them. Other people do not.
It would be nice if every parent could follow the simple formula you mentioned above and have success, but I don't think there would be so many books written on the subject of infant sleep if it were really so easy.
From Susanne:
"It was a thousand times easier to co-sleep than it was to train them to sleep alone when they were newborns. Not to mention hauling my a$$ out of bed multiple times a night to stagger down the cold hall half asleep when they needed feeding."
It may be harder on YOU in the moment, but it's easier on THEM in the long run when you're not then dealing with a toddler or small child who doesn't understand why he can't be in his parents' bed and why he needs to go take his blankie and go back in his own room. For all the mommies who seem to think that it's So Scary for the Poor Wittle Baby to be in a different room, they seem to take in stride the fact that it's far more traumatic for the toddler / preschooler, who KNOWS what's going on and has been made to get used to a certain situation, to now adjust. Now THAT feels like rejection to a toddler / preschooler; a baby doesn't know the difference either way.
From Holly:
Wait, so is it about what's EASIER for me, or is it about the kid? I'm getting mixed messages from you, Susanne.
From Caryn:
What, no such thing as a normal, content baby, who enjoys his bath, feeding, playtime, lullaby and then contentedly settles in and goes to sleep? Maybe fusses a minute or two, but no big deal?
ROFLOL! Not at my house!
Try: wakes for changes in ceiling fan speed. Wakes for changes in vehicle speed. Wakes for dropped socks. Will not stay asleep while you transfer him from asleep on your body to asleep somewhere else. Will not stay asleep when you *shift your weight in the chair*. If left to "settle himself", screams louder and *louder* and LOUDER until throwing up.
As you know he was a NICU baby; the nurses described him as "a spitfire with quite a temper."
From Alexis:
I don't think it was easier for any of us when she bawled for 2 hours in her crib. None of us slept. With her in the bed, we all get sleep. Maybe I get woken up in the night by her sticking her feet in my armpit, but I can move her and go back to sleep. Now she's 2 and she's learning she can sleep without someone in the bed.
The other issue with judging-by-messageboard is that there are a lot of reluctant cosleepers in there. They never really wanted to do it and still don't, but baby won't sleep otherwise, so they're caught in a vicious cycle.
From Ericacrochets:
"Now THAT feels like rejection to a toddler / preschooler; a baby doesn't know the difference either way."
But it doesn't necessarily work! Maybe it did for you, and I think that's wonderful, and I'm happy for you. But believe me, there are lots of crib graduates out there who demand to sleep in their parents' bed as soon as they can run down the hall.
From Susanne:
So they "demand." If they demand ice cream for breakfast, do they get that too? Don't people ever say no anymore?
I guess my twins co-slept, since they shared a room til age 5. I put them in the same crib at the beginning, but it wasn't because I thought they'd be Sad and Teary Eyed and Lonely ... it was just way cute, and that way I had an extra crib to move them into if someone spit up, LOL.
I do think a lot of parenting today seems to have lost some common sense.
From Caryn:
So they "demand." If they demand ice cream for breakfast, do they get that too?
Certainly not, because I have alternative things to feed him.
There's no alternative for sleep.
From Ericacrochets:
"So they "demand." If they demand ice cream for breakfast, do they get that too? Don't people ever say no anymore?"
So, what are the options here?
1) Punish frightened toddler for running into parents' room (probably won't work).
2) Walk child back to room, leave, child returns, process is repeated over and over (Parent becomes sleep deprived).
3) Walk child back to room, stay with them while they fall asleep, repeat process over and over. (Parent becomes sleep deprived).
4) Let child crash in parents' room, either in the bed or in a sleeping bad on the floor. (Considered "bad" in our culture--some parents find it interferes with intimacy).
5) One parent crashes in child's room. (Again, this may interfere with a couple's desire for 4 AM sex or whatever).
For some people, the temporary sleep deprivation may be worth the possibility of training the child to stop coming into the room. There is no guarentee that the training will work.
This idea that you can follow formulas to get a specific result in child rearing is what is the problem with these people on message boards. It sets parents up to feel like failures. Each child has unique needs, and each child responds differently to these little "tricks" we try and use on them.
From Holly:
Word, Erica. Magic formulas don't work. Each child is different, and parenting isn't a simple 1-2-3.
From Ericacrochets:
"I guess my twins co-slept, since they shared a room til age 5. I put them in the same crib at the beginning, but it wasn't because I thought they'd be Sad and Teary Eyed and Lonely ... it was just way cute, and that way I had an extra crib to move them into if someone spit up, LOL."
That's VERY unusual today, in my experience. Everyone thinks their baby/toddler NEEDS a whole big room to themselves.
From Lies_DamLies_and_stats:
ITA with the "it's so dependent on the kid's temperament" crowd! My (very lucky!) experience with my children has been that we kept them in our bed at first, and they moved out when they were ready. None of them have stayed in our bed even a year - they've moved out in the fourth quarter. Of their own accord - they cued us pretty clearly as to when they were ready for their own room and crib, and off they went, everyone was happy. Admittedly, keeping them in our bed at first was mostly for our convenience, sleep, and peace of mind. It was actually DH who initially wanted them brought into our bed, and it didn't do anything to our intimacy. Our older children, who now occasionally want to "cuddle up" or "hang out" in bed with us (usually during naptimes), are quite independent, and just as happy in their own room on a normal basis.
Not everybody has the same experience, however. I had a dear friend who bought into the "Mommy Olympics" and was convinced that she had to sleep with her son in her bed in order to be a good mother. That little boy did _not_ want to share a bed. At all. He wanted his own space, and that was it. She struggled and struggled, and finally had it and put him in a crib across the hall - where he promptly went to sleep and never had any sleep difficulties again. It took some convincing to get her to see that this was actually _good_ mothering, as he was healthy and getting sleep, and she was protecting her own energy and sanity to care for him when he was awake.
OTOH, another dear friend of mine had children who were only too happy to share their parents' bed - and they're still there, years later. (Obviously didn't ruin their sex life, as this is multiple kids later as well.)
I strongly believe that individual families should do what works for them, and the "stay out of my bedroom" prohibition should extend to family sleeping arrangements. The only "wrong" arrangement is one that a family is forced into due to social constructs (whether that's "you have to co-sleep to be a good mommy" or "you have to chuck that child down the hall or s/he'll never be independent"), that doesn't work for them and deprives them of sleep. I'm not a relativist on many things, but this matter truly is lacking in one universal solution.
From Susanne:
That's VERY unusual today, in my experience. Everyone thinks their baby/toddler NEEDS a whole big room to themselves."
Unusual for twins? Really? I've never known any mother of twins to set up two nurseries so that each baby gets a whole big room to themselves.
But yeah, it's fun when you're having a baby to set aside a room to be a nursery, and decorate it to your taste, and the like. What's wrong with that?
From Susanne:
"Our older children, who now occasionally want to "cuddle up" or "hang out" in bed with us (usually during naptimes), are quite independent, and just as happy in their own room on a normal basis."
Not referring to anyone here, but I think there is a subculture of Fearful Mommies who really want to be needed, and for whom the idea of baby resting contentedly in his / her own room feels like a rejection of them and makes *them* feel lonely, so they intuit baby must be lonely.
I have to laugh, though, because we had in our house what we referred to as "family bed," which was simply in the evening, everyone comes into our room, sits on the bed or gets under the covers, and we watch TV, play cards, hang out, read, whatever. And then, when it was nighttime, they went in their own equally comfy and nice room and went to sleep. And dh had patients who asked him about practicing the family bed, and he would rave about it, and I had to clue him in that they were talking about something completely different .
Having a family bed in a household where the phone often rings at night and dh has to be awake / talk loudly / get up is just a dumb idea anyway, LOL.
From Susanne:
I don't even get how you could sleep comfortably with infants anyway. Two adults and two infants / toddlers in our queen-size bed? We are normal-size adults, but that's a crowd. And I *like* my bed to be a place where I sit, read, watch TV, wind down from the day. I don't want to have to shut it down when it's baby's bedtime at 8 pm when I don't want to go to bed til 10 pm. Doesn't make any sense to me.
From Ericacrochets:
Well, Susanne, I don't think co-sleeping is for you, nor is it for everyone. That's funny about your DH. It sounds like your children slept well, due to genetics, your parenting, or both. Yea for Dr. and Mrs. Susanne and family!
From Susanne:
Actually, dd developed a sleep disorder at age 14. THAT's when I had someone coming in my room in the middle of the night with the "Mom, I can't sleep! Will you rub my back?"
Our ped put her on melatonin and it worked like a charm. She takes it religiously and practices excellent sleep hygiene with a bedtime routine and it has made all the difference. I wouldn't underestimate the power of a consistent bedtime routine.
From Jen:
"I never had nighttime help in the least, so I don't know where that assumption is coming from, at all. I did have a husband who was an equal partner in getting up with them in the middle of the night, but that's simply part of being a father, nothing noteworthy."
But wouldn't a breastfeeding mom not have that help? If you're BF'ing, YOU are the only one who can feed the baby, unless you pump bottles just for nighttime feedings. And not everyone is comfortable giving baby bottles for fear of nipple-confusion. In that situation, hubby could only get up for wakings that didn't have to do with feeding. And, at the newborn stage, most wakings are hunger related, aren't they?
And just to be nit-picky, I would count your hubby getting up as having SOME nighttime help. To me "never had nighttime help in the least" means you were the only one to get up with babies every. single. time.
Overall, I agree it is such an individual choice whether or not to co-sleep that every family has to make that choice for each of their children. I don't agree with anyone trying to force ANY kind of sleeping arrangement on a family, for whatever reason (barring, I guess, any "sleeping arrangements" that are somehow detrimental the child).
From Esther:
I do, however, have to wonder about these babies who just won't sleep in any way other than the one they choose - touching Mom, on Dad's chest, nursing all night. Were there no such babies back in the old days? And if there were, did parents humor their babies' quirks they way they do now, or perhaps they saw this as a behavior to be corrected - with crying involved, if necessary?
I suppose you could broaden this question to ask - are "high needs" babies born or made? (I don't mean the temperament, but the conditions that baby needs just so to be happy). And if the former, is there a way to "fix" them that today's parents are reluctant to use?
After all, we don't hesitate to strap a baby in his carseat even if he hates carseats. Most eventually learn to deal. We can be plenty tough when it's a matter of safety (and then again, maybe not...like a patient of mine who told me she cosleeps with her month-old, SGA baby even though she's a smoker. And she puts him prone to sleep. If he's in any other position in any other place, he cries and won't sleep, or so she claims. Yes, I have told her EXACTLY what I thought of that and plan to follow up).
From Jen:
"It may be harder on YOU in the moment, but it's easier on THEM in the long run when you're not then dealing with a toddler or small child who doesn't understand why he can't be in his parents' bed and why he needs to go take his blankie and go back in his own room."
Also, I don't believe all toddlers react this way to transitioning to their own bed (especially if the transition is gradual). I've seen many moms say that the kid just decided it was time, or what have you, and happily went to their own bed, with maybe a few night visits at first. Of course, I have no way of knowing how many transition easily and how many have a really hard time. As far as the message boards, the moms who have the kids who transitioned fine have no reason to post asking for help. Each kid is different, and you never know how they're going to react to anything you do.
From Ericacrochets:
"After all, we don't hesitate to strap a baby in his carseat even if he hates carseats. Most eventually learn to deal."
My youngest screamed a loud, horrible, shrill scream the entire time he was in the car unless he fell asleep until he was 6 months old. I would not want to listen to that unless it were absolutely necessary. You would think it would not take so long to get used to riding in the car, but it just seemed like he was unable to deal until he was old enough to enjoy looking around and smiling at his brother, etc.
From Jen:
"I suppose you could broaden this question to ask - are "high needs" babies born or made? (I don't mean the temperament, but the conditions that baby needs just so to be happy). And if the former, is there a way to "fix" them that today's parents are reluctant to use?"
If I had to guess, I would say some of them are probably "made" but surely not all. I think the only "fix" per se would be to ignore their discomfort until they no longer complain about it (ie CIO).
I just remembered that my one younger brother was VERY hard to get to sleep. My "parents" didn't take care of the boys, I did. And they certainly didn't co-sleep, they CIO'd. I would put him in his crib with his bottle and sit on the floor next to him, stroking his hair until he fell asleep. It was the ONLY way to get him to sleep, unless he conked out on his own from exhaustion (there were many nights where we didn't get dinner until 9-10pm and they would fall asleep trying to eat). I wonder, if he had shared a bed with either myself or my parents (although that would've been somewhat dangerous, considering they were both smokers and my mom was an alcoholoic) if he would've had an easier time? No way to know, of course.
From Ericacrochets:
Esther, as a family practitioner, would you recommend letting a baby under 6 months cry it out?
My parents didn't feel comfortable putting a baby in their bed, and instead my father spent hours each night walking/bouncing/dancing me to sleep because they had so much trouble and didn't want to CIO.
On the other hand, my sister settled herself easily from day 1. Even today, she can fall asleep as early as 7 PM (what a freak!), and I can't normally sleep until after midnight. She can get up at 4 or 5 AM. I am a zombie at that time.
I think it's interesting when parents have children of two very different temperments.
From Ericacrochets:
I'm convinced that this thread is my karma. Until you have direct experience with a child who doesn't settle easily and struggles with sleep, it is very easy to believe the experts that any parent can turn their baby into a good sleeper by following several simple steps. I was so smug before my first son was born.
From Esther:
Ericacrochets:"Esther, as a family practitioner, would you recommend letting a baby under 6 months cry it out? "
As in training a baby to sleep through the night? No.
As in training a baby not to sleep in a particular position, in a particular place (e.g., a sidecar cosleeper), not attached to the breast all night long...all the while staying by baby, patting him, talking to him soothingly? Yes, even if it involves a bit of crying.
From Esther:
Ericacrocherts:"Until you have direct experience with a child who doesn't settle easily and struggles with sleep, it is very easy to believe the experts that any parent can turn their baby into a good sleeper by following several simple steps."
My eldest wasn't exactly a picnic, either.
From Ericacrochets:
"Yes, even if it involves a bit of crying."
How much would you consider a bit? 10 minutes? 30 minutes? One hour? Two hours?
From lurker:
"For all the mommies who seem to think that it's So Scary for the Poor Wittle Baby to be in a different room,"
do you realize how condescending you sound or is it just done on purpose?
From ObNurse:
Erica;
Your post made me laugh. I was oh so smug before I had my first. He was going to sleep in his crib and get used to taking one bottle a day so that I could leave him with babysitters. I didn't even buy a baby monitor because the baby whisperer book said not to.
All that changed when I brought a colicky, hungry, fussy baby home from the hospital. He cried for 3 months. The only way to get him to sleep was to either nurse him (if I was lucky) or jam his thumb in his mouth and bounce him around for 40 minutes. THEN I had to ease myself back on my bed with him on my chest if I wanted to get any sleep that night.
And oh yeah, he hated bottles, soothers, and his crib.
i bought all of the sleep books, tried CIO a few times, and I just couldn't follow through. It just went against my maternal "instinct" or whatever the hell you want to call it. I liked having my babies close to me.
My first high needs baby was born, not made. My second baby was super easy going and would have slept in a crib had I tried hard enough. But by then dh and I knew how wonderful is was to share your bed with your baby, and how much easier it was for night feeds. The only difference was the second time around I didn't care what anyone else thought and we allowed ourselves to enjoy him a little bit more.
Co sleeping is not without it's problems. We have a 3 and 6 year old who still want to crawl in with us at 4am. Shrug. They'll outgrow it. It's really no biggie.
wouldn't change a thing if I had another baby.
From Esther:
Ericacrochet:"How much would you consider a bit? 10 minutes? 30 minutes? One hour? Two hours?"
Well, if he was still crying 5-10 minutes later, I'd pick him up, soothe him, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat....
But let's say I took the hardnose approach and the baby cried for 2 hours straight, under the conditions I mentioned. Also assume the baby has all his other needs fulfilled beforehand (diaper is clean, well-fed etc.). Do you believe the baby will somehow be damaged by the crying, the way Dr. Sears threatens?
ObNurse:"
i bought all of the sleep books, tried CIO a few times, and I just couldn't follow through. It just went against my maternal "instinct" or whatever the hell you want to call it. I liked having my babies close to me."
It's great that you found something that worked for you, but what if you did follow through?
From Holly:
All of the mother-blaming going on! Am I on motheringdotcommune?
From Esther:
And Ericacrochets, what would you suggest to my patient - the smoking mother of the one-month-old who says her baby won't sleep except when prone and in her bed? What if he cried for 2 hours straight if she tries to change his behavior?
(*Quitting smoking is an option, but in this case, I'm afraid it's not gonna happen.)
From Holly:
Side-car the crib.
From ObNurse:
Esther;
I don't know what would have happened had I followed through. Maybe they would have become "good" sleepers in a matter of days, or maybe not for several weeks. Who knows? It just seemed cruel to *me*, to let my babies cry like that.
I do know that anything, teething, illness, would cause them to have setbacks, so I'm not sure that crying it out would have worked in the long term.
Esther, I really loved being near my babies at night time. I knew that they wouldn't be great sleepers as long as we kept them in our bed, but for us, it was worth a few years of disrupted sleep in order to have that closeness.
I don't judge others who put their babies in their cribs to sleep. It's all about what works for you and the baby in the early days. Honestly for me, it was just too much effort to crawl out of my warm bed , breastfeed, change a diaper, settle the baby, put back in his crib, go back to bed, fall asleep and wake up 90 minutes later to do it all again. I tried that and I was a basket case.
I used to be a maternal health nurse, did home visits,the whole bit. I was a firm believer in letting babies cry themselves to sleep. Until I had my own. There was just something in me that *needed* to be able to see and hear my baby in the night. When they slept in their own rooms I was getting up every 15 minutes to make sure they were still breathing. Call me crazy, but I know that I'm not the only mother to feel that way.
From Holly:
She needs to quit smoking or she's going to die anyway, and she's likely to give her son severe respiratory problems from her behavior. I'd be more worried about the affects of second hand smoke than I would about the co-sleeping.
From Esther:
Holly-she claims the kid needs to be touching her. (I suggested the sidecar). And I'm not going to go into her medical history, incognito or not, online, but let's just say that your last assessment is very much on target *bangs head on desk*.
From Alexis:
I don't think the question is necessarily whether the baby will be damaged (though if you're unlucky enough to get one of the kids who will do that over and over again, maybe, who knows). I DO think that sleep deprivation makes for lousy parenting, and that in the end most parents will end up going with whatever method gives them some peace.
From Holly:
I think I'd recommend a modified CIO routine- let cry 10-20 min, soothe, 10-20 min crying, soothe, repeat.
I think that's totally appropriate in this case.
From Ericacrochets:
Yes, I think co-sleeping is a very dangerous idea when either parent smokes. Even aside from co-sleeping, it's sad to think of the baby being held against the mother's clothes that are reeking of smoke and the damage it does to the baby's respiratory system.
From Susanne:
Esther: "But let's say I took the hardnose approach and the baby cried for 2 hours straight, under the conditions I mentioned. Also assume the baby has all his other needs fulfilled beforehand (diaper is clean, well-fed etc.). Do you believe the baby will somehow be damaged by the crying, the way Dr. Sears threatens?"
Of course not. It's the mother who's damaged by the crying, not the baby. I know it's fashionable to pretend that the above scenario is going to result in baby-becomes-depressed-because-he-believes-no-one-
loves-him-anymore, but absent an abusive situation, why anything would think that any real "damage" would result from a few nights of the above is beyond me. It's women thinking emotionally instead of rationally.
From Ericacrochets:
"But let's say I took the hardnose approach and the baby cried for 2 hours straight, under the conditions I mentioned. Also assume the baby has all his other needs fulfilled beforehand (diaper is clean, well-fed etc.). Do you believe the baby will somehow be damaged by the crying, the way Dr. Sears threatens?"
In the case of my (premature) baby, I was told that he was not to cry at all because he would waste energy he needed to grow and eat.
I don't know of any evidence that the baby will be damaged by 2 hours of crying. I personally could not listen to a newborn cry for 2 hours without holding them--it would be too disturbing. I'm sure you wouldn't either.
In the case of your patient, I think your modified CIO method is probably the best. I don't think CIO when done responsibly "damages" babies. I know of several lovely families who choose to do it that way. But I'm not comfortable letting my babies cry, and I don't think mine are "damaged" either.
From Susanne:
I think I'd recommend a modified CIO routine- let cry 10-20 min, soothe, 10-20 min crying, soothe, repeat."
That's just normal common sense, though. There are certainly parents who don't have the backbone for it, who "rescue" the kid before the 10 minutes or whatever, and then claim that the kid "just can't sleep without being next to them." They never gave him a chance!
From Ericacrochets:
OT, but I have a question. I am probably going to change pediatricians because I am put on hold an average of 30 minutes every time I call. Yesterday, I called, was on hold for 30 minutes, asked for a nurse to call me back about a question. Of course, she called several hours later during the 30-minute window I was picking my oldest up from school. I tried to call back, was put on hold for 10 minutes and then disconnected. (This has happened before, being randomly disconnected after holding for an extended period.). They also have terrible after hours support.
My question is, should I write them a letter telling them why I left? I don't understand why they have these problems with their office. They seem very understaffed as far as office workers. They are a very busy, popular practice. They employ two laction consultants, which is the main reason I was interested in them--they are very supportive of breastfeeding. The doctors seem good, and I hate to leave for a nonmedical reason, but I just can't take it anymore. Do you think the doctors are aware of the situation? Do you think they care?
From Susanne:
"I DO think that sleep deprivation makes for lousy parenting, and that in the end most parents will end up going with whatever method gives them some peace."
Well, sure. I'd rather get my sleep deprivation over with in the beginning, though, rather than not address it and have a bigger issue on my hands later on that will lead to more sleep deprivation on everyone's part. It's a lot harder to convince the toddler that he should go to bed by himself, than it is to convince the baby. The toddler got set up to expect something and now it's being taken away. That seems more "harsh" to me than letting a baby CIO, frankly.
From Holly:
I would write them a letter to let them know I was switching, but I'm that kind of person. Even if they don't care, they will hear me bitch. 
Send a letter. You'll feel better. And I am totally with you on switching. I would switch too.
From Esther:
Is there any way you can complain to the person who runs the practice (MD pr administrator) before giving up on them?
(And heck, I wish I had a fleet of nurses to return my calls for me. Or maybe not...)
From Ericacrochets:
I'm not sure how to find out who is in charge. I'm certainly not going to call and be put on hold for half an hour to find out! Haha. I also feel like I'm spending a lot of time waiting for the nurse to come with the shots after the doctor leaves the room. I can understand waiting for the doctor, but if I'm waiting 30-45 minutes after the doctor for the nurse to come back, I think that's excessive. I don't recall this being a problem in our old practice (we moved--had the most wonderful pedatric nurse practitioner).
From Esther:
And just to finish up (?) the sleep issue - so what I understand you, Erica and ObNurse, are saying is that when parents to high-needs babies say, "my baby wouldn't do X", they mean "I didn't believe it was worth all the misery to induce my baby to change his behavior".
Is that accurate?
From Jen:
"It's a lot harder to convince the toddler that he should go to bed by himself, than it is to convince the baby. The toddler got set up to expect something and now it's being taken away. That seems more "harsh" to me than letting a baby CIO, frankly."
And that's your opinion of course. I think some might argue that the toddler is more able to understand why he's being left alone than the baby can. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but I could see someone arguing it.
And it's not really a matter of "convincing" of course - at least not for the baby. The baby just can't do a damn thing about it, except to cry and scream. The toddler can actually attempt to get out of their own bed all night, and join mom and dad...and then possibly cry and scream when they aren't allowed.
From Ericacrochets:
""I didn't believe it was worth all the misery to induce my baby to change his behavior". "
I would agree with that. And add that the possibility that they might not work (or take many weeks/months to work) bothers me too.
From ObNurse:
Was CIO worth the misery? For me, no. For others, it can be worth the misery.
I fully acknowledge that by letting my babies sleep with me I created toddlers and preschoolers who are very resistant to going to bed by themselves and staying there all night.
I probably missed out on more sleep that I would have had my babies been sleeping in their cribs for 12 hours a night.
I'm also okay with that.
From Susanne:
Erica: You absolutely should complain. It would be one thing if the nurse said that she needed to call you back at X time and you could plan accordingly, but to keep you on hold that long is simply unacceptable. I hate when doctors are poor businesspeople and don't respect other people's time.
From Emma B:
I must say that it's annoying, as a co-sleeping parent, to hear rumors of how detrimental the practice is to my sex life. Apparently, some people can make it work, and others can't. I have not found it to be a burden to either leave the bedroom or put the child in another room.
I'm not talking about what I heard on a message board, but about my friends' and *my own* real-life experience. Maybe I am "uncreative" and "unmotivated", but it's an issue for us. It would be problematic anyway due to the physical issues I've had since my son's birth, but when you're already having trouble, one more barrier to entry is not what you need. (Pun unintentional.) Our home environment is not conducive (dogs, un-curtainable windows, etc), and our son is a light enough sleeper that he wakes up even if we're just snuggling and talking at night.
If it works for you, great, but having kids in our room feels like an intrusion to us, even when they're not in the bed. It's happening right now, because I'm lazy enough to trade the loss of intimacy for not having to get out of bed a couple times a night. Night-weaning is not optional right now, since due to the milk supply/weight loss issues, the baby legitimately needs to eat in the middle of the night, but I don't like it and I look forward to the day when it stops.
I'm not comfortable with CIO for young babies either. I did CIO with the girls around 10 months of age, but I don't think that any of my children have shown the requisite awareness and understanding to do sleep-training before six months. Getting oneself back to sleep is a skill, and the girls didn't seem to know how to self-soothe for a while. Neither does Andrew, who can't fall asleep without his pacifier and can't get it in his own mouth. Maybe my kids are just dumb , but I truly haven't thought any of them have been ready for CIO until later in babyhood.
BTW, my twins have always shared a room, and shared a crib until they started rolling over on each other. That's true for every other set of infant multiples I've known, although many choose to start separating them for naps when they get to be toddlers. Sleep for multiples is a whooooole different ballgame, believe me!
From Emma B:
Re toddlers in the bed, we are avoiding this right now by the very simple expedient of a childproof lock on the bedroom door. They *can't* get out of their room and come into our bed. (We have a baby monitor, and always respond if we're truly needed.)
This is part of the multiple sleep thing, though. We have not been successful at making them stay in their own beds at nap/bedtime -- they don't seem to have the emotional maturity to be able to resist the lure of playing with each other. Their room is childproofed to the teeth (there's no furniture in there except their cribs and a dresser turned around backwards so they can't climb it), so we just lock them up there and let them play until they're ready to fall asleep.
Parenting multiples does tend to make you feel like a zookeeper.
From Ericacrochets:
Well, maybe Andrew will start sleeping better/longer on his own. Not to be patronizing, Emma B., but have you tried white noise? The shower fan has been a lifesaver for us.
From Ericacrochets:
"I hate when doctors are poor businesspeople and don't respect other people's time."
I will complain, and I've gotten a couple of recommendations for a different practice where calls are taken in a timely fashion. I haven't had to call our pracitec that often since my children are rarely sick, so it has taken me a while to realize that those hold times are typical for the practice. Also, when I go in, the receptionist is nearly always talking on the phone to parents into a headset as she helps people check in and does billing. I can't imagine working in that office.
From Miss Belle:
Wow..whathisname must be thinking Amy really spends a lot of time talking to herself!
So many things I would like to respond to but I did like what Holly said and lets NOT be like MDC and questioning eachothers devotion to the cause of co sleeping or crying it out!
For the record I coslept with all three and was happy. With all three I tried a guilt induced from other people cry it out night and lost my mind. And yes, I was afraid to admit how long my toddlers breastfed or slept in our bed I many times at playgroups etc. Dependant on the general consensus on such issue.
I think Amy's post and Esther's wait a sec were both interesting. It makes me glad I am done because I was happy with how things went for me. I was also happy for my sister who did things the complete opposite of how I did. I don't think either mode makes for high needs kids or future sociopaths or guarantees perfect children!
From Caryn:
I spent three years teaching my son that if I stopped touching him, he could stay asleep.
I'd nurse him to sleep on the bed, wait until he had been out for ten minutes or so, get up and leave the room, and he'd wake up sobbing. I'd settle him back down again and get back up, and he'd wake up sobbing. If I left him for 5 minutes he'd take another hour to settle back to sleep. If I left him for ten, he'd throw up. Lather rinse repeat six to ten times each night between his bedtime, and mine. If I woke up at 2:30 am to pee after he'd been asleep for hours, he woke up crying. If I got up in the morning planning for him to sleep for another hour, he'd be up in 5 minutes or so.
The first time he stayed asleep for more than 20 minutes after I got out of the bed, I wrote it down as a milestone -- he was more than 2 years and 9 months old.
He *still*, at age 6, does not sleep so deeply that I could lift his arm a few inches and drop it without waking him -- and IIRC that's the marker for "baby sufficiently deeply asleep to move from one place to another." And he still has a 45 minute sleep cycle and is stunningly easy to wake 45 minutes after falling asleep, 1:30 after falling asleep...
(But then sleep disturbances run strongly in my family, particularly insomnia, night terrors, and sleepwalking, which is why I'm still awake at 1:30 am after not really sleeping for the past two nights.)
Some kids are just like that, absent issues of parental backbone.
As someone pointed out upthread, the issue of child temperment is being conflated with values questions. Whether or not children have different temperments is one factor in sleeping decisions; another is how the parents value adjusting babies to sleeping by themselves/ adjusting toddlers to sleeping by themselves/ waiting until the child moves of his or her own accord/ having a bed for sex/ having a bed for privacy and quiet conversation/ etc. And yeah, it's just stunningly obvious that not everyone shares the same values there.
From Margaret:
" Were there no such babies back in the old days? And if there were, did parents humor their babies' quirks they way they do now, or perhaps they saw this as a behavior to be corrected - with crying involved, if necessary? "
Esther, historically (and still around the world today) co-sleeping was perfectly normal. Not just with babies, but entire families or even random guests at an inn having to share a bed (and fleas/lice!). I'm having trouble imagining that the vast majority of women in Botswana or Zimbabwe have houses big enough to put baby in a seperate room "down the hall", or enough money to even buy a crib. My husband is East African and slept in his mother's arms as an infant, and then shared a bed with his brothers through his childhood. Given the open fires, bugs, rats, and random animals wandering around in rural areas, right next to mom is the *safest* place for an African baby to be. They might have "difficult" babies but just not know it because they already do that which comforts the miserable little thing. :D
All our babies sleep with us in the early days. Usually staring out in the bassinet by our bed and ending up in my arms by midnight. We all sleep better that way. We have never been comfortable letting a baby scream itself to sleep, and all of our children went well beyond "fussing a little" if left alone in bed. The older two have moved to their own room with no trouble by the age of 2. Right now they share the bottom of a bunk bed (one on each end). The "baby" will shortly move into that room as well, when he turns 2 this spring.
From Liz:
I do tend to see another form of collective amnesia here in the ignoring of historical/geographical/class attitudes to co-sleeping I shared a room, and sometimes a bed, with my sister until she left home, and it wasn't even slightly unusual. I had friends from big families who would share two at the top, two at the bottom of one bed. And we still have "homeless families" living in what is known as "bed and breakfast accommodation" - a family in one room, climbing over each other.
And, as someone whose babies are now adults, what's this with the crying? Do modern babies only cry when in extreme distress? I seem to remember that there is a whole range of baby cries, not all of them life and death. Am I mis-remembering? Or was I a cruel and wicked mother? If I was, neither of my two have grown up to be axe murderers. (I didn't leave them to CIO and to be honest, I had more problems with the crying of older children, which I did find hard to differentiate sometimes, finding the crying of a tantrum and the crying of a cut knee just as harrowing.)
From Liz:
Anecdote: Once, as a doting aunt, I was attempting a "pretend" cry. My three year old niece looked at me in disgust, and said: "That's not how you pretend to cry, this is how you pretend to cry..." Burst into the most heart-rending crying, complete with real tears, stopped, looked at me calmly, and said: "THAT'S how you pretend to cry." Good teachers, children.
From Susanne:
"I'd nurse him to sleep on the bed, wait until he had been out for ten minutes or so, get up and leave the room, and he'd wake up sobbing. I'd settle him back down again and get back up, and he'd wake up sobbing."
But then why would you nurse him to sleep, Caryn? Wasn't that just "training" him that he needed you to get to sleep / stay asleep, versus nursing him while making sure he stayed awake, and then putting him down?
From Susanne:
"Also, when I go in, the receptionist is nearly always talking on the phone to parents into a headset as she helps people check in and does billing. I can't imagine working in that office."
Someone needs to hire another receptionist or office assistant, it sounds like. How can she not wind up making mistakes? And it's rude not to attend to the person in front of you. Sounds like a poorly run office. I'd tell them.
From Susanne:
"And, as someone whose babies are now adults, what's this with the crying? Do modern babies only cry when in extreme distress? I seem to remember that there is a whole range of baby cries, not all of them life and death. Am I mis-remembering? Or was I a cruel and wicked mother?"
Of course there is. They don't all need to be treated as the life or death shut-them-up-at-any-costs-because-baby-might-grow-
up-to-be-a-serial-killer. I think Esther's comments about putting a baby in a carseat are spot-on.
From Caryn:
But then why would you nurse him to sleep, Caryn? Wasn't that just "training" him that he needed you to get to sleep / stay asleep, versus nursing him while making sure he stayed awake, and then putting him down?
If I put him down while he was awake, he screamed. Immediately. And kept going for 10 minutes, and threw up. And couldn't be settled for an hour following.
If I put him down *at all*. On anything. Well, if he was in his carseat *and the car was moving*, he'd be quiet, but stoplights were a bad thing. Strollers equaled screaming. Floor on a blanket equaled screaming.
I've a lot of experience with babies -- younger siblings born when I was in my teens -- and this was not a vaguely fussy whimper or a mellow annoyed cry. It was hysteria. People with lots of experience with babies, five children of their own or whatever, would insist that I was making it up, and I'd hand him to them, and they'd spend 10 minutes trying to distract him/ sooth him/ wait it out, and he'd throw up, and they'd hand him back and say "Wow."
When I met my mom for coffee, and had to run to the bathroom, I'd hand him to her, and invariably by the time I finished peeing, she'd be outside the shop holding a sobbing baby. I'm talking the kind of volume that clears restaurants.
My little brother was a "normal" baby, and could be handed off to anyone, and liked to play on the floor, and slept anywhere. That was the sort of baby I was anticipating, but it's not the sort I got.
From Ericacrochets:
"But then why would you nurse him to sleep, Caryn?"
I can't speak for Caryn, BUT:
Because that's what babies DO, Susanne. When you breastfeed a newborn, they fall asleep. They are wired to do so. Some babies will fall asleep at the bottle, but the composition of formula isn't as sleep inducing. And I imagine that sucking on a human nipple, which is warm, attached to the mother, and tastes of her, is more "snuggly" and sleep inducing that sucking on silicone. Also, the breastfed baby is pressed against more of the mother's skin, and the bottle fed baby is not, unless parent chooses to unbutton his/her shirt. The skin effect is more sleep inducing as well.
The baby, being attached at the mouth to the mother, snuggled up next to her skin, is going to respond a little differently to being moved than the baby who is not attached at the mouth to the mother and is snuggled up next to clothing. It's often easier to make that transition from the parent to crib or bassinet when one is bottle feeding, particularly if the bottle feeder is not the mother.
Most of this "expert" sleep advice is tailor made for parents/babies who use formula. It's much more difficult to apply this advice to the breastfed baby.
From Liz:
All in all, I have been intimately involved with trying to get five different babies to sleep at night - as mother/aunt/grandmother. All of them were different, moving in and out of different phases. One would only sleep if you walked up and down holding her, and wake if you sat down (at a very heavy 10 months)but would settle when fast asleep; one liked noise; one would never ever sleep in your arms, but only in her crib. My youngest, put her in her crib, and she was asleep before I got to the door. My eldest would happily sleep in a crib, but as a toddler flatly refused to acknowledge any difference between night and day, and would not sleep if she wanted to play. I think mothers who congratulate themselves on their foolproof technique are deluding themselves.
From ObNurse:
Erica
ITA. I know of very few breastfed babies who were sucessfully "sleep trained". It is extremely difficult to apply sleep training methods on a baby who falls asleep the moment he is done eating. And you have to feed a breastfed baby right before he goes to sleep, otherwise he is going to wake up hungry in half an hour anyway.
I think the sleep books are popular because a lot of new parents are exhausted and therefore most babies must be "poor" sleepers. Which leads me to think that these so called poor sleeping habits are actually pretty normal.
By the time I felt that my babies were old enough for sleep training, the nurse to sleep habit was firmly entrenched, and like I said, i was not willing to put either of us through the misery.
From ObNurse:
FWIW I returned to work (shift work) when my babies were a year old. I guess you could say that my husband sleep trained them. They would wake up to nurse and I wasn't there, they'd cry and dh wore a path in the carpet walking them around.
Eventually they caught on.
My dh was never very happy with me when I'd get home, and I felt bad. Both times I tried to night wean before returning to work but in reality, it is SO hard!! In that sense it would have made much more sense for me to put my babies in their cribs and listen to a little bit of crying. I admit it!
I was very torn, wanting to do what was best for my baby *at that moment* while worrying about how we were going to handle things a year down the line.
Being a mother is a very hard job not matter how you do it. As my mother pointed out, there is always a day of reckoning with your kids. CIO, taking away breast/bottles/soother, potty training, none of it is very pleasant but it has to be done. I'm a big wimp but so far everyone is potty trained and off the breast and sleeping in their own bed most nights! I guess I haven't screwed them up too much.
From Jolene:
Susanne,
In not too long you may (or may not, who knows?) be seen as the judgemental, unreasonable grandma. When you are so unwilling to open your mind to accept other experiences than your own and when you label the parent as doing something "wrong" when the results aren't exactly what yours was, you tend to be granted less involvement in your grandchildren's lives as you may wish for.
And who knows, maybe that situation will suit you just fine. Some grandparents don't like more than a very surface relationship with their grandchildren.
From ObNurse:
Sorry for the multiple posts. I just want to clarify, because this thread is starting to sound like MDC, that I don't think that crib sleeping babies are going to grow up to serial killers. Not in the least.
And also, that sleep training is much harder IRL than what is written in the sleep books.
From SarahNicole:
@EricaCrochets: Most of this "expert" sleep advice is tailor made for parents/babies who use formula. It's much more difficult to apply this advice to the breastfed baby.
Really? What about babies, like my son, who are fed exclusively breastmilk, but from a bottle (long story short, since he was about 3 weeks old, I pump an adequate supply for him, my husband is at home with him alone 2 1/2 to 3 days a week, and I am at home alone with him the same amount of time, on opposite weekdays)?
The whole statement you made upthread doesn't actually sound as if it's based on evidence, as you "*imagine* [emphasis mine] that sucking on a human nipple, which is warm, attached to the mother, and tastes of her, is more 'snuggly' and sleep inducing that sucking on silicone." My son appears to like his milk regardless, and snuggles quite a bit, whether he's being held against clothing or skin. It's also not as if skin on the chest is the only skin that can be touching him as he's fed... He regularly falls asleep after eating, although not always... He's 4 1/2 months old, and pretty much sleeps through the night as well... We partially co-slept with a sidecar, but also used our chests and a foldable mini-bed on top of our bed. The sidecar is now upstairs in our office for naps, and he is generally in his crib for the night...
From Alexis:
Susanne, many doctors' offices are fully aware of how poorly they're run and simply don't care. My father has waited for 2 hours at his cardiologist's. When he complained, the response was "tough, blame the HMOs".
I also think you're setting up a ridiculous scenario in pretending that parents do treat it as life and death. The carseat analogy works to some extent, but not entirely. Sleep is different. Your entire attitude, your level of tolerance, is completely different when you're exhausted and want to sleep. That carseat screaming doesn't last all night, every night, which is what sleep issues do. It's easy for someone who's not in the situation to say suck it up and be in it for the long haul. Most people will do what works now.
(BTW, I know several parents of carseat-hating children who, while they didn't stop driving, did curtail their driving to "absolutely necessary" because it was so unbearable and continued exposure didn't seem to change anything.)
From ObNurse:
SarahNicole
When you are pumping, how much milk does your son generally take in a bottle? See, I myself produced lots of breastmilk, but fed my babies frequently because although I made lots of milk, I didn't have the storage capacity, KWIM?
When I pumped and fed my babies would never take more than a few ounces. And then they would still wake up a few hours later to be fed.
I would try pumping a few times and combining that amount in one bottle, but they would never take the whole thing.
If your son is drinking 6 or more ounces at a feed, it may account for him having nice long stretches of sleep (lucky you! )
I am not trying to get anyone fired up here, I am just curious. And I think its great that you are able to pump enough milk, that can be a big challenge from what I've heard.
From Kat:
I will mention a professor who once told us of a study (and yes, I should find a link to it and I will but only if one forces me to work that hard) about high needs babies in Africa.
The researchers noted babies as either high needs (crying, cranky, awake a lot) normal, or good (hardly ever crying). Most babies were normal of course.
Some time later there had been a drought and they went back to the remote village. None of the good babies were alive, some of the normal babies were, and all of the high needs babies were alive.
Now why that was is just speculation, but the speculation was that the difficult babies screamed so much and made such a ruckus to be fed and taken care of that they got fed. The good babies starved, and of course as statistics go, some normal ones survived.
So are babies hard-wired to be high needs? Is there a benefit? Perhaps.
I do think every child is different and every parent is different, and I am secure in knowing that each family makes the right decision for them. It is one of those no-brainers that a mom and infant will find a way to get some rest.
From Ericacrochets:
"My son appears to like his milk regardless, and snuggles quite a bit, whether he's being held against clothing or skin."
I'm sure he does. I just think it's easier to move a baby from a bottle nipple than from a human nipple and bare skin. If your head is resting against a shirt, then the feel of the sheet might not wake you up as easily. If you had a bottle nipple in your mouth, the pacifier nipple might not feel as different.
However it came out, I was trying to explain, as I think Emma B. put it a few weeks ago, that breasts are not bottles attached to the chest. I meant that it is easier to trick the bottle fed baby into thinking you're still holding him/her. I didn't mean they were snuggled less.
I also think fathers are often better at putting babies in their cribs because the baby minds less.
From Ericacrochets:
One more thing I wanted to clarify:
Breastfeeding and bottle feeding are both good ways to feed a baby. Both have advantages and disadvantages. However, they are not exactly the same. Turkey and Greece are both great places to visit. They are not exactly the same. You will not get EXACTLY THE SAME experience in Istanbul that you do in Athens. (Or so I'm told--I've never been to Athens.)
From Emma B:
Do modern babies only cry when in extreme distress? I seem to remember that there is a whole range of baby cries, not all of them life and death.
That is one of the lessons of having multiples, that no child ever died from a few minutes of crying. Of course, what Caryn's talking about is different from "a few minutes", but I'm OK with ignoring a little bit of ordinary "I'm unhappy with the universe" crying.
That's why CIO worked for us -- the first night was 40 minutes of crying (with me standing right there back-patting), the second night was 20, and after that it was a couple minutes, if there was any crying at all. I wouldn't have done it if the crying lasted for hours, and the child didn't seem to be making any improvement after a few days of it. If the child isn't learning anything, s/he probably isn't ready for whatever you're trying to train her to do, and you're just teaching a pig to sing.
From SarahNicole:
EricaCrochets: "I also think fathers are often better at putting babies in their cribs because the baby minds less."
Why would that be, especially in a situation like mine? I know I am in a still rare situation, but even when I was directly breastfeeding, more often than not, it was my husband that got up and got the baby for me -- even when he was in the sidecar or the little bed -- due to my need for him to help me both lift the baby from my position on the bed (no, the lying down feeding position did not work for me at all) and help me get him settled with the boppy, and the nipple shield when I had to use that. Whether or not he also changed the baby before or after, he was doing the bulk of the physical care of the baby early on, and he does roughly half of it now (sometimes more, sometimes less). It may be that the baby minds less being separated from his/her primary caregiver, and that may still overwhelmingly be the mother...
My son seems to be a lot like I was as a child -- will sleep anywhere he happens to be, if he is inclined to sleep. If he is not, there is the magical battery-powered swing, which almost never fails...
@ObNurse: Currently, I get about 36 ounces of milk a day. I was up at about 42 ounces for awhile, and I had a freezer full for a couple of months. I basically followed the amount guidelines for formula feeding, but fed on demand, and right now he's taking about 28-32 ounces a day (usually between 4-6 ounces at a time; 6 is still rare, and I'd say he averages about 4.5). I'm not sure why I dropped from 42, as I have been very consistent about my pumping schedule. I may go back to doing a middle of the night pumping and see what that does...
I feel extremely lucky that the pumping has worked out so well, since direct breastfeeding became an issue for me fairly early on...
From Susanne:
"I also think fathers are often better at putting babies in their cribs because the baby minds less."
Or, the fathers have harder hearts (not in the bad sense of the word, mind you) and don't let themselves get all discombobulated at what Emma nicely characterized as ordinary "I'm unhappy with the universe" type of crying. Babies cry, and sometimes their crying will be inconsolable ... and, then, what? Like I said, in an otherwise well cared for child (barring orphanages and neglectful situations), it's far bothersome to the mother than it is to the child.
From Susanne:
"The baby, being attached at the mouth to the mother, snuggled up next to her skin, is going to respond a little differently to being moved than the baby who is not attached at the mouth to the mother and is snuggled up next to clothing."
I was explicitly told by our pediatric neurologist that it was a bad idea to "let" them fall asleep while feeding (in this case, a bottle) - that if they showed signs of doing so, then you WOKE THEM UP, you tickled their feet or whatever, so you didn't get drawn into the trap of baby thinking it has to be feeding, falling asleep, and then getting upset when source of feeding and / or parent is removed. Shrug - seemed like simple everyday common sense to me.
From Susanne:
"That's why CIO worked for us -- the first night was 40 minutes of crying (with me standing right there back-patting), the second night was 20, and after that it was a couple minutes, if there was any crying at all. I wouldn't have done it if the crying lasted for hours, and the child didn't seem to be making any improvement after a few days of it."
Exactly. Why wouldn't someone try this?
And total agreement that raising multiples helps you understand that no one ever died from a few minutes of crying, crunchy-mama-boards notwithstanding.
From Alexis:
Again, Susanne, what you don't appear to get - that's not what actually happens for many babies. My daughter was capable of crying till she vomited and passed out from exhaustion. That's cruel. Many parents HAVE tried it, and it didn't work for their babies.
From Jamie:
Yeah, we co-sleep. Anyone surprised? ^_^
I kept my LO's side-carred portacrib empty for almost a month -- determined not to let it turn into a hamper/catch-all, but alas, it has.
But I'm not here for that -- Dr. Amy? Are you going to do a story on the octuplets born in California? I have a highly irreverent question to ask you if you do. ^_^
Cheers!
From Liz:
My daughter was capable of crying till she vomited and passed out from exhaustion.
Really? At what age? That does sound very unpleasant, and I really, really don't mean to be snarky, but what is the difference in "passed out from exhaustion" and "finally went to sleep"?
My memories are a bit vague, it being a long time ago, but my youngest daughter, an omniverous feeder, would vomit frequently and seemingly quite happily. Me eldest, tiny, brain injured, colicky, I remember more clearly would cry inconsolably from 6 to 10 every evening for what seemed like weeks. Putting her down was out of the question, so I would hold her and rock her and eventually she would stop and sleep through most of the night. Bit of a nightmare at the time, but you can get used to anything. It wasn't frantic screaming, just crying that nothing would fix. She was simultaneously thriving (considering) and content the rest of the day. Very definitely high maintenance though.
From Jen:
"Are you going to do a story on the octuplets born in California? I have a highly irreverent question to ask you if you do. ^_^"
She has on her Open Salon blog. There's a link on the front page of this one, right under the "Risk Quiz"
From Jamie:
"I was explicitly told by our pediatric neurologist that it was a bad idea to "let" them fall asleep while feeding (in this case, a bottle) - that if they showed signs of doing so, then you WOKE THEM UP, you tickled their feet or whatever, so you didn't get drawn into the trap of baby thinking it has to be feeding, falling asleep, and then getting upset when source of feeding and / or parent is removed. Shrug - seemed like simple everyday common sense to me."
Ah yes. That horrible trap of caring for our children the way they were designed to be cared for -- I think there's a shorter word for it... ah, yes! Parenting! ^_^
I have no problem with babies and kids falling asleep on their own, sleeping in their own beds/rooms/whatever. I have a problem with universally prescribed CIO, and also with doctors giving parenting advice without clearly identifying it *as* parenting, rather than medical, advice.
From Jamie:
Thanks, Jen!
From Holly:
Liz, My 18 month old cried/screamed until he vomited in his pack and play while we were visiting my mom. He screamed for over an hour. Both DH and I were both delirious from sleep deprivation and letting him scream himself to sleep was our last option.
From Jolene:
I had one of those 5 lb IUGR babies, who was considered "high needs". I was told to let baby nurse even through his sleep (they continue sucking, even though they are asleep... binky behavior) becuase he needed every swallow of milk he could possibly fit into one day. That means constant nursing for awhile. Crying is valuable calories a difficult-to-start baby can ill afford. (any infant, really)
I think the difference Susanne, is that your babies spent their first weeks in NICU, and by the time they came home they simply didn't need or expect to be held while they slept. Can you admit that that may have made for a very different experience than mine, (and many others) who was discharged less than 6 hours later?
His care was all up to me. Daddy worked at night. *I* was responsible for helping that baby grow, or risk re-hospitalization.
Oh, and holding the baby constantly doesn't necessarily stop the screaming. My IUGR baby arched his back and screamed bloody murder for hours every evening. Not "I'm unhappy with the universe" crying, but "the universe is killing me right this instant crying". By the time he could be settled, I wanted nothing more than to doze off and keep him quiet at the same time. Thank god that period didn't last long, or it wouldn't have ended well for either of us. (speaking of ax murderers, it may not have caused the baby to become one, but I nearly became one!)
From Liz:
I think you mean me, not Susanne, and yeah I can accept that weeks in NICU made a difference. Just that my frail tot's crying did seem to bother me more than her. It would have been far worse in the middle of the night and I agree that that could turn the most placid mother frantic. Feeding did tire her, so that was a nightmare too. Much worse than the crying. Then I got the world's easiest baby, and boy was that a relief.
From Jolene:
No, I mean Susanne. The statement "why not just try CIO" simply doesn't jive with my experience.
Interestingly, my MIL did try to come help me at night for awhile. That lasted exactly one night. I was more anxious when she had the baby... after waking Twice and finding her asleep on the couch, and the baby fallen in between her and the back of the couch the first time and the baby LITERALLY on the floor the second. "I was tired" she said. Jesus! Aren't we all?!?!
No thanks. I'll do it myself.
From Alexis:
Liz, she was about a year old when she did that, and it lasted a while. I know she was exhausted because her crying got weaker and she was trying to force herself to keep crying. Finally she zonked. And further attempts didn't seem to be any better, though I never let her get that far again. Not paying attention didn't make her learn the way the "experts" said it would.
Again, as kids go, mine is not that high needs (just very stubborn!), but when we tried to switch her from a bassinet in our room to a crib in her own room, she freaked. Really and truly freaked. She didn't cosleep before that. And yeah, we got her to realize that sleeping right next to us was better, which might have been detrimental in the long run but we felt like we had no choice. When we finally got the big crib in our room, she wouldn't have it. We kept trying to get her back in her crib, and I even tried the Ferber controlled crying thing, and she wouldn't do it. Now, at 2, she's better, but she still wakes up crying in the middle of the night and nothing works but letting her come in with us, calm down, then moving her into her bed.
From Kat:
"Or, the fathers have harder hearts (not in the bad sense of the word, mind you) and don't let themselves get all discombobulated at what Emma nicely characterized as ordinary "I'm unhappy with the universe" type of crying."
Yes and yes. My husband has an easier time still putting the children to bed. He is no nonsense, while I can fall victim to extra tucking, cuddles, whines for another story, all of which leave the nighttime ritual exhausting for me. Dad has a very easy time with it since they know they can't manipulate him like they can me. Not bad or good. Just different.
From sarahz.:
I'm not Amy! And I'm not going to debate co-sleeping. IMO, I have always felt safer doing it. I need to check on my LO about 1000 times a night and co-sleeping allows me to do that. I am a totally light sleeper though. It is not something that I am that fired up about.
However, Amy I LOVE that you don't let idealogy get in the way of your critiques! And will speak out on both sides of the idealogical fence in favor of accuracy.
Also just as an aside, publically thanking Dr. A for friendship and support during my recent m/c at 10 weeks.
She was amazing, very sweet to me, and an invaluable resource for advice as I searched Pubmed to sort out my options. I am pleased to say her assistance helped me ensure a smooth passage for my baby and a great outcome for myself & my family!
From Ericacrochets:
"I had one of those 5 lb IUGR babies, who was considered "high needs". I was told to let baby nurse even through his sleep (they continue sucking, even though they are asleep... binky behavior) becuase he needed every swallow of milk he could possibly fit into one day. That means constant nursing for awhile. Crying is valuable calories a difficult-to-start baby can ill afford. (any infant, really)"
Interesting, that's what I did with my 5-pounder. I wasn't told to nurse him in his sleep though--it just seemed like a good idea. He did gain weight really, really well.
From Ericacrochets:
"That's why CIO worked for us -- the first night was 40 minutes of crying (with me standing right there back-patting), the second night was 20, and after that it was a couple minutes, if there was any crying at all."
I have done CIO while I was there with them, holding them or patting their back, too. Night weaning and such past a year. But I didn't count it as CIO because I was there. I agree that there is a big difference between sleepy fussing and outright crying.
Without "help" being parented to sleep, my older son was/is capable of staying up all night. He would get exhausted but never sleepy. Sleep did not overtake him. He almost never has fallen asleep watching a video or listening to his bedtime stories (at least 30 minutes, sometimes an hour). When he was a baby, he needed nursing and often singing/bouncing/dancing (like his mom as a baby, I guess), and even now he needs backrubs and footrubs, lots of encouragement to stop asking questions, turn his mind off, and think about sleep. I had terrible insomnia until I was 16, so I think there is something neurological at play with both of us. We do have an extensive bedtime routine for him, and that helps a lot.
Now, my younger son, if we're late getting him to bed, will just fuss a little, come up to one of us, put his head in our lap, and fall asleep. At night, when he's tired, I can put him in the bed, rub his legs a little bit, sing, and he falls asleep pretty quickly.
It's amazing to us to see a baby fall asleep like that. And I nursed the second one on demand, let him fall asleep that way (of course didn't let him nurse IN his sleep because he was a good, hefty size), and babywore him hours and hours each day, including for most of his naps. It wasn't anything I DID to make him settle easier. He just developed that capacity much sooner than his brother.
From Ericacrochets:
I'm sorry to hear of your loss, sarahz.
From Ericacrochets:
"Why would that be, especially in a situation like mine?"
I meant that newborns have more difficulty being put down by their mother because they spent the last several months in her body, are used to her, and they seem to resent being taken off of her body. True, as they get older, that changes, depending on the circumstances.
From Susanne:
"Ah yes. That horrible trap of caring for our children the way they were designed to be cared for -- I think there's a shorter word for it... ah, yes! Parenting! ^_^ "
Well, if children were "designed" to be cared for in such a way that it wreaks tremendous havoc on the parents' sleep, and causes deprivation which isn't a good thing, then it's a pretty stupid design. Because many women can NOT sleep if the baby is in bed with or near them.
So if that's the case, are you saying that too bad, so sad, the mother's sleep deprivation is of no health consequence whatsoever? So damn what if it leads to maternal exhaustion, clinical depression, zombie-like functioning? So damn what if it affects older children -- baby's all of a sudden the most important member in the household?
From Susanne:
"My husband has an easier time still putting the children to bed. He is no nonsense, while I can fall victim to extra tucking, cuddles, whines for another story, all of which leave the nighttime ritual exhausting for me. Dad has a very easy time with it since they know they can't manipulate him like they can me. Not bad or good. Just different."
Well, right. How many of the people on parenting boards who are complaining about not getting the preschooler to stay in his own bed do you think were no-nonsense and all-business from the beginning?
Clue: If the child responds to the all-business, no-nonsense approach, then it's not "innate."
From Susanne:
"I think the difference Susanne, is that your babies spent their first weeks in NICU, and by the time they came home they simply didn't need or expect to be held while they slept. Can you admit that that may have made for a very different experience than mine, (and many others) who was discharged less than 6 hours later?"
Sure, but I take issue with the assumption that had they been born in a normal situation they would have "expected" to be held while they slept. Again, it's amazing how you can walk down the hall of a hospital and see a hospital nursery with babies who all fell asleep even though OMG-they-aren't-in-parents'-arms. How does that happen, do you suppose?
From Susanne:
Oh dear Sarahz - I am so sorry to hear of your miscarriage, and wish you and your family well in your healing.
From Squillo:
I'm so sorry for your loss, sarahz.
You and your family will be in my prayers.
From Susanne:
"I have no problem with babies and kids falling asleep on their own, sleeping in their own beds/rooms/whatever. I have a problem with universally prescribed CIO, and also with doctors giving parenting advice without clearly identifying it *as* parenting, rather than medical, advice."
I have a problem with how women today have been so brainwashed to believe that they don't count at all, and so they should accept interrupted sleep for months on end rather than help the baby learn to sleep on its own. And further, I think that if nursing means the mother has to live in this constant state of half-awake-half-asleep, I think that's enough reason to wean, because mother's important too.
I continue to find it ironic that this blog discusses women who homebirth -- who are all about "me and my experience too!" -- and yet the experience of women after having a baby has to be All About The Baby 100% of The Time and Just Suck It Up and live in that constant state of sleep deprivation because you have to nurse through the night or have baby in your bed or whatever.
From Susanne:
This is a prime example of Teh Stupid That Burnz, that is the crap that women are being fed today by the typical mama-drama women:
"But I worry that if I leave my children to cry it out, then they will not see the point in reaching out to us if they have problems later in life and could try to deal with serious issues like bullying, drug addictions, teenage pregnancy, gambling problems, or flunking out of school on their own or turn to peers. Unfortunately, those problems are often too big for a teenager to be left to deal with alone or with peers and it can have disastrous results ranging from making poor decisions all the way to committing suicide out of a feeling of hopelessness."
Really? It's not about the totality of the parent-child relationship, it's about a couple of nights as a baby? It seems that the overall trend in parenthood is to make everything So Completely Significant Or Else Disaster Will Result, and it's so fear-based. Which begs the question - why are these women so fearful that they won't do a good job in raising their kids in the first place? If you haven't already, I'd urge you all to read Esther's blog (Mainstream Parenting) - Mango Mama Redux. It captures so much of this whole philosophy these days - parenting from fear and scared-ness, not confidence and self-assurance.
From Alexis:
Except that sometimes, parenting IS about sucking it up and saying that this is what your baby needs, or this is the price you'll pay. You're presenting this really false, easy choice of being Suck It Up and being a Mommy Martyr, or being sensible and just not do it. Sometimes, what you want doesn't count, not because of any ideology about the supreme importance of baby, but because baby has their own opinions and needs.
From SarahNicole:
@Ericacrochets: "I meant that newborns have more difficulty being put down by their mother because they spent the last several months in her body, are used to her, and they seem to resent being taken off of her body."
Again, I have to ask, Really? That was *never* the case with my son. I think this is an (gender-based) assumption on your part, not one that is backed up by research. Can you point to any that shows this? I don't mean research that shows that newborns respond differently to higher-pitched voices, or to the smell of their own mother's milk (things I've read that say they are backed by research; have not read the original studies themselves). I mean specifically any study that shows that newborns fuss more/sleep less/are harder to get to sleep in a crib/whatever it is you're arguing it is harder for them to do if they are put down/separated from the arms of their biological mothers as opposed to their fathers (with comparisons between types of birth for the babies, because what I hear here is an implication of a very deep onoing physical connection between mother and child that also seems to exist in arguments for attachment/natural [I think there's a big overlap] parenting, some that get into arguing that c-section -- or even medicated childbirth of any kind -- breaks that all important link in a variety of ways...). My husband and I have been doing shared parenting -- tasks that our society mostly puts in the "mothering" column -- since the beginning of his life; it's my husband that first started having him fall asleep on his chest, in fact.
Full disclosure: I had gestational diabetes, an emergency gallbladder removal and appendectomy at 31 weeks, and an emergency c-section at 38 weeks (a planned induction, my son's HR decelerated and wasn't bouncing back, and he was born gripping his cord; he's utterly fine. 15 pounds, 25 1/2 inches at just over 4 months). Through both my own experiences and the research and teaching that I've done as a sociologist, I'm quite suspect about gender differences that are presented as biologically innate, epsecially when there are so many counter examples to the stated difference.
From Susanne:
"My husband and I have been doing shared parenting -- tasks that our society mostly puts in the "mothering" column -- since the beginning of his life; it's my husband that first started having him fall asleep on his chest, in fact."
YES. Exactly!
From Esther:
ObNurse:"I know of very few breastfed babies who were sucessfully "sleep trained". It is extremely difficult to apply sleep training methods on a baby who falls asleep the moment he is done eating. And you have to feed a breastfed baby right before he goes to sleep, otherwise he is going to wake up hungry in half an hour anyway."
I have 3 examples to the contrary in my own house, and know quite a few others personally. I simply didn't nurse them to sleep after the neonatal stage (well before CIO came into play). In any case, at the time in the baby's life CIO becomes pertinent, the baby is also usually taking solids. A solid supper can help prevent the baby from waking hungry half an hour later.
Caryn - honestly, in the context of a family history and what you're describing, I would have asked my pedi for a sleep lab and consult long ago.
Sarahz - adding my condolences to the others' 
.
From SarahNicole:
sarahz -- Almost exactly a year before my son was born, we had an anembryonic pregnancy, and I had to take meds to induce the miscarriage. I am also sorry for your loss.
From Jamie:
"Sure, but I take issue with the assumption that had they been born in a normal situation they would have "expected" to be held while they slept. Again, it's amazing how you can walk down the hall of a hospital and see a hospital nursery with babies who all fell asleep even though OMG-they-aren't-in-parents'-arms. How does that happen, do you suppose?"
I've never been in a hospital with a well-baby nursery.
Susanne, I took exception to your implication of why should anyone *want* to help their kids get to sleep. I don't judge any one family for using CIO, because I don't know them, and don't know their kids. I have a problem with the idea that EVERYONE should use CIO, because helping kids get to sleep is too difficult/time-consuming/worthless. I don't find it worthless (and I have a baby who nurses every 2-3hrs at night). Cosleeping keeps *me* from being more a zombie. And coincidentally, feeding the baby as soon as he stirs keeps *him* from waking up my oldest (who sleeps right next door) and my hubbie (who sleeps like a log).
For the record, my oldest cried himself to sleep in arms. He's had trouble getting to sleep from a very early age, and needed to be wrapped up against someone in order to block out stimulation enough to get to sleep.
From Jamie:
"Except that sometimes, parenting IS about sucking it up and saying that this is what your baby needs, or this is the price you'll pay. You're presenting this really false, easy choice of being Suck It Up and being a Mommy Martyr, or being sensible and just not do it. Sometimes, what you want doesn't count, not because of any ideology about the supreme importance of baby, but because baby has their own opinions and needs."
ITA. Sometimes, it is all about what the kids need. Less frequently, it's all about what I need. But I can handle the inequality one experiences with young children, because I'm an adult with a certain amount of logic.
From Janna:
ObNurse:"I know of very few breastfed babies who were sucessfully "sleep trained". It is extremely difficult to apply sleep training methods on a baby who falls asleep the moment he is done eating. And you have to feed a breastfed baby right before he goes to sleep, otherwise he is going to wake up hungry in half an hour anyway."
I have to agree with Esther on this one. My son, while he was breastfed learned to fall asleep on his own without being nursed to sleep. Almost all of my new mom friends breastfeed and only 1 nurses her baby to sleep (which caused a lot of trouble for her and baby around 15 months old, another story). Between 3-6 months most start putting their babies down awake after a feeding to help teach them to fall asleep on their own. And its usually mom, not dad, who puts the baby down. This isn't hard core CIO BTW just early, gentle sleep training.
So no, in my experience and the experience of most of my friends breastfed babies do not *need* to be nursed to sleep. If a mom chooses to do that with her child that is completely her choice and a valid one if it works for her and her family. Just don't make it seem like its a breast vs bottle fed baby issue because it isn't.
From Susanne:
"I've never been in a hospital with a well-baby nursery."
Surely you can imagine what it must look like. A room full of babies who are, for the most part, sleeping while their mothers rest and recuperate.
From Susanne:
"Except that sometimes, parenting IS about sucking it up and saying that this is what your baby needs, or this is the price you'll pay."
The same could be said about a parent who sucks it up and realizes that a few nights of baby fussing make *her* uncomfortable and make *her* lower lip tremble, but might easily be far better for baby in the long run as baby learns to fall asleep by himself and isn't conditioned to need someone else in order to sleep.
I absolutely don't doubt that there are babies who are truly high needs, a la Caryn's example, and who have fundamental sleep difficulties no matter what. But I also don't doubt that many of the babies who grow into toddlers and preschoolers who "just won't get out of my bed" or "won't stay in their own rooms" were created by parents who didn't want to deal with the temporary discomfort that a crying baby induced *in them*, and would have been better off if they'd fussed for a few nights and dropped off to sleep.
From Lies_DamLies_and_stats:
Sarahz - so sorry to hear of your loss! I wish you and your family health and healing.
Susanne: So if that's the case, are you saying that too bad, so sad, the mother's sleep deprivation is of no health consequence whatsoever? So damn what if it leads to maternal exhaustion, clinical depression, zombie-like functioning? So damn what if it affects older children -- baby's all of a sudden the most important member in the household?
Agree with this statement about results, but I don't think you can universally ascribe a cause for them. For some families, CIO (in any form) causes exactly the results you refer to. For other families, co-sleeping does. I think people are just offended that you seem to think every parent can do exactly what you did and have happy, healthy, well-adjusted children. There are no "magic formulas" in birth _or_ parenting. The tons of "expert" advice out there really just provides a milieu of techniques that have worked for other parents in the past, and may work for you. Don't be offended if they don't - just try other techniques, and recognize that what didn't work for you may work for other parents, and vice versa.
From Jamie:
"Surely you can imagine what it must look like. A room full of babies who are, for the most part, sleeping while their mothers rest and recuperate."
My point, Susanne, has nothing to do with whether or not I can picture it -- my point is that well-baby nurseries are going the way of the dinosaur -- that I am raising my children in a different climate than you raised your children. You seem to think that *I'm* the one who is brainwashed, without any evidence to support it. We do things differently. It doesn't make either of us broken.
From Suzanne:
Susanne said: Sure, but I take issue with the assumption that had they been born in a normal situation they would have "expected" to be held while they slept. Again, it's amazing how you can walk down the hall of a hospital and see a hospital nursery with babies who all fell asleep even though OMG-they-aren't-in-parents'-arms. How does that happen, do you suppose?
Both of my kids were super sleepy their first week of life. I could practically hang them by their ankles and they wouldn't wake up.
My first would only wake to feed until 30 minutes after my husband left to take my mother back to the airport. Then she woke up and she had had enough sleep, thank you very much.
She had to be completely asleep before I put her in her bed.
My second, however, has no problem being put to bed awake. He'll fuss for a minute or two and then zonk out. Different.
From Susanne:
LOL, well-baby nurseries are going the way of the dinosaur because of cost-savings efforts on the parts of hospitals, dressed up as "promoting mother-baby bonding" but everyone knows the real reason.
From Jamie:
I'm also not entirely sure how someone who has ever *looked* at a human infant (let alone raise two) can faithfully argue that it was designed to fall asleep on its own in a box, but can be "conditioned" to prefer human touch.
Sleep train all you like, but at least admit that you are fighting against the baby's natural biological tendencies, which will be easier with some babies than others.
From Jamie:
"LOL, well-baby nurseries are going the way of the dinosaur because of cost-savings efforts on the parts of hospitals, dressed up as "promoting mother-baby bonding" but everyone knows the real reason."
Try again, Susanne. I argued that the current climate was *different* not better. How many times do you think I've been around this block with you? I know better. ^_^
My POINT is that today's healthy newborns are *not* swaddled in basinettes from birth and watched over by experienced nurses -- they are turned over to their parents immediately. Parents who want to touch and hold, through their exhaustion. That's the 'norm' today. If it is reasonable to supposed that some NICU babies have the benefit of a little early conditioning in being able to fall asleep alone, it is also reasonable to suppose that healthy newborns who room-in do *not* have the same experience, yes?
From ObNurse:
Ah well, most of the breastfed babies *I know* are not sleeping through the night until at least a year, maybe that is b/c we have one year of maternity leave here, and are slightly less motivated to get baby sleeping as we would be if we only had 3 months off. Or not. I don't know.
My kids were not taking much in terms of solid food until they were close to a year, and by then, they just ate table food. So until that time, I was pretty sure that they were hungry when they woke up in the night.
And anyway, who really cares?
I don't feel like arguing about it. To each their own.
Carry on...
From Jamie:
"Ah well, most of the breastfed babies *I know* are not sleeping through the night until at least a year, maybe that is b/c we have one year of maternity leave here, and are slightly less motivated to get baby sleeping as we would be if we only had 3 months off. Or not. I don't know."
I agree with this. I hear more Canadian moms agitating about getting baby sleeping more reliably when *they* face going back to work, which is at a year.
From Esther:
LDLAS:"For some families, CIO (in any form) causes exactly the results you refer to. For other families, co-sleeping does."
Perhaps. I know this isn't really the purview of this particular discussion, though, but some mothers do feel threatened that if they go the CIO route to alleviate their exhaustion, they're harming their babies. cosleeping isn't working, they're at their wits' end, but they "just can't CIO" because of all the scary stuff they read over at Dr. Sears. That's what gets me, not families who are (safely) cosleeping and doing OK with it.
From Susanne:
"I'm also not entirely sure how someone who has ever *looked* at a human infant (let alone raise two) can faithfully argue that it was designed to fall asleep on its own in a box, but can be "conditioned" to prefer human touch."
Are you serious? I don't know why I wouldn't think a human infant could be quite happy in a nice warm crib after playtime and bath and lullaby and kisses and nighty-night, with mom / dad down the hall if need be.
And what's with the "box"?
BTW, if babies so very much need mom and / or dad's presence to fall asleep, how do they ever take naps in the middle of the day?
From ObNurse:
Esther,
I can agree with this. I read the Sears books, only by then I was already sleeping with the baby, so it merely validated my feelings on the matter. I can see how one could read these sorts of books and think that by letting baby CIO or by using a crib, they would cause their baby permanent emotional trauma. I sort of bought into it to, sanctimommy that I was, until I realized that my friend's kids were just as loving and wonderful as mine were, and they were good sleepers to boot! They all slept in their cribs, and some of them, oh the horrors, were bottle fed. I was forced to get down off of my high horse in a hurry.
In my case, I was sleeping with my baby out of pure exhaustion, and was getting a lot of criticism from my mother, my inlaws etc., so I ran sobbing into the bosom of Dr. Sears where my feelings were validated and my fears abated. Embarrassing to admit it, but it's true. I think if everyone had just minded their own business, I probably wouldn't have become so militant about it. My defenses were up.
Otherwise, i am decidedly mainstream. I don't walk around in berkenstocks, homeschool, or tinker in homeopathy. You'd never know by meeting me that I slept with my children or breastfed the into toddler hood. It just worked for us. That's all.
From Jamie:
"Perhaps. I know this isn't really the purview of this particular discussion, though, but some mothers do feel threatened that if they go the CIO route to alleviate their exhaustion, they're harming their babies. cosleeping isn't working, they're at their wits' end, but they "just can't CIO" because of all the scary stuff they read over at Dr. Sears."
I think it is up to individual families to weigh the evidence and decide what helps meet everyone's needs the best. It's not about the kids or the parents -- it's about the family.
On the flipside, I know a few families who really feel like they *can't* co-sleep, despite falling asleep with their babies and struggling to stay awake long enough to put them back in their cribs. They feel guilty whenever they wake up and find baby snuggled up next to them. It's not because they have a personal aversion, but because of the AAP recommendations, scary cautionary tales of their own mothers, etc.
It goes both ways -- mothers pressured to CIO and mothers pressured not to.
From Esther:
And Susanne, I had no idea you were still reading my blog. I don't remember you ever commenting, but I'm happy and proud to count you among my readers!
From Susanne:
"My POINT is that today's healthy newborns are *not* swaddled in basinettes from birth and watched over by experienced nurses -- they are turned over to their parents immediately. Parents who want to touch and hold, through their exhaustion. That's the 'norm' today."
Not around here, it's not. The mother has the choice if she wants to send the baby to the well-baby nursery or have it room-in with her. Her choice, as it should be, and no pressure either way.
"If it is reasonable to supposed that some NICU babies have the benefit of a little early conditioning in being able to fall asleep alone, it is also reasonable to suppose that healthy newborns who room-in do *not* have the same experience, yes?"
Rooming-in can also mean baby sleeps in bassinet, you know. This fetishization of baby being in constant contact with mother's body at all times gets a bit much, and it would be a bit healthier if some of the women would admit that it's *their* need to hold baby all the time (which is fine!) rather than trying to rationalize it by bogus attempts at pretending that it's all babies' innate preferences at all times. Own your preference instead of dressing it up as better.
From Susanne:
"Some mothers do feel threatened that if they go the CIO route to alleviate their exhaustion, they're harming their babies. cosleeping isn't working, they're at their wits' end, but they "just can't CIO" because of all the scary stuff they read over at Dr. Sears. That's what gets me, not families who are (safely) cosleeping and doing OK with it."
Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes!
From Jamie:
"Are you serious? I don't know why I wouldn't think a human infant could be quite happy in a nice warm crib after playtime and bath and lullaby and kisses and nighty-night, with mom / dad down the hall if need be."
I'm dead serious. See, there's this whole 'evolution' thing. When chimpanzees start putting their babies down to sleep in a nearby tree, maybe I'll revisit it.
"And what's with the "box"?"
Most cribs I know are box shaped. The one next to my bed is, in fact, box shaped.
"BTW, if babies so very much need mom and / or dad's presence to fall asleep, how do they ever take naps in the middle of the day?"
Well, my baby naps in a sling, but that's mostly because I chase after his brother all day. He sleeps quite happily there, and aside from a little bouncing, I generally don't need to put any effort into getting him down.
From Jamie:
"Own your preference instead of dressing it up as better."
I never said it was better. You're hoping I do, so that you can smoosh me. I'm deliberately not making it easy for you.
Instead, I will happily admit that I personally love to hold my baby, love to kiss his fuzzy head, and love to fall asleep with him on my chest or at my side. In the defense of my selfish behavior, though, I will observe that he doesn't seem to mind human touch. He's not yet pushing me away and saying "Mom, cut it out!" His 4yo brother, in contrast, will say, "Mama, that's enough kisses. Little boys want jelly beans." I absolutely refuse to believe that any small child was psychologically *damaged* by a loving human touch. They figure out when they want space, and ask for/demand it.
From Jamie:
BTW, Susanne, I find it ironic that I'm brainwashed in depriving myself for co-sleeping, but selfish for admitting that I *like* to co-sleep.
Can I do anything (besides sleep training) that wouldn't damn me in your eyes? ^_^
From Alexis:
Well, "evolution" is tricky, since we're skating very close to the naturalistic fallacy. However, that said, I don't think it's ridiculous to state that babies tend to have a preference for being held, and there are biologically plausible reasons why this would be so.
It's also true that the whole trend of having babies in their own room, in their own bed, is historically recent. Historically, bed or room sharing was common, not necessarily because of a fetishization of attachment (though some groups did come up with Continuum Concept style justifications and customs), but because safety and space dictated it. And, Susanne, you don't see that as a problem, because it's what you've been socially conditioned to think. That's not a moral judgment, but you seem to have difficulties with acknowledging your own biases in this arena. Instead, you dress it up as a "choice" that has no significance beyond personal preference. I've noticed that when it's a "choice" that you care about, you're all for judging people who choose otherwise, but when your choices are being criticized, suddenly, they have no meaning.
From SarahNicole:
@Jaime: "I'm also not entirely sure how someone who has ever *looked* at a human infant (let alone raise two) can faithfully argue that it was designed to fall asleep on its own in a box, but can be "conditioned" to prefer human touch."
"I'm dead serious. See, there's this whole 'evolution' thing. When chimpanzees start putting their babies down to sleep in a nearby tree, maybe I'll revisit it."
It's either design, OR evolution, isn't it? You're making appeals to both A Designer and Nature. If it's evolution, that encompasses adaptation, both biological and cultural, at both the individual and group levels. By saying that human infants can learn to sleep away from the arms of their mothers, one can quite comfortably argue from an evolutinary standpoint. By arguing that either a deity or Nature *meant* for us to behave in any particular way, you're coming at it from an entirely different perspective.
From Alexis:
I'm sure the fact that I kept co-sleeping because we all slept would give Susanne a reason to criticize me. It's no-win, isn't it?
From Jamie:
"It's either design, OR evolution, isn't it? You're making appeals to both A Designer and Nature."
Sorry -- I believe in evolution, to clarify.
I will admit that human infants can adapt to sleeping alone. I refuse to believe that they are *born* expecting anything other than human contact.
From Jamie:
Looking from a very simple POV:
I don't need my baby to fall asleep on his own badly enough to leave him crying, and I don't believe that he enjoys any advantage to being left crying, therefore, we don't use sleep training, and especially CIO, at this time.
From sarahz.:
I have to say, I can buy arguements for own sleeping space, up to and including a crib (with an natural mattress free of chemical additives, of course).
I can't however buy arguements for separate room. Not only is that historically recent, but without historically VERY recent electronic monitoring equipment, which could always fail, it is straight up unsafe, IMO.
And not just pyschologically. An infant who wakes up in his own room has no idea they are not on some other planet. And it could cost the precious seconds in terms of caregiver response time that we are always crowing about with repsect to birth. If we can step outside of American social condition, IMO it is very clear that putting an infant in a separate room is unsafe.
Bottom line, is if I hired a caregiver for my infant, I would ask that she sleep in the same room as my infant during any time that she was on duty at night and I can't ask any less of myself.
From Emma B:
Rooming-in can also mean baby sleeps in bassinet, you know. This fetishization of baby being in constant contact with mother's body at all times gets a bit much, and it would be a bit healthier if some of the women would admit that it's *their* need to hold baby all the time
I think there would be some safety concerns with bed-sharing in a pospartum hospital environment, in fact. The beds are narrow, and the mother is frequently unusually tired and/or on pain meds (both contraindications to co-sleeping). I'm not of the school that freaks about co-sleeping safety, but I was not at all comfortable co-sleeping under those circumstances. Both Andrew and the girls roomed in, but in their bassinets.
Side note: in hospitals without nurseries, where does the baby go if the mother needs to leave the room (for tests, procedures, or post-CS walking)? At both of the hospitals I delivered at, policy was that the baby had to be in the nursery unless the mother was in the room. Babies can't even be left with their fathers -- the mother or hospital staff have to be with the baby at all times, for legal reasons. With the girls, we laughed at the silliness of sending the babies to the nursery, then walking down to the nursery to see them; then a father tried to abduct his baby from the room a few doors down, and it stopped being funny.
From Emma B:
Sarahz, I'm really sorry to hear you lost your baby. You and your family are in my thoughts.
From SarahNicole:
@Emma B: "Babies can't even be left with their fathers -- the mother or hospital staff have to be with the baby at all times, for legal reasons."
My husband didn't get the same electronic monitor tag as I did (the kind that if baby gets too close to the elevators, an alarm goes off and the doors and elevators lock; they were matched so that they played a tune when close to the mother's tag, so that the right baby was with the right mother), but he did have the same matched-ID tags as I did. It was apparently not too far away in terms of setting off the alarm for the baby to be in the nursery (ours roomed in, with a bassinet, and was in the nursery for health checks; he had mild jaundice) and not in our room. My husband was there in the hospital room the whole time I and the baby were, and I'm not sure what their official policy was on whether the mother or just a parent had to be in the room with the baby at all times. The fact that only mothers get an electronic tag makes me suspect what their policy is, but I don't recall the specifics. My husband and I both brought up the discrepancy of the monitor tags, but only in conversation with each other, not the staff.
From Jamie:
"I think there would be some safety concerns with bed-sharing in a pospartum hospital environment, in fact. "
Interestingly enough, it was one of my postpartum nurses who 'okayed' bedsharing for me 4 years ago when my first was born. I had been leaving him in the bassinette, and at one of his checks, his temp was a little low. She tucked him in with me.
I thought it unusual at the time, but obviously it appealed.
From Kat:
Where I delivered there were no nurseries. I did get the plastic bassinet and used it when the baby slept and I got to eat and visit with everyone. At night I slept on the plastic couch since I hated the divide where the bed changes into a delivery table. We were told we could not co-sleep for liability/safety reasons.
However, I did at night anyway because it was just easier that way. I didn't continue the practice though.
From Janna:
FWIW most of the breastfed babies *I know* are sleeping through the night by 6 months. And all their moms are SAHM so I don't think maternity leave has much to do with it- IME anyway (since we are talking in anecdotes and our own experience).
I think expectations have a lot to do with it. And environment- because if there is cosleeping going on why should a breastfed baby sleep through the night? The only cosleeping breastfed baby I know (my niece) isn't sleeping through the night at 16 months. But why should she when she can snack all night? And that is her mom's expectation for her- especially since she feeds her very little at dinner so she will BF all night.
From Janna:
Sarahz- I'm also very sorry to hear about your loss.
From Alexis:
Emma, I gave birth in a hospital with wards (bays, ie rooms, of up to 8 women, off a corridor with an entry lock at the end) and no nurseries. (Only nurseries in NHS hospitals, AFAIK, are special care.) Your baby is in a bassinet next to your bed. Generally, it seems that the midwives and ward staff keep an eye on everyone coming into maternity, and there's always someone around. I suppose that if one of the other patients was psychotic, something could happen. I spent very little time with her on the ward, though (overnight in surgical recovery, maybe 8 hours on the ward before she was transferred to special care, and for all that time I was confined to bed).
I do remember having my daughter in with me in transitional care right before we were discharged, and I had a heck of a time finding someone to watch her so I could go to the toilet.
From Caryn:
Caryn - honestly, in the context of a family history and what you're describing, I would have asked my pedi for a sleep lab and consult long ago.
Insurance wouldn't have covered it until he was almost 4, at which point he'd outgrown it. Graduate student insurance is pretty crappy.
From Alexis:
(Oh, and before anyone interprets my experience as evidence of the failings of rooming-in, it's just the failings of my particularly understaffed hospital.)
From ObNurse:
Janna;
Well, and please don't take this the wrong way, there is breastfeeding and then there is breastfeeding.
There are those who breastfeed based on a flexible schedule, aim to start the baby on solids at 4-6 months, perhaps use soothers, put to sleep awake, etc., and by the time the baby is 9 months old, he is only nursing a few times a day and able to sleep without mom's assistance. And there is NOTHING wrong with that.
(My SIL nurses this way, baby is down to only one feed a day and still not sleeping thru the night at a year, FWIW).
Then there are lazy mothers like me who would rather sleep in than get up and make breakfast, so I nurse instead to buy myself another half hour. I would nurse away any owies, for naps, comfort, boredom. I'm lazy that way.
My kids weren't into solids not because I didn't offer them, but probably because they were full from snacking at the breast all day. And when you co sleep, you're absolutely correct, babies will nurse all night and therefore will not sleep until mother has had enough and night weans. Otherwise it would go on for years, I'm sure.
I doubt your sister (or was it sister in law? I forget) is deliberately not feeding her child a big enough dinner, I'm sure by now she'd like the extra sleep, but they are in this routine, rut, whatever, and it's hard to get out of it. I know because I've BTDT. Your niece's behavior sounds pretty normal compared to the toddlers that I've met in crunchier circles.
I know it seems weird, but it's not abnormal behavior. I agree that babies will adapt to whatever conditions we set up for them. Crying it out as infants or as toddlers, well, it eventually comes down to it, and I felt more comfortable letting a toddler cry in my arms than as a helpless infant. Just my preference. No judgement on those who do.
Like I said earlier, by the time my friend's babies grew into toddlers and preschoolers, they were just as sweet and wonderful as my own, and they all cried it out at some point and slept in cribs. They were better sleepers too! (But most not until they were around a year old and completely weaned...)
Anyway, I really hate debating on this board, I'm not very good at it! I'm not attacking anyone's beliefs, just sharing my own experiences and observations.
I'm really really done now
We are recovering from the flu (I think it may be the real thing) and I'm bored, which is why I'm boring you all with my "wisdom".
From Liz:
Whenever I read approving references to what champanzees do, my mind boggles. If I was sleeping in a tree with predators around, I'd hang on tight to my baby too, and be glad that they clung back. It is cute and interesting that baby chimps like the furry substitute, not the wire one with tits, but do we really have much to learn from such studies? If your tender heart breaks at the idea of your baby sleeping in a "box", then don't do it. We are adults, we do get to choose, but every choice doesn't have to defended with theorising?
From Elizabeth:
1. My infant did enough crying even when I was doing my best to stop it that I didn't feel the need to orchestrate extra occasions of crying by way of "training" her at anything.
2. As a first time mother, with little help, coming off a traumatic labor and c-section with recurring feverish infections, I was absolutely warranted in being as attentive and conscientious a mother as possible for the simple reason that, in that state, the best I had to give wasn't that great. Cutting corners on attention to a newborn (which shutting it up alone in a separate room surely is) may sometimes be justified, but it seems to me that only a person in a certain place of physical and psychological strength could feel confident doing it. Granted, if I sensed that I was about to fall into an unusually deep sleep, I wouldn't hold a baby in my arms; but by the same token I wouldn't shut the door on her and walk away, either. (All this entirely independent on how well the baby herself is sleeping.)
3. Likewise, in that state I could not afford to sacrifice a single minute of sleep to achieving some ideal state of affairs days or weeks in the future. Stand over the baby rubbing its back while it cries for 40 minutes? Ha! I slept like a rock while the baby screamed in its father's arms right next to my head for forty minutes.
4. I can't parse how a preference to keep cuddling my long-awaited only child for as much of her fleeting babyhood as possible over immediately returning to standard night-time conjugal availability, makes me "brainwashed" into thinking I "don't count" as a woman. Quite the contrary, I would think.
4a. My marriage is quite fine, thank you. I pity those women who stand in danger of losing their marriages if they temporarily stop putting out, whether by necessity or [GASP!] choice. Points to deeper problems IMO.
4b. Not that it's any of your frackin' business.
5. Here in flyover country, we are deeply in the closet with respect to co-sleeping. It's probably a superabundance of caution, but Heaven forbid we encounter a HCP possessed of prejudices like those expressed by some here, intersecting with "mandated reporter" doctrine. Unlikely, but stranger things have happened, here in the land where nursing mothers are still occasionally removed by security guards. The only time I have heard co-sleeping spoken of locally is in the form of official exhortations not to do it.
6. My not-quite-three-year-old has begun leaving the family bed on her own, with no suggestion from us. Indeed we don't even have a bed set up for her yet; she goes to the couch, or the floor. So much for the "never-learn-independence" argument.
7. Many posts in this thread differ from MDC in content, but slavishly imitate the worst of MDC attitude and form.
From Elizabeth:
If I was sleeping in a tree with predators around, I'd hang on tight to my baby too, and be glad that they clung back.
But we are surrounded by predators. What makes you think we're not? Only that you've been fortunate enough not to encounter them.
When I was nine years old, a crazed criminal broke through a window and attacked me in my bed.
In the desert where my husband was raised, they have scorpions, deadly spiders, etc. In their houses. One of them almost took my MIL's life during a midnight trip to the bathroom.
And a baby caught in a fire won't know how to follow a safety map.
Etc etc ad infinitum. IMNSHO, the ability to shut a door on one's newborn and calmly walk away for the night suggests either extreme lack of imagination, or an unwarranted belief in one's own invincibility (which seems to frequently coincide with socioeconomic privilege).
From A Sarah:
Sarahz, I am also so sorry to hear about your loss. ((((hugs Sarahz))))
From ObNurse:
"But we are surrounded by predators. What makes you think we're not? Only that you've been fortunate enough not to encounter them."
You know, once a few years back, we had one of our kids in his own bed, and a pedophile was breaking into houses in our neighborhood and was molesting little boys.
You can believe that we brought him back into our bed until the police caught him. The neighbors did the same.
From Jamie:
Well, I reference higher apes not because I fear that my child will get eaten if I don't, but because I believe that honoring a child's natural, developmentally appropriate expectations as much as possible is a great way to parent. Generally speaking, it results in a happy baby with little conflict, and that makes me happy too. Win/win. I call myself a 'path of least resistance' parent. I do what works until it stops working, and then we find a solution.
I find my clues for what a child might appropriately expect from our nearest genetic neighbors, but I *also* think you can simply observe a human newborn and come to the conclusion that it is an organism that is meant to be in close contact with its parent, just as you can observe a whale and conclude that it lives in a large body of water.
From Jamie:
Or, look at it this way, Liz -- how does that tiny baby know that he's not in a tree in the jungle? What tells him that I'm just in the next tree over, and that I'll be there as soon as he needs me (er -- make that as soon as I can wake up enough to drag my exhausted self off of my branch)?
From sarahz.:
I am just posting to say thanks y'all. Everyone's kind thoughts mean a lot!
It was very sad for us, of course, but also a learning experience. Maybe at some point I will post my story here so we can debate the many and varied politics of the m/c (like how there is NOT a lot of agreement amongst provdiers about how to do Cytotec inductions (I basically m/ced on my own, but there was a little Cytotec involved. Too little apparently) or how they sent me home, after an Ultrasound, saying I was all done, must have missed the babe, only to have a sweet baby emerge a full SEVEN days later! This is one time I am TRULY thankful for the antibiotics I was taking! )
Even though it is really sad that it happened, I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow through this experience. :D
/Personal Hijack. :D
From Caryn:
Question: given for the sake of argument that you can sleep-train a baby, why wouldn't it be possible to teach a baby that you were going to nurse him to sleep, and then get up for the rest of your evening?
Why would that, as a strategy, be any less satisfactory than teaching him that you were a) going to nurse him, then put him in a crib to fall asleep on his own, or b) going to nurse him to sleep, then stay with him? Wouldn't he learn to sleep through the night, regardless, following that particular implementation of a bedtime routine?
Certainly if you *valued* not nursing a baby to sleep and then getting up, and you valued one of the other alternatives more, that would be a reason to avoid that strategy. But I'm not convinced that those using that strategy should expect *inherently* poorer outcomes.
From Caryn:
Sarahz, I just read your post. I'm sorry to hear that you've miscarried; no one plans for that. Take care.
From SarahNicole:
@Elizabeth: "Cutting corners on attention to a newborn (which shutting it up alone in a separate room surely is) may sometimes be justified, but it seems to me that only a person in a certain place of physical and psychological strength could feel confident doing it."
"IMNSHO, the ability to shut a door on one's newborn and calmly walk away for the night suggests either extreme lack of imagination, or an unwarranted belief in one's own invincibility (which seems to frequently coincide with socioeconomic privilege)."
"I was absolutely warranted in being as attentive and conscientious a mother as possible..."
Um. Wow. And you just felt okay about judging others as overly-judgemental?
And what, exactly, does "here in flyover country" mean? I'm from the midwest, and spent my entire residential life either there or here in the South, and I've been and am surrounded by people who breastfeed, co-sleep (in a variety of ways, for a variety of reasons), and who are from a variety of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds.
Is CIO currently ever advocated for *newborns* in comparison to *infants*? At the very least, has it been on this blog?
@Jaime: In terms of referencing higher apes, you might find Susan Sperling's article, "Baboons with briefcases and Langurs in lipstick" interesting. It's a chapter in Micaela diLeonardo's book, "Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge."
@sarahz: "I can't however buy arguements for separate room. Not only is that historically recent, but without historically VERY recent electronic monitoring equipment, which could always fail, it is straight up unsafe, IMO."
Hmmm. I would say that the electronic monitoring equipment is a technological adaptation to our cultural evolution. But then, I'm a dork that way. :-D
From Esther:
Caryn:"Question: given for the sake of argument that you can sleep-train a baby, why wouldn't it be possible to teach a baby that you were going to nurse him to sleep, and then get up for the rest of your evening?"
The theory is that babies who nurse to sleep then have a sleep association of being nursed. When they partially wake at the end of a sleep cycle, many babies need the association they fell asleep with originally to fall back into deep sleep. A baby who nursed to sleep would demand the nipple back in his mouth at that time in order to get back to sleep. That's why the point of sleep training is to get the baby associated with lying in a crib/other sleep surface, not needing anything or anybody else to fall asleep.
From A Sarah:
Elizabeth: "IMNSHO, the ability to shut a door on one's newborn and calmly walk away for the night suggests either extreme lack of imagination, or an unwarranted belief in one's own invincibility (which seems to frequently coincide with socioeconomic privilege)."
You've neglected the possibility that some of us mean mommies just love the sense of power that we get when we walk away from our helpless wee thing while s/he is still crying. Neglecting them like that, when they're so small and vulnerable, so that we can go watch the teevee is the only thing that gives our small, shriveled, tarlike hearts any pleasure.
From Liz:
I call myself a 'path of least resistance' parent. I do what works until it stops working, and then we find a solution.
Me too. But I suppose we all have some pre-conceived notions of what might work, or of what kind of mother we want to be.
I am not suggesting that babies SHOULD sleep in a box - just that quite a lot of them will.
From Liz:
What tells him that I'm just in the next tree over,...?
Instinct? A baby sleeping in a box will wake up and cry. Interesting question: is it crying for mother, or to alert care givers?
My children loved to snuggle up to my sister. She was bigger and softer than me. Babies, and even small children are a bundle of instinctive needs, but the reciprocal and complex interactions of mother love are, I believe, socialised and human.
From Liz:
I wonder how many mothers there are who can shut the door on a very distressed baby? Not many, I would imagine. Babies are designed to be hard to ignore. But does that mean you have to hover attentively over a sleeping child?
Co-sleeping as a practice seems to me neither here nor there - do what works for you. As an ideology, I think it is full of wholes.
From Liz:
Sorry for your troubles, SarahZ. A sad and miserable thing to happen.
From A Sarah:
Co-sleeping as a practice seems to me neither here nor there - do what works for you.
*applause*
Incidentally, this manufactured fight over -- oh, hell, cosleeping, but also absofrigging everything having to do with what mothers do to make their lives hang together in some workable way... it came to mind when I read this post on Shakesville about Girl Math... inspired by the Jennifer Aniston/Angelina Jolie media myth, but pertinent to other forced rivalries between women that serve to ensure women are devoting energy to unproductive sure-to-lose contests, rather than building each other up. While meanwhile ANY work coded as "feminine" gets to be trivialized by the onlookers who don't have to do it and can't see what all the fuss is about.
Or, as the commenter Sniper said over at Shapely Prose (and I'm paraphrasing here): "Shorter whole world: Women's work is so stupid and trivial that a chimp could do it, yet women still must be policed because otherwise they will screw it up."
I say, parenting is hard and highly household-specific; and no, a chimp could NOT do all the things I do, so I need not start off by looking to chimps straightaway to see how to parent. The test of how your family should be sleeping is how your family in fact sleeps best, and if you stumble upon an arrangement that accomplishes that goal, it's not deficient simply because you can't back up what you're doing with appeals to evolution, attachment theory, or to the latest in sleep disorder research. Those things are primarily useful to the extent that a) you find them personally, genuinely interesting and/or b) they give you ideas of things to try when what you're doing isn't working.
But this idea that every mother on the planet is required to have a philosophical underpinning for the decisions their household makes about something as personal as sleeping arrangements... I mean, sleeping arrangements, for heaven's sake! And that these philosophical underpinnings are so universally-applicable that they stand to pit you against other mothers who do things differently... *boggles*
From Janna:
OB Nurse- thanks for sharing your perspective. I hope you and your family recover quickly from the flu!
I really wasn't trying to debate either- it just bothers me when it seems like the assertion is that *these* types of babies do *this* when as we have both pointed out there can be a large variability in babies who are fed in the same manner or whatever.
I think we can both agree that there are many types of babies, families, and parenting styles and families should find out what works for them and go with that (as A Sarah just pointed out).
And for the record, it is my SIL and I actually do know that she doesn't feed my niece much at dinner so she will nurse more at night because she has stated that very thing. There is actually a long story behind this but this site isn't the place to go into it.
From Susanne:
"Co-sleeping as a practice seems to me neither here nor there - do what works for you."
Exactly! Look, I'm not arguing *against* co-sleeping. People can do what they like and what works for them, and I don't much care either way what other people do. Not my business. And I fully admit that I had "easy" babies from that standpoint. We didn't really have anything other than the occasional minor fussing while settling down. I had excellent sleepers and that was a blessing with twins.
Everything's a choice, though. If you co-sleep, it may work out beautifully - or you may wind up down the road wanting advice on how to get the darn kid out of your bed because he's been conditioned not to fall asleep without your presence. It's pretty obvious that that's a reasonably common outcome because there are so many parenting boards etc dealing with it, an entire shelf at Barnes & Noble, etc. OTOH, maybe he'll transition to his own bed with nary a peep and everyone's happy. Who knows?
And if you CIO (and frankly the definition of CIO ranges all the way from ignoring 5 minutes of fussing to ignoring agonized screams for hours on end, so there really needs to be a tighter definition), it may work out beautifully -- or you may raise the next serial killer who, while he is plunging the knife into his next victim, is crying "Mommy, why, why?" LOL. It's that kind of mama-drama that I object to.
From Susanne:
"I don't need my baby to fall asleep on his own badly enough to leave him crying, and I don't believe that he enjoys any advantage to being left crying, therefore, we don't use sleep training, and especially CIO, at this time."
Does it make someone a bad mother if she does need her baby to fall asleep badly enough on his own to put up with some crying? What isn't being understood is that putting baby in the same bed isn't an option for a lot of people. Not for Elizabeth's snarky gotta-be-ready-for-sex-at-all-times reason, but because Mom won't sleep well with a baby next to her. So, Mom should be unproductive and grumpy just to let baby sleep with her? I don't get that reasoning whatsoever.
If OTOH mom can sleep and baby can sleep and mom prefers it, then cool for everyone and what do I care?
From Alexis:
I don't think any of the cosleepers here have said that you're bad to do CIO, so that's a strawman argument.
From Caryn:
The theory is that babies who nurse to sleep then have a sleep association of being nursed. When they partially wake at the end of a sleep cycle, many babies need the association they fell asleep with originally to fall back into deep sleep.
Can you link me to data on this?
From SarahNicole:
@Alexis: "I don't think any of the cosleepers here have said that you're bad to do CIO, so that's a strawman argument."
I interpreted Elizabeth as doing exactly that, and we co-sleep...
@A Sarah: Once again, I have an internet girl crush on you. :-D
From Jolene:
A Sarah,
May I print out your comment and hang it on my wall?
I promise to put a pretty little squiggly outline around it, and sign it ~A Sarah.
Words to live by.
From Susanne:
"I don't think any of the cosleepers here have said that you're bad to do CIO, so that's a strawman argument."
I didn't do anything that was remotedly related to the CIO sleep training that is portrayed in books - occasionally they fussed for a few minutes and if they fussed, so be it. And I don't think anyone here was attacking anyone else. I do think it's silly to act as though co-sleeping doesn't bring with it a host of problems for many women, because there wouldn't be so much need for all the support groups and books and what-not about getting junior out of your bed.
BTW, though, I do think there is a phenomenon of what I'll term the Quivering Lower Lip Mom (QLLM) who can't bear even one moment of thinking that she wasn't 100% completely responsive at all times to what her child wanted, and is very fearful of what the dire consequences are of letting her child feel some stress and discomfort at some point, however inadvertently. And while no one is advocating throw the kid into the middle of the highway and hope for the best, the QLLM taken to extremes is the mother whose kid runs around the restaurant because she can't bear to tell junior no for fear of crushing his spirit and risking that he would be less than 100% happy.
From Emma B:
I pity those women who stand in danger of losing their marriages if they temporarily stop putting out, whether by necessity or [GASP!] choice. Points to deeper problems IMO.
Oh, yes, you're not judgmental AT ALL here, are you?
Lemme explain what I meant a little further. I don't expect my husband to leave me because I can't have sex with him. However, loss of intimacy is destructive, to both partners. It has less to do with keeping him satisfied so he won't leave/cheat, and much more to do with the fact that a healthy sexual relationship helps smooth over a lot of smaller tensions.
I have experienced a long period of involuntary celibacy for health reasons, and let me tell you, it's hard on a marriage. I have a great marriage to a wonderful husband, and still it's really stressful and difficult. Our marriage is surviving it, but another marriage might not -- and you don't necessarily know how strong your marriage is until it gets tested, and the transition to parenthood transforms a marriage in sometimes-unpredictable ways.
But then, I'm an excessively privileged, unimaginative, neglectful, self-absorbed Bad Mommy, so what do I know?
From Susanne:
"The theory is that babies who nurse to sleep then have a sleep association of being nursed. When they partially wake at the end of a sleep cycle, many babies need the association they fell asleep with originally to fall back into deep sleep."
Can you link me to data on this?"
This isn't data, but that's part of overall sleep hygiene treatment for people with sleeping disorders -- to get them to associate certain things with sleep, such that if X happens (warm bath, lights low, soothing music, whatever) their brain associates it with "time to go to sleep." Why do so many people do bedtime routines with their children? Bath, brush teeth, drink of water, read a story, night-night time. It's the same concept -- training your brain that if X happens, start priming yourself for sleep. If sleep routinely happens at the end of nursing and then baby is jolted awake by the removal of the mother, it makes perfect sense that baby has been "trained" that mother's presence / nursing is necessary for sleeping.
From Jolene:
SarahZ "Maybe at some point I will post my story here so we can debate the many and varied politics of the m/c"
Sorry for your loss Sarah.
I also miscarried at 10 weeks and have a story about running my own m/c. I was quite surprised as well to find a complete lack of consensus about care. So I agree with you completely on this one!
I wasn't ready to talk about it for quite awhile however, so give it some time, just to be sure you are.
From Susanne:
"I pity those women who stand in danger of losing their marriages if they temporarily stop putting out, whether by necessity or [GASP!] choice. Points to deeper problems IMO."
I pity those women who apparently think that sex is something that is just a chore that's done to appease a husband's desires or demands. This might surprise you, but some women might want to be sexually active with their husbands in their own bed because women are sexual beings, not because they're afraid of the husband leaving them if they don't put out.
From Jamie:
"Does it make someone a bad mother if she does need her baby to fall asleep badly enough on his own to put up with some crying?"
I never suggested that.
Isn't it funny how the outcry is 'each to her own!' and then when I state what *is* to my own, there's a good chance that *I'm* being judgmental? Well, maybe it's not funny...
From Jamie:
I am struggling with the notion that a baby can be 'conditioned' to prefer human touch when falling asleep. I thought conditioning referred to introducing a new pattern of behavior, and babies are born seeking the warmth of their mother.
I would think that 'conditioning' applies more to babies who are taught to sleep alone, and theories that use adult sleep associations don't hold a lot of water with me.
From Esther:
Caryn:"Can you link me to data on this?"
Ferber talks about it in his book and IIRC so does Weissbluth.
From Caryn:
This isn't data, but that's part of overall sleep hygiene treatment for people with sleeping disorders -- to get them to associate certain things with sleep, such that if X happens (warm bath, lights low, soothing music, whatever) their brain associates it with "time to go to sleep."
My point exactly; so far it's a narrative, not data. I don't associate anything in particular with sleep, except being tired -- I have no trouble falling asleep on a tour bus full of musicians when I'm tired, and can have immense trouble falling asleep if I'm not sleepy at 2 am, regardless.
And this would seem to be true of babies as well, or else they wouldn't generally fall asleep wherever they happened to be, when they were tired, right?
If sleep routinely happens at the end of nursing and then baby is jolted awake by the removal of the mother
That's why you nurse them to sleep on a bed. They unlatch, then they roll away, then you get up. (Unless, as in my son's case, they have radar for "distance to mom" that works even when they're asleep.) I know multiple people who've happily managed nursing babies this way; it doesn't seem all that uncommon to me.
I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it is that's supposed to hang on this argument. If there are really people who dispute the idea that people make their own decisions about how to maximize restful sleep for their families, it seems to me like that's *their problem*. It's not like we're under some sort of moral obligation to make infants sleep in some sort of particular way, so long as the way the infant sleeps is safe.
Which gets us back to the original post, doesn't it?
From Caryn:
Ferber talks about it in his book and IIRC so does Weissbluth.
Those are popular press, but I'll go look in PubMed.
From Jamie:
"This isn't data, but that's part of overall sleep hygiene treatment for people with sleeping disorders -- to get them to associate certain things with sleep, such that if X happens (warm bath, lights low, soothing music, whatever) their brain associates it with "time to go to sleep."'
Alright -- this is what I was getting at. It kind of implies that a baby who nurses (or sucks) to sleep has a disorder, rather than a normal behavior designed to maximize its survival.
The behavior may eventually be problematic for the child's parents, but that doesn't make it a pathology. The child will eventually build *new* sleep associations (on his own or with help), but he can't be 'conditioned' with the ones he's born with. That makes no sense.
From Ericacrochets:
"At both of the hospitals I delivered at, policy was that the baby had to be in the nursery unless the mother was in the room. Babies can't even be left with their fathers -- the mother or hospital staff have to be with the baby at all times, for legal reasons."
Oh, my! I think that's so sexist. At both my hospitals, my husband received an identical bracelet. They are as much his kids as they are mine! This remidns me of something he and I were saying the other night about men who can't "babysit" their children. I've never felt guilty about leaving my husband with HIS children.
From Ericacrochets:
"Again, I have to ask, Really? That was *never* the case with my son. I think this is an (gender-based) assumption on your part, not one that is backed up by research. Can you point to any that shows this?"
No, I can't. It's an assumption based on my own experience.
From Esther:
Jamie:"Alright -- this is what I was getting at. It kind of implies that a baby who nurses (or sucks) to sleep has a disorder, rather than a normal behavior designed to maximize its survival."
If his nursing to sleep is causing his parents to be exhausted and not function, then, like our love of sweet and fatty foods, it's an evolutionary relic that can be maladaptive in certain situations and/or environments.
Caryn - here are a couple of academic articles which discuss sleep associations, but it's pretty basic sleep medicine:
http://pediatrics.aappublication...stract/90/4/
554
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi...tract/159/3/
242
From Ericacrochets:
I think it's interesting that our society still takes such a strongy behavioralist approach to sleep, rather than a developmental one. There is a combination of neurological and environmental forces at work.
I've been blessed with children who are very verbal. What if I said to a mother whose child was a little behind the average, "Hey, you know, all you have to do is talk and sing more. Maybe he's watching too much TV or using the paci too much. blah blah blah."
Well, chances are she is giving the child adequate verbal stimulation, the child just isn't READY to talk yet, or possibly has a speech problem. Either way, it isn't her fault or thei child's.
Same with walking. "Kid isn't crawling by 10 months/walking at a year? Get them out of the exersaucer! Why didn't you do more tummy time?" Well, we know that these things may help to a degree, but some children aren't neurologically ready to walk at a year.
Sleep association is only one small part of the picture. I think it's unforturate that we start from the assumption that there is something wrong with a baby who, by the age of 6 months, isn't able to sleep by himself in a crib all night. Or the newborn who needs human contact to sleep at all. It's simply a cultural bias. It's based on what some people want children to be like rather than observation of children.
From Ericacrochets:
Esther, I've read similar things to the articles you've posted. They don't show a clear cause and effect relationship. They show a correlation. The "worse" sleepers were not put into their beds awake. Well, is it because of the parents or because of the difficulty the baby had settling himself? Same with the night feeding.
These things are almost impossible to prove a cause and effect relationship because of the difficulty of finding vast numbers of parents willing to be randomly assigned to a particular sleep method.
From Caryn:
Thanks, Esther.
So far I've found this which says ...Findings support the hypothesis that maladaptive parental behaviors develop in reaction to preexisting sleep difficulties. Further, early sleep difficulties are more predictive than parental behaviors in explaining [bad dreams] and foreshortened [total sleep time] beginning at age 50 months. Results are interpreted in light of early emotive/physiological self-regulation problems...
which suggests that there's at least some dispute in the literature about cause and effect, and also this perfect description of my son's behavior (and yes, he likes for things to be predictable.) I won't have a chance to dig into the journals up at the university until the middle of next week.
From Caryn:
(Also, I'm not in any way vouching for either of those articles; this is not my primary research interest. They are merely the result of a quick browse through PubMed.)
From Esther:
Ericacrochets:"Esther, I've read similar things to the articles you've posted. They don't show a clear cause and effect relationship. They show a correlation. The "worse" sleepers were not put into their beds awake. Well, is it because of the parents or because of the difficulty the baby had settling himself? Same with the night feeding."
The answer is easily had if when the asociations are changed, so does the behavior. In a good many cases, this is what happens, as any sleep clinic will tell you.
From Elizabeth:
It's not like we're under some sort of moral obligation to make infants sleep in some sort of particular way, so long as the way the infant sleeps is safe.
Yes we are, because otherwise how would we prove that we're not insecure, brainwashed, sexually inadequate girlchildren?
I only piped up after a couple hundred posts insinuating or explicitly stating as much, and now I'm judgmental. Whatever.
I never said walking away and leaving a helpless newborn shut up alone in a room was evil. What I implied, and probably should have come out and said in as many words, is that it is foolish. Imprudent at best, and at worst downright stupid. When a person shuts a door on something and walks away to go do something else, that normally means they can afford to forget about it for a while, particularly if the "something else" is going to sleep for the night. I don't even shut the kitchen door when I have a pot of water boiling. The idea that the safe development of a brand-new human being is somehow a special case that merits less vigilance than other sensitive and high-stakes processes is nonsensical absent certain philosophical assumptions which I and many others do not share. And yes, I get feisty when it is repeatedly stated that not endorsing those questionable assumptions makes me not a grown-up, not a real woman, not psychologically normal.
"Hard-heartedness" was mentioned above - not by a proponent of co-sleeping, but by a vocal opponent, and she meant it as a good thing. If you feel the need to cultivate hard-heartedness toward your children, that's your business. You have a lot of historical precedent for it, actually. But don't go telling the rest of us that there's something wrong in our heads if we don't. If "hard-heartedness" is an important personal value for you, then it only makes sense that you would trade a little bit of vigilance and peace of mind in order to insert distance between yourself and the child. If the kid is screaming, putting it in a separate room isn't going to magically enable you to sleep; if the kid is peacefully asleep, having the bassinet in the same room isn't going to prevent your sleep. (Same goes for sex.) So what makes the difference? The answer willingly supplied, "hard-heartedness," seems as likely as anything. Fine; suit yourself. But the moral panic over parents who don't feel the same way - what's wrong with these poor widdle helpless nellies, all a-quiver over a mere child! - is just a bit much.
From Esther:
Here's the American Association of Sleep Medicine's take on the subject:
http://www.sleepeducation.com/To...Topic.aspx?
id=8
From Ericacrochets:
I have a question for the CIO people.
How do you know when the child is just fussing because he's mad to be stuck in the crib, or if there's something really wrong?
I have grouchily told my children to go to sleep only to have them wake up a couple of hours later with a fever.
I prefer to err on the side of comforting a nonverbal child because I don't believe I can tell if they might be sick, having teething pain, a leg cramp, who knows?
From Mama Liberty:
Esther, from the link above:
"Do not let your child fall asleep while being held, rocked, fed a bottle, or while nursing."
I wonder why breastmilk contains cholecystokinin, which causes sleepiness in the baby and the mother if it is unhealthy for them to fall asleep together?
From Jamie:
"I think it's unfortunate that we start from the assumption that there is something wrong with a baby who, by the age of 6 months, isn't able to sleep by himself in a crib all night. Or the newborn who needs human contact to sleep at all. It's simply a cultural bias. It's based on what some people want children to be like rather than observation of children."
Bingo. Thank you.
All I want is for those in favor of sleep training to admit that they are (possibly) fighting against the child's Completely Normal Development. It may very well be that doing so the least possible evil in any given situation, and no one has the right to judge anyone else's need to make that decision for their own family. That's fine.
But when sleep training, even in its most extreme forms, is recommended or justified as being purely for the child's own benefit, I take issue.
From Esther:
Ericacrochets:"How do you know when the child is just fussing because he's mad to be stuck in the crib, or if there's something really wrong? "
Well, you generally are supposed to start sleep training when the baby isn't undergoing any acute illness. If the baby is happy and smiley up until the moment you put them in bed and say good night, it's a pretty clear indication that they're displeased at being put to sleep, not in physical distress. My babies also tended to have an angry cry and not the same one they used when sick, hungry or in pain.
Mind you, after they learned how to STTN by themselves, I would treat any middle-of-the-might cries as indicating distress (with my second son - who was and still is my best sleeper - it was usually an ear infection) and attend them immediately. Also, when my eldest was about 2-3yo, he had night terrors. The blood-curdling shrieks he made were nothing like a baby undergoing CIO, and were similarly attended to (though, as is typical of NT's, he never actually fully awoke and didn't remember anything the following morning).
Mama Liberty - it's not a matter of being unhealthy as much as it can really mess with a mother's sleep (especially if they aren't a SAHM, have older shildren that need to be gotten to school in the morning, etc.). We don't lead the lives of hunter-gatherers anymore.
From Mama Liberty:
"Mama Liberty - it's not a matter of being unhealthy as much as it can really mess with a mother's sleep"
Well, many health "authorities" frame the issue as a matter of health. The website above did exactly that, authoritatively proclaiming that a baby shouldn't fall asleep at the breast.
I really don't care what other families do with regards to sleep, but I still don't understand how making multiple trips down the hall to another room to feed a breastfeeding baby helps the mother's sleep.
From A Sarah:
I never said walking away and leaving a helpless newborn shut up alone in a room was evil.
Oh my. That's... kind of priceless.
The thing is, Elizabeth, you may even be entirely right that most people who do CIO are imprudent, privileged, hardhearted beeyotches who care about their children just a little bit less than you do. But they still don't have to care that you think so! A mother is not required to feel stung when a stranger from the internet is overcome with shocked disapproval over her inadequate selfish choices! Strange but true.
That said: I think you're absolutely right that choosing to co-sleep doesn't necessarily mean that someone is a weak-willed simpering sexless needy mombot with no understanding of psychological boundaries. Absolutely, 100 percent correct. It sucks to have your household's choices policed by other self-appointed authorities. It's totally unfair, unproductive, and ridiculous. They should knock it off.
Yet you seem to want to cry "foul!" when people do this to you, while reserving the right to do it to others. Does it bother you that this is hypocritical? Or are do you think you should be given extra hypocrisy allowance because co-sleeping is so obviously better?
From A Sarah:
All I want is for those in favor of sleep training to admit that they are (possibly) fighting against the child's Completely Normal Development.
Hmmm.
*considers fulfilling Jamie's request*
You know what, Jamie? No thanks. I don't feel like it.
I mean, I get it: to you, the choice to do CIO requires some defense based in evolution.
But, I don't agree; and also, I don't really feel like expending the effort to make sure that you are personally satisfied with what goes on in my house.
Ah, but you WANT the CIO people to "admit" something to you. Well, okay. I WANT a search committee chair to show up at my door and give me a job. And? I mean, you can want what you want -- and in this case it sounds like you want people to say, "Yes, Jamie, your way is More Righter but I just wasn't cool enough to make it work in our house so I took the slacker's way out," -- but that doesn't mean that people are required to make that happen.
I guess you'll have to figure out some other way to feel okay about the way you've chosen to do things.
From A Sarah:
I still don't understand how making multiple trips down the hall to another room to feed a breastfeeding baby helps the mother's sleep.
Well, then, it probably wouldn't help your sleep to do it that way. Cool for you. I don't understand how some people can like cold vinegar-y salads. That doesn't mean they are obligated to defend this preference to me. It just means I shouldn't eat cold vinegar-y salads.
From Elizabeth:
But they still don't have to care that you think so! A mother is not required to feel stung when a stranger from the internet is overcome with shocked disapproval over her inadequate selfish choices!
That's a really odd way of framing the interaction. I notice that you frame a lot of situations that way, regardless of what's actually said.
Why would I expect someone who (over a period of YEARS now!) proudly trumpets her own tough-cookie attitude toward children, with big heaps of scornful judgment toward those who differ, to be "stung" when I occasionally pipe up with "right back at ya, and here's why"?
And how does doing so make me a hypocrite?
Which side here, really, is presently in the position of dishing it out but not taking it?
It's not that I think other mothers care less about their children than *I* do about mine. After all, I'm not the one who's spent almost a week on this thread preening how non-inadequate I am. But I do think that most mothers care about as much about their children as I do, or more so. Emphasis on "or more so." A big part of my whole take on this is that I'm not such a great mother to start off with that I feel I can afford to dial it back any. (Doubly so when my baby was new.) And people militantly nagging me to do so, lest I prove inadequate by some irrelevant, poorly-defined standard, make me suspicious. To be told that I'm insecure and vapid and brainwashed for figuring "eh, they're only little once, so better safe than sorry!" and temporarily foregoing other priorities? Why do they even care? Evolution is still happening; why are other women so interested in persuading me to reduce my investment in my own offspring, using this transparently illogical "boo hoo you're judging me" manipulation? Is eliminating the tiny chance that I might save my baby from SIDS by being in the same room in order to be at least liminally aware of her while I sleep THAT important? Is taking a kid into an adult bed with pillows really that much more foolhardy than walking away from it for the night and hoping for the best?
From Jamie:
"I mean, I get it: to you, the choice to do CIO requires some defense based in evolution."
Nah -- the decision to do CIO is entirely personal as far as I'm concerned (which I have stated several times on this thread). The only thing I dislike is the way it is often justified as 'necessary' in order to raise a healthy child.
Look -- I nursed my oldest until he was 2yo. And then I (*gasp!*) weaned him. Deliberately. I was done. He weaned remarkably easy at that age, which I have since learned is fairly common. It went so well that I'm likely to do it again with my new baby.
Why? Because I wanted to. Because it worked well for ME. Because I'm not willing to nurse an older toddler, *and* I'm not willing to go through a hard weaning.
I don't think my son enjoyed any benefit from *my* decision to wean, other than not being put through a mountain of power struggles if he had still been nursing when that 'fun' phase kicked in just before his 3rd birthday. In that regard, weaning probably made *me* a better mother than I would have been still nursing, and he benefits from that, obviously.
Just like a more sane parent is a benefit that child can enjoy from sleep training. But it's far crying from saying a child *must* be trained to sleep alone at an early age -- which something that I often come across.
From A Sarah:
And how does doing so make me a hypocrite?
Because you're saying that it's illegitimate for people to criticize your choices -- it's all personal choice, after all -- but then you feel free to portray mothers who don't do as you do in the most negative light possible. You expect people to abide by standards of behavior - and fault them for not doing so - that you don't seem to feel held to yourself.
From A Sarah:
Nah -- the decision to do CIO is entirely personal as far as I'm concerned (which I have stated several times on this thread).
You have said that; but then you said that you want CIO-ers to "admit" that they are going against a child's biological tendency. I just don't see how it can be entirely personal, yet they owe you an admission of anything. Perhaps you can explain to me how they hold together?
From A Sarah:
After all, I'm not the one who's spent almost a week on this thread preening how non-inadequate I am.
Okay, Elizabeth, you don't like me and are predisposed to find fault with anything I say. Got it. I notice you didn't address the point where I tried to concede legitimacy of what you'd written about co-sleepers not being needy mombots. I'm mildly interested as to why.
(Just to get clear on a factual matter, though: I've been out of town for most of the last week without internet access and just got home yesterday, so I haven't actually spent a week "preening" here.)
Anyone else want to discuss the idealization of motherhood, ways to be unapologetic about your own choices, sleep, or anything else?
From Jamie:
"I just don't see how it can be entirely personal, yet they owe you an admission of anything. Perhaps you can explain to me how they hold together?"
I'm not sure that I can, other than apologizing for my poor word choice.
I was responding to theory though, rather than practice. Susanne raised her babies many a year ago, and was citing the studies of adult sleep disorders to call nursing a baby to sleep 'conditioning.' My opinion is the reverse, that we *condition* babies to sleep alone, because they are born sucking and snuggling. That was why I used the term 'supporters' of sleep training, rather than parents who use it.
From A Sarah:
A big part of my whole take on this is that I'm not such a great mother to start off with that I feel I can afford to dial it back any. (Doubly so when my baby was new.) And people militantly nagging me to do so, lest I prove inadequate by some irrelevant, poorly-defined standard, make me suspicious. To be told that I'm insecure and vapid and brainwashed for figuring "eh, they're only little once, so better safe than sorry!" and temporarily foregoing other priorities? Why do they even care??
Okay, first: I don't even get along with you, Elizabeth, yet I can tell plainly that you are a GREAT mom. Which is not to say that I don't understand the feelings of inadequacy... of course I do. Partly because I've bought into this line of bull about how mothers have to prove themselves. I believe it to be insidious, and a patriarchal construction.
But I'm confused, because I really feel like I took some trouble to say that I THINK IT IS AWESOME THAT YOU COSLEEP BECAUSE YOU LIKE IT! It's AWESOME when people find things that work for them! I think we should all throw ourselves a friggin' PARADE whenever we find something that makes our family lives WORK, because there are a million voices - within and without - telling us that it can't just *work*, it has to be RIGHT. All I'm saying -- to myself as much as to anyone else -- is that it's enough for it just to work.
So, in case it wasn't clear enough before: Attention, people who criticize co-sleepers as damaged neurotic needy mothers with no boundaries who haven't read the best research!!! In my not-so-humble opinion, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
From Elizabeth:
I do think that most mothers care about as much about their children as I do, or more so. Emphasis on "or more so." A big part of my whole take on this is that I'm not such a great mother to start off with that I feel I can afford to dial it back any
To be clear, I'd also like to add:
Another big part of it for me is that I think I'm really average. The claim here isn't "I'm special, and you suck"; it's "I'm normal, and I'm not going to let you paint me as a freak." In an era where babies still sometimes turn up dead in their cribs for no discernible reason, I think that anyone who wants to say that parents who wish to keep as close an eye on their kid as possible are weak and brainwashed has a pretty heavy burden of proof. I spent the first month or so of my child's life sleeping with my arm extended into her bassinet to feel that she was still breathing. I don't claim another mother would be inadequate if she didn't do the same; but in fact, a lot of the women I know did do that or something like it. In my case it was a compromise with myself in order to be able to sleep at all, and I have at least one (perfectly normal) friend who couldn't even do that much: she would just sit there and watch the kid. My claim isn't that this is extra-special saintly mommy care. My claim is only that, GIVEN THAT SEEMINGLY HEALTHY KIDS SOMETIMES REALLY DO EXPIRE IN THEIR BEDS FOR NO APPARENT REASON, it's not crazy, and says absolutely nothing about my gender role, marriage, self-esteem, or intellectual independence. Indeed, given the facts, a mother or father who can confidently leave a child of the age at which SIDS happens alone in a room for extended powers is, objectively, highly risk-tolerant. That's not right or wrong; it just is, although like all risk-averse people I think the risk-tolerant tend to imprudence. As I said above, it seems to betray a certain lack of imagination. There may be countervailing factors; believing, whether out of Calvinism, feminism, or sheer cussedness, that "hard-heartedness" or emotional distance is an important ethical value, would certainly qualify. After all, I can't *prove* that checking that my baby was still breathing wards off SIDS. Letting your baby sleep alone isn't comparable to not using a carseat. But by the same token, I'm not about to dial down my personal vigilance, in the privacy of my own home, to meet standards of rational proof put forth by some "stranger on the internet."
BTW, isn't projecting that I'm on some holier-than-thou sanctimommy trip just another, sneakier way of calling my concerns crazy?
From A Sarah:
BTW, isn't projecting that I'm on some holier-than-thou sanctimommy trip just another, sneakier way of calling my concerns crazy?
Well, then let me say: I don't think your concerns are crazy. But likewise, I don't think that sleep training is evidence that someone has said, "Bah! Child safety, shmild shmafety... momma's tired, so suck it up, little one." Earlier it sounded to me like you were implying as much. To me that's as off-base as someone's implying that you only co-sleep to meet some neurotic need. Ridiculous!
IOW, I don't have any beef with how you do things, truly. I just think that in general, every mother on the planet will be helped if we can all just act as though "This is what works in my family" is a good enough reason for most of the hot button mothering issues that divide... Co-sleeping, cry-it-out, whatever.
Which is not to say that it's some kind of contest to see who is the most inured to mommy-prefectionism. That would be counterproductive, to say the least. Of COURSE we are all influenced by mommy-perfectionism; I certainly am. When I "preen," as you put it, it's because I'm imperfectly practicing a different way to be. I'm trying to convince myself, obviously. I'm trying to contribute to a different discourse around motherhood - one where mothers are allowed to shrug and say, "Yeah, maybe I'm being selfish. And? This is your business how, exactly?" Because I truly believe that that would help everyone. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but that's what I'm doing.
From Jolene:
(Just to get clear on a factual matter, though: I've been out of town for most of the last week without internet access and just got home yesterday, so I haven't actually spent a week "preening" here.)
She's not talking about you, A Sarah. Read back.
From A Sarah:
Jamie: My opinion is the reverse, that we *condition* babies to sleep alone, because they are born sucking and snuggling. That was why I used the term 'supporters' of sleep training, rather than parents who use it.
Ah-ha... Well, then, I was insufficiently attentive to your use of the word "supporters." I getcha now. I thought you were saying that people who *did* sleep-training needed to address your criticism... But if I understand you correctly, you're saying that people who say sleep-training is *superior* need to address the possibility that the default is for infants to nurse to sleep?
Sorry for my misunderstanding!
From A Sarah:
She's not talking about you, A Sarah. Read back.
Wait... what? Sorry to be so dense. I'm low on sleep. Who's she talking about? I thought that she started the comment by addressing me and being snide about how long I've been here and how I always frame the issues in such-and-such a way?
From Jolene:
Nope.
Susanne.
From SarahNicole:
@Elizabeth: "I spent the first month or so of my child's life sleeping with my arm extended into her bassinet to feel that she was still breathing."
Oh, I totally did that too. Now that he's both in his crib AND has learned how to turn over and seems to have just discovered that he enjoys sleeping on his tummy, I am now up and in his nook (we converted our master suite closet into his nursery, because the other options were too far away upstairs, or required the re-doing of a guest room and the tv room upstairs) every time I feel that he is too quiet, which is the opposite of when all of his little grunts and shifts, etc. tended to keep me awake...
"Indeed, given the facts, a mother or father who can confidently leave a child of the age at which SIDS happens alone in a room for extended powers is, objectively, highly risk-tolerant. That's not right or wrong; it just is, although like all risk-averse people I think the risk-tolerant tend to imprudence. As I said above, it seems to betray a certain lack of imagination."
I think that rather than being risk-tolerant per se, it is just an example of differences in individual risk-analysis. The incidence of SIDS in and of itself -- even given how murky our knowledge of what the causes of it are -- is very small (.8 per 1000 live births in the U.S. in 1996, and the incidence has been dropping, righ?). Its small incidence coupled with its murky risk factor profile is, I think, outweighed by the sheer horror that one can easily imagine upon finding that one's child has died, right in one's home, when doing something that is otherwise innocent and necessary -- sleeping. I have recurring nightmares about harm coming to my son, and either his sounds or lack thereof can either keep me from sleep, or rouse me from it. Of course, I also have a history of sleep disorders, as well as having a hairy imagination. At the same time, I make an effort, for a variety of reasons, towards trying to analyze and assess the fears behind my fears, as well as the facts behind them. I know that, having taken infant CPR, there's a belief in my brain that if I discover him not breathing in his sleep, I'll be able to do something about it... I think there's an underlying issue of both what our risk profiles actually are, what our understanding/analysis of risks are, and our sense of whether we feel we have any control over those risks...
That pacifiers are one recommendation in the lowering of SIDS risk is interesting too, given that breastfeeding is also, and other advice we all get often sets up "sucking on silicone" as a contraindication for "suckling on mom."
The peak incidence of SIDS is between 2 and 4 months, and I don't think anyone, here at least, was advocating any sort of regular sleep training or push towards inappropriate independence at that age (whatever anyone think is inappropriate). I think we're all using the word "baby" in a way that conflates the differing needs of differing ages, as well as of the differing needs of different babies and different families...
Also, I personally was never calling you crazy. I was calling you judgemental, and just as judgemental as those I thought you were saying were judgemental.
And that is a circular sentence. Sorry.
And. Gee. If I'd known I was going to go on that long, I would have brought a glass of water.
From Susanne:
"My opinion is the reverse, that we *condition* babies to sleep alone, because they are born sucking and snuggling. That was why I used the term 'supporters' of sleep training, rather than parents who use it."
But what if there was no "training" involved? What if it was simply as simple as .. baby was put to bed however it suited mom, occasionally whimpered a few minutes but that was that? See, this whole thing presupposes that sleep is something that only comes with some kind of "training" - whether it's mommy's going to nurse you to sleep in the family bed or mommy's going to put you in the crib and turn off the light and leave.
From Susanne:
"I really don't care what other families do with regards to sleep, but I still don't understand how making multiple trips down the hall to another room to feed a breastfeeding baby helps the mother's sleep."
Well, I don't see how being in a constant half-asleep half-awake state while baby is sucking on you helps the mother's sleep either. Not to mention that I don't see how it would "help" my sleep to have to go to bed when baby does, when maybe I'd like to stay up til 10 pm to read or watch the news. Maybe ... here's a concept ... adults have different sleep requirements too.
From Susanne:
"In an era where babies still sometimes turn up dead in their cribs for no discernible reason, I think that anyone who wants to say that parents who wish to keep as close an eye on their kid as possible are weak and brainwashed has a pretty heavy burden of proof. I spent the first month or so of my child's life sleeping with my arm extended into her bassinet to feel that she was still breathing."
Who said otherwise? BTW, my twins had apnea monitors and like other premie parents, we had to learn infant CPR. They were already at higher risk of SIDS (making the idea of sleeping on a soft bed with pillows even the more I totally understand the fear of baby not breathing. TOTALLY. I have no issue with co-sleeping in general; I don't much care what other people do. If that's how you all prefer things, grand. If you're afraid baby will stop breathing and this is how you get your assurance -- cool beans. What I object to is the silly straw man that not co-sleeping = CIO, and that CIO encompasses everything from a few minutes of whimpering to full-out hours of agonized screaming but they're all equally damaging. And I think that co-sleepers have to know that they are running the risk of having a harder time getting child out of the bed later down the pike. If they're cool with that, well, then, hey, not my problem.
"My claim is only that, GIVEN THAT SEEMINGLY HEALTHY KIDS SOMETIMES REALLY DO EXPIRE IN THEIR BEDS FOR NO APPARENT REASON, it's not crazy, and says absolutely nothing about my gender role, marriage, self-esteem, or intellectual independence."
Who said it did? Who said it was crazy to check on your child by whatever means?
"Indeed, given the facts, a mother or father who can confidently leave a child of the age at which SIDS happens alone in a room for extended powers is, objectively, highly risk-tolerant."
You're bringing up a whole 'nother argument, though. The prevailing reason given to co-sleep isn't "protect your baby against SIDS since co-sleeping reduces that ris." The prevailing reasons given to co-sleep are about how It's Just So Emotionally Distant to Be Down The Hall You Might As Well Be in Siberia, and What Kind of Mother Could Turn a Deaf Ear to Even One Minute of a Baby Fussing. That's the ultimate in sanctimommy, IMO, and it plays right into the Mask of Motherhood -- the faux having to pretend that every moment with your baby is Absolute Pure Bliss and How Could It Not Be.
I mean, what if I'm happy playing with baby during the day, and then I'm equally happy tending to baby's needs, giving him a kiss and putting him in a nice comfy warm crib and saying night-night? And what if I'm the kind of mother who really doesn't miss him with quivering lower lip during the X hours that he's just right down the hall anyway?
From Susanne:
"Well, I reference higher apes not because I fear that my child will get eaten if I don't, but because I believe that honoring a child's natural, developmentally appropriate expectations as much as possible is a great way to parent."
Having twins is a fascinating case study because you can see how much really is nature vs nurture, as mine are very unalike on most personality dimensions. I think some people are innate introverts (in the Myers-Briggs sense) -- being by themselves simply isn't problematic, they enjoy their own space. And some people are innate extraverts - if there's a party going on in the house and they aren't there, boy do they feel hurt.
And I sometimes think that the introverts such as myself can't "get" why the extraverts assume that Every Baby Wants to Be Part of the Party, and the extraverts can't "get" that a naturally introverted baby could enjoy hugs and kisses and snuggles and then left alone to explore his hands and feet in a nice comfy crib just fine and it doesn't mean his lack of crying is because he's given up hope that anyone cares.
And again, I'm using the Myers-Briggs introvert / extravert definitions, not to be confused wit shy and outgoing.
From Caryn:
And what if I'm the kind of mother who really doesn't miss him with quivering lower lip during the X hours that he's just right down the hall anyway?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the point Elizabeth is making here is that it's *also* not correct to paint all co-sleepers as the sort of mother who does really "miss him with quivering lower lip", nor as the sort of mothers who aren't getting any, nor as people with no common sense.
People are different.
From Jamie:
"The prevailing reason given to co-sleep isn't "protect your baby against SIDS since co-sleeping reduces that ris." The prevailing reasons given to co-sleep are about how It's Just So Emotionally Distant to Be Down The Hall You Might As Well Be in Siberia, and What Kind of Mother Could Turn a Deaf Ear to Even One Minute of a Baby Fussing."
Susanne, I almost hate to take issue with this because I'm actually liking what you're saying now.
But the most common reason for co-sleeping I hear is that it's highly convenient to the nursing mother, and I don't know of anyone who has continued to co-sleep if it meant less parental sleep.
I can get my 3m/o back to sleep in less than five minutes if he's next to me in bed. Which is a good thing, because I have trouble staying awake for longer than ten. I discovered that with my first son.
I tried very hard *not* to co-sleep with him. I would try to stay awake through feeding him, through holding him long enough to make sure I could transfer him without waking him up (and he was absolutely *NOT* a 'awake but sleepy' baby -- he needed to be very OUT to be put down). I couldn't do it. I would fall asleep with him in my arms, propped up against the headboard. I think he was almost 3m/o when I just gave up and stopped trying to get him into his crib (side-carred).
My sleep improved SOOO much. He went from waking a couple of times a night to waking 4 times or so, but instead of being up (or trying to be up) for nearly an hour each time, I was up for 5-10 minutes, without the stress of worrying if I'd be able to get him back down.
From Jamie:
"And some people are innate extraverts - if there's a party going on in the house and they aren't there, boy do they feel hurt."
I'm an extrovert with at least one extroverted child. I can *very* deeply empathize with any pain he feels at being left alone, because the tenor of his cry or his expression brings back strong memories for me. For me, him not wanting to left alone is an extremely valid reason to seek a solution that does not involve isolating him.
I don't know if his little brother is intro or extroverted yet, but I can already tell that he's *much* more easy-going. He likes being in the center of activity, but he's much less sensitive to stimulation. I could easily see him being able to fall asleep without help long before his brother.
From Mama Liberty:
"Maybe ... here's a concept ... adults have different sleep requirements too."
Why so sarcastic, Susanne? I was responding to someone (you?) who said that cosleeping disturbs the mother's sleep. I was just saying that *I* don't see it that way. To me, getting up disturbs my sleep more than halfway waking up to latch a baby on. Actually, initially I chose to cosleep so that I could get more sleep. My mother did not cosleep with me and then DID cosleep with my two younger siblings. She was much happier with breastfeeding when she coslept. So, I decided to draw on her experience when I was a young mother and decided to cosleep. I'm glad I did. I truly believe that cosleeping helped me to successfully breastfeed. Now, four children later I couldn't imagine mothering an infant any other way. My husband feels the same way.
Ironically, cosleeping with an infant has always worked well for me. My young babies have always slept well (at least 6 hours) in bed with me. It is when they get older that they start to nurse more and disturb my sleep. I am getting ready to night-wean my now 18 month old because he has increased his nursing frequency. I have done this with my three older children... my pattern is basically to nightwean at 18 months and fully wean at 3 years. And some time between 3-4 years, I put them in their own bed.
I haven't had any problems with the way I have done things. My husband and I are happy with our decisions (and, yes, we still have a decent sex life). I have a big problem with the fact that the prevailing "expert" wisdom is not cosleep. Honestly, it is this kind of advice, which is clearly not grounded in science, which makes me question the "experts" in other areas such as... childbirth.
From Jamie:
"But if I understand you correctly, you're saying that people who say sleep-training is *superior* need to address the possibility that the default is for infants to nurse to sleep?"
Yep! This is what I'm saying. ^_^
From Jamie:
"But what if there was no "training" involved? What if it was simply as simple as .. baby was put to bed however it suited mom, occasionally whimpered a few minutes but that was that?"
I guess to be faithful to my assertions here, I'd have to say that anything I have the luxury or inclination of doing with my sleeping baby that another primate wouldn't would be a form of sleep training.
That list would include (from the last three months):
Putting him down asleep on a bed.
Putting him down asleep in his crib.
Swaddling him.
Putting him down asleep with his sleeping father.
Putting him down awake with his sleeping father.
Unlatching him.
Blocking his access to my breast.
Putting him down asleep in his bouncy seat.
Putting him to sleep on my back when his clear preference is to be closer to the food supply.
Really, *putting* him to sleep at all, rather than letting him fall asleep suggests a level of agenda, and I'm very much a Putter of Children to Sleep.
So, putting a baby in a crib and shutting the door is a form of sleep training, IMO. And, as you pointed out earlier, not all sleep training = CIO.
"Not to mention that I don't see how it would "help" my sleep to have to go to bed when baby does, when maybe I'd like to stay up til 10 pm to read or watch the news."
Er... why can't the baby stay up until 10pm?
From Alexis:
Not to mention the fact that even if baby sleeps in their own crib, they don't always go down straight away, and co-sleeping doesn't necessarily require constant presence. (Some babies will wake up the minute you get up, and cry like hell, but these are the babies who, IMO, would probably be awful in a crib too.) You can go lie down with baby, get her to sleep, tuck her in, and then get up. (If you're worried about her rolling over and out, there are bed rails you can use.)
From Jamie:
"(Some babies will wake up the minute you get up, and cry like hell, but these are the babies who, IMO, would probably be awful in a crib too.)"
My 'borrowed' baby (well, toddler) is like this. She has been swaddled, rocked, CIO-ed, white-noised, worn down, you name it. She was an *awful* sleeper until she 'decided' that it was fun to nap. Now she asks to nap, takes her paci, and climbs into a twin bed that she voluntarily stays in -- not until she wakes up, but until someone opens the door to come get her. She's 2yo now.
From SarahNicole:
@Jaime: "I guess to be faithful to my assertions here, I'd have to say that anything I have the luxury or inclination of doing with my sleeping baby that another primate wouldn't would be a form of sleep training."
I would just call it culture. Which is natural for human primates.
From Susanne:
"To me, getting up disturbs my sleep more than halfway waking up to latch a baby on."
The crux of it seems as follows:
For X% of women, getting up to feed baby (whether breast or bottle) is less disruptive to their sleep than is co-sleeping and rolling over to feed baby. Therefore, co-sleeping gives them (mother) interrupted / less sleep.
For the other Y%, rolling over and latching on is less disruptive to their sleep than getting up and walking down the hall to feed baby. Therefore, co-sleeping gives them (mother) less interrupted / better sleep.
Seems like there's no right solution other than what the mother identifies as giving her the best sleep - and only she can judge which of those two types she might be.
From Jamie:
"I would just call it culture. Which is natural for human primates."
Natural, but highly variable between different populations of human primates. I guess that's why I try to *start* with biology and apply culture as I go, at least as far as relating to a relatively unsocialized infant goes. Biology is pretty consistent for all mammals.
From Susanne:
"I have a big problem with the fact that the prevailing "expert" wisdom is not cosleep."
But why *should* someone co-sleep if the baby does just fine in the bed / crib, goes to sleep happily / contentedly, gets a good rest, and the mother finds getting up to walk down the hall and feed baby less disruptive than being snacked on all night? What's the point of that? What's being missed out on?
And in my household in particular, with a phone that rings all night long, in which dh may at any point have to turn on lights or talk loudly or make a lot of movement? Why *ever* would someone put premies, who certainly need their sleep more than the average baby, through that?
From Susanne:
"I would just call it culture. "Which is natural for human primates."
Natural, but highly variable between different populations of human primates. I guess that's why I try to *start* with biology and apply culture as I go, at least as far as relating to a relatively unsocialized infant goes."
By that token, putting on a onesie is "clothing training," since it's not found in nature.
BTW, if we want to start going down what is natural, what's so natural about sleeping on a Serta mattress with cotton sheets in between four walls made of brick, stone or wood that has electricity and running water? I don't recall any other primates doing that. It's interesting how the definition of natural only goes as far as people want it to.
From Jamie:
"BTW, if we want to start going down what is natural, what's so natural about sleeping on a Serta mattress with cotton sheets in between four walls made of brick, stone or wood that has electricity and running water? I don't recall any other primates doing that. It's interesting how the definition of natural only goes as far as people want it to."
I'm not allowed to partake in culture because I find biology a more reliable indicator of normal child development?
BTW, for a good deal of the human population, a lack of electricity and running water *is* culture.
From Esther:
Mama Liberty: "Well, many health "authorities" frame the issue as a matter of health. The website above did exactly that, authoritatively proclaiming that a baby shouldn't fall asleep at the breast."
Parents looking for this info are typically of the kind who want their baby to sleep for longer stretches, or through the night, because they (and the baby, quite often) are suffering from sleep deprivation. To that end, disassociating nursing from falling asleep is quite healthy, not to mention helpful. If you don't need it - don't do it.
Mama Liberty: "I really don't care what other families do with regards to sleep, but I still don't understand how making multiple trips down the hall to another room to feed a breastfeeding baby helps the mother's sleep."
Ah, here we go again with the ol' false dichotomy - either baby is snuggled up against Mommy in bed, or he's 'down the hall' (and might as well be in outer space).
You know, plenty of people (in fact, just about everyone I know IRL) share a room with their small babies for the fist few months. Sidecars and basinettes don't require 'making multiple trips down the hall to another room to feed a breastfeeding baby', they require, at most, sitting up and reaching over.
And by the time babies are down the hall in their own room, such mommies night-wean their babies (Gasp! Horror!) and thus don't need to make said multiple trips.
From Jamie:
"By that token, putting on a onesie is "clothing training," since it's not found in nature."
Sure it is. Just like putting a diaper on a baby is diaper training.
Note that I'm not expressing an aversion to training/socializing. I'm not sure what you're getting at...
From Esther:
Alexis:"Not to mention the fact that even if baby sleeps in their own crib, they don't always go down straight away, and co-sleeping doesn't necessarily require constant presence. (Some babies will wake up the minute you get up, and cry like hell, but these are the babies who, IMO, would probably be awful in a crib too.) You can go lie down with baby, get her to sleep, tuck her in, and then get up. (If you're worried about her rolling over and out, there are bed rails you can use.)"
If you're practicing SAFE cosleeping with a baby, this is a no-no:
http://www.safebedsharing.org/
sa...guidelines.html
"Never leave an infant or toddler unattended on an adult bed. Co-Sleeping or family bed sharing consists of an adult & a child. Babies can roll off of beds (even when using a co-sleeping device) can become tangled in blankets, or otherwise need the attention of an adult. We recommend babies not be left unattended in the early months."
But hey, I'm constantly saying even ideological cosleepers don't follow all the safe cosleeping rules all of the time.
From Jamie:
"And by the time babies are down the hall in their own room, such mommies night-wean their babies (Gasp! Horror!) and thus don't need to make said multiple trips."
Nightweaning = STTN? I'm honestly curious. We didn't nightwean until shortly before J's 2nd birthday, but he was only nursing once or twice a night at that point, and spend the night before he woke up in his own room.
And if nightweaning happens before a year, does the baby still STTN during teething/gross motor milestones?
From Esther:
Jamie:"Nightweaning = STTN? I'm honestly curious. We didn't nightwean until shortly before J's 2nd birthday, but he was only nursing once or twice a night at that point, and spend the night before he woke up in his own room.
And if nightweaning happens before a year, does the baby still STTN during teething/gross motor milestones?"
In our house, night weaning immediately preceeded or went along with sleep training. There's no point, IMO, in getting a baby to sleep in a separate room if I need to go there to nurse him during the night. And yes, babies can night wean at 6-8 months.
Teething was treated as genuine distress when appropriate - Teejel and painkillers helped a lot.
From Alexis:
If there's no pillow, no blankets (I used the baby sleeping bags), a rail along the side (not pillows piled up) and a hard mattress (and our mattress is the firmest they sell) I'm honestly not seeing how that's so different from a crib. The "baby might need attention" argument could just as easily apply to leaving your baby in a crib by themselves.
From sarahz.:
To add another twist to this debate,IMO, the mattress, adult or child, that is being slept on is a big concern.
IMO, I prefera chemical treatment free mattress or futon. I actually deeply prefer a futon because it is closer to the floor and very inexpensive, but my DH has back problems and we choose a natural latex mattress. It was appx. the same cost as a middle of the line Serta.
Modern mattress are chock full of chemicals and that goes double for crib mattresses. There has been some association between mattress chemicals and SIDS (perhaps the real reason for success of 'back to sleep'), so crib or adult bed, I think the chemcial makeup of the mattress should be considered.
From Esther:
""The prevailing reason given to co-sleep isn't "protect your baby against SIDS since co-sleeping reduces that risk.""
Well, actually, I've heard that reason quite often from certain quarters. Never mind that it's patently untrue (and cosleeping in the earliest months is, as far as is known today, a risk factor even if you're not smoking).
From Caryn:
If there's no pillow, no blankets (I used the baby sleeping bags), a rail along the side (not pillows piled up) and a hard mattress (and our mattress is the firmest they sell) I'm honestly not seeing how that's so different from a crib. The "baby might need attention" argument could just as easily apply to leaving your baby in a crib by themselves.
Yeah, we put our hard mattress on the floor when it became obvious that we were going to be sleeping with a baby. (It helps that we aren't into that whole cultural "nicely kept house" thing, lol.)
From Alexis:
sarahz, they studied the mattress "off gassing" thing and there's no evidence it relates to SIDS. Some mattresses (and carpets) can smell, but they don't kill you.
From Esther:
Alexis:"If there's no pillow, no blankets (I used the baby sleeping bags), a rail along the side (not pillows piled up) and a hard mattress (and our mattress is the firmest they sell) I'm honestly not seeing how that's so different from a crib. The "baby might need attention" argument could just as easily apply to leaving your baby in a crib by themselves."
Simple: Cribs are designed for infant use; Adult beds (esp. with pillows and duvets present, even if not present right next to baby) are designed for adults.
These are rules from family bed proponents, not me.
From Caryn:
Well, actually, I've heard that reason quite often from certain quarters. Never mind that it's patently untrue
They've read McKenna.
From Alexis:
So, I can't question "rules" made by "family bed proponents" if they patently don't make sense? Because that "baby might need attention" rule means you should never leave your baby alone to sleep, whether it's in an adult bed or a crib.
And by "no pillows or blankets", I meant they were not on the bed at all. I took them off.
From Esther:
I don't know too many cosleepers who divest their beds of all pillows and blankets, anyway. Especially not in February.
And Caryn, Of course they'e (people who cosleep for ideologival reasons) read McKenna. And Tina Kimmel and Peggy O'Mara.
From Alexis:
(I didn't, actually, leave her alone in our bed very often, but that "rule" does irk me.)
From Susanne:
"BTW, for a good deal of the human population, a lack of electricity and running water *is* culture."
Well, right. And to that end, the fact that they co-sleep does not reflect an inherent Noble Savage ideal (ie., they know what the "best" solution is, but we've all forgotten it as we became civilized) -- it just means that's all they had access to or were able to do.
From Alexis:
Also, keep in mind that the problem is frequently worse with older babies and toddlers. Blankets and pillows are not an issue with a toddler who can reach and grab the duvet for herself.
From Jamie:
"Simple: Cribs are designed for infant use; Adult beds (esp. with pillows and duvets present, even if not present right next to baby) are designed for adults."
Cribs are incredibly modern development. Babies have slept and lived and died in adult beds (whether it's a mattress and box spring or a mat on the ground) since the beginning of human history.
I'm willing to concede that cribs are designed for babies who sleep *alone* and are therefore safer than a baby sleeping *alone* in an adult bed.
And if Alexis is anything like me, she was popping in to check on her daughter every 20 minutes or so. My little guy doesn't tend to sleep that long after I leave, so it's less of an issue.
From Alexis:
And (if I'm serial posting) if it's all about safety above all, parents who sleep with the baby down the hall aren't doing it. There's research suggesting a lowered risk of SIDS for babies who sleep in their parents' room, and the UK Department of Health's advice is that this is the safest place for a baby to sleep. (In their own crib or bassinet.)
From Susanne:
And if nightweaning happens before a year, does the baby still STTN during teething/gross motor milestones?"
I'm sorry, I'm missing something. What is STTN?
From Alexis:
Jamie - when she was little, I did check frequently.
Now, if she falls asleep in my bed, I do leave her for some time. But she's 2, and she can get out of bed if she wants.
From Alexis:
STTN - sleep through the night.
Anecdata: My daughter was one of the lucky ones who slept through the night early--formula fed, pacifier baby. She did revert to waking up for various reasons, and is doing so more now that we're trying to get her to sleep in her own bed.
From Jamie:
"Now, if she falls asleep in my bed, I do leave her for some time. But she's 2, and she can get out of bed if she wants."
Makes sense to me. ^_^ My oldest was in his own twin bed starting around 15 months, for at least part of most nights. My new baby, being pretty wee in my estimation, gets quite a bit more supervised sleep.
From Esther:
STTN=sleeping trough the night.
Alexis:"And (if I'm serial posting) if it's all about safety above all, parents who sleep with the baby down the hall aren't doing it. There's research suggesting a lowered risk of SIDS for babies who sleep in their parents' room, and the UK Department of Health's advice is that this is the safest place for a baby to sleep. (In their own crib or bassinet.)"
Agreed.
Jamie:"I'm willing to concede that cribs are designed for babies who sleep *alone* and are therefore safer than a baby sleeping *alone* in an adult bed."
That was the point. Adult beds are also, to the best of our knowledge today, less safe in the early months, even (and maybe especially) if a parents is present. Hence, sidecarring is a great idea.
From Jamie:
"That was the point. Adult beds are also, to the best of our knowledge today, less safe in the early months, even (and maybe especially) if a parents is present. Hence, sidecarring is a great idea."
Eh. Not for me. As I said above, I can't stay awake long enough to get a baby back into his own crib after a feeding. Especially not after he has become fully alert. I don't know the numbers that I'm defying, but I *feel* that my baby is safest when he is in close proximity to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a lot of trouble accepting logic that implies that being *with* me puts him in danger.
From Susanne:
"Cribs are incredibly modern development. Babies have slept and lived and died in adult beds (whether it's a mattress and box spring or a mat on the ground) since the beginning of human history."
Cradles have been around for eons -- same concept. And once more with passion, up until modern times, the vast majority of humankind, including all our ancestors lived in the poorest and direst of conditions, so what they *did* when they had no *choice* has little to do with anything. So yes, they did it. So what? What kind of argument is that for anything? Is there evidence to suggest they raised "better" children? Happier children? More well-adjusted children? Got more / better sleep themselves? Of course not. They just HAD NO CHOICE. They also defecated outside and never took baths. Now what?
From Jamie:
"Cradles have been around for eons -- same concept. And once more with passion, up until modern times, the vast majority of humankind, including all our ancestors lived in the poorest and direst of conditions, so what they *did* when they had no *choice* has little to do with anything."
Susanne, I'm not going to use a crib that doesn't benefit me or my child just because someone invented them. I feel like that's the argument -- "Well, *now* we have cribs and they are obviously superior, so babies should all sleep independently!" It just makes no sense to me.
I'm not saying that having no running water is a positive, or that I'd really love myself a good outhouse. I'm saying that I don't understand how a very recent CULTURAL development is safer for my child than a timeless biological constant.
From Jamie:
Ok, if I'm making sense to anyone, *what* makes co-sleeping in the early months less safe: is it parent or the adult bed?
From Alexis:
Both, I think. It would require a controlled study to sort out the effects, and I don't think there's been one that measures that specifically.
From Alexis:
I would take issue with your last post--again, we're skating close to the naturalistic fallacy. Sometimes, newfangled inventions are better, or safer. Or an adaptation that may have previously been safer, given a particular set of circumstances, isn't safer in a new set of circumstances. Having your baby in your bed probably was safer when you had to worry about animals coming in and biting the baby. But eliminate that risk, and maybe it isn't any more.
From Jamie:
"I would take issue with your last post--again, we're skating close to the naturalistic fallacy. Sometimes, newfangled inventions are better, or safer. Or an adaptation that may have previously been safer, given a particular set of circumstances, isn't safer in a new set of circumstances. Having your baby in your bed probably was safer when you had to worry about animals coming in and biting the baby. But eliminate that risk, and maybe it isn't any more."
I meant to ask earlier: what is the naturalistic fallacy -- it sounds like something that I'm very guilty of buying into.
From Susanne:
It's the assumption that because it's more natural / it's what our collective ancestors did / it's what people in underdeveloped parts of the world still do, that it is somehow better or reflects some greater insight or reflects a norm that we should aspire to. It's a very weak and fallacious argument. What my ancestors did only has validity as input into what I do if there is some proof that their way had better OUTCOMES. It's fashionable for people who haven't read a history book to conclude that people were kindler / better / gentler in the unspecified Way Back When and therefore Their Ways must have been superior and we should go back to them, but like I said ... that's people who haven't read a history book (and, who don't understand that what has been "natural" has varied widely across cultures across time, as if one would actually expect that 16th century Peru and 8th century India and 10th century Poland and 19th century Papua New Guinea all had the same "natural" ideas on childbirth, weaning, baby sleeping, etc).
From Alexis:
Naturalistic fallacy - the idea that because something is "natural", it's inherently superior. It's the basis of MDC.
Basically, it fails because Mother Nature is satisfied with "good enough". It's perfectly OK if 5% of people die, just not 50%.
(I'm mildly crunchy, but deeply cynical, which is why I could never drink that much organic fairtrade Kool-Aid.)
From Susanne:
"I don't know the numbers that I'm defying, but I *feel* that my baby is safest when he is in close proximity to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a lot of trouble accepting logic that implies that being *with* me puts him in danger."
I don't know if you are wrong or not -- and my argument here has never been from a safety perspective -- but it's an empirical claim. Either it's safer or it's not, and your feelings have little to do with it either way.
From Susanne:
"I'm mildly crunchy, but deeply cynical, which is why I could never drink that much organic fairtrade Kool-Aid."
LOL - nothing "natural" about fair trade, as trade subverts hunter-gatherer societies!
From Jamie:
Ok, that's what I thought.
Well, I *do* feel that there's something to be learned from how we lived before Things That Go Beep, and I don't necessarily believe that Those Things are always 100% beneficial to us, but as I said before, I trust biology more than culture -- any culture.
From Jamie:
"Either it's safer or it's not, and your feelings have little to do with it either way."
Spoken exactly like Dr. Amy! Thanks, Susanne... I (didn't) miss that. Maybe I'll just take my feelings and crunch them elsewhere. ^_^
From Jamie:
"I would take issue with your last post--again, we're skating close to the naturalistic fallacy."
Now that I better understand the term, I disagree. I don't think saying that I *don't* believe that device developed to better facilitate a recent cultural fad is inherently superior to The Old Way suggests that The Old Way is objectively better.
Basically, I'm rejecting that the fad *is* an improvement. A great deal of technology and study has gone into the fad, but I don't see that as a validation of its superiority.
From A Sarah:
I'm saying that I don't understand how a very recent CULTURAL development is safer for my child than a timeless biological constant.
Personally, I'm very leery of sanctifying biology in this way. For one, I don't believe we have any access to what body parts "mean" without a cultural filter. But more to the point, it seems like extremely fertile ground for a lot of patriarchal constructs. I mean, for example, how many times have the voices of the patriarchy looked at penises and vaginas and said, "See? It's biological. Women are inherently passive, and men are inherently active," and then gone on to legitimate rape? Rape makes perfect biological sense; one might say women were "evolved" or "designed" for it because otherwise women would all have teeth down there, or men's penises would be too floppy.
From A Sarah:
I'm just posting this to see whether my previous comment - that I wrote a moment ago - will show up if I do. At the moment it seems to have disappeared.
From A Sarah:
Okay, it did. Never mind.
From Susanne:
"Well, I *do* feel that there's something to be learned from how we lived before Things That Go Beep"
What culture and what time frame are you considering as part of that "we," however? See, part of what you see on MDC is this desire to return back to the olden days. Yet these olden days are spectacularly ill-defined. What century are we talking about? What specific culture? Why that time and why that culture? Is there a time / culture in history that you believe had objectively better results or outcomes than today, such that their techniques (if you will) are to be emulated?
These are very serious questions, by the way. You can only argue that there's a Way Back that is worth going to, if you isolate which of the many, many Way Backs you're thinking about. Otherwise, you're making the assumption that everything shrouded in the mists of time was the same Way Back (and that it was all good).
On MDC, their ill-defined Way Back always seems (at least to me) to have some Celtic / pagan components to it (dancing under the light of the moon type of thing). It's a culture that many of them have some intuitive linkage or good feelings towards, as reflecting a Better Time and Place. Well, why those? I'm willing to bet it's because most MDC women are of Western European background. And so they conceptualize life Way Back that way, without even realizing that hey, at the same time the Celtic / pagan goddesses were dancing to the light of the moon, totally different "natural" norms surrounding childbirth / parenting were going on in Africa, in China, in India, etc. Which of those is more natural?
From Alexis:
OK, the reason I said that it skated close to it is that you framed it as culture vs biology, new vs old. It's not quite full on fallacy since you didn't say, this is biology and therefore it HAS to be the best way. But, you're going towards that, and I'm always leery of it.
As it happens, I do have some sympathy for your argument, because it's not unreasonable to assume that mothers have a desire to protect their children and that contact with young is an important part of keeping predators away. But that doesn't equate to newfangled cultural adaptations not having an edge by certain measures. It's perfectly possible for crib sleeping to be the safest way to sleep, without it being "best" in all respects. People, just like nature, make tradeoffs.
From Susanne:
"Well, I *do* feel that there's something to be learned from how we lived before Things That Go Beep"
If humans were satisfied and happy with the things they did and how they lived before Things That Went Beep, then why did humans exert their considerable ingenuity to create said Things That Go Beep? Any "product" (and I'm including philosophies) is created because it serves a need that isn't being met by the available options. Epidurals were created because many women found childbirth excruciatingly painful. Multiple bedroom households were created because as people got wealthier, they desired more space. Formula was created (and wet nurses used prior to that) because women either couldn't or didn't want to nurse. Homebirth is becoming more popular because women are dissatisfied with some of the attention they get from mainstream HCP's. Etc. Whether these things are improvements or not from your standpoint is your call, but evolutions / inventions don't occur unless they address something people are dissatisfied with.
From Jamie:
"Personally, I'm very leery of sanctifying biology in this way."
My intent is not to sanctify anything. I just trust biology more than culture when it comes to child development because babies and toddlers operate at a different level of socialization than (most) adults. I have no way of knowing when their social conditioning starts to regularly trump their instincts (though I'm suspecting early school age), and I definitely don't know when they develop enough context to understand (like we do) that we are not apes in trees. Well, my 4yo would probably rather be an ape in a tree. Or maybe a pirate in space. But probably a different subject entirely.
I don't think biology is some sacred truth, but I do think it offers more reliable information than culture, which varies wildly and shifts frequently.
From Jamie:
"And so they conceptualize life Way Back that way, without even realizing that hey, at the same time the Celtic / pagan goddesses were dancing to the light of the moon, totally different "natural" norms surrounding childbirth / parenting were going on in Africa, in China, in India, etc. Which of those is more natural?"
Well, none of them. This is why I rejected organized religion as a teen: I refused to believe that one 'story' was correct at the expense of all the rest.
Please don't lump me in with MDC.
From Susanne:
"I don't think biology is some sacred truth, but I do think it offers more reliable information than culture, which varies wildly and shifts frequently."
Ah! But you have defined biology as the *assumption* that babies innately need the presence of mother in the same sleeping quarters to sleep well, and that such is a biological truth - and that using a crib or other location is subverting biology (even if baby seems happy enough, etc.). And I think if there is any such tendency, it's highly individual. Your baby might need that - because of your gene pool, his personality, etc. Mine might not. There's no universal innate inherent, any more than there is a universal level of shyness that your baby and my baby might have or a universal level of musical talent or artistic ability.
The other point that I'd make to yours is that when you say "I trust biology more than culture", it presupposes that you are enlightened enough to discern what is biology from what is culture. But differnet societies took biological facts and drew different cultural interpretations of what those facts meant over time (e.g., Culture A put babies to breast immediately; Culture B thought colostrum was bad and so delayed baby at breast; Culture C put mom in charge of infant care immediately; Culture D had female friends care for baby and mom did no baby care for the first month). Each of these "natural" cultures were working with the exact same biological facts and observations, yet they overlaid very different interpretations of what those facts MEANT or what "should" be done. How do you know that your view of the facts is any more stripped-away from culture as anyone else's? Put another way, you and I are *both* equally "victims" or more accurately products of culture in what we're saying and what we believe.
From Jamie:
"Whether these things are improvements or not from your standpoint is your call, but evolutions / inventions don't occur unless they address something people are dissatisfied with."
No argument here.
There's something about what came first, independently sleeping babies or babies rattling around in my head, but I can't make sense of it, and it's late. I guess I should take my co-sleeping baby of to our unsafe adult bed and endanger him with my proximity.
From Susanne:
If it works for you as the means by which all get enough sleep, does it *matter* if it's natural or not? I guess I'm asking what's more important, the natural-ness or the outcome.
From Susanne:
I was not clear on this part, so let me make it more clear:
Biological Fact: Mom produces colostrum shortly after birth.
Culture A: The natural thing to do is put baby to breast immediately; colostrum is good.
Culture B: That's the body clearing itself out of yucky stuff and it's not very healthy at all. The natural thing to do is to delay baby at breast til colostrum is gone.
Same biological fact; both cultures think that they're being equally "natural" in their reaction to it. Indeed, both reactions are cultural, not natural.
From Jamie:
"The other point that I'd make to yours is that when you say "I trust biology more than culture", it presupposes that you are enlightened enough to discern what is biology from what is culture. But differnet societies took biological facts and drew different cultural interpretations of what those facts meant over time."
....why do you think I look at chimpanzees? ^_^
Well, all mammals, really. Newborn mammals all behave in very similar ways to meet very similar needs. There's my biological constant.
I also think you can tell a good deal about the kind of environment/care an organism prefers/thrives in by observing it for a while. It has very little to do with enlightenment. Sure, I learned somewhere along the way that flippers are for swimming while wings are for flying, but I'm not sure how that can be called be cultural filter.
But like I said, I'm very tired, and probably not making much sense.
From Jamie:
"If it works for you as the means by which all get enough sleep, does it *matter* if it's natural or not? I guess I'm asking what's more important, the natural-ness or the outcome."
I'm all about problem-solving, so I think I honestly say the outcome. I tend to think that outcomes are improved by not fighting with natural tendencies, but to be fair, I probably just prefer them. Like I said before, I'm a 'path of least resistance' parent. I'm not going to spend 40 minutes patting a baby's bum or prying my eyes open at the headboard to stay awake long enough to put him back in his crib. I'm going to curl up with him so that I can snooze too, or tie him into a sling so that I can pat his bum *and* make my coffee at the same time. I do what works until it stops working, and I find, overwhelmingly, that what works best for me is not fighting with my child's inherent preferences.
From Susanne:
Well, all mammals, really. Newborn mammals all behave in very similar ways to meet very similar needs. There's my biological constant."
Well, yeah, but mammals don't have split-levels to house the fam in . Nor do they need to be at a high cognitive level to drive the car or operate the stove safely. It takes more mental cognition to navigate our environments than it does for mammals to navigate theirs. We also have higher expectations for our offspring; to the extent that most mammals could even conceptualize what they want for their offspring, it would be merely survival, not self-actualization, security, etc.
From A Sarah:
I don't think biology is some sacred truth, but I do think it offers more reliable information than culture, which varies wildly and shifts frequently.
And I believe that you can't really oppose "biology" and "culture" so neatly, as though they are discrete quantities with no overlap. So when you look at a baby and think, "Oh, it's clear that babies were evolved to X, Y, and Z and therefore X, Y, and Z should be the default," you are likely bringing a lot of cultural assumptions to bear when you decide what counts as natural vs. unnatural, snuggled up vs. at a distance, helpless vs. independent, pertinent to mothering vs. irrelevant to mothering, etc.
Just like someone who looks at penises and vaginas and says, "Rigid penis, vagina that can't put up a fight. Women's biology means that they're sexually passive and exploitable." Well, sure, it looks like that if you come in with a certain set of preconceived ideas. But what if someone else came in with a different set of preconceived notions and so said, "Ah-ha! The penis has to go into the vagina for procreation to occur. This shows how men are meant to be surrounded and protected by women, at least once they've become sexually active." And, well, sure. It all depends on what you've already decided is true, likely without even realizing it.
I'm not explaining this well because I'm going through a great deal of professional stress at the moment and took something to help me sleep, only... it didn't. Can someone else say it better?
From A Sarah:
Also, Jamie, I doubt that a lot of moms seek out the paths of *most* resistance. But not every path has obstacles in the same places. For our house, sleep training was the path of least resistance. Really truly. For everyone. Including the kid... not that I think it wouldn't have been okay to sleep train just because I needed the kid out of my dingdang bed. But in our case, this was easiest for all. Maybe my son's not really a primate? Or else I'm either lying or giving an incorrect version of events? (I don't think you're saying that... but, really, how *do* you account for instances where sleeping next to mom really isn't what makes everyone happiest?)
From Susanne:
"But in our case, this was easiest for all. Maybe my son's not really a primate? Or else I'm either lying or giving an incorrect version of events? (I don't think you're saying that... but, really, how *do* you account for instances where sleeping next to mom really isn't what makes everyone happiest?)"
Exactly!
Or how do you account for mothers not having "instinctual" needs / desires to co-sleep? Because I gotta tell you, I don't think it ever even occurred to many women, which sort of puts the lie to the innate / instinctual. Yeah, you could argue they were socialized to crib-in-nursery-down-the-hall as the norm, but I suspect you're equally socialized to baby-in-same-bed as the norm.
Just like the old canard that the definition of tasteful is something I can afford and the definition of gaudy is something I can't -- I think we all see the things that we're attracted to as instinctive / instinctual and the things that we're not attracted to as obviously the prduct of faux social conditioning.
From Esther:
Or as I like putting it: It's innate human nature to create culture.
From Liz:
I do what works until it stops working, and I find, overwhelmingly, that what works best for me is not fighting with my child's inherent preferences.
And what if, as a toddler, your child's innate preference is not to wear shoes (or clothes at all) and snack all day long on chocolate biscuits as opposed to eating crunchy vegetables?
And do all chimpanzees thrive? Quick glance at some figures seemed to imply that quite a high proportion of chimpanzee mothers (especially young ones) want nothing to do with their young, and quite a lot of the infants don't make it to adulthood. And unrelated females would play football with them. Chimp grannies seem pretty good though. So what about the present cultural preference for keeping granny out of the picture?
From SarahNicole:
@Jaime: " trust biology more than culture -- any culture."
Well, as Esther said, "Or as I like putting it: It's innate human nature to create culture."
Also, the more non-human primate research you read, the more you'll read arguments about which non-human primates have at least rudimentary culture themselves. So, which sample of chimps do you mean? And, when you say you look to chimpanzees, do you mean bonobos, or the more common chimp species? Again, I'd suggest the Sperling article, because it goes into the very meanings we human primates put on non-human primate behavior, something Sperling argues we've done as it became less acceptable to use "primitive" -- especially non-white -- humans as the measuring stick for the "natural" versus "cultural" comparison.
From Caryn:
Of course they'e (people who cosleep for ideologival reasons) read McKenna.
Right. He's indexed in PubMed and has a whole academic infant sleep center. It goes back to that whole thing about which authorities you accept, and why. I think it would be possible to argue against his claims, but so far there's just the assertion that, even properly done, cosleeping is more deadly, because the data is suggestive of a correlation. Some of McKenna's data is suggestive of a protective effect. Epidemiologic data is often untrustworthy. Who's right?
Jamie, it's: because it is the case that X has such and such natural property, X is good. But I'm not sure I understand you entirely as claiming that we ought to or that it is good to cosleep because it is natural to cosleep; there seem to be some elements of the empirical claim that coslept babies (and possibly their mothers) thrive on certain markers in comparison to crib bedded babies. (Or perhaps even just that *your* coslept baby thrives on certain markers in comparison to putting him into a crib, which is certainly what I'm claiming.)
In particular, you've said that you reject the claim that crib sleeping is an improvement in the absence of good data showing that, right? And as I understand Dr. Tuteur and Esther at the top of the thread, we don't actually have that data. Instead we have a suggestive epidemiologic correlation because of a change in data reporting.
From Esther:
Caryn:"Right. He's indexed in PubMed and has a whole academic infant sleep center. It goes back to that whole thing about which authorities you accept, and why. I think it would be possible to argue against his claims, but so far there's just the assertion that, even properly done, cosleeping is more deadly, because the data is suggestive of a correlation. Some of McKenna's data is suggestive of a protective effect. Epidemiologic data is often untrustworthy. Who's right?
"
McKenna's data is a bunch of contradictory physiological factoids that don't even come close to suggesting a protective effect to cosleeping. And no evidence, epidemiological or otherwise, has suggested that cosleeping is safER than not (just that it might be AS safe).
From Caryn:
McKenna's data is a bunch of contradictory physiological factoids that don't even come close to suggesting a protective effect to cosleeping.
And that's exactly what obstetricians have always said about Brewer's diet. But it doesn't work, as an argument or as a strategy, because it is just an assertion and you've not provided a reason to believe the assertion is true. I know it's a pain in the ass to take down every single fallacy in a bad argument, and to provide counterevidence, but it's the only thing that works.
Biologists tried ignoring creationists on the grounds that their claims were patently false, too. Now they're 50% of the US population and they're voting against funding. As a strategy, it doesn't work at all.
And no evidence, epidemiological or otherwise, has suggested that cosleeping is safER than not (just that it might be AS safe).
So if there's data suggesting that it might be as safe, how can it be clearly more dangerous? What's wrong with the data suggesting that it's just as safe?
From Susanne:
Safety isn't the only criterion that people use, though, in making decisions.
From Susanne:
"And if nightweaning happens before a year, does the baby still STTN during teething/gross motor milestones?"
Going upthread, but mine slept through the night at 5 months (3 months adjusted age) at around 12 pounds, and yes, they STTN with the exception of unusual circumstances (like taking ill suddenly). It's also pretty much what the doctors told us to expect, and it's pretty much what my mother experienced with her children and my siblings experienced with theirs. Not a lot of fuss about the whole thing,and no "procedures" that needed to be followed. Nighty-night and off we go. Everyone's "natural instincts" seemed to be that this was a fine approach that resulted in a heck of a lot more sleep for everyone than the months of broken, uninterrupted sleep I hear about from people who are never fully asleep because baby is there with him and they react to every rustling, or because they're repeatedly putting an older child back in bed. Maybe it's genetic or maybe it's luck. I don't know.
From Liz:
What I find so fascinating is not just the biology versus culture strand, but received wisdom, changing fashion and how mothers learn to mother. In my day, co-sleeping was unquestionably regarded as both dangerous and unwise, and the horror stories stressed the suffocated and overlain infants. I think I would have quite liked to snuggle up with mine,(I certainly did enough of it with toddlers and older children) but it was, then, unquestionably regarded as Bad Mothering. I am pleased to see that those myths are being dismantled, but nonplussed that it is now the epitome of Good Mothering, and the assumption that today's mothers have access to wisdom that other generations were denied. It is all very relative folks. On another board, their is a discussion going on about adults who were AP.d who, it seems, did not grow up to be wonderful, well balanced individuals who cope effortlesslessly with the pressures of modern life, but feel, as adults often do, that the actions of their parents screwed them up. Do as you please, do what works for you, do, as most of us do, what seems right - but don't count on the outcome being Superchild.
From Susanne:
"I also think you can tell a good deal about the kind of environment/care an organism prefers/thrives in by observing it for a while."
Right. But if I observe your baby, who cries / screams / doesn't sleep unless he's cuddled up with you, and then I observe my baby, who enjoys cuddling just fine during the day but is happy to lie down in a crib at night and go night-night, what kind of observation can I make about babies *in general*? See, you seem to be arguing that babies are [b]innately [/b] the first way and that the babies who aren't have just gotten used to their natural nature being subverted so the poor things have just given up.
And as for the whole family thriving, it's kind of hard to argue that the crib folks have the same level of preschooler-won't-stay-in-his-bed-issues than the co-sleeping folks do. Of course the co-sleepers have a greater incidence of that, precisely because whether it's *innate* and reinforced, or *trained* and reinforced, their children seem to need the presence of the parent and react more strongly to that withdrawal or lack of presence.
Put another way, I think that a 4 yo who can't sleep in his own bed, and understands at some level that mommy used to let me in bed and now she says no, is FAR more damaging than an infant who sleeps in his own crib and occasionally fusses in doing so. Actually, I think there is no comparison between the two.
From SarahNicole:
Given the Caryn's comments above, here's something else that might be appropriate for discussion on this blog: http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/01...w-they-tell-us/
Alot of what we seem to discuss here has to do with research, popularized distillation of that research, and ultimately the cultural practices we are implementing, defending, or condemning based on those readings of that research. And other meaning-making worldviews, which are not based on systematic evidence...
From Mama Liberty:
"Put another way, I think that a 4 yo who can't sleep in his own bed, and understands at some level that mommy used to let me in bed and now she says no, is FAR more damaging than an infant who sleeps in his own crib and occasionally fusses in doing so."
Huh? There are lots of things that a child has to let go of as he grows older.
Susanne, I have no problem with anybody choosing NOT to co-sleep or with the fact that women might find it easier NOT to. My problem is that there is very strong bias from health "authorities" to pressure families against the practice with no sound scientific evidence. And furthermore, cosleeping does make breastfeeding possible for many women who would otherwise give it up. Young babies need to nurse every two hours or sometimes even more often. Prohibiting cosleeping causes problems for many women who want to breastfeed. (Please notice I said *want* to breastfeed. It is no skin off of my back if you want to formula feed and sleep train, or whatever else you want to do.)
From Jen:
"On another board, their is a discussion going on about adults who were AP.d who, it seems, did not grow up to be wonderful, well balanced individuals who cope effortlesslessly with the pressures of modern life, but feel, as adults often do, that the actions of their parents screwed them up."
Please tell me where this is, Liz. I've been on the look-out for something like it for awhile, out of curiosity, but haven't really found anything yet
From Susanne:
"Prohibiting cosleeping causes problems for many women who want to breastfeed."
It would seem to cause or exacerbate problems for those women who are *like you* - for whom the idea of lying in bed and being nursed upon gives you better sleep than waking up to walk down the hall in the middle of the night. It would not cause problems for those women who are not *like you* - who find the idea of getting up to walk down the hall preferable to the idea of having broken, interrupted sleep all night long and who would not sleep well with another person in the bed.
From Susanne:
"Put another way, I think that a 4 yo who can't sleep in his own bed, and understands at some level that mommy used to let me in bed and now she says no, is FAR more damaging than an infant who sleeps in his own crib and occasionally fusses in doing so."
"Huh? There are lots of things that a child has to let go of as he grows older."
Sure. But the child who has been happily sleeping in own bed / crib for a while doesn't have anything to "let go" or to angst about in the first place!
From Mama Liberty:
"It would not cause problems for those women who are not *like you* - who find the idea of getting up to walk down the hall preferable to the idea of having broken, interrupted sleep all night long and who would not sleep well with another person in the bed."
Well, Susanne, I believe that wrt to breastfeeding and cosleeping that most women *are* like me. Keep in mind, that I am talking about BREASTFEEDING mothers, and for the purposes of this discussion I am talking about young, exclusively breastfed infants. I was a breastfeeding peer counselor, ran a breastpump rental business and come from a family of breastfeeding women. I have had exposure to hundreds of breastfeeding mothers. For the newborn/young infant period, most (not all) women sleep better, have longer breastfeeding duration and are happier when they breastfeed and cosleep. Personally, I believe that sleep training might be a good option for some women, but if we are talking about a breastfeeding infant, I think it is inadvisable until they are older and breastfeeding is established. Just my .02!
From Mama Liberty:
"It would not cause problems for those women who are not *like you* - who find the idea of getting up to walk down the hall preferable to the idea of having broken, interrupted sleep all night long and who would not sleep well with another person in the bed."
Well, Susanne, I believe that wrt to breastfeeding and cosleeping that most women *are* like me. Keep in mind, that I am talking about BREASTFEEDING mothers, and for the purposes of this discussion I am talking about young, exclusively breastfed infants. I was a breastfeeding peer counselor, ran a breastpump rental business and come from a family of breastfeeding women. I have had exposure to hundreds of breastfeeding mothers. For the newborn/young infant period, most (not all) women sleep better, have longer breastfeeding duration and are happier when they breastfeed and cosleep. Personally, I believe that sleep training might be a good option for some women, but if we are talking about a breastfeeding infant, I think it is inadvisable until they are older and breastfeeding is established. Just my .02!
From Liz:
It is one Esther's Minstream Parenting Blog. Like this, not definitive, but suggestive.
I do think that being a mother is an impossible job - at least if you want guaranteed outcomes. What works well with one child may not with others. What we attribute our grown-up troubles too is so individual. I have had several interesting conversations with my sister and with my younger daughter, about internalised feelings of self worth, and where they come from. I never met my husband's mother, but as far as I can tell, she was an attentive and devoted mother to her adored only child. I have a lot of sympathy for her approach, and think I would have liked her. Not sure it did my husband any favours though. Sooner or later, you have to recognise you are not the centre of everyone's universe.
From Caryn:
Safety isn't the only criterion that people use, though, in making decisions.
Of course not -- that's why I nodded at the idea that I was maximizing certain markers when I coslept my son, namely the ones that had to do with the amount of sleep everyone was getting -- but Esther has been making an argument about safety.
From Jolene:
"Well, I *do* feel that there's something to be learned from how we lived before Things That Go Beep, and I don't necessarily believe that Those Things are always 100% beneficial to us, but as I said before, I trust biology more than culture -- any culture."
Spoken like a true biologist.
Those of us with Biology degrees (myself included) see the world through eyes somewhat different than those with ... um, dare I say... "softer" ones?
From Jamie:
I haven't read everything here, and I don't have time now, but I wanted to pipe up quickly on the subject of granny chimps.
The toddler I watch during the day was an incredibly colicky newborn -- the kind who screams for most of the day, is impossible to settle, and very quickly depletes her mother's emotional, mental and physical resources to a dangerous level. She has a very involved grandmother, who stayed with the new family for at least a month. I have no doubt that the mere presence of another interested party improved outcomes in that situation, but in practice, Nana had no better notion of how to soothe Baby than her Mother did, as in Nana's culture (Manhattan, circa 1975), it was appropriate for her to have a baby nurse for a month after both of *her* children were born.
This (obviously) is an argument for culture/society improving outcomes, but that's because new mothers aren't abandoned in nuclear families.
Thinking of my mother, I have no doubt that she would be wonderful *with* a baby in her arms, but the advice she gives from 1000 miles away is useless. It's all about weaning and STTN, criticizing my choices, and validation of her own superior mothering (yes, I know this all filtered through our very fractured relationship, but that certainly limits her effectiveness as an interested party).
I'm also realizing that my argument for innate biology is weaker than I originally suspected (and not for all the brilliant reasons that y'all are sharing that I just can't follow). It's because we've been defying our biology for decades (and I think that's an excellent thing -- don't get me wrong). The baby who struggles until he gets his needs met is no longer favored in certain situations, and now the survival of all kinds of babies is more or less assured in our culture.
Example: Parent/caregiver decides to enact a strict 4hr feeding schedule.
Result: Baby does not receive enough nutrition to thrive.
Baby 1: Screams from hour 2-4, wasting precious calories
Baby 2: Sleeps between feedings, therefore conserving calories and ultimately has a better outcome in the same environment.
And lastly, if I can find it...
"We also have higher expectations for our offspring; to the extent that most mammals could even conceptualize what they want for their offspring, it would be merely survival, not self-actualization, security, etc."
Honestly, this is what appeals to me about mammalian parenting. They feed and clean the babies. They feed and clean themselves. They all fall asleep at night in a heap. They don't stress about what the *books* say their baby should be doing, or threats about what their baby *might* want next month. They don't make choices at 2 months designed to maximize their potential at 12 months. 2 months is 2 months, and 12 months is 12 months.
And yes, as a relatively sane adult human, I have an obligation to do one (or two) better and not eat or abandon my young.
From Mama Liberty:
Jamie, I am enjoying your comments.
From Jolene:
"Epidurals were created because many women found childbirth excruciatingly painful."
Woah! I'm falling off my chair laughing. {the precursers to} Epidurals were created for use in OTHER surgerys, and it wasn't until later than somebody slapped their forehead and said, DUH, I bet this would work well for childbirth too!
A second point about co-sleeping and predators.... we no longer need to worry about our children and wild animals, thank goodness. What is the main predator of children today? Any guesses? Yup. "daddy" or "uncle fred" Male family members/friends. Hmmm, maybe keeping the kid next to Mom isn't such a bad idea after all.
From SarahNicole:
@Jolene: "Spoken like a true biologist.
Those of us with Biology degrees (myself included) see the world through eyes somewhat different than those with ... um, dare I say... "softer" ones?"
Really? My husband is a biomedical engineer and cardiovascular physiologist, and he has a startingly similar take on the biology/culture continuum as his qualitative sociologist wife. :-D
From SarahNicole:
@Jolene: Except when Mum is doing the bulk of the physical and psychological child abuse.
From Susanne:
"Well, Susanne, I believe that wrt to breastfeeding and cosleeping that most women *are* like me. Keep in mind, that I am talking about BREASTFEEDING mothers, and for the purposes of this discussion I am talking about young, exclusively breastfed infants."
There's no *inherent* reason to believe that the distribution of the ability to sleep well with others in the bed and/or to react well to being nursed upon would be any different among women who chose to breastfeed than among the general population of women. Choosing to breastfeed may change what you're willing to put up with (i.e., you may decide you'll live with half-awake-half-asleep-all-night long because you believe that bfing is worth it for other reasons) but it doesn't change your (adult) inherent sleep needs.
From Susanne:
"What is the main predator of children today? Any guesses? Yup. "daddy" or "uncle fred" Male family members/friends. Hmmm, maybe keeping the kid next to Mom isn't such a bad idea after all."
Well, if you want to co-sleep with your kid because you're afraid your husband or Uncle Fred is going to go down the hall and molest baby, go for it, but that won't enter into my decision-making at all, and if I have reason to believe that husband or Uncle Fred is a molester, then co-sleeping is sort of the least of my issues, no?
From Elizabeth:
It helps that we aren't into that whole cultural "nicely kept house" thing
Well yeah, but you're a dirty, dirty hippie with no self-esteem. Just don't act all surprised if your kid doesn't get into the best school.
From Elizabeth:
who would not sleep well with another person in the bed.
Oh, so that explains why their sex lives are so pathetic.
Oh wait.
From Jolene:
"@Jolene: Except when Mum is doing the bulk of the physical and psychological child abuse."
I am talking the physical here....psychological is a different animal, but Yup, I agree.
Statistically speaking, It's Mom's partner who's doing the abusing, not Mom. But there is the rare situation when it's Mom, I agree.
From Jolene:
"Well, if you want to co-sleep with your kid because you're afraid your husband or Uncle Fred is going to go down the hall and molest baby, go for it, but that won't enter into my decision-making at all, and if I have reason to believe that husband or Uncle Fred is a molester, then co-sleeping is sort of the least of my issues, no?"
I agree with your point Susanne.
Remember however that Mom almost universally claims not to have known about the abuse. (we can have a whole nother conversation about if we believe that or not) *IF* we accept that Mom didn't know, then my point stands.
I responded to the claim that the biological adaptation of sleeping with an adult is no longer protective, because we don't need to worry about wild animals taking bites out of the baby.
I am asking if that is true. The Predator may be different, but it might still be protective against the predator of the day to sleep with an adult - preferably Mom.
From SarahNicole:
@Jolene: I think you were specifically talking about sexual abuse, which is a subset of physical abuse, and no, statistically speaking, it isn't Mom's partner doing the bulk of the non-sexual physical abuse. It's Mom. In the U.S. an estimated 75% of sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by men, and over 70% of neglect, and 80% of medical neglact is perpetrated by women. What actually counts as physical abuse? Putting hands on a child, or affecting the physical outcomes of a child?
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Child Maltreatment 1997: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999).
Although here's an interesting deconstruction of those sorts of stats: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/
liz...statistics.html
Linda Gordon's work on the historical emergence of the definitions of child abuse and neglect is fascinating. I have a student and colleagues that study violence in women, and as with much in the criminal justice system, our definitions of what constitutes a crime, and what constitutes a perpetrator, matters.
From desiree:
i've been thinking about the intersection of safety data with parental decision making. it's really new to our generation, i think: the availability of information that paints one parenting choice as objectively superior, in terms of safety, to another. it is really interesting, but i'm going to try to keep my thoughts brief (little DD will be up soon. she's a sleep in her stroller, if anyone cares. )
how worth it is to pin down that co-sleeping (i'm making up numbers here) increases the baby's risk of death by 1 in 10,000? how, supposing this is absolutely true, does this affect any individual family's choice to co-sleep? seems like most of us have kids that in the end, made the choices for us. i think all it really does it induce guilt in the moms that feel like co-sleeping is the only way they'll maintain their sanity and sleep. and yes, moms. becasue i've yet to come across the message board filled with dads debating this stuff.
the information really can be a curse. i mean, we all want to know, and distributed over a population of 4 million babies, well, a 1 in 10,000 risk means 400 babies that might die each year. not so trivial anymore.... but 1 in 10,000, when i'm up at 3 with my baby, desperate to sleep? it's not going to affect my choices.
and, how sucky would it be to have all of your choices made for you by safety margins of 1 in 10,000?
i hope this made sense. i'm a reluctant co-sleeper, so my head is a bit fuzzy. :-P
From Liz:
I honestly can't understand why anyone wants to prioritize biology as a guide to child care. So infants and to some extent mothers are a bundle of instinctual drives but if you want to raise a human baby you are going to have to deviate radically from those drives. Valorising those that fit with what you want to do anyway seems illogical to me.
From Jolene:
"our definitions of what constitutes a crime, and what constitutes a perpetrator, matters."
Oh, I have no doubt.
I was using a much narrower definition of abuse I guess. The definition has seemed to explode of late, and I haven't quite caught up. Last I heard, spanking could be considered abuse.
I'll check out your source.
I was referencing the fact that deaths of children occur almost entirely at the hands of men. (although I've just lately heard of a horrific case where the mother finished the baby off) And physical/sexual abuse (hands ON) occurs mostly at the hands of men (the woman's parnter usually).
I'm not talking about the sort of "abuse/neglect" that the child might need a shrink for later.
Fact of the matter is, predators still exist, although not in the form of a wolf sneaking into a cave. And our biological adaptation to seek the protection of the primary caregiver at night might not be an unnecessary relic after all.
From Jolene:
SarahNicole, From your source
"Note that each counted incident of reported abuse is per occurrence per child, and not per perpetrator. (So that, e.g. one woman caring for 4 kids who didn't send them to school or didn't take them to the dentist when she should have in the opinion of some DCF worker is responsible for four reported counts of neglect-type abuse "perpetrated by a woman," whereas one man's rape of one child would be one count of abuse in the reported statistics.)"
Yeah. That's exactly what I am *NOT* talking about. Although the conclusion of the paper agrees with me, although it's amazing that they do, *EVEN* when they include instances of not taking a kid to the dentist!!! (?) One further note, they removed all statistical abuse of the kind in the night-sleep example above. Abuse that happened when a child was under the care of a COUPLE together, was removed for ease of calculation.
"Children are at astronomically greater risk of physical abuse in the care of a man than in the care of a woman."
From SarahNicole:
@Jolene: "I was referencing the fact that deaths of children occur almost entirely at the hands of men. (although I've just lately heard of a horrific case where the mother finished the baby off) And physical/sexual abuse (hands ON) occurs mostly at the hands of men (the woman's parnter usually)."
I'm still not sure this is true though, given how violence by women is hidden and often invisible. I've heard of -- and read research on (this is the topic my student did her thesis on) -- A LOT of "horrific" cases of women who kill their children, and they're not by any means all that recent... My student was looking at both the actual incidence, and the media representation, of such cases... Yes, horrific. But nearly always presented as MORE horrific than such cases perpetrated by fathers...
From Jamie:
"So infants and to some extent mothers are a bundle of instinctual drives but if you want to raise a human baby you are going to have to deviate radically from those drives. Valorising those that fit with what you want to do anyway seems illogical to me."
Basically, Liz -- I'd rather deviate according to my baby's cues and my own needs than deviate because Dr. Ferber or Dr. Weissbleuth or Dr. Sears think I ought to, in part because I have problems with authority and 'rules,' and in part because I think I can better meet my child's immediate needs if I parent in the present to the best of my ability.
I talk about biology because I believe that observing all infant mammals tells us more about what human newborns *need* than reading up on adult sleep disorders.
From Susanne:
"Children are at astronomically greater risk of physical abuse in the care of a man than in the care of a woman."
That may very well be. Is the biological "conclusion" from that fact to never leave child with any male, even the father? See, this is what I mean. That's a "natural" conclusion to the above observation, but it's irrelevant as to how I'm going to run my life, where I wouldn't have the eensiest bit of hesitation to leave my children with my husband for any period of time.
And in *today's* society, if you (gen) are seriously co-sleeping because you fear dh, you've got far bigger problems to worry about than bedsharing.
From Susanne:
"Basically, Liz -- I'd rather deviate according to my baby's cues and my own needs than deviate because Dr. Ferber or Dr. Weissbleuth or Dr. Sears think I ought to."
But that's precisely what other women are doing too! They're seeing that their babies fall asleep quite nicely in the crib and appear happy upon awakening, so that's what they do! How is that any less instinctive for me than co-sleeping was for you?
YK maybe for *you* 5 minutes of fussing induces uncomfortable feelings in you about an unhappy childhood, troubled relationship with mother, extrapolating that baby is feeling abandoned, and the overwhelming desire to do anything to stop it. Maybe for *me* 5 minutes of fussing induces the feeling of "ah, he just needs to get out some noise in the only way he knows how before he settles down contentedly, but all is certainly well and this is of no meaning or significance." Who are you to say your reaction is more "instinctual" or "innate" than mine? Who are you to say you're doing a better job of reading your baby's cues if two years from now you're frequenting parenting message boards all bleary-eyed saying how do I get this kid out of my bed?
From Susanne:
"I'd rather deviate according to my baby's cues and my own needs than deviate because Dr. Ferber (etc)."
So is the woman who puts her baby in the other room because she likes her privacy at nighttime and the baby seems to enjoy the solitude.
Really, I think your E -extraversion is part of the thing here. As an I, it makes all the intuitive sense in the world to me that a baby, like anyone else, after being stimulated all day, would be happy in his or her "own space" to contentedly fall asleep, and doesn't need people hanging all over them. For you, as an E, it makes all the intuitive sense in the world to you that a baby would want company because who doesn't want company at all times? So *I* extrapolate that keeping the baby with me is potentially overstimulating for baby, whereas *you* extrapolate that putting the baby in the crib is lonely-making for baby. We're just reading it all through our own lenses, but you're claiming that your lens is inherently more innate.
From Caryn:
Put another way, I think that a 4 yo who can't sleep in his own bed, and understands at some level that mommy used to let me in bed and now she says no, is FAR more damaging than an infant who sleeps in his own crib and occasionally fusses in doing so.
Why can't they grow out of it, though, the same way they grow out of staying at home with a caregiver and start to go to school? The same way they used to grow out of short pants and into long pants and boots?