It didn’t take me long as a new mom to realize which topics were off limits unless I wanted a lecture or a debate. My decision to both breastfeed and use formula was up there, but my daughter’s sleeping arrangements were even more of a hot-button issue.
“Where does she sleep?” the pediatrician would ask.
I knew the honest answer (she starts in her crib, but almost always ends up in my bed) would run counter to his professional advice.
“It’s just awful to put a baby alone in her own room,” fellow new moms would say, and I would blush, thinking of the effort I went through each night to have my daughter sleep in her crib so I could have some space.
No matter who I was talking to about sleep, I learned to lie.
While that kept the judgments and advice to a minimum, it also meant that I had nowhere to turn to troubleshoot our sleep issues. It was hard to find accurate information on infant sleep that wasn’t pushing one side of the increasingly polarized issue: I was either a cruel mother for letting my child fuss in the crib, or a hippie mom going against medical advice by letting my baby sleep in my bed. Meanwhile, all I wanted was a bit of rest.
Sleep training — the process of teaching babies how to fall asleep on their own and sleep through the night — has become incredibly controversial in the past few years. On one hand, people who are against sleep training claim that responding to a baby’s cries is crucial for attachment, and that sleeping with or near infants is biologically normal. Sleep training advocates argue that healthy sleep habits are learned, starting in infancy, and that training provided the foundation for a lifetime of sleeping well.
Both of these are compelling arguments, and many confused and exhausted new parents are left in the middle, trying to figure out what they should be doing.
“We’re talking a lot about balancing (parents’) needs versus the needs of their kids,” says Melony Williams, the clinical supervisor at TLC Family Resource Center in Claremont. “Coming from a place of attachment, responding (to infants’ cries) helps them feel secure and not responding goes against that. At the same time, we’re in this real world situation where you need to be rested because you need to go to work or because your depression is kicking up.”
Williams said that she doesn’t see many families opting to formally sleep train (there are a variety of methods and books that parents follow to do so). However, she encourages families to find ways that allow both parents to get a four-hour block of sleep, whether by having family members help out, taking shifts during the night, or employing any other plan that works for them.
Dr. Tricia Groff, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, says there are a lot of misunderstandings about sleep training, especially the notion that if an infant is left alone, it will cry and cry.
“It doesn’t involve as much crying as people worry that it would,” she said, noting that sleep training often results in well-rested babies and parents.
Groff, of Hanover, has sleep trained her four children, who range in age from 3 months to 7 years old. When her children were 6-8 weeks old she began putting them down in their crib drowsy but awake, so that they learned to fall asleep without being rocked, nursed or otherwise soothed.
“At that early age we made sure they’re awake so they have that chance to know they have ability to put themselves to sleep,” she said. When children are fed, rocked or held as they fall asleep, that becomes part of their routine and they lose the ability to fall asleep on their own, which is a critical aspect of getting a good night’s sleep, Groff said.
Babies who are comfortable falling asleep on their own can put themselves back to sleep when they wake in the night, which everyone — child or adult — does as part of a normal sleep pattern.
“If they have that skill to put (them)selves to sleep at bedtime they should have it in the middle of the night as well,” Groff said. In turn, this reduces dreaded night wakings.
Many parents are concerned that babies need to be fed at night. Groff said that she follows the baby’s cues here. When the baby sleeps for long stretches a few nights in a row, Groff is comfortable knowing that the baby no longer needs to be fed in the night, but rather wants to be soothed.
“As soon as I get that signal I will put some rules around when I will feed them,” she explained. If a child wakes outside feeding times there may be some fussing or crying before they fall back to sleep.
Groff said that she often sees well-meaning parents trying anything and everything to comfort their tired, crying child, when tears can just be a normal part of transitioning to sleep.
“People feel really worried that they’re emotionally damaging baby by letting them cry, but the baby is crying for (the) same reasons parents want to cry: they want to sleep,” Groff said. “But there’s this misconception that the baby is feeling sad or abandon(ed).”
However, some parents find that following their child’s sleep cues ultimately gets them the most rest.
Aimee Bittinger, of Enfield, has not sleep trained her 17-month-old and has no plans to. On a typical night, her daughter falls asleep in her own cot, but comes into Bittinger’s bed when she wakes for the first time.
“At that point, it’s pretty much out of laziness for me,” Bittinger said. “If she wakes up (to nurse) I barely wake up.”
Bittinger used to get out of bed to nurse her daughter in the middle of the night, but she found that she had a very hard time falling back to sleep afterward.
Ultimately, bed sharing is what worked best for her family.
Bittinger said that many parents don’t realize there are safe ways to co-sleep with a baby, and that there can be compromise in the sleep training debate.
“The middle ground is where mom and dad get some rest and baby is safe,” she said.
Bittinger, a teacher, also points out that she was able to take seven months off when her daughter was born, which gave her more options when it came to sleep. Because she was home during the day she could nap when the baby napped in order to make up for frequent night wakings. Too often, she said, a mother’s work schedule forces her to sleep train.
“It’s a societal problem that we’re not supporting women to have the time off,” she said. “That’s a lot of the reason people are wanting to sleep train at four months when it (might not be) appropriate for babies at that age. In those first few months, working full time would have been really rough and I understand why people have to do other methods.”
Karen Jameson, a registered nurse with TLC Family Resource Center, says that ultimately whether to sleep train or not comes down to an individual family’s beliefs and needs.
“Do what feels right for you and what you need,” she said. And be prepared that once you figure out what works, it could change at a moment’s notice.
But also prepare for a lecture or debate if you’re going to volunteer any information about what you’ve decided works best for you.