Kathy Leeper wrote:

"they needed to help teach the baby to go back to sleep when they awaken at
night and are NOT hungry, beginning around 4 months of age. The essential
element in this is putting a baby down to sleep while still awake enough to
be aware of the surroundings."

But how do you know the baby's not hungry? I have seen several mothers who
tried an approach like this and found the baby's weight gained slowed or the
baby even stopped gaining weight altogether.

What do you do when the baby falls asleep at the breast? When the baby
starts to get drowsy, do you remove him from the breast and put him in a
crib? How does this work with letting the baby "finish" the breast and
making sure he gets the hind milk? If he does fall asleep at the breast, do
you wake him up again so that you can put him in a crib awake? (Waking a
baby up so you can put him to sleep seems kind of illogical to me.)

And while saying "the baby falls asleep while lying in the crib" sounds kind
of peaceful, the mothers I know who have tried this say that the baby cries,
and some cry for quite a long time. Some cry until they throw up.The mother
often finds herself also crying. It seems to me that we want to encourage
mothers to be responsive and sensitive to their baby's cries, and if we tell
them they must ignore the crying to "teach" the baby to sleep, how does it
affect their responsiveness and willingness to take the baby's cries and
cues seriously at other times?

Kathy also wrote:
"once the child develops the habit of waking at night and receiving positive
attention from the parent(s)... it is a VERY difficult habit to break and
often leads to parental tension and exhaustion."

I really question whether waking at night is a habit that babies develop.
Surely all babies wake at night, at least in the early months. Night-waking
to me looks more like a developmental stage that babies and children grow
out of at different ages. It doesn't need to be "broken" because it will
eventually resolve itself (just like weaning will eventually happen, too).
When we talk about it as a bad habit, I think it really suggests to parents
that they have done their babies some disservice by responding to them at
night - something I don't believe is true.

My observations have been that when parents respond to their babies at
night, by the time they are older (say 4 or 5) sleep has become an easy, no
problems issue. When their children are tired, they say so and may ask for
someone to come and lie down with them to go to sleep. Within another year
or two they will head up to bed alone when they're sleepy. In some cases,
children will stay in the family bed or want a parent to give them a
"start-off" longer - but I haven't seen one that didn't move out eventually.
No tears, no stress, just a child who is ready to move on.

But the other approach only works well as long as there is a crib to contain
the baby. Once the baby can climb out of the crib, or is in a bed, you have
a new set of challenges. I hear too many stories from parents who have to
lock their toddlers in a room (perhaps with pacifiers and "Loveys" to help
them sleep), who describe their preschooler's bedtime as a long battle, as
they go through elaborate rituals and repeated requests for attention before
the child falls asleep.

When I talk to parents about this, I try first to let them know what is
normal for human babies - including sleeping next to a parent (just like
puppies and kittens) and waking at night to nurse. I tell them that all
babies do eventually outgrow this and will sleep alone when they are ready,
without having to go through any periods of crying. I also talk about how
difficult it can be to respond to the baby at night given the way our
society is currently set up.

Then we can talk about ways that this might be done, so that both parents
and baby can get enough sleep. Sometimes it's just accepting that this is
okay, that you're not setting up bad habits or spoiling the baby. Sometimes
it's putting a mattress on the floor so you can nurse the baby and roll away
without waking him up. Sometimes it's having the parents go to bed earlier
in the evening so they can cope with being woken up a couple of times. Or
parents taking turns being the one to get up. Or any of a hundred other
things...

Teresa Pitman

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