Kathy, I appreciated your post -- and want to assure you that I certainly did
not mean ALL HCPs ("others") who tell parents to let the baby cry it out in
order to get the parents off their backs....however, in my nearly 30 years of
working in MCH, I HAVE seen that happen too many times than I care to count.
And I'm not talking just about pediatricians/physicians. I'm talking about
nurses, friends, grandmothers, books, self proclaimed "experts" in child
rearing (Ezzo and others of his ilk), parenting programs, etc etc.
You said,
<< So, I always did urge parents
who were concerned about the issue of "baby sleeping through the night"
that 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. The baby falls asleep initially
while laying in the crib, and is better able to fall back to sleep later,
laying in the crib. This really seems to hold true in practice. But once
the child develops the "habit" of waking at night and receiving positive
attention from the parent(s) while actually nursing very little, it is a
VERY difficult habit to break, and often leads to parental tension and
exhaustion. >>
My question is, how do you know the baby isn't hungry? Nursing 'very little'
may simply be efficient nursing that is making up for the not so good
nursings during the daytime that babies from 4 to 6 months often exhibit
because they are going through some specific developmental steps including,
but not limited to, major distractibility. One of the issues I deal with in
my office when I'm evaluating a breastfeed of an older baby (4 to 8 months or
so) is not being able to talk to the mother unless the baby is virtually
nursing in her sleep, because she's so interested in the world around her.
Nighttime nursing is very important in these cases so the baby gets some
really good feeds.
For many moms who return to work at around this age, this is the baby's
opportunity to touch base w/ mom after being gone from her for 9 to 10 hours
5 days a week. But I understand the tension between babies' needs of being
w/ mom, and mom's needs for sleep. The question becomes, whose "needs" need
to be served? What we may be perceiving as a "bad habit" in the baby may be
just as legitimate a need as the mom's need for uninterrupted sleep???
Lots of questions....
Jan - in Wheaton, who will henceforth attempt to keep her frustrations with
"others" to herself.
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