Here's what I felt was more suitable for the NYTimes article:

This article was a PILOT study. There has been a lot of very substantial research on RESPONSIVE feeding of infants and young children leading to healthy intakes. This means you watch for and respond the infant and young child's cues and interact with them. The wider body of research does not support encouraging very young infants to sleep rather than eat. The hypothesis that more sleep would decrease obesity appears to be based several studies of CHILDREN who were three years old and one study that lumped sleep patterns among infants at 6 months, 1 year and 2 years. The neurological sleep patterns of the 2-3 week old infants who initiated this study are completely different from those of older infants and young children. Infants of this age need to feed frequently because their stomachs are too small to contain much milk without really overriding their own hunger and satiety cues. The drop out rates were very high and average weight-for-length among the infants who did not drop out was LOWER than normal while the infants were not forced to sleep longer was NORMAL. The lower than average weight-for-length is consistent with other research has found, not responding to early hunger cues can lead to failure to thrive. Many infants who fail to thrive early on, end up overcompensating later and being at higher risk of obesity. Publishing this in the NYTimes is only going to stress parents unnecessarily when it is too soon to draw any firm conclusions.

Best regards,
Susan E. Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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