Dear Dr. Fahey,
Your web site address was posted to a list of lactation professionals
(LactNet). You may be getting a number of emails from concerned health
professionals with regards to your "Dreambaby" program and your claim that
it is healthy for newborns and young infants to sleep for many hours each
night.
As a biological anthropologist with over 20 years of research,
teaching, and publishing experience in the areas of breastfeeding and child
growth and health, I am concerned about your "Dreambabies" program. Normal
human infants sleep in short increments, around the clock, interspersed with
frequent breastfeeding, around the clock. The work of Dr. James McKenna
(Department of Anthropology, Notre Dame University) has shown that when
mothers and babies sleep together -- the evolutionary normal, adaptive
situation -- babies arouse more frequently, spend less time in deep sleep,
and are more likely to be roused from apnea episodes by their mother. All
of these conditions protect the child from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Dr. McKenna's research has also shown that co-sleeping mothers and infants
breastfeed more throughout the night and breastfeeding has been shown to
have many significant benefits for infants and children. Maternal prolactin
production in response to suckling is greater at night, helping the new
mother establish a good milk supply in the critical early months, before
control of milk production switches from primarily endocrine to primarily
autocrine production.
In addition, while some younger infants will sleep for 4-6 hours at a
stretch from about 3-6 months of age, once they start cutting teeth they
often begin waking frequently at night again. For sensitive babies, this
can last from 6 months to 2 years of age, when all the deciduous teeth have
erupted. If parents realize that this is normal behavior, and that their
infant is uncomfortable due to teething, they are more likely to be happy to
respond to their child's nighttime needs. If, on the other hand, parents
have been taught that children don't *have* legitimate nighttime needs and
ought to be sleeping through the night, then they are more likely to resent
their child's disturbance of their sleep, and to ignore their baby's needs
for comfort and breastfeeding.
Finally, those quiet minutes of middle-of-the-night interaction between
mother and child, when all the world is quiet and a mother can focus
completely on her baby free of daytime distractions, are moments to be
cherished and prized.
For all of these reasons, it is important to realize that human
children are not supposed to be sleeping through the night at 1-2 months of
age, regardless of how convenient that might be for the parents. It
increases the child's risk of dying from SIDS, and it interferes with
establishing a successful breastfeeding relationship.
I don't suppose that one email will lead you to discontinue this
program (and philosophy). I do hope that you will recognize your clear
ethical responisibility to inform parents of the possible side-effects of a
program like "Dreambabies" -- a higher risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,
a higher risk of breastfeeding failure, and the loss of cherised memories of
spending time with the child free of daytime distractions. If parents still
choose to utilize this program (whatever it consists of) then at least they
have been fully informed. I would appreciate a reply. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University
http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html
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