Gonneke wrote,

> My experience, both personal as professional, is that once parents accept
> thair infants' sleeping patterns as normal, they stop fighting them and
> become more relaxed and less fatigued.
> Wonder if I am the only one with a hypothesis like this?
>
No, Gonneke, you're not... I support your hypothesis. This topic comes
up frequently in LLL calls and meetings. I am really concerned about the
tendency to study "sleep disorders" and to conclude that unless an adult
has had seven or eight hours of uninterrupted sleep they are
sleep-deprived. Through most of human history, and in some societies
still today, deep and uninterrupted sleep has been dangerous for adults,
leaving them prey to all kinds of menaces. James McKenna's research on
sleep patterns in infants has clearly shown that co-sleeping nurslings
wake more often and are healthier than others. I think co-sleeping
nursing mothers are also doing what they are biologically designed to
do, and that their frequent waking is healthy. I would not for one
moment presume that mothers of newborn are not fatigued, overwhelmed,
and so on. Telling them that this state is pathological isn't very
helpful. Giving them suggestions about how to get more rest  and about
how to "de-stress their day" is useful. (Mothers of twins are the
world's leading authority on creative ways of getting sleep, by the way
:-) I have to conclude that the people doing the research  were left
alone to cry it out and think that their sleep patterns are normal!
Jo-Anne

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