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Subject:
From:
"Sara D. Furr" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:46:33 -0600
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Hello everyone.  This is my first post to Lactnet but I have been reading and learning from all of you for over one month now.  I am an over-40 mom currently at home with my two children (Nat, 4 1/2 and Abby 2 1/2), expecting #3 in May.  My training is in social psychology but I have worked primarily in the healthcare market research and health insurance industries as a data analyst.  I am also a LLL Leader.

I have read with interest the recent threads on sleep disorders and the possible link to attachment parenting and/or cosleeping.  I didn't respond previously, but now the subject has been raised again.  And I want to jump in with my own observational studies of my sample of N=2 children.  My children have been exclusively breastfed, Nat weaned at age 3, Abby at 2 1/2, both have slept with me (my daughter still does, Nat is on a futon next to our bed).  Yet Nat went through a period of almost a year, at age 2, when he had both nightmares and night terrors.  During the night terrors, he would not wake and my strategy was to just hold him close and talk softly to him until he eventually went back to sleep.  I kept a journal in the end to see if I could determine what precipitated the night terrors.  But they eventually just went away.  Now he occasionally has nightmares, usually related to a specific stimulus he encountered during the day (a scary story, etc.).  Abby has also had some sleep problems, primarily talking in her sleep and grinding her teeth.  She has even told me jokes in the middle of the night (of the knock-knock joke variety).  Actually, if we didn't cosleep, I may not have even been aware of Abby's "problems."

My experience leads me to believe that breastfeeding and cosleeping do not prevent sleep disturbances.  Perhaps like ear infections or juvenile diabetes or leukemia, sleep disturbances may be more prevalent in children who were not breastfed or who did not cosleep.  But I think that there is also a component which is heritable.  I myself have walked and talked in my sleep as did my grandfather before me.  So it has never surprised me that my children do this.  

I searched online for the article referred to by Nikki but could not access the February, 2000 issue of the Journal of
Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.  I do think it would be interesting to analyze sleep disorder data in children according to variables such as parental style.

Sara Dodder Furr, MA, LLL Leader
Lincoln, Nebraska

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