Dear all:

I am a little confused about Micaela's comments.  But I will attempt to explain.  The myth that babies sleep longer is what parents cling to because it is PARENTS who want extra sleep.  As far as I'm concerned, when babies do not have health problems related to their feeding (such as indigestion from formula or from being fed too much too quickly) they sleep just fine.  The definitions of sleep were predominantly made when babies were trained to sleep by ignoring their cues until they gave up.  I think the studies in orphanages where infants and young children never cry are indicative of how meaningless it can be to assume that because a baby gives up crying it is automatically perfectly fine.  So, I really do not believe much of the research done on infant sleep because we are still contaminated in many parts of the world by an artificially imposed pattern of sleep.  

The right answer really is how long parents sleep because it is the parents who will change their parenting practices because of their perceptions of how much sleep they are getting and they will then look for justifications for changing their own babies sleep patterns.  They may very well say they want their baby to sleep longer but they really mean THEY want to sleep longer.

The one study I read in detail was not about bottles, it was about formula.  There is also probably a difference between feeding from the breast and breast milk feeding, but I have not yet read such a study.  

The study I read used wrist monitors.  It was not about self reported sleep.  Furthermore, infant sleep can be confounded by the possibility that those who use formula are more likely to put their infant in a separate room and not respond to that infant.  So these infants may not be responding to the formula so much as to the separation and the constant deprivation of parental response.  

Best, Susan Burger

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