Harvey wrote:
"Yes, crying is a very late cue for breastfeeding, but most parents don't
want to use early cues of hunger during the night.  They want to wait
until the baby is good and hungry so they eat a little more milk a
little less often."

I wonder who taught parents to have false expectations of their babies? Who has taught parents that it is safe, even preferable to ignore and control babies? I remember when my 14 yr old son was an infant and I walked into the ped's office one day to see a Ferber poster plastered on the door to an exam room. I had plently of time to read it while waiting. I told her how disturbed I was by it and after hearing her excuse about how parents want easy solutions like this, I promptly changed peds. Today, most parents are still being told by doctors to do some form on non-responsive parenting as a means to manipulate infant behaviour.

I think peds have a responsibility to infants to understand the physiology of the mother-infant ecosystem. Frankly, I think it is the single most important subject that every ped should study (and every parent as well). I think peds have a responsibility to tell parents the truth about the needs of infants. (Of course, I also think peds have a responsibility to tell parents that artifical milk is dangerous, so they clearly aren't listening to me).

If you want to teach parents ways in which they can ignore their baby's communication, or even physically control and suppress it, then shouldn't you first tell them that this is just what they are doing? And shouldn't they be told that this is an experiment w/ as-yet-unknown consequences? I wonder why we are behaving as if it okay to flagrantly ignore or intentionally suppress an infant's cues with no evidence that it is safe to do so? The world of an infant in utero is the mother's body as experienced from the uterus. When a baby is born, he reaches out for that same familiar environment. I cannot believe a blanket satisfies that need, but I can sure believe that the warm, breathing, rythmic, soft, embracing, life-giving and life-affirming body of the mother can.

Based upon Harvey's posts, I am convinced that he has some useful ideas for difficult situations. The problem with publishing a book for the general public is that the general public comes to believe (or be validated in a prior belief) that they all have difficult situations and that normal infant behaviour is a problem to be solved rather than a journey to muddle through together. I think my biggest problem with all of this swaddling is that it seems to be all about feeding and not much about mothering. Babies can survive if they are fed, but they can only thrive if they are mothered.

I believe with all of my heart that babies have the tools to guide us in knowing them, in understanding them, in meeting their needs. This swaddling at night process appears to be all one-sided, as if the baby has become a passive, rather than an active participant in his own experience of the world. Is there harm in this? I don't know, but I bet there is.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

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