I've heard Anne Eglash's version of why babies don't sleep at night and I do believe that plays a role.  I have a different and potentially complementary theory about why they are awake at night based on my son's pet mistakes (little white female mice we bought as pets - that WERE both female) and many other mammals that we had as pets or my parents rescued or fostered (1 basset hound and her 12 babies when the family next door moved and didn't want to disrupt her at the end of her pregnancy by moving) during my childhood.  One of the mice, to my horror doubled her size within 7 days of purchased and produced a litter of 7 pups.  Mice are nocturnal and the mom and the auntie would scurry around for food during the night.  During the day they rested. The pups would feed more during the day.  At night the mom would just leave them behind to eat herself.  Ditto with the bunnies we had, the basset hound, and various other mammals.  When the mothers slept, the the babies would eat.  

So, I think that babies are hardwired for a time when we didn't have an excess of processed food readily available for instant eating.  We used to have to gather, hunt, or (when we finally got agriculture and livestock) tend our food until it was ripe or mature or ready and then process it (kill it, clean it, grind it -- I've actually used a big mortar an pestle on cassava -- it will build biceps better than any body sculpting class) and once we had fire sometimes cook it.  So, I do believe that babies initially ate more at night when we were lying down in our hut safe inside away from the wildlife that might eat us.  In fact, most of the studies in developing countries show that nighttime feeding continues well into the second year of life.

So, I tell parents both theories and how their babies will adapt in a couple of weeks if they get their oxytocin levels up through frequent feeding (and encourage dad to hold the baby at other times) and cosleeping by its proper definition (in the same room) so that their sleep rhythms synchronize and everyone wakes up in light sleep and drifts back into deep sleep while knowing that they have just reduced the risk of SIDS by 36% by keeping the baby in the room with them.  

Best regards, 

Susan Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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