Generation of the quick fix June 24, 2008
Posted by Megan in Beware the Baby Trainers, History: Cultural Beliefs and Society Pressures, Human Development/Mental Health, Myths: Sleep through the Night/Self Soothing.add a comment
I’m guilty
Yes me
I wanted out
I’d had enough
Can I give it back!
Oh man I do remember being sooooo tired. I just wanted someone to tell me what to do…well hey all my life I’d been told what to do…My parents, My teachers, My boss…and then it was up to me to do it all on my own.
It was up to me to make up my own mind on what to do with my tiny little daughter that would just not sleep. No one had told me what to expect…I mean we are all independent adults we shouldn’t need help now should we?
Then it came to me…”well if no one wants to tell me what to do I’ll find a book and learn”. Well that’s what I feel can I can do to fix things, I read and the I try it out. For others they prefer to ask the experts like Doctors, Nurses, Midwifes and Nannies. Some still feel that its their parents or family that have the answer (well maybe they do depending if the line of information has not been interrupted in the last 150-200 years of infiltration of expert information).
This is all just reassurance…and for some people if they don’t like what they hear they will keep asking until they get what they want. (Like me I didn’t think it was right to let a baby cry themselves to sleep and so I stopped asking the people who told me it was ok and I looked at why they thought that this was so…hence my blog and my look into history and mental illnesses)
One thing that we often forget it that all good things take time.
How long did it take for you to learn how to drive a car? Did you know exactly what to do how to change gears (if you started with a manual like me) could you park the car, do a hill start…all first pop?
How long did it take for you to learn a second language? Did you just listen to your teacher speak then speak back and know exactly what you were saying?
How long did it take you to learn how to cook? Did you know how to buy, prepare, and cook a meal. Did you know how to stir the pot so the food would not catch and burn. Did it just come to you out of the blue that if you wanted to roast some vegetables that you might have to wash them possibly peal them then if its your fancy herb and oil them…then know how long it would take to cook them and when they are done and how hot to have the oven.
Ok I rabbit
BUT my point is
Good things take time.
A baby (person) takes time to learn MANY things and sleep is one of them.
For me we needed a method – a routine to follow (not strictly but lovingly and thoughtful and watching and understanding)
The understanding to take things slowly (thank you Elizabeth Pantley) you may go many nights sitting on the bed in the dark breastfeeding/feeding your bub and as you slowly pop them off and lower them to the bed (feet touching first)…they wake up. So you do it again…and again…until you’ve done it.
Then they wake up in 45minutes time so you go back in and you use quiet words of love and reassurance…and do what you feel is needed….for some its back on the breast for some it’s a pick up and a hug a shhhh and then gently back down on the bed….shhhhh….for others its putting your head down beside your bub while rubbing their back softly humming and shhhhing….and understanding that crying is because they are learning how to sleep…its frustration and confusion but who best to be there but the best parents in the world…..YOU!
Would Letting them Cry Solve the Problems? May 17, 2008
Posted by Megan in Belief in Baby’s Crys: Cry It Out/Controlled Cry, Beware the Baby Trainers, History: Cultural Beliefs and Society Pressures, Myths: Sleep through the Night/Self Soothing.add a comment
“…If a day or two of letting a child cry to sleep would solve all problems, there is no way that the previously quoted percentages would be so high (they are in the book on the other page). In addition, if those who tried it found immediate, simple success, it would be impossible for word not to spread quickly around the world. The truth is that even though cry-it-out advocates try to tell you that it’s a quick fix, it often takes weeks or even months of very intense crying (and very little sleeping) for a child to finally succumb and start sleeping better, only to relapse after teething, illness, vacations, schedule changes, and growth spurts. So to imply that “a few nights of crying” would solve everything is naive and unrealistic….’
This is from one of my new books…Elizabeth Pantley. I’ve been getting new books in the subject of parenting for over a year now. Dave and I were just discussing how far we have come and how educated we are now to what we were before.
We don’t need this book as Ara is sleeping just fine but I’ve become a bit of a “sleep helper” and in my search for help/ideas it seems that information has become very slim as children become older…so the book the “No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers” is just great.
As I have found through my looking over the past year not only does this idea of crying (no matter what type) to sleep it;
1. Does not seem to last and
2. Does not seem to be very good developmentally for a human child
3. Seems to have lasting affects to adulthood (even though some people may not see it as a problem cause they are so wrapped up within themselves – lack of empathy, or they do not realize that the problems they are having stem from childhood)
Not sleeping through the night May 5, 2008
Posted by Megan in Myths: Sleep through the Night/Self Soothing.2 comments
The wish for a child to sleep through the night is a strong one for new parents and one which many parents seem to want no matter what the cost.
But is sleeping through the night a natural thing or even a good thing?
In the article “dreams differed” we can see that it was not until the invention of the light bulb did humans really start to sleep through the night (well some of them anyway).
Up until that light bulb burning at all hours we humans used to lay down with the sun and get up with the sun, but we did not necessarily sleep all the night. Goodness just imagine sleeping nearly 12 hours from 7pm till 7am or in some cases in winter 5pm till 8am (in some countries even longer or shorter). As we can see in the article but also with peoples around the world who do not have electricity this is a time for storytelling, talking, hunting, love making, breastfeeding or catching up on sleep 
.
The question is has this big change in our environment, our way of life has it affected us as humans?
Yes we did have oil lamps and very good ones at that but with the invention of the light bulb in the late 1800’s we also had the invention of sleep training for babies coming into affect.
If people wake up in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning they think something is wrong that they have insomnia or heavens above maybe as a child then never really learn how to self soothe or self settle. This can become a problem the more one thinks about it and worries about it the more one wakes up, rather than thinking its just a natural part of life and waking up in the night is normal. But as we have developed as a culture we have also separated our self off from room sharing so who is there to talk to what can a person do?
Many people who have been subjected to “cry it out” methods will later on in life have very late bed times is this to make sure that they are so tired that they will not wake up – fear of waking up in the night? Is this healthy? A fear of lack of sleep or a fear of not sleeping at the “right” times.
Has the pressure of sleeping through the night affected our adult life too?
Teaching a Baby to Self Soothe April 25, 2008
Posted by Megan in Belief in Baby’s Crys: Cry It Out/Controlled Cry, Myths: Sleep through the Night/Self Soothing.15 comments
When new parents start out life with their new born life, all is new, strange, scary, fascinating and exciting. But after a few days, weeks or months of possibly not sleeping well we as parents start to hear these words.
“Babies need to learn how to ’self soothe’ otherwise they will never be good sleepers”.
I think first we need to look at who is backing this myth and where it has come from.
When I first heard these words it was from one of my Plunket nurses, she said these words to a large group of new mothers, we (the Plunket nurse, new mothers and I) then went on to talk about how to “train” our babies to self sooth with controlled crying (well I of course didn’t encourage CC).
I’m sure there are many other organizations around the world like Plunket who support this idea of self soothing but they don’t seem to have any backing such as research or studies to show that children do in fact become bad sleepers if not left to cry.
Carrying on with my discussion group of new Mothers I would have to say nothing really came of the talk as the Plunket nurse could not commit to any length of time that was safe to leave the baby (this was after a talk which was on the damages to a baby’s brain development from prolonged crying) and no mother there really felt that any time was right.
I feel that this comment by the Nurse about – needing to learn how to self soothe – is very irresponsible, very untrue as well as creating more stress and pressure on new parents. These words are often said to a new parent as something they must do to their children. The parents are left with little guidance or understanding of what “self soothing” actually is and really why they should do it and are the reasons really a part of the parents beliefs.
I suppose we must look at the reasons why we feel we ‘must’ train our babies to self soothe.
For a start, organizations like Plunket, like to enforce cot/crib sleeping and sleeping alone.
Co-sleeping is a another whole question which I have and will answer in time but if you would like to see some good web sites like the Mother Baby Sleep Lab or this article on “why babies should never sleep alone” or Ask Dr Sears about co-sleeping or Ask Dr Sears or Sears again and again or Baby Reference (yes I know this web site needs up dating but it does have really good information) to help you on your way.
In the short we are taught in our culture that babies must sleep alone these teaching seem to be based on fear and sex (the lack of, the seeing of).
Baby sleeping alone can be very draining for parents who then need to get up and down all night to re-settle their children. This is also very draining for a poor breastfeeding Mother who has to get out of bed to go into another room to feed her baby.
So here is born the need to learn how to “self soothe”.
It is born from the myth that children must sleep alone in another room. It is born from the need to quell parent’s fears hearing their children cry out for them in the middle of the night (or even the middle of the day).
It is enforced by organizations like Plunket whose information come out of yesteryear and it is spurred on by “Chinese Whispers” of fear through our communities.
If we take away the idea that children must be in another room to “learn” how to sleep and replace it with they should be with their parents to learn how to sleep…then the whole need for “teaching a baby how to self soothe” becomes a non-event as they learn from their parents each night how to become good healthy sleepers.
Learning by following example or mirroring is how we learn best as young humans.
We as parents also need to learn that this learning takes time and may be done at a different time from other children…but in the end we all do learn how to sleep.
Some more links
As well as these ones here…there are a lot of them at the Sleeping with Natural child and Natural child project
This post from a friend also talks about discipline which I feel very strongly about too (I love the diagram)
Also a post on the Damage of CIO
Also for a bit of history and understanding of where a lot of our parenting styles came from reading this book which is on line is very eye opening….For Your Own Good
For a different view from another person who found me you could try CIO recovery
