For
the past few months, I have been getting several emails a day
containing passages such as this, from an email titled “More Help for
Your Troubled Napper”:
Difficult sleepers don't necessarily outgrow their problems, so simply ignoring the issue can result in a lifetime of sleep deprivation issues, such as obesity, depression and behavior problems... not to mention the stress on you as a parent.
Yes, I signed up for these. The Sleep Lady, Baby Sleep Site, etc.....each one lured me in with its success stories and miraculous testimonials. Each one made me feel like a failure every time I lay down for a nap with Gracie on my chest, or rocked her back to sleep in the middle of the night. This email’s nod to parental stress is ironic, as this approach to sleep causes more stress than it resolves, or so I have come to believe.
And only now am I beginning to question the wisdom and utility of such alarmist messages about the paramount importance of sleep. I had fully bought into this idea, which pervades baby books, blogs, and even the weekly emails I get from the hospital where I gave birth, that sleep is absolutely critical to your child’s development, so much so that it trumps all else. Without adequate sleep, the unrelenting message goes, her brain will wither, neuronal connections won’t be made, and because she was only sleeping an average of 10 total hours a day, Gracie would end up a moody, fat, insecure child with ADHD and learning disabilities (seriously!). According to this logic, sleep is so critical that if your baby isn’t sleeping through the night and taking regular naps by 4 months of age, you should devote your every waking minute to figuring out the art, science, and magic of how to get her to sleep better. Half-hour naps, like Gracie takes, are called “disaster naps,” and lead to the cardinal sin of all sleep-obsessed acolytes: allowing your baby to become OT (overtired).
And the worst part is that every sleep expert contradicts another sleep expert. You can find equally compelling advice for: following your baby’s cues vs. putting her on a schedule; putting her to bed early vs. keeping her up later to make her sleep later; and, of course, letting her cry all night, never letting her cry, and everything in between.
I am finally starting to realize: This is crazy!
The “Teaching Your Child to Sleep” message board at BabyCenter.com is proof of that. There is a 500+-page thread on “early waking” alone, where SAHMs (they've gotta be) obsess over how to solve their babies’ problem with EWU. (There is also a big old list of acronyms that you are supposed to read and master before you even start posting.) Some of these ingrates actually have babies who sleep through the night and nap for hours, but are “desperate for help” because LO (“little one”) wakes at 5 a.m., before the textbook 12 hours of sleep have elapsed. They seem to spend all day micromanaging their LOs’ naps and feedings, trying to tweak ounces in bottles and nap start-times in 5-minute increments.
I just rushed into Gracie’s room and picked her up to comfort her after she woke up crying suddenly. I eventually saw a you-know-what (see previous post) on the wall, and think it may have been crawling on her and woken her up! AGGGHHHH!!!!!
My first impulse, after comforting her and putting her back down in the crib, was to rush to my Kindle (which contains five different sleep books) or the computer to look up what I was supposed to do, according to sleep training dictates. The sleep experts would’ve likely have had me wait at least 15 minutes before going in. The fact that I picked her up as soon as I heard her cry, because it sounded different than her usual wake-up cry, would have been described as a sure path to failure.
But guess what? I put her down, still awake, and she fussed a tiny bit before falling back asleep. She may wake up again in an hour. She may wake up again every hour all night. I’ll keep going as I have been, trusting my liberal arts education-imparted critical thinking skills (still paying off those loans, in case you’re wondering) AND the sleep training knowledge to help me figure it out. And then I’ll think of Mad Men, and remind myself that at least I’m not Betty Draper. I only let Gracie play with dry cleaning bags when she is closely supervised.
Difficult sleepers don't necessarily outgrow their problems, so simply ignoring the issue can result in a lifetime of sleep deprivation issues, such as obesity, depression and behavior problems... not to mention the stress on you as a parent.
Yes, I signed up for these. The Sleep Lady, Baby Sleep Site, etc.....each one lured me in with its success stories and miraculous testimonials. Each one made me feel like a failure every time I lay down for a nap with Gracie on my chest, or rocked her back to sleep in the middle of the night. This email’s nod to parental stress is ironic, as this approach to sleep causes more stress than it resolves, or so I have come to believe.
And only now am I beginning to question the wisdom and utility of such alarmist messages about the paramount importance of sleep. I had fully bought into this idea, which pervades baby books, blogs, and even the weekly emails I get from the hospital where I gave birth, that sleep is absolutely critical to your child’s development, so much so that it trumps all else. Without adequate sleep, the unrelenting message goes, her brain will wither, neuronal connections won’t be made, and because she was only sleeping an average of 10 total hours a day, Gracie would end up a moody, fat, insecure child with ADHD and learning disabilities (seriously!). According to this logic, sleep is so critical that if your baby isn’t sleeping through the night and taking regular naps by 4 months of age, you should devote your every waking minute to figuring out the art, science, and magic of how to get her to sleep better. Half-hour naps, like Gracie takes, are called “disaster naps,” and lead to the cardinal sin of all sleep-obsessed acolytes: allowing your baby to become OT (overtired).
And the worst part is that every sleep expert contradicts another sleep expert. You can find equally compelling advice for: following your baby’s cues vs. putting her on a schedule; putting her to bed early vs. keeping her up later to make her sleep later; and, of course, letting her cry all night, never letting her cry, and everything in between.
I am finally starting to realize: This is crazy!
The “Teaching Your Child to Sleep” message board at BabyCenter.com is proof of that. There is a 500+-page thread on “early waking” alone, where SAHMs (they've gotta be) obsess over how to solve their babies’ problem with EWU. (There is also a big old list of acronyms that you are supposed to read and master before you even start posting.) Some of these ingrates actually have babies who sleep through the night and nap for hours, but are “desperate for help” because LO (“little one”) wakes at 5 a.m., before the textbook 12 hours of sleep have elapsed. They seem to spend all day micromanaging their LOs’ naps and feedings, trying to tweak ounces in bottles and nap start-times in 5-minute increments.
I just rushed into Gracie’s room and picked her up to comfort her after she woke up crying suddenly. I eventually saw a you-know-what (see previous post) on the wall, and think it may have been crawling on her and woken her up! AGGGHHHH!!!!!
My first impulse, after comforting her and putting her back down in the crib, was to rush to my Kindle (which contains five different sleep books) or the computer to look up what I was supposed to do, according to sleep training dictates. The sleep experts would’ve likely have had me wait at least 15 minutes before going in. The fact that I picked her up as soon as I heard her cry, because it sounded different than her usual wake-up cry, would have been described as a sure path to failure.
But guess what? I put her down, still awake, and she fussed a tiny bit before falling back asleep. She may wake up again in an hour. She may wake up again every hour all night. I’ll keep going as I have been, trusting my liberal arts education-imparted critical thinking skills (still paying off those loans, in case you’re wondering) AND the sleep training knowledge to help me figure it out. And then I’ll think of Mad Men, and remind myself that at least I’m not Betty Draper. I only let Gracie play with dry cleaning bags when she is closely supervised.
I promise this will be my last post about sleep. Next post will contain something about Ben. Like maybe how much fatherhood has changed him. No, wait, let's do it now:
Our lives are slowly getting back to normal. Ben made microwave popcorn again (his most guilty pleasure) for the first time since Gracie was born (the noise! Oh no, the noise!), but he muffled the noise by pressing a throw pillow against the microwave.
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