When I decided I wanted to write a story about letting your baby cry it out, and my fine editor at Chicago Parent approved the idea, I never thought I’d be sitting here, 10 months later telling you that I let my research for the “balanced” story get to me. The story came out last month, but I had long since decided that I wasn’t going to let my baby cry it out anymore. If you remember, I posted about this topic for the very first blog post for Second City Baby. It got quite a few comments and I was pretty adamant about my position – I let my kid cry and self-soothe until he figured it out and slept through the night.
But I’ve changed. I wrote that article balanced for a reason, but what I didn’t publish were the notes from my lengthy and informative conversation with Dr. James McKenna of the Mother-Baby Sleep Laboratory at Notre Dame. I don’t know exactly why – if it is because it’s my second child, if it’s because I already did the CIO and he was sleeping great at night, if it was his soothing voice and demeanor, or because I really believe what he says is the truth – but our conversation hit a nerve. From the moment I wrote up my notes from the interview, my husband and I have been running into the baby’s room as soon as he makes a peep. He literally doesn’t cry for more than 1 minute for anything now. I think my four-year-old is now a terrible sleeper because I never went into console him when he cried at night as a baby. Now he fears sleeping alone. I don’t blame him. I’m not advocating for attachment parenting or co-sleeping. Neither or for me, but I now feel strongly that I cannot leave my one-year-old crying unattended. So I’m not.
I know some of you commented on my last post on the topic and asked me in person about why I changed my mind, and so after combing through the conversation I had with Dr. McKenna I wanted to post some of the soundbites and excerpts that really struck a chord with me and that weren’t published in my article. I’m not an expert in this area and I’d never claim to be. I’m just a mom who had access to an interesting expert on the topic sharing some information. I’d love to know what you think. Would you change your tune?
Notes/ Excerpts from interview with Dr. James McKenna June 2010:
About babies from “Westernized” cultures. (The thought being that parents from other civilizations and countries are much more relaxed about sleep patterns of their babies):
What we’ve done to babies in western culture- we’ve socially constructed ideas about the way we want them to be and live and the problem is that babies will never get the cultural memo because we are never as close to our genes or without culture and learned behavior as we are when we are babies.
They [babies] want to be held and with their parents. This is what 100,000 years of human evolution history will be. no cultural memo will be negated and no science can’t disprove why babies might cry. The reason they call their parents is it is in their adaptive best interest and their bodies are designed to do it.
That there’s no such thing as a “good” baby:
We know culture has taught us certain things and we’ve risen to a certain concept of the good vs. bad baby. And there is no such thing. There are just babies. The good baby is labeled because they sleep through the night, there are no such thing as bad babies- it’s an ideologically based value – some middle class white guy who never took care of babies made this up so everyone strives to get this “good” baby. babies are designed for different things.
On the generalizations of “proper” sleep behavior:
The stringent and terrible generalizations of what babies should be are generalizations like weapons, nothing to do with scientific evidence of who babies are and what they do, but they are all generalizations of how a western 6 month baby should do. Any child is not independent. The harder you push at the start, the less confident they will become. They need to secure all the confidence and affection and touching, and grooming as much as a child can possibly get when they’re young to get them to be resilient, adaptable, and be with others.
Even with all you hear with the solitary sleep baby being independent never had one scientific study shown that to be true. Lingering mythology that have been disproved when the child becomes an adult.
On “self-soothing”:
There is no developmental advantage to self soothing. never even meant to me any concept of development – not a developmental milestone.
You’re told everywhere it’s important and you think it’s emerging from research – we have the least happy and the most exhausted and the most well read parents in the world. and we are the least satisfied parents in the world with our children sleeping behavior. That’s because all of our parents are reading ideas of what their babies should be and how they should sleep and it has nothing to do with babies but with cultural ideologies which are recent developments.
(I think it was that soundbite above that really got me.)
On breastfeeding babies and sleep (again, not promoting breastfeeding vs. formula feeding, just reporting my notes):
The whole paradigm of infant sleep was modified based on bottle fed babies. The 6 month old breastfeeding baby wakes up to feed. they priviledged sleep over baby nutrition – growing a brain in the best possible way and it doesn’t sleep through the night because it’s drinking mothers milk and it burns calories quickly and they certainly don’t need to consolidate their sleep at 4 months of age.
(My notes – he studies breast fed babies) – how sleep architecture- two related processes – metabolism and delivery of breastmilk- critical processes of how babies sleep – the smells, the affect of giving the milk, and then once the baby takes the milk it changes heart rate and body temp and those are critically important.
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I’m excited you had the chance to do this research! So fascinating. We co-sleep and don’t do CIO but that’s just how we’ve adapted over time as parents according to our baby’s needs, and some life experience with neurological disorders and reading related studies.
I admit I get very frustrated when parents “expect” the baby to just sleep when they think they should sleep and so forth. Just all the expectations in general turn me off, but I understand and don’t mean to judge, it’s just that whole cultural thing that disappoints me and I wish more people “got” it, and were open to these ideas (no matter if they apply them to their own lives or not.) I guess I’m tired of being considered the wacky one.
Steph
this was so nice to read. I hope this gets around so maybe people are more understanding of my choices.
Kudos to you for being bold enough to change your mind publicly. Sometimes as bloggers, we tend to feel judged if we sway on our thoughts and decisions. I, for one, try to give writers the utmost freedom when it comes to things like this. I know that my blog is ever-evolving because *I* am ever-evolving…as a wife, as a mom, and as a writer.
P.S. I have read McKenna’s work extensively – and we don’t do CIO either.
We have co-slept with our boys and never did CIO, but we did reach a point with both boys (around 15-18months) when it was time for them to learn to sleep by themselves in the crib without needing to nurse during the night. When we had to transition them, we did “daddy boot camp” where my hubby took over night duty for a few days and did let them cry for small increments of time until they figured out that mommy wasn’t coming to nurse them and they fell asleep. I guess I just share that to say that we all do what we feel to be best for us and our kids. I know a lot of moms who have done CIO and it seemed to work for them. That is not my chosen method but I don’t think it makes either me or them better mothers. But so many people seem determined to associate this moral aspect to it, like one is BAD and the other GOOD. We all choose what we think is best out of love for our babies.
I love his point that we have created these cultural constructs about what a baby “should” do and and when they should do it. I think that gets us mothers all worked up about things that we probably should just take as it comes. My four year old still has trouble riding a tricycle. My 2yr old doesn’t know his colors yet. Kids reach different milestones at different times. The constant comparing to our friends or our “research” probably does make us a little neurotic. It can be helpful too, of course, but in moderation. I am SO preaching to myself right now!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
Interesting… I think that there’s some comfortable middle space where we give developing children (not newborns) the space to figure out if they’re ok before we rush in to fix everything. I strongly believe in self-soothing, but not as some rule that can’t be broken. Actually, I also believe that we, as parents, need to believe in our own instincts AND understand that our children are not merely some extension of ourselves. They are their own people and they come into this world with some personality traits that are unique. We used the same basic sleep techniques initially on both kids… a gentle version of cry-it-out, where we did allow them to cry, but not to the point of hysteria. We checked on them, calmed them down, and then put them back to bed. And then we adapted based on how each child responded. My son, who is 5, rarely wakes up in the night. Sometimes he has a nightmare and calls us, but it’s highly unusual. My daughter, who is 3, hasn’t been a strong sleeper since she was born. She rarely sleeps through the night. We are typically in her room 2-3 times a night. What works for one doesn’t work for the other and what we can expect from one isn’t what we can expect from the other. That’s the way children are. But guess what? Here we all are with whatever crazy parenting choices are parents made. There is no perfect parenting approach, just the best approach for you.
SO interesting! I think I’m in the same place you are… changing my tune with my second baby. I let my first “cry it out” in order to learn to self-soothe, once I knew his tummy was full, and I had reasons for doing that, and I still think it was the best thing for us given his personality and our situation at the time (he would have had us up all night to PLAY, plus with two working parents, we needed to sleep.) Now my second is 6 mos old, and his personality is TOTALLY different, and I have yet to let him cry without comforting him. He’s been sleeping through the night (6-8 hours) of his own volition since 6 weeks old, but if he does get up at night, I figure it’s because he needs something, so I nurse him or sleep with him or whatever. And we all get to sleep, which is what we need, and it works.
I fully believe in doing what works for you – it’s so personal. That’s my mantra!! Thanks for the support.
I don’t blame you for changing your mind. I went to both my kids when they cried as babies but we followed the Baby Whisperer method which is pick up put down. Sounds weird but it worked for both my girls and neither have sleep issues. They both sleep in their own bed and go to sleep at the same time each night with no issues.
I don’t really agree with CIO method because you never know what your baby could be trying to communicate. If our baby cries (she is 1 yr) or wakes after being put to sleep we go through the checklist: change diaper, check if she is hot/cold or hungry. Hungry is not the norm at this age but if she is freaking out I will give her water.
We thought the pick up put down method may have been beginners luck but I started sleep training the minute my second was born. Both started sleeping through the night around 10-12 weeks. We also use pacifiers to help the girls soothe but those go away by 16 months.
I personally love the Baby Whisperer book but whatever method is chosen for sleep training consistency is key. It’s definitely not easy and taking turns with your husband/partner is key. Two people should not be sleep deprived every night.
My favorite book! The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems: Sleeping, Feeding, and Behavior–Beyond the Basics from Infancy Through Toddlerhood [Book] by Tracy Hogg
Thanks for the follow-up post. It was interesting, as are all these comments.
I think that part of the problem is the over-generalization in the use of the term “CIO”. Because what one person means when they said they did “CIO” is not what the next means. For example, I let my daughter cry when being put to bed at around 16 weeks old, and she learned to self soothe and go to bed with no crying at all after about 2 nights of that. (I know, we were lucky. But I also think that I could tell from knowing my own child that she was ready for that – it’s like she *wanted* me to stop bouncing her so much!) : ) But now that she’s over a year, she’s such a great sleeper that of course if I hear her cry in the night I will go to her immediately – I know that it’s not just a “protest” cry but an indication that she needs me. So, while you might describe that as “I don’t do CIO anymore,” I wouldn’t – I’d just describe it as we already did CIO, it worked, and now we’re just at a different stage in life.
I feel bad that people like Steph (of Adventures in Babywearing) feels judged for her choice to co-sleep, because that should be any parent’s choice. It’s funny to me, though, because I sometimes feel the opposite — it’s like I have to be embarrassed to admit publicly that yes, I did let my child cry a bit as part of a sleep training process. It seems to me that many proponents of co-sleeping (or of avoiding CIO all together) are very vehement in their accusations that any amount of crying equates to ignoring your child’s needs and wants completely. I would have to respectfully disagree. We followed the Weissbluth book and listened to our child’s cues, and that’s very different from just ignoring. (Let me add: I am by no means saying Steph said any of that! I’m just saying some people are very judgmental about it.)
I’ve been lucky to have 2 kids that, as soon as they were no longer getting up in the night to be fed, pretty much stopped getting up in the night. I know that’s not the case for all parents, and some people deal with multiple night-wakings for years. So again, it’s all very cicumstantial. Maybe my approach would be different if I were dealing with a child like that; maybe others would take a different approach if they were dealing with a child like mine.
P.S. I’m pretty sure my kids are both going to get up about 4 times each tonight now that I have typed such things here. I’ve probably jinxed myself by describing their sleep habits so glowingly. ; P