AWCH Sleeping Through the Night

“Does he sleep through the night?” This is the question I have been asked most in the last 11 months. And the answer often elicits some kind of character judgment. If he sleeps through the night, he is a “good baby”. If not, he’s not openly declared a bad baby, but what is Mommy doing wrong? Great – sleep deprivation and feelings of inadequacy.

Sleep-deprived parents can at least take heart that we are not alone. Judging by the number of advice books available on the topic, we have plenty of company. Most of these books claim to offer the one true path to enlightenment and shut-eye. A quick perusal, though, shows paths that could not be more divergent. If you look online, you will read that followers of various paths can get downright rabid when discussing the evils of their opponents. So what’s a mom to do?

I am not an expert on getting children to sleep. I have one 11-month-old child and we’re still working it out. Our nights have improved dramatically, but he won’t be getting his diploma from the Nap Academy anytime soon.

What can I tell you about getting your child to sleep? Almost nothing – because I don’t know your child. And neither do these authors. I’m not saying there are no experts in the field. But you need to find the approach that is right for you and your child. If you look at it that way, having more than one available path is great. All of these different methods have worked – you need to decide what you feel comfortable doing and what your family needs.

Richard Ferber heads the Sleep Lab and the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital in Boston. His 1986 book, Solving Your Child’s Sleep Problems, has produced a great deal of debate, much of it by people who have never read the book. Ferber maintains that since all of us naturally wake up several times a night, children need to learn to get back to sleep on their own after the age of about 6 months. Our job is to help them learn to do that, as opposed to getting them back to sleep by rocking, carrying, singing, etc. This almost invariably involves crying, but probably not for as long as you think.

William Sears is the father of eight children, author of 24 books on child care and Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. He is credited with the term “attachment parenting” and advocates co-sleeping for the first several years of your child’s life. To quote: “If you were an infant, would you rather sleep alone in a dark room behind bars or right next to your favorite person in the whole wide world and inches away from your favorite cuisine? The choice is obvious.”

Neither approach is for everyone. After the age of 5 months, my baby’s idea of co-sleeping was to see how far he could stick his fingers up my nose. Nobody was sleeping. At 7 months, I read Ferber thoroughly, decided he wasn’t cruel, and took that path. I am convinced it was the right one for my family, and I encourage you to read his entire book before you let anyone convince you that Ferber is mean. But explore the whole spectrum – read book reviews on Amazon.com, check out a few baby websites, run a search on Google. There is no “one true path”.

And as for those parents who claim their babies slept through the night from 8 weeks? Well, that’s terrific, except that 1) some of them are not telling you the truth, 2) others have a very different definition of “through the night” and 3) many are still suffering from dementia and just plain forgot what actually happened. So be careful out there when gathering advice. If it makes you feel bad, it’s probably not helping.