Ah, a sleeping baby. Few things are as sweet and uncomplicated
as the sight of your own little offspring, deep in slumber.
But wait a minute: Is she on her back, her stomach or her
side? Is she in a crib or--gasp!--in your bed? If she wakes
up, will you nurse her back to sleep or let her cry it out?
Is she sleeping on schedule or according to her own little
baby whims?
Tired yet?
We all know parenting isn't supposed to be easy, but I
never imagined that a basic act such as how I put my daughter
to bed could render me a Donna Reed--or a Mommie Dearest,
depending on which child-rearing theory you prefer. Yet
the way we teach our progeny to sleep is the preeminent
controversy when it comes to bringing up baby. A recent
study prompted the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission
to declare it unsafe for infants under age 2 to sleep in
the same bed as their parents--ever. Public response was
nearly hysterical: People were shocked to learn that an
average of 64 toddlers died this way each year, and critics
were shocked by the uproar, pointing out that the mortality
rate is roughly the same for crib-sleepers and bed-sleepers.
Of course it's just one of the issues parents, doctors
and "experts" disagree on, but sleep is the badge that distinguishes
one child-rearing approach from another. Each school of
thought claims to be the definitive guide, so every well-read
mom and dad ends up feeling utterly confused. I, for one,
have a stack of baby books sitting by my bed--about 2,400
pages in all--and I'm still not sure if it's cruel or kind
to make my 3-month-old sleep in her own crib.
When I was a baby, my mom, along with every other mom in
America, consulted one book for the answers: Dr. Spock's
Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock and Michael Rothenberg.
According to my mom's dog-eared copy, your little darling
should sleep "on his stomach from the start." Babies should
not sleep in bed with parents "for any reason," and should
be out of Mom and Dad's room by six months.
For today's mommies, things aren't so cut and dried. While
most mouthpieces agree on the physical stuff (what color
my baby's poop should be, for example), there is no consensus
on the more nuanced aspects of caring for an infant. What
I, and many parents, are trying to figure out is: At what
point are you spoiling a baby with attentiveness, and at
what point are you neglecting him by trying to enforce schedules
and rules?
"Attachment parenting" is one philosophy that's becoming
increasingly popular. A friend gave me The Baby Book:
Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby--From Birth
to Age 2 (Little, Brown) by attachment gurus William
and Martha Sears, with a warning: "You might be annoyed
by this, but it's really full of useful information." How
true that turned out to be.
If you follow the Searses' Baby Book religiously,
you will "wear" your baby virtually around-the-clock, responding
to all of her cues and sharing sleep with her in your own
bed--the government commission be damned! If you're less
committed to this approach (like me), you will pick up the
book from time to time and feel guilty that you're not gazing
lovingly into your baby's eyes 24 hours a day.
Though there is reason to believe that the Searses' approach
is healthy and effective (sleeping with your baby is a traditional
means of bonding in many cultures), their tone makes you
balk. Authors William and Martha (a pediatrician and a nurse,
respectively, and parents to eight kids) modestly call their
book "the new parenting bible of the '90s"--and much like
the Bible, it's full of righteous proclamations and cautionary
tales.
Wondering whether to give your baby a "binkie"? The Searses
don't spell it out for you like Spock did, but they offer
this rhetorical question: "Which do you think your baby
prefers: to drift off to sleep peacefully at his mother's
breast...or to soothe himself to sleep with a tasteless,
emotionless rubber pacifier?" Parents, are you feeling like
selfish cretins yet? If not, then imagine your baby in "his
private room in a wooden cage, peering through the bars."
For many parents, this tone creates a sense that somehow
they are short-changing their beloved babes by trying to
make their own lives a little easier. My friend Kirsten,
whose 3-month-old was still nursing every few hours through
the night, finally bought a videotape called Your Baby
Can Sleep, which, like many parenting books, advocates
teaching your baby to calm himself. After a few nights of
brief crying jags in his crib, Baby Rowan suddenly started
sleeping for 10-hour stretches, and just as the video promised,
he still loved his mommy in the morning.
But then Kirsten made the mistake of reading the Searses'
take on the cry-it-out method. Suddenly she discovered that
she had broken "valuable connections" and inadvertently
started the "detachment snowball" that would lead to an
irrevocable distance between parent and child. Feeling like
a sinner, she did the only rational thing to do in this
situation: She put the Sears book away.
So what's a parent to do? There are several good guides
out there that offer more middle-of-the road approaches
to parenting. Many stress independence over attachment,
and some offer approaches that comfortably combine the two.
The Ferber method, introduced by Richard Ferber's Solve
Your Child's Sleep Problems (Simon & Schuster) in
1986, advocates a tough-love approach to sleeping, helping
parents establish a hands-off regimen. Some mainstream experts
such as T. Berry Brazelton, author of Touchpoints: Your
Child's Emotional and Behavioral Development (Perseus
Books), also encourage parents to raise independent self-soothers,
but are less extreme.
I stumbled upon the real solution to the baby-care dilemma
when I was talking to a friend who has three kids. Quite
simply, she told me to "find the book that justifies what
you're doing and just read it to make yourself feel better."
Hallelujah.
So for now, as Baby Alice snoozes between my husband and
me, I turn to the pages of Sears for solace. But you can
bet that when we kick her into the crib, I'll suddenly find
that Brazelton, who devotes a whole section to the pitfalls
of the "family bed," is the man for me. With the right bedside
reading, I bet all of us will sleep a little better.
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 10,
1999
|
