Baby will not sleep all night?

More than 30 years ago, I attended a parents meeting at the nursery of my oldest child, while he was in the 2-year-old's room, and he was turned out that many children in the room did not sleep reliably through the house. night.

It sounded like a revelation, discovering that mine was not the only child who woke up from time to time – or regularly – in the night and needed a little attention.

In our family, we had agreed to deal with this and we had managed to establish – and to respect – certain rules: no food, no drink, no exit from the cradle, but yes, once a night, there was no need for a drink. One of your parents wants to walk down the hall, look at you, rub your back and say something like, "We did not go away and we left you, now go back to sleep. " (Or maybe sometimes it was: "Come back to sleep or we'll leave and leave you," but that's lost in the mists of history.) That was not ideal, but we were doing well.

In the current issue of the journal pediatricsresearchers described a study of nearly 400 mothers in Canada who were asked to report, "How many consecutive hours does your child sleep without waking up during the night?

The researchers took six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep to define "sleep all night".

They found that at the age of six months, 62.4% of mothers reported that their baby was sleeping six hours or more, and only 43% of them reported sleeping blocks consecutive eight hours.

At 12 months, 72.1% of mothers reported six consecutive hours of sleep and 56.6% reported eight hours of sleep; Since all infants wake up several times a night, those who were supposed to sleep consecutively probably woke up and went back to sleep alone without the mother's knowledge.

According to these criteria, a significant number of babies did not sleep "at night" at six months and even at 12 months. At times, girls were more likely to sleep longer than boys, but at other times there was no significant difference.

The study found consistent badociations between duration of sleep and badfeeding – at each age, children with longer sleep durations were significantly less likely to be badfed – although again, there is no way to say anything here.

Dr. Marie-Hélène Pennestri, a psychologist and badistant professor in educational psychology and counseling at McGill University, made a distinction between measuring these long blocks of sleep and examining other measures such as than the total duration of sleep.

"I would not want anyone to think that I say that sleeping is not important. My overall goal with this study was to reduce guilt, "said Pennestri. More realistic expectations about young children's sleep habits could help parents cope, she added.

In later studies, she said, they will be looking at more objective measures of sleep and parents' expectations. The study also focused on child development and revealed no significant differences between the two groups with respect to their mental or psychomotor development.

The study also revealed no difference in maternal mood between mothers whose babies were sleeping for longer and those whose babies were not, although links between practices Infant sleep and maternal stress have been found in other studies.

Dr. Douglas Teti, a professor of psychology in human development and pediatrics at Pennsylvania State University, has studied the social criticism that mothers sometimes experience if they continue to keep the baby in the parents' room after six months of age.

(The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that, for safety reasons, babies sleep in their parents' room, but never in bed, for at least the first six months of their life and ideally the first year.)

In our culture, he said, parents who continue to keep the baby in their room often face such criticism, while shared sleep is the norm in many other cultures.

Their studies have shown that persistent co-sleep is badociated with less happy marriages and higher stress around co-parenting, although this is again an badociation; there is no way to unravel the cause and effect.

Mothers, he says, "appear to be particularly vulnerable to sleep loss" and may accumulate chronic sleep deficits, which can affect their well-being and functioning as parents.

"It will depend a lot on the parent's reaction," he said. "One of the things we tell parents is to pay attention to your own sleep schedule, to use good sleep hygiene."

Some mothers can tolerate these deficits better than others, he said. "It's not everyone who shows kinship relationships or stressed marriages."

The two members of the couple must be able to decide with them where the baby sleeps and the treatment of the night vigil, he added, and to make sure that they take the time to nurture their own relationship.

The new study, along with many other studies on variability, temperament and different ways of caring for children, should rebadure everyone: children develop differently and there are many ways to grow and to be in good health.

Parents who are stressed or distressed by an infant's sleep pattern should talk to their pediatrician.

"When a mother asks me to teach her behavioral sleep techniques, I'm happy to do it," said Pennestri. "But if a mother asks me to tell her that, under the pressure of a nurse or a friend, she says," Your baby has to sleep all night, "I do not think she should use it . "

The authors of this study clearly fear that unrealistic expectations of when babies sleep all night put pressure on mothers.

In the world of infant sleep, this raises highly polarized issues – and this polarization has unfortunately not helped parents around the world.

Children are very different from the beginning, and a single measure such as the longest duration does not necessarily tell you what is happening at home, what is the night of the family or what the parents do.

The cause and effect are really complicated here, and the patterns that develop within families reflect both parents and the baby, as well as culture and many other aspects of the family situation (socioeconomic status, housing arrangements, parental work and work-leave balance, other siblings).

And most importantly, babies may have a different temperament, there are good sleepers and less good sleepers, and we must love and nurture those we treat.

The message should be that there are a lot of normal variations and that the experts should help you, not make you feel bad, whether it's living with a child who wakes up at night or strategies to help you decrease that. awakening.

Families who do well with a baby who does not "sleep all night" according to a specific definition should not feel guilty or pressured.

There is no evidence that sleeping at six or twelve months is bad for babies. On the other hand, even though he does not recommend it simply because the baby does not sleep all night, "sleep training is not barbaric," Teti said. "There is a way to do it in a progressive way."

And studies on attachment and social and emotional development do not show that these methods of "gradual extinction" are bad for babies.

"There is no recipe here," says Teti. "It's not just the baby to focus on. You must look at the health of the family system. "