Help With a Sleepless Baby
Alternative Approaches to Help Babies go to Sleep and Stay Asleep
Sep 10, 2009
Parents are often urged by well-meaning relatives, friends, and even pediatricians, to train their babies to fall asleep without parental assistance. The ultimate goal of sleep training is to teach the child to self soothe. However, sleep training is often synonymous with letting a baby "cry it out" and focuses on the child's physical needs while often ignoring his or her emotional needs.
Cry It Out
Letting a baby “cry it out” is often recommended as a way to get him or her to go to sleep without parents’ help and/or sleep through the night. Rather than respond to their baby’s cries by picking up, rocking, nursing/feeding, or otherwise comforting the child, at its most extreme, believers in the method advocate allowing a child to cry for as long as it takes for the baby to stop on his or her own and finally go to sleep. This can mean leaving the baby to cry for hours, a process that must be repeated for several nights or longer as the baby gradually cries for less time and ultimately learns to self-soothe and go peacefully to sleep.
Needless to say, this process can be unpleasant and even traumatic for both baby and parents. And changes in schedule, travel, illness, teething, and other disruptions to normal routines can necessitate repeating the whole process.
The term Ferberizing is often used synonymously with “cry it out”, but this approach is not the same as that advocated by Dr. Richard Ferber in his book, Solve your Child’s Sleep Problems [Simon and Schuster, 2005]. Instead, Ferber suggests gradually reducing the amount of parental intervention, making gradual progress towards independence, rather than a “cold turkey” withdrawal of nighttime attention.
An Alternative to Crying it Out
Elizabeth Pantley, after her own negative experience trying the “cry it out” approach with one of her children, began to work on alternatives, which are detailed in her book, The No Cry Sleep Solution [McGraw-Hill, 2002]. The book was in part inspired by the sleep habits of her youngest child, who continued to wake repeatedly at night even as a one-year-old. As the title suggests, Pantley’s goal was a better night’s sleep, without hours of crying through the sleep-training process.
Among Pantley’s suggestions for parents:
- Keep track of baby's sleep patterns to understand why he or she is waking.
- Establish an enjoyable bedtime routine that they are willing to do EVERY day and that establishes new sleep associations and sets the mood for sleep.
- Approach change gradually. For example, if baby resists limits to nursing or bottles, slowly cut back the duration or amount until giving it up entirely is less stressful.
- Work on nap time first. Good daytime sleep results in good nighttime sleep.
- Be open to trying different things until something works for individual babies, schedules, sleeping arrangements, and parenting styles.
Pantley’s most significant statement, however, has to do with parents altering their mindset. Parents need to remember that:
- They have to have reasonable expectations. Babies simply sleep differently than adults.
- All children eventually sleep through the night and the period of sleep-deprivation with young children is temporary.
- They will spend the time at bedtime no matter what. This can be spent pleasantly reading books, singing, and otherwise relaxing with a child, or it can be spent in struggle and stress. Ultimately it is parents’ choice to think positively or negatively about getting their child to sleep.
Sleep is so fundamental to heath and well-being that a lack of sleep quickly begins to take a toll, even on the most loving and patient parents. Though they may be desperate for sleep, parents shouldn't feel that they must undertake sleep training if it goes against their beliefs about responding to their child's needs. With a little patience and persistence, parents will see improvement in their baby's sleep, without hours of crying.
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