There is so much out there that you 'need' to buy for your new baby... or do you? Here are three articles which take a look into three important ways we provide for our babies - how we carry them, where they sleep and (the often over looked importance of) the feet. Find out what you really need and why, this information can help you make an informed decision when shopping. Most importantly, taking a look at what is the most respectful approach to meeting your babies biological needs.
A Place to Sleep
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Babies sleep a lot, will sleep anywhere, and we need to find a safe place for them to sleep. There are a couple of options to consider when shopping for a ‘place to sleep’ for your baby but first its important that we look at what sleep is for babies and children… because it’s a whole different ball game to what sleep is for adults.
Sleep, Grow, Sleep Young babies sleep much of the day and will wake up in the night until they come into alignment with their circadian rhythm. Many mothers find that while in the womb their babies would become more active when it came to laying down to go to bed at the end of the day, this ‘womb rhythm’ is still the babies rhythm in the first weeks out of the womb while they adjust to the outside world. During all this sleep, up to 50% is what is called light sleep or REM (rapid eye movement). In comparison, the average adult will have up to 20% light sleep, and a much smaller amount of sleep is required. While having all this light sleep, a number of things are happening in you baby, one of which is brain development. During light sleep the higher centers of the brain keep operating, the blood flow increases, and the body makes more of the nerve proteins designed for brain growth. As soon as your baby enters a deep sleep these higher centers shut off and everything functions from the lower brain centers. When the human baby is born its brain is 25% the size of an adult brain. By the time the human infant is 1 year old it will have 60% of its brain, and 80% by the age of 2 years old. When we factor in this phenomenal amount of brain growth with the amount of light sleep needed by babies through into toddlerhood, we have a realistic time frame for what is called night-time parenting. Night-time Parenting “Your baby should ‘sleeping through the night’ by about 3 months old”, is a common expectation and desire of many parents in western culture. This popular belief came about in the 1930’s and was backed up in the 1950’s from studies based on groups of formula fed babies. The reality is that babies are not designed to sleep through the night for a long time. Many parents find this cultural myth and the reality of night-time parenting a difference hard to reconcile. It is important to remember that every baby is different, some sleep through the night earlier than others and schedules, food and blackout curtains or any of the other thousands of products on the market have little to do with this. “One thing we have learned during our years in paediatrics is that babies do what they do because they’re designed that way. In the case of infant sleep, research suggests that active sleep protects babies. …It appears that babies come wired with sleep patterns that enable them to awaken in response to circumstances that threaten their well being.” Dr Sears What Wakes Your Child Along with an understanding of the amount of brain development and light sleep that is required during your child’s first years, it helps to understand what circumstances your baby is waking in response to. Making a ‘Night Time’ To begin with your baby will be in womb time, and nights can be an active time for them until their circadian rhythm comes into effect. Circadian rhythms are important for determining the bodies sleep patterns and one of the key triggers is light. According to Karen Thomas, from the University of Washington babies’ circadian rhythms take up to a year to develop and become established. What you can do: To help develop your babies circadian rhythm ensure they get outside for plenty of day light and fresh air every day. Make your babies place to sleep a warm, dark and comfortable environment and atmosphere. Hunger A baby’s stomach starts out very small (some say the size of a marble) and soon grows larger with frequent feeding, day and night. Frequent feeding is part of the human baby design as the human mothers milk is fast to digest. Human milk composition is low in fat and protein, consists of 88% water and 4.5% fat on average, and is therefore digested quickly, within 2 hours. “Milk composition also offers clues to the intensity and style of species-specific maternal behavior. In species where mothers are expected to feed only occasionally and leave babies in a next for long periods, the milk is high in fat and protein so that infants can be both nutritionally compensated (by protein) and satisfied (with fat) for long periods alone. When the milk is low in fat and protein, as it is in humans, it is an indication that breast-feeding is designated or intended to be more continuous.” Meredith F. Small When we take into account stomach size and digestion time it is clear to see that hunger will play a key role in night-time parenting. Your baby will drink as much at night as in the daytime, and feeding increases during growth spurts. How Your Body Responds Your body will continue to make milk through the night and your night-time milk will be different to the milk you produce in the day. That’s your body expressing a circadian rhythm specific to mothering. Naturally occurring chemicals called nucleotides which induce sleep, are found highly concentrated in milk produced at night-time. Your body will also increase prolactin production at night-time, this is the hormone that triggers milk production as well as bringing a sense of calm and affectionate feelings. Many breastfeeding mothers find that at night their baby will easily fall asleep while breastfeeding, while they themselves also experience feelings of drowsiness. Night-time feeding is designed to help both parties in the mother-infant unit to remain drowsy in the night, conducive for sleeping. Bottle or Cup Nursing For those unable to breastfeed (whether you are feeding your baby human breast milk from a milk bank, formula or any other alternative), responding to your baby’s hunger cues as soon as possible can give you extra time to retrieve everything needed for feeding before your baby wakes fully and reaches distress. What you can do: Feed your baby before they go to sleep, before you go to sleep, and when they are stirring from a light sleep with hunger cues. Breath There are a couple of things to know when it comes to your baby’s breathing. We are all aware of Sudden Infant Death where the baby stops breathing and for the first few months this can be of concern to parents until automatic breathing is firmly established. During light sleep the blood flow to the brain nearly doubles and much of this extra blood is going straight to the area of the brain that controls automatic breathing. While this area of the brain is in development any encouragement to go into a deep sleep or sleep through should be avoided. A mother’s breath not only calms her baby, but it is also found to stimulate the baby’s breathing. There are receptors in the lining of the nose that affect breathing, the outward carbon dioxide breath (along with her familiar smell) of the mother acts as a respiratory trigger for the baby to breath. Research has shown that face-to-face breathing is safe and the right concentration of carbon dioxide for this biological respiratory stimulation design. This is one good reason to sleep close to your baby. Synchronized breathing is not the only thing that happens when the mother-infant unit together. Sleeping together can mean that stages of sleep are experienced together; both can be in deep sleep and light sleep at the same time. This synchronicity enables the mother to respond to any nighttime waking from her baby without having to wake from a deep sleep. In fact research has shown that during this shared light sleep, both mother and baby can stir, move, feed etc without actually waking up. The body backs up this recipe for successful night-time parenting by releasing the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin, which are found in high quantities particularly in the post partum period. “In the first year of life, his breathing slows from 87 to around 47 breaths per minute. And between two and four months of age, the time when a baby is changing his breathing patterns, he is at his most susceptible to SIDS. He is also most responsive at this time to the benefits of touch.” Deborah Jackson What you can do: Sleep in close proximity to your baby so that they are able to pick up on your breathing, this can could be the same room, beds next to each other or in the same bed. Lay your baby to sleep on their back, breastfed babies are naturally more likely to sleep on their backs. Anxiety There are several reasons your baby may feel and wake from their light sleep with anxiety: nightmares, night terrors, changes, stress and the fear of being alone – but it is mostly fear of being alone. Changes in the family environment can cause night waking. Many mothers returning to work find that night-time parenting increases perhaps because it is the only bonding time available for the child to access. Developmental changes can also cause waking, such as separation anxiety when your baby starts to crawl or walk. Processing the prospect of this separation may require them having the option of being very close until they are comfortable with their newfound freedom. Stress is not uncommon for babies in western culture, they experience a lot of information, stimulation and handling that can build up in a one day, and they may not have a chance to release it regularly by relaxing on the mother. Sleep is the time when the brain processes information taken in while awake and some stimulation overloads can cause waking. A relaxed and peaceful baby is more likely to sleep peacefully even through movement and noise and when being held. "Most children of preschool age still need to fall asleep in the presence of another person and resist being alone. This is an innate tendency that we humans share with all mammals. Young mammals do not fall asleep away from their mothers but stay near them for warmth and protection." Aletha Solter What you can do: If your baby has fallen asleep on you and you need to put your baby down or move them, wait for the first 20minutes of light sleep to pass into deep sleep. Pain Pain can interrupt light sleep and the most common pain for babies is teething pain, though any other illness or injury may also be painful enough to interrupt light sleep too. Teething is different for every child though most will experience pain during this time and for many night-time the period when pain is higher. The time frame for teething is that typically the first tooth is cut around 6 months old and most children have all their milk teeth by 2 and half years old. What you can do: Comfort and settle your baby with cuddles, rubs, breastfeeding, and simply being in the safety of your arms. Physical Discomfort In the same way that pain can break a light sleep so can other forms of physical discomfort such as being too cold, hot or wet. Young babies can wake from being uncomfortable in soiled nappies, in particular wet cloth nappies. As your baby gets older they may wake when or just before they feel the need to urinate. What you can do: When changing a nappy or helping your child to the toilet in the night, keep the lights down, quiet whispers, little eye contact, keep the conditions sleepy not active. Parental Exhaustion Most parents will feel exhaustion at some stage in their parenting journey and in most cases it stems from nighttime parenting. Exhaustion is commonly caused by not getting any sleep or your sleep is being broken up in to smaller sections of a night where you might be fully awake several times. What you can do: To avoid exhaustion, take naps with your baby or go to bed with when your baby does. What ever it is that you would like to do when they are asleep can wait, your health is more important. Night-time Parenting When we look at the biological time frames of sleep and for our baby, we can start to map out a realistic journey for night-time parenting and therefore a suitable place for sleep during this time. We know light sleep is required for brain growth and the majority of this growth for every human being is done in the first 2 years. The circadian rhythm takes up to 1 year to develop and the pain of teething which can frequently interrupt light sleep can last up to 2 and half years. "Since the mid-1930s, prolonged and independent night-time sleep has been the hallmark of a ‘good baby’ in many Western societies; early infant independence is viewed as a developmental goal, and its achievement as a measure of effective parenting. Yet for the majority of the world’s cultures, separation of an infant from its mother for sleep is considered abusive or neglectful treatment for which Westerners are criticised." Kathy Dettwyler What Is Normal? It becomes obvious when we look at the biological design of the mother-infant unit, that your baby is designed to sleep with you. However in our culture this is not normal and can be a controversial topic hung on the word ‘safety’. Separation sleeping (sleeping away from your baby) is something only practiced by those of us in the west. It is estimated that well over half of the world population co-sleep or bed share, and incidentally, that half have almost no occurrences of SIDS. The other concerns with safety are overlaying and squashing your baby, both can be clearly avoided if you bed share safely. “The myth of overlaying persists because in many Western cultures there are also social, emotional, and political reasons to keep babies out of the parental bed. In the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church became concerned with the possible sexual vulnerability of young girls sleeping with their fathers. At the same time, European culture was developing notions of romantic love and redefining marriage as a conjugal bond rather than an economic or political unit. Suddenly the mother—father relationship took on a separateness within the larger idea of family. When the relationship of mother and father became a sacred, private, sexually intimate bond, parental privacy was born. Children, although offshoots of the bond, were not allowed to interfere with the spousal union.” Meredith F. Small Although separation sleeping has only been around for all of 200 years and only in the West, our culture sees it as normal. When first time parents are first introduced to night-time parenting on the job they can find it extremely exhausting and may wonder what is wrong with the situation, their baby, or them. Unfortunately our western culture around separation sleeping does not match that of the baby’s biological design. If we start working with the biological design we have a win-win situation. “When cultural imperatives match biological imperatives, you grow a magical child" Joseph Chilton Pearce What Makes A Place To Sleep Now let us look at what we might need to make a safe place to sleep that respects the innate needs of the baby and makes night-time parenting easy. Sling Your baby will need to sleep in the day time, some children can continue having naps until they are 3 years old, even older. Having your baby or toddler on you with a correctly fitted sling can often be an easy hands-free, on-the-go solution for you. Your baby is able to relax and sleep on-the-go. Sidecar Cot This type of cot is open on one side where it fits neatly next to the side of your bed and acts as a bed extension. The rule of thumb when you are considering a 'family bed' is that everyone has enough room to be comfortable, no one gets a good night sleep squished up or worrying about falling out of a tight space. Bed Bumpers Bumpers act as a safe edge to the family bed, so that no one can roll out. Bed Rail Guards There are many bed rails on the market. They produced so that when the child moves from a cot with sides to a bed without sides they are safe from rolling out. Extra Mattress Some times having another mattress can help so that everyone in the family has a good nights sleep, whether the extra mattress is on the floor in the family room, on another bed next to the family bed or another room. Make Your Own Many people make do with what they already have, pushing beds together or doing a DIY job on the cot you thought you would use. This link has a collection of photographs from different families of how they made a place to sleep that works for everyone in the family. www.drmomma.org/2010/01/turn-your-crib-into-cosleeper.html Helpful Links Co-sleeping guidelines from Dr James McKenna http://cosleeping.nd.edu/safe-co-sleeping-guidelines/ Several articles by Dr James McKenna www.naturalchild.org/james_mckenna For more information on infant sleep www.basisonline.org.uk For some history on western sleeping arrangements www.awareparenting.com/sleep.htm www.kathydettwyler.org/detsleepthrough.html I would also like to recommend the book Three In A Bed by Deborah Jackson as it is such a great resource, well researched and very informative. “I can’t help noting that no cultures in the world that I have ever heard of make such a fuss about children’s bedtimes, and no cultures have so many adults who find it so hard either to go to sleep or wake up. Could these social facts be connected? I strongly suspect they are.” John Holt Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. My writing is a product of research, reading and first-hand experience. |
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