Sleep like a baby.
Maybe the most confused statement for a new/ tired/ desperate parent. Or perhaps the most confused words of all time. Speaking of time, is it time to sleep yet?
I remember thinking, even right up to the day before my son was born, that sleeping would be fine (I know, forgive my naivety). Maybe it would be tough the first few weeks (it was) but he would settle, adapt to the new world and his cot and we’d all sleep happily and blissfully in a matter of weeks, at most a month or two (we didn’t).
Why was I wrong in my expectations?
Because he actually did sleep like a baby i.e. unpredictably.
Some nights were okay. Many weren’t. At least, that’s how I thought about it. But as I read and researched and rallied against the heavens praying for more sleep, it turns out that there were things I was doing wrong. Abandoning sleep training wasn’t one of them. Expectations were a big one.
Maybe some babies sleep through the night regardless (congratulations on winning the lottery), but most don’t (as others keep telling me). And most, according to science, shouldn’t be expected to either.
So:
- What is ‘normal sleep’, and why don’t babies and infants sleep through the night?
- What can we really do to help them and, well, help ourselves to sleep more?
What I’m learning is that what is ‘normal’ isn’t what I had first thought…
…
1. Just What is ‘Normal’ Sleep?
“Is he sleeping yet?”
“No. I mean, yes. He sleeps, just not when I want…”
In the first year, I spent so long craving for an 8-hour stretch throughout the night, but as those first months — and years — have gone by I’ve come to learn one painful but also liberating fact:
Almost anything is normal.
Okay, perhaps if they never sleep, always stir, you’re on the brink every night for months on end that might not be normal. But, as I’ve found out, the ‘normal’ range for sleep for newborns through to young children is really wide. Wide enough to make the phrase “sleep like a baby” utterly, painfully useless and annoying.
For example:
It’s normal for them to wake up several times every night. It’s normal for them to cry. It’s normal for them to want to be close to us. Really close.
What’s not normal, however, are expectations and the way we now live. For the majority of babies and small children, most will never sleep for 8 hours straight. Why? For two simple yet neglected reasons:
Brain development (sleep just isn’t the same, biologically)
First, their brains aren’t developed in the same way as an adult’s.
Newborns, for example, have no concept of a circadian rhythm i.e. no idea of night or day, nor do they have melatonin yet, the hormone responsible for ‘winding us down’ at the end of the day.Even as they grow older, babies and toddlers sleep very differently to an adult — their sleep cycles are far shorter, meaning that they spend far more time in a ‘light sleep’ state, meaning they stir and wake more easily.
In this sense, according to leading studies, biology and genetics plays a major role in sleep. It’s crushing for parents, but also an important step to managing our expectations.
So why? Why do this to us poor, tired parents?
Because evolution wanted babies to be alert to their parents, to wake regularly to keep them safe through ensuring that their parents were always close by.
History (we didn’t always sleep this way, babies or adults)
Second, tired parents — at least as we experience it today — weren’t the same as in the past. Biology and evolution play a role, but our environment and society also matter.
The history of how we slept shows that our modern ways of sleeping as adults — let alone babies or infants — is at odds with our nature. One fascinating (and forgotten) fact is that for much of human history we had a segmented or bi-phasal sleep i.e. we never slept in one solid 8-hour block, but instead got up in the middle of the night for an hour or two to cook, chat or even have sex. And possibly check in on the baby. Not to mention the likelihood of afternoon siestas to recharge the batteries, which some of us may need more than others.
These days, however, we expect a solid 8-hours to fit in with the rest of society, and expect our children to do the same.
Beyond our changing sleep patterns, we’re also constantly confusing our hormones, our bodies’ natural regulators.
For example, in the past babies and infants (and adults) didn’t have to put up with artificial light, especially blue light (which messes with our melatonin and natural sleep cycles). According to Charles Czeisler, Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School:
“[L]ight affects our circadian rhythm more powerfully than any drug.”
And it’s affecting children, who are estimated to have 1.2 hours less sleep than they did 100 years ago.
Besides light, another key factor seems to be day care and schools or other disruptions to their normal biologically-driven naps and added stress levels. One meta-review study showed how young children in day care or school, especially when they miss a nap, have a spike in cortisol, a hormone associated with stress and one that makes it harder to sleep.
So, what do we do then?
Usually, in the west we are told that our main way to ‘ensure a good night’s sleep’ is down to ‘sleep training’. There are a few varieties, with varying degrees of success (and some people really do find success it seems), but as my wife and I went from night to night with the screams in the other room we felt that this wasn’t right for us.
There are ‘gentler’ ways to sleep train, but the reality is that most of sleep training is going against nature, and whilst we might ‘win’ the outcome is that the baby often ‘loses’. And, as studies seem to show, there is a powerful biological (and also environmental) imperative that limits what such training can achieve.
So why do babies and infants wake up in the night so many times? Because that’s how they evolved. Why are we tired? Because we’re often trying to ‘fix’ a problem that doesn’t exist — modern society exists, and we haven’t been able to manage the two.
Of course, I didn’t move to a cave or the other side of the world. I’ve learnt to manage my expectations and tweak a few things instead…
2. Some Practical Ideas I’ve Used from other Cultures, Studies and Research
So my wife and I wanted to sleep.
Sleep training, we found, either didn’t work or simply didn’t feel right for us. And the more I found out about how baby’s really sleep, and how we parents ourselves might have slept pre-modern society, the more I thought that maybe I could adjust my expectations, my own schedule, and maybe learn from others. So…
Environment
One thing that almost everyone can benefit from almost immediately is mastering the sleeping environment.
There’s the lighting to consider (especially avoiding screens and even night lights, or at least not using those with blue light), as well as maintaining a routine which offers cues for sleep— this acts as a ‘winding down’ phase, which may include bathtime and story time.
In particular, I’ve found that reading the same two books every night (for nearly two years now, but hey, it works) provide a familiar ‘cue’ that it’s time for bed.
Sharing a bed/room
This was tough at first. And then surprisingly easy. It’s also incredibly common everywhere and I wonder why I ever bothered with a (expensive) cot.
Naturally, babies and infants want to be close to their parents — very close. And from India to China, from Japan to Kenya, almost everywhere bedsharing is the norm. Even if sharing a bed isn’t always possible, sharing a room can make children feel calmer, safer, and closer to their parents.
And help them — and us — sleep better. But more than that, there are numerous benefits reported in sleep studies. For example, Professor Margot Sunderland, director for Child and Mental Health in the UK, in her book ‘What Every Parent Needs to Know’, notes that countries that practice bedsharing report far fewer cases of SIDS.
Moreover, Sarah Ockwell-Smith, in her book The Gentle Sleep Book, reviews more than a dozen comparative studies that looked at contrasting sleeping habits in western and non-western countries, and found that countries where bedsharing/room-sharing was the norm, parents reported less night-time wakings and more total sleep.
Perhaps more fascinating still, there are several long-term benefits.
“The more touch a child gets in childhood, the calmer he is likely to be as an adult.” — Professor Margot Sunderland, director for Child and Mental Health in the UK.
Professor Sunderland notes in her research that, ultimately, bedsharing and sharing a room with babies and toddlers helps families form closer bonds and more emotionally resilient children and later adults.
Sling napping
This took me a little longer to get the hang of and, as a dad, I definitely remember a few odd looks my way when I carried a strapped baby around the neighborhood.
Still, for the first few months especially, I remember walking the full neighborhood almost every day to get our son to sleep. The rest of the time, he would be close to his mummy. Despite much effort and weeks of trying, he just wouldn’t nap in bed or the pushchair — but in the sling he was happy and sleeping.
Indeed, in many cultures babies (and smaller infants) are carried or held close to the mother most of the day.
“For some babies a clam and pleasant sleep environment involves being in contact with their mother or other carer — a typical practice in many countries” — Infant Sleep Information Source, as quoted in The Gentle Sleep Book, p.53.
Later (or even earlier) bedtimes
Perhaps the most important change I found (where I graduated from exhausted parent to only tired but otherwise fully functional parent), was changing when I went to sleep.
Our son is an early riser. At 1 he woke religiously with the sun — and in the summer that means waking up at 4.30am. We tried pushing bed time later but he still woke up early — and just tired. Naturally, I didn’t want to wake up at 4.30am, but he did. So after fighting it I learnt to adjust, and it was only when I made the effort to go to sleep 2 hours earlier in the summer to be more aligned with his body clock did everything work out.
2 years on, this summer he wakes up 2 hours later, so everything works out in the end.
I Thought My Child Was a “Bad Sleeper” — Turns Out He’s Normal
“We accept that they can’t talk or walk, so why sleep?” — Sarah Ockwell-Smith, The Gentle Sleep Book
There are two things I’ve learnt about sleep that have been most helpful — managing my own expectations (and adjusting where I can), and realising that society only makes this harder.
In Pakistan, for example, when a child is born the mother is exempt from all household duties for 40 days while her family help out. The Ifaluk Pacific islanders, moreover, place children at the heart of their society, and everyone sees it as their responsibility to help new parents. As per the famous African proverb, too, it takes a village to raise a child.
For a while my wife and I were exhausted, uncomfortable with some of the advice of others (which we did out of desperation but didn’t work anyway), and most of all just felt guilty. Guilty because we thought we’d done something that meant our son was a ‘bad sleeper’.
But when we consider how they really sleep — his developing brain and almost constant need for physical intimacy — and how we also used to sleep before the modern era — no artificial lights or screens — it all makes sense.
He sleeps ‘normal’.
So I adjusted my expectations. I implemented what we could based on science and what we learnt from other cultures.
Eventually, we found what works for us. Eventually, we all slept better. And not, thankfully, ‘like a baby’.
© Jamie D Stacey 2021
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project
Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often | Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | ..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything |