Should bedsharing/ co-sleeping only be for breastfed babies?
I think it’s time to look at this issue a little more, of all the things I write about unbelievably the most contentious is my suggestion that only mothers who are breastfeeding should share a bed with their baby. In fact I have received a fair deal of angry backlash in response to this, mostly by mothers who think I am being “anti formula feeding” and spreading incorrect information, so I think the time has come for this idea to have it’s own blog post.
So – why do I believe that mothers should only share a bed with their baby if they are breastfeeding? Particularly when most of the safe co-sleeping/bedsharing guidelines omit this point.
Let me start by saying I believe this is an area that is in desperate need of further research, I am still saddened that bedsharing research misses the most important points, for instance research quoted by FSIDS to support their claim that “the safest place for your baby to sleep for the first 6mths is a cot in your room” whereas this is not the case if you read the evidence (and that evidence too misses out several variables that could create a huge difference) – but it is VITAL that research, well constructed research, is undertaken accounting for all of these variables, but most importantly accounting for feeding method.
Before I go further I would like to quickly point out the following:
Bedsharing – sharing a bed with your infant
Co-Sleeping – sharing a room with your infant
I have used the term co-sleeping in the title of this post purely for SEO purposes.
The following are reasons you may want to think again if you you formula feed and share a bed with your baby:
1) Formula fed babies are at greater risk of SIDS than breastfed babies (wherever they sleep). See here for more. It makes sense to me then to be warier of introducing anything that may further compound this risk, with this in mind alone it is vital that if sharing a bed with a formula fed baby every single safety recommendation for bedsharing is followed exactly.
2) Formula fed babies are in general less arousable than breastfed babies during certain phases of sleep, this means that babies who are formula fed tend to awaken less readily than those who are breastfed if there is a threat to their life during certain sleep phases (this may be in part a reason for point 1 above). In particular this difference is seen the most during active sleep states at 2-3mths, which is the peak SIDS risk period.
3) Mothers who breastfeed experience different sleep to those who formula feed and awaken more regularly than formula feeding mothers during the night. Breastfeeding mothers seem to be more in tune with their baby during the night and as such may be more arousable than mothers who formula feed and may be more likely to awaken if there baby stops breathing/falls etc.
I guess the problem comes when we feed our babies via another method than nature intended – nature understandably does not then provide the same protection and it is important we respect that.
To quote from University of Notre-Dame’s Sleep Lab’s website:
“all else being safe, bed-sharing among nonsmoking mothers who sleep on firm mattresses specifically for purposes of breast feeding, may be the most ideal form of bed-sharing where both mother and baby can benefit by, among other things, the baby getting more of mother’s precious milk and both mothers and babies getting more sleep – two findings which emerged from our own studies.”
Here’s a great video interview with Dr. James McKenna where he speaks more about breastfeeding mothers bedsharing and SIDS:
4) Mothers who breastfeed are far more likely to adopt a cradling/side laying position with their baby (the advised position to adopt when sharing a bed with your baby) and are more responsive to their baby’s movements in the night – this is currently being researched by two centres – Durham University sleep lab in the UK and James McKenna’s sleep laboratory in the University of Notre Dame.
For all of the reasons above I personally only feel confident in advocating bedsharing if the mother is breastfeeding, however unpopular my opinion may be, it has nothing to do with my opinions on breastfeeding V formula feeding (for the record I don’t have one – I have 4 kids, one was breastfed for 4mths, then moved onto formula, one was breastfed for 8wks, then moved onto formula, one was breastfed until 6mths and the last I breastfed for 4yrs!) and everything to do with keeping babies safe.
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
http://www.babycalm.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/babycalm
http://www.twitter.com/babycalmclasses
BabyCalm: A guide for calmer babies and happier parents released October 4th – pre-order your copy HERE with FREE worldwide postage
References.
- Horne RS, Parslow PM, Harding R. Respiratory control and arousal in sleeping infants. Paediatr Respir Rev. 2004 Sep;5(3):190-8.
- McKenna JJ, McDade T. Why babies should never sleep alone: a review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing and breast feeding. Paediatr Respir Rev. 2005 Jun;6(2):134-52.
- http://www.nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab/articles/USBC-SIDS-PR-10-17-2005.pdf
- Parslow PM, Ferens D, Watts AM, Adamson TM. Comparison of evoked arousability in breast and formula fed infants. Arch Dis Child. 2004 Jan;89(1):22-5.
- http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/100/2/214.abstract
- http://jhl.sagepub.com/content/16/1/13.short
- Kahn A, Groswasser J, Franco P, Scaillet S, Sawaguchi T, Kelmanson I, Dan B. Sudden infant deaths: stress, arousal and SIDS. Early Hum Dev. 2003 Dec;75 Suppl:S147-66.
- http://www.ibreastfeeding.com/content/newsletter/nighttime-breastfeeding-and-maternal-mental-health
- http://www.nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab/articles/Canada%20safe%20Sleep.pdf
Tesco: Every little helps – when it comes to breastfeeding?
Oh dear Tesco…oh dear indeed.
I popped to our ‘friendly local’ this afternoon to pick up some milk (of the adult – cow – variety) and got more milk action than I’d bargained for in the – quite literally – form of bargain milk.
Now, I love a good bargain, I love rooting through the reduced section, hunting for knock down priced short date fresh food to stash away in my freezer or battered up cans to bring my ever increasing family food bill down (that’s a whole other Tesco issue though – anyone notice how much their weekly shop bill is increasing each month, despite meal planning, slow cooking, cutting down to the bare minimum and buying as many value items as possible?). For on the aisle end bargain section I was greeted with this:
Now if it’s not immediately obvious to you what it is – here’s the front:
So – it’s a tub of Cow and Gate Hungry Baby milk – suitable for newborn and up and it had been reduced because it had a cracked lid (that in itself freaked me out). Don’t see the problem? Surely that’s a nice saving of 35% for a cash strapped, recession bitten family? So why am I moaning?
Ever hear of the snappily titled “Infant Formula and Follow–on Formula Regulations”? No? It’s not something you hear of everyday is it. Basically what this law – yes LAW – says is that it is illegal to advertise or promote formula for babies under six months old to the public. This includes price reductions, displays or other promotions in shops.
Restrictions on promotion of infant formula
23.—(1) No person shall at any place where any infant formula is sold by retail—
(a)advertise any infant formula;
(b)make any special display of an infant formula designed to promote sales; – NOTE: The formula was displayed in a special reduced products aisle end
(c)give away—
(i)any infant formula as a free sample, or
(ii)any coupon which may be used to purchase an infant formula at a discount;
(d)promote the sale of an infant formula by means of premiums, special sales, loss-leaders or tie-in sales; or
(e)undertake any other promotional activity to induce the sale of an infant formula.
(2) No manufacturer or distributor of any infant formula shall provide for promotional purposes any infant formula free or at a reduced or discounted price, or any gift designed to promote the sale of an infant formula, to—
(a)the general public; NOTE: The formula was discounted and for sale to the general public.
(b)pregnant women;
(c)mothers; or
(d)members of the families of persons mentioned in sub-paragraphs(b) and (c),
either directly, or indirectly through the health care system or health workers.
So – these regulations could be interpreted to apply to price reductions for damaged packaging which in turn could mean that Mr T is breaking the law by reducing the price of this formula (suitable from birth). If you spot any formula being illegal promoted please do report it HERE.
Now the question is are Tesco doing this knowingly? I took the formula to the checkouts with me and told the checkout operator – she in turn told me “no that can’t be true, why on earth would we not promote that, we promote everything else” and after a good couple of minutes of me trying to explain and her scoffing, it became apparent she a) didn’t believe me and b) thought I was a crazy nutjob from another planet. I then took it to the information desk where the lady there instantly knew what I was talking about and said “I keep telling them not to do this – but they don’t listen, they shouldn’t reduce it”…….I don’t know who “they” are, but “they” clearly know what they are doingl.
I have emailed & tweeted Tesco to ask their policy on promoting formula milk and await a reply. I’ll be sure to post it here when I receive it.
UPDATE:
Tesco emailed me to apologise today (29th April):
Dear Sarah
Thank you for your email. My name is Sarah and I am the Customer Service Manager who is responsible for answering your email.
Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the delay in getting back to you.
I am very sorry to hear you found a tub of infant formula milk in the reduced section of our Saffron Walden store. I can appreciate your concerns with this.
You are completely correct that this should not happen by law, as we are unable to promote this milk or even offer Clubcard points for purchasing them.
One of my colleagues has contacted the store and the item has been immediately removed from the shelf. They have also reiterated to the staff that they should not have infant formula milk in the reduced section.
I do hope this has reassured you that we take these matters very seriously and have acted to resolve this as soon as possible.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for providing your feedback and giving us the chance to put this right.
Kind regards
Sarah Taylor
Tesco Customer Service
BabyCalm: A guide for calmer babies and happier parents released October 4th –pre-order your copy HERE with FREE worldwide postage
Are you coming to the BabyCalm Conference?
In exactly 49 days time, 20th May 2012, I will be attending the first BabyCalm Conference – “The Mother, The Baby, The Father, The Child” in Central London. I can’t tell you how excited I am that the day is finally nearly here, it’s been over a year in the planning and sometimes I felt like the day would never come, now we’re on the countdown!
A year and a half ago, my business partner and I formally incorporated BabyCalm as a limited company, as part of our ambitious plans I was desperate to hold a conference with some of the experts (yes *real* baby experts!) I admire so much and whose work has greatly influenced the BabyCalm ethos. Never in a million years did I think they would all say “yes” when we asked them to speak – but they did! and here we are frantically finalising the finer details – busy gathering together goody bag contents and choosing the day’s food and drinks!
I was really keen that the BabyCalm conference focus on the newborn/postnatal period. I have been to many wonderful conferences and study days during my career, but they all seem to focus on the birth, I’m not saying the birth is not as important as what happens afterwards – because it really is – I just don’t understand why, to date, nobody has focussed solely on this period, paying particular attention to the adjustments mothers *and* fathers make and the impact of this period upon the baby and the child they will become – so here we are!
So, let me introduce our keynote speakers for the day:
Michel Odent
Michel Odent has been in charge of the surgical unit and the maternity unit at the Pithiviers state hospital (1962-1985) and is the founder of the Primal Health Research Centre (London). He introduced in the 1970s the concepts of home-like birthing rooms and birthing pools in maternity hospitals. He is the author of the first article in the medical literature about the use of birthing pools (Lancet 1983), of the first article about the initiation of lactation during the hour following birth, and of the first article applying the “Gate Control Theory of Pain” to obstetrics. He created the Primal Health Research database and the website www.wombecology.com. Author of 12 books published in 22 languages.
Michel will be speaking for two hours on the importance of the newborn period – in particular how this period, and the interaction with the mother in particular, can affect the future health and wellbeing of the baby.
Naomi Stadlen
Naomi Stadlen is a psychotherapist and mother of three. Naomi has run the weekly discussion group “Mothers Talking” in London for more than twenty one years. Naomi’s first book “What Mothers Do” resonates with mothers everywhere and was described by the Guardian as “The best book on parenting”. Naomi has a perceptive insight into the relationships of new mothers with their babies. Her second book, “How Mothers Love”, has now been published..
Naomi will be speaking for 1.5hrs on how mothers integrate their baby into the rest of the family and the complexity of these relationships.
Patrick Houser
Patrick M Houser is a grandfather and father of 2 sons. It was the birth of his first son which revealed to him the need to understand birth more fully. Patrick’s second son’s arrival, in 1980, was the first documented waterbirth in the USA. This has informed his life’s work and led him to nearly 25 years of passionate advocacy for birth choices. He has a degree in marketing, has owned a natural health centre and for 10 years ran his construction firm in Austin, Texas. He is the director of The Source Foundation International a UK reg. charity, promoting health and choice from preconception to birth and throughout life. Patrick is also a speaker, writes articles and is the author of the Fathers-To-Be Handbook, published in the UK and now available in a USA edition as well. Patrick is the founder of http://www.fatherstobe.org.
Patrick will be speaking for 1.5hrs on the importance of the father’s role and in particular how fathers can help support mothers to successfully breastfeed.
Oliver James
Oliver James trained and practised as a clinical child psychologist and, since 1988, has worked as a writer, journalist, broadcaster and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include the best-selling ”They F*** You Up” and the controversial parenting book “How not to F*** Them Up”. Oliver is a columnist for the Guardian Newspaper and is latterly more famous for his exchanges with Gina Ford concerning the dangers of baby training. Oliver lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and two small children
Oliver will be speaking for 1.5hrs on “Love Bombing” – his much talked about technique for healing bonding and behavioural problems in children.
Plus all of our speakers will be selling books, which they are happy to autograph on the day, and we have a selection of stalls for you to browse during break times.
Would you like to join us? we have a handful of tickets left – which are usually priced £99 each (this includes a full buffet lunch, plus snacks and a goody bag!) but as a special blog offer if you quote “Birth” when booking it will deduct 20% from the ticket price. You can book here: http://babycalmconference-estw.eventbrite.com/
If you do come along, please drop me an email so I know you’re coming and we can catch up over a coffee!
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
The BabyCalm book (cover!) has landed
I know this isn’t a proper blog post, but I am *so* excited that the book jacket is finished, it makes it all seem so much more real and I really want to (actually need to!) share my excitement with as many people as possible!!!
Here it is:
We wanted to echo the branding of BabyCalm – keep it simple and mainstream and give off a calming vibe – what do you think?
You can pre-order now from Amazon, The Book Depository, Waterstones and the BabyCalm Website.
Sarahx
“What will you give me if I do it?”
I had just asked my son, 9, if he could help me to set the table for dinner.
“Can I have £2 if I do it?”
Today £2 – tomorrow ? – yesterday? (well 7yrs ago yesterday actually) it was a sticker on his Thomas the Tank Engine reward chart.
“The more we want our children to want to do something, the more counterproductive it will be to reward them for doing it.” Alfie Kohn – Punished By Rewards.
What do we teach our children when we aim to modify their behaviour by rewarding them with stickers on a chart, marbles in a jar or promising “if you do that, then I’ll do this”? Apparently I have taught my child that helping people is only worth doing if you are given a reward for doing so and that reward is one of a materialistic kind, the fact he would be helping me, his tired old mum, didn’t cut the mustard.
When you have a tantrumming 2yr old whose favourite word is “no” (over and over and over again) and who falls screaming to the floor in the supermarket at the drop of a hat (or taking away of a chocolate bar), refuses to brush his teeth, won’t eat his cabbage, wakes at 5am every single day and prefers to poo in his pants than in his potty rewards (aka bribery) are a very tempting way to get him to do what you want. It’s Behaviourism at its simplest and most effective. Yes, behavioural control is a doddle if you dangle carrots in front of your toddler – BUT – and it’s a big ‘but’, what you don’t realise is WHY it works and why that why is so vitally important to the relationship and behaviour you are creating in your child for years to come.
Why do reward charts (and all other manner of carrot dangling rewards) work? Let me introduce you to the concept of extrinsic (external) versus intrinsic (internal) motivation.
Rewards, such as sticker charts, “if then” promising, marbles in a jar and so on, work on increasing extrinsic motivation – that is using an external motivator which ‘works’ by encouraging your child to behave in a certain way in order to receive said reward (be it a sticker, a smartie, a chocolate button or a promise of going to the park or staying up late) this is a classic behavioural tool, classical conditioning at its best – it is Pavlovs dogs and Skinner’s pigeons. e.g.: “eat all your dinner and you can have a chocolate”, “brush your teeth and you can have a sticker”. “If you pick up your toys then we’ll go to the park” and it works – or does it? I guess it depends on your definition of “work”.
“Of course, Behaviorism ‘works.’ So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public”
W. H. Auden, 1970.
In the short term rewarding the behaviour you want via the use of stickers, sweets and so on works well and most importantly for you as a parent – they work quickly! However as with cutting corners in any other aspect of child rearing you pay a price for that short term gain. The effects of sticker charts et al are not long lasting and are pretty superficial (that’s putting it politely!).
For a real change to take place (and by that I mean changing the child’s internal drives and wanting to do – or not do – something for no other reason than they want to) we need to work with a child’s intrinsic motivation – that is the motivation that comes from within. Rewards such as sticker charts work only on a superficial extrinsic level which, whilst they produce quick results for little effort and financial outlay, can actually undermine intrinsic motivation.
What does that mean then? in short these techniques of behavioural control make your child less likely to do the specific task unless they are given a reward. Which brings me back to my opening quotation. It starts with stickers and chocolate buttons, then it moves onto more hard bargaining, usually involving increasing amounts of cash. What do you end up giving a 16yr old burly teenager to do something? a sticker just won’t cut it there – so what DO you do?
This sort of ‘motivation’ (sticker charts and the like) are not really changing behaviour at all, far from it – they are actually a form of compliance tool. By this I mean that your child is not learning “right and wrong” nor are they becoming a better person – instead they are complying with their behaviour whilst the reward is on offer, remove the reward and you lose compliance. Compliance absolutely categorically does not indicate an internally motivated change has taken place.
Then there is the issue of the compliant teenager. As a toddler compliance sure is appealing when you’re in the supermarket, desperate to get your shopping and get out with the least embarrassment possible, for us as parents in this situation compliance is very appealing. Now imagine your 14yr old is in the school playground with his friends. His friends are trying to encourage him to smoke, offering him a cigarette with chants of “go on, go on, go on” – the unspoken assumption that if he takes it and begins smoking he will be “cooler” and more accepted (such is the problem with peer pressure amongst teens). Now – if your teen is used to being compliant, doing something to get a reward (a sticker – or peer regard is very little different here) he will be far more likely to comply, to buckle to peer pressure and to start smoking. I bet that wasn’t something you thought could ever be related to how you dealt with him at age 2?!
The Praise Problem
So what else to do? how about praise? praise is good right? it couldn’t ever be harmful? think again:
“Praise, like penicillin, must not be administered haphazardly. There are rules and cautions that govern the handling of potent medicines – rules about timing and dosage, cautions about possible allergic reactions. There are similar regulations about the administration of emotional medicine.” H. Ginott, 1965
The majority of praise we give to our small children is very shallow:
“Good boy”
“Well done”
“Good job”
Praise like this can actually have the opposite effect of that desired, maybe it might cause your child to lose interest in the task and not push themselves to do better next time, maybe they might feel that you only love them if they “do good”. Praise can lead children to believe they are only ‘good’ if they are perfect which in turn can lead to a fear of failure. What about the effort they put into tying their shoelaces for an hour, did you praise that? why not? is that perseverance surely not more worthy of praise than a wee in a potty? Constantly telling a child “good job” is meaningless and shallow at best, at worst you can lower self esteem and create a “praise junky” (I refer you to the above teen example!).
Maybe, therefore, it is time to rethink our love of reward charts? maybe it is time to change our language and drop the constant praise?
Part 2 to follow – The problem with Time out and Naughty Steps
If you would like to learn effective and positive ways to cope with your toddler’s behaviour then check our ToddlerCalm http://www.toddlercalm.co.uk (launching April 2012) http://www.facebook.com/toddlercalm and http://www.twitter.com/toddlercalm.
ToddlerCalm offer classes and workshops all over the UK offering parents of 1 to 3 yr olds help with understanding their toddler’s behaviour and offer real solutions to toddler tantrums, sleep and eating problems – without resorting to outdated and ineffective Behavioural techniques such as sticker charts, time out and naught steps.
An Open Letter To Gina Ford
Dear Gina,
I was interested to learn of your new book “The Contented Mother’s Guide” (via this Daily Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2110738/Don-t-say-sex-ready-childcare-guru-Gina-Ford-tells-new-mothers.html) and as a fellow (soon to be) parenting author I wondered if perhaps our ethos and beliefs had begun to be more aligned. I must admit we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to raising babies, so I wondered if we may agree on what makes a contented mother. I haven’t read your book yet so am only commenting on what appear to be the press releases sent out by your publishers and the resulting interpretations of the media, so it may well be that we are not as poles apart as I fear. I do plan to read your book in full as soon as possible as I like to keep in touch with what is happening in the world of popular parenting literature as well as research and science, don’t you feel that that is vital for one in the priviledged position of guiding new mothers? staying on top of current evidence that is?
For now though what I have read – what I believe may be comments from mothers in your book rather than yourself – has left that same sinking feeling in my heart that I was left with when I read your Contented Little Baby Book almost ten years ago as a nervous and naive new first time mother. Back then I wasn’t sure why your book made me feel so uncomfortable, particularly as all my other new mummy friends were raving about it, I did try your routines and your controlled crying approaches to sleep training, but I cried as much – if not more – than my baby did. In the end I think, after a wretched time that truly spoilt my enjoyment of my baby, I donated your book to the local NCT branch’s library, something I regret regularly.
I know now of course why your first book made me so uncomfortable, it was because my maternal instinct was screaming at me that your advice was wrong. I’m just so sorry I listened to the hype and not my inner voice. Now though I am older, stronger and wiser, I’m a seasoned mother of four and that same sinking feeling is no longer for me or my baby, now it is for the thousands (millions?) of new mothers who will read your newest book and may feel as I did when I read your first. A lot has changed in ten years, it seems however the burden of expectation modern parenting manuals place on new parents has not.
I know you have not had children, so it may not seem unreasonable for you to allow comments to be published in your book from mothers to suggest resuming a sexual relationship as soon as possible after the birth (as per the Daily Mail article suggesting one mother advises in your book to “grin and bear it”), neither I suppose would you allowing the addition of a suggestion from a mother to your book who advises leaving a newborn with babysitters whilst the new parents enjoy a “date night.” I appreciate if you have not walked in the shoes of a new mother it must be hard for you to really understand what we go through and thus it must be incredibly hard to know what comments to include in your book that present a representative view of mothers around the world. From what I have read today I don’t personally think you have achieved that balance which is such a shame.
The reality though is incredibly different and the advice in your book, however well meant or jovial – and whoever it comes from, I fear will do nothing more than make new mothers feel even more pressurised to be ‘perfect’ and make them doubt themselves and fuel the fires of guilt even more than your Contented Little Baby book made me feel (and actually ten years on STILL makes me feel a little). For me reading both in tandem I’m sure would have pushed me over the edge of the cliff into the cold and lonely waters of postnatal depression.
When you have just had a baby you experience so many unbelievable emotions, some wonderful, some less so as your body and your mind struggles to adapt to the change. Even if your birth has gone smoothly your vagina and perineum still feels as if it has done ten rounds with Mike Tyson for days, often weeks after the pain of the contractions have been long forgotten. You bleed for weeks after the birth too. I have personally had three 2nd degree tears, each one obviously needing suturing. Having stitches in perhaps your most intimate and sensitive body parts is not an experience to forget quickly. At first you are unable to sit down for any length of time, then comes the intense fear of the first poo, no matter how much lactulose you consume it is always far more terrifyng than birthing a baby – have you ever feared splitting in two – literally? and then the weeks it takes to recover from the indignity of having a stranger examine and insert their fingers into your private parts over and over again?
Then when you survive the first postnatal poo you have to endure days of said stitches itching and pulling as the skin heals and the stiches begin to break down – this remember is after a straightforward vaginal birth with a natural, fairly minor tear. For those women who suffer major tears or episiotomies their vaginas can feel bruised and battered for months – even years and I haven’t even begun to think about what postnatal healing must
be like for those women who birthed by C-Section, major abdominal surgery that takes months to recover from fully!
Then there is the all too constant reminder that we are “too attached” to our babies, for although we – as new mothers – feel they are the most important beings in the world, we are told we must not smother them, we must let them self settle in their own cot and now we are told we must go out without them. Not only that the suggestion, from another mother, published in your book that we must tear ourselves away from our newborns (we may as well be told to cut off a limb – such is the bereft feeling of emptiness when away from them) and “date” our partners, we must not talk of our baby – when that is the only thing in the world we want to talk about. We are boring and risking our relationship if we do otherwise though. Heaven forbid how did our species survive without these parenting tomes and advice?
Then there are the breasts that leak – or perhaps more embarrassingly squirt – milk whenever anybody comes near them, the saggy crepe papery postnatal belly, the hair loss, the night sweats and the new levels of exhaustion you experience each day, just when you think the tiredness cannot get any worse and the sleep deprivation must surely reach a turning point soon. No amount of alcohol, massage oil, lubricant or dressing up helps your libido when you are an aching, tearful bundle of hormones who quite frankly could never possibly envision sex again (I was always amazed at my GPs responses at my 6wk checks when they asked me what contraception I was using? I always replied “abstinence – I’ve just had a baby” – as they discussed the merits of implants, pills and condoms with me).
….And then there are the fathers. Are we partnered with such sexist primal cave men that unless we fulfil their carnal desires they will up and leave us for another? are they so shallow that they cannot possibly wait until we are physically and emotionally ready for sex again? must we 
lie back and think of England? perhaps I should comb my hair, fix in a ribboned bow, clean the house from top to bottom and have his favourite three course meal prepared for his arrival home too? Do their babies mean so little to them that they want to return to normality and enjoy a social life as they did before – when they were free of the burdens of fatherhood? Really? Perhaps my husband is one of a kind then? because he fell head over heels as much as I did, I only feel guillty that he only had 2weeks paternity leave with each of our babies when I know he would have liked much longer. It is important that we do not undervalue new fathers.
I feel it would be rude of me to enquire why your own marriage ended in divorce, but in some ways that question seems incredibly pertinent now, you did not have the strain of children that I do, so I wonder what happened? Perhaps you will tell us in your next book?
kind regards
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Mother of Four
Guest Blog: New Help For Ante and Post Natal Depression
This week BabyCalm announced that they have pledged their support to a new support service for those affected by Antenatal & Postnatal depression, PTSD, Birth Trauma and Puerperal Psychosis, both in an advisory and ambassador role but also in a fundraising role. We are pleased to announce that all proceeeds from the launch of our national BabyCalm coffee morning, in celebration of the BabyCalm book launch internationally, on October 4th, will be donated to PANDAS in order to help them in their fantastic work. PND and birth trauma are subjects close to my heart, not only because they are both so common and affect many of the new mothers we work with, but because I have first hand experience of both conditions myself and am so passionate that no new mother should go through what I went through alone. Indeed I have devoted a whole chapter in my book to PND and birth trauma so I am delighted to be working with PANDAS in order to both raise awareness of these common conditions and provide more support for those that it affects.
The rest of this blog was written by Racheal Dobson, Founder of PANDAS:
The PANDAS Foundation (Pre And postNatal Depression Advice and Support) was set up to support individuals and their families suffering from Pre (Ante)natal Depression, Postnatal Depression and Postnatal Psychosis. We offer a variety of support mechanisms such as email support, A PANDAS telephone Helpline, the PANDAS website, regional support groups and in some areas one to one support.
Our aim is to ensure that every individual suffering from these illnesses gets the support they require to begin their road to recovery. I started the PANDAS Foundation, along with my husband Stuart, due to my experience of Postnatal Depression after my son, Andreas, was born in February 2010. I found there was very little support available which allowed me to meet other individuals and families going through the same or similar situation as me. PANDAS officially launched on the 15th August 2011 and have grown in strength ever since. We are now rapidly gaining support from different areas of the United Kingdom.
I have put my story on our website - and below – in the hope if gives others comfort to know that they are not on their own, it is ok to admit you are struggling. Prenatal Depression, Postnatal Depression and Postnatal Psychosis are all illnesses, like any other and nothing to be ashamed of.
‘My birth wasn’t exactly plain sailing, I had an emergency caesarean and was left feeling as if I was being attacked. I have never had so many people in one room. I had to have a blood transfusion which amounted to me waking up after having my baby.
I Sat in a side room on my own, looking over into a cot. I was not met with love or joy, just nothing…. Empty. More and more people came to see me and my sister said I must be so proud. The only person I could tell was my husband. I felt such a shame of a women, a wife and a mother.
Everyone was telling me how I should be feeling and all I wanted was to just go back to time when it was just my husband and I. I knew this was selfish, but I spent what felt like my childhood caring for my mum. My husband was my escape and on our 1st anniversary, having friends round I felt like finally “I’m me, I can do what I want, what people my age do”. So I blamed this little vulnerable child… Baby even, for taking that away from me.’
We are really pleased at the PANDAS Foundation to have gained the support from BabyCalm and we look forward to working with them. We already have one BabyCalm teacher,Sam Gately, setting up a Cardiff PANDAS Support Group and I personally look forward to meeting more BabyCalm teachers and discussing how we can support each other.
If you require more information, advice or support, on prenatal depression, postnatal depression or postnatal psychosis, please visit our website at www.pandasfoundation.org.uk or alternatively you can call our Pandas Help Line on 0843 28 98 401.
Our Adventures at The Baby Show
Why I HATE Attachment Parenting
The name that is!
Yesterday I commented similar on facebook and was asked “why?”, so I spent the evening thinking about it a little more and these are my reasons (I will warn you many of them are VERY tongue in cheek and over-exagerated before you get upset! I fit quite neatly into the ridiculous examples I have given below and am prodding fun at myself more than anyone else):
1) I detest any form of labelling, of parents or babies. I hate Tracey Hogg’s description of babies (mostly because mine wasn’t an angel, however hard I tried to fake the quiz!) and shock horror, I don’t even like Sears’ description of fussy babies or Oliver James’ description of organiser mothers. Why not? because it pigeon holes people, whether they are big or little people. We all possess many different traits and qualities, some days we’re angelic, some days we’re fussy, some days we’re controllers, some days we’re helicopters. What is the point of these labels? except to keep us feeling negative, feeling trapped by our own personalities or giving us an excuse for behaviour, ours or our child’s. When I worked as a Paediatric Homoeopath (I told you I was a cliche!) I used to meet lots of parents desperate for a diagnosis for their child’s behavioural issues – Aspergers, ASD Spectrum, ADHD/ADD, Dyspraxia….I always used to ask them *why* they wanted a diagnosis? (particularly if it was one that didn’t result in any extra help for the child/family), why they had spent so long chasing one? When I was a child we didn’t have all of these terms in use, did it make life harder? I think it did the opposite, my school certainly felt more inclusive.
2) I don’t like the implication that Attachment Parents must always be physically attached to their child. This certainly puts expectant parents off, in my HypnoBirthing classes several mums have commented “people are trying to make me do attachment parenting, but I think it sounds stifling, for me and the baby”. I know this is not in the implication of AP principles but it does often come across, rightly or wrongly, as an implication in the wider world. I can guarantee there is not one single parent out there who didn’t get pissed off with their baby, didn’t wish for a night’s uninterrupted sleep in bed on their own, didn’t wish to be alone and didn’t wish, even just once, that their baby self settled or didn’t wish, on a hot sticky day, when they were tired and carrying lots of heavy shopping, that they had a buggy. No parent can admit to being perfect, no parent can admit to never getting pissed off with their baby, whingeing to a friend, shouting at their toddler or sobbing in a heap when it all gets too much. Attachment parenting is often seen as a daunting “ideal”.
3) AP’ers can sometimes adopt a bit of a superiority complex and smugness that can make the whole ethos off putting. Yes I’ve met my fair share of judgemental AP’ers (heck I know I’ve even been one at points no matter how hard I tried not to), the sharp intake of breath as they walk past the forward facing, dangling baby in a Baby Bjorn, the desire to say something to the friend who pushes their baby around all day in a car seat on a travel system (I’m so sorry – I’m guilty of that one!), the comment of “it’s not too late to go back to breastfeeding” to a new mother who has made an informed choice to switch to formula feeding and the slightly smug “he sleeps in my bed, I’d never dream of leaving him by himself in his own room in a big scary cot” comments.
4) AP’ers can make non AP’ers feel terribly guilty. Whether it is an unintentionally hurtful comment, a smug smile (remember I said I was being tongue in cheek!), the latest piece of scientific research sensationalised by the Daily Mail, or just because you do things differently. Surely the AP principle of responding with sensitivity should apply to everybody, not just our babies – but other mothers too. How does a new mother, who has made her choices with what little information and support she had available, feel when she reads she is Detachment Parenting and thus damaging her baby? I have always made 100% sure that whenever I write an article on AP principles/research and get a little hot under the collar that I stress I am NOT ever, ever, ever attacking the parents – but the misinformed “Baby Expert” who has spread the bad advice. It is these “experts” I am angry at and wish they would change their way – NEVER the parents who I always have the utmost respect and empathy for.
5) Attachment Parenting is seen as alternative. It is seen as a lifestyle choice. APers are University educated, shop in Waitrose, have been to Glastonbury at least once, have a penchant for dreadlocks, use cloth san pro or mooncups, use real nappies on their babies. The babies are dressed in organic, fair trade (preferably bamboo) clothing and always sport an amber teething necklace, they shun vaccination, they bed share, they definitely gave birth at home, usually in water with a doula and some birth hypnosis, they read the Greeen Parent, Juno or The Mother, they have a rainbow sling, use elimination communication and don’t buy any toiletries containing parabens, SLS, artifical fragrance or colours and definitely none tested on animals. Attachment parenting has become a ridiculed cliche and one that is not appealing to the masses. Heck *I* am a ridiculous cliche (remember the tongue in cheek comment please!). So what are the parents to do who shop in Next, Tesco and Mothercare? who have a Bugaboo, use Pampers and Tampax, love Calpol and enjoy reading Now and Mother and Baby Magazine? No indeed Attachment Parenting is not mainstream, it is offputting and weird.
6. Attachment Parenting has lost its roots. No, the idea did not stem from Sears or Jean Liedloff, as many seem to think. The idea ideas are much, much more scientific in nature, stemming from Developmental Psychology and namely the work of Jown Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Harry Harlow, Rene Spitz and co. There is a MOUNTAIN of scientific research, both old and new into Attachment Theory. Why then are so many so aware of Sears and Liefdloff and not of Bowlby and Ainsworth? It is my belief (or indeed BabyCalm’s belief) that this research needs to be made mainstream, in an accessible way. We are branding the BabyCalm book at the moment, discussing cover designs and are certain that the book should follow our mainstream branding, simple, clean, basic, almost scientific without any nods to “natural”, or “alternative” “earthy”, “crunchy”. I have not used the words “attachment parenting” once in the book! If we want to make attachment theory and its implications mainstream we need to do it in a mainstream way – we need to drop the name, for only then can it be seen as the cultural and biological norm for our species and only then can we begin to loosen the grip of the Baby Trainers and Experts.
Do you have to be an AP’er to parent with respect and connection? no. Do we need guidelines and principles telling us how to parent? no. Do we need to just trust our instinct and do what feels right? yes. Let’s drop this terminology, let’s drop the idea of viewing it as a choice of a way to parent and lets help new and expectant parents to understand the way our species is meant to be born and raised. The NORMAL way for humans to birth and parent.
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Mother of Four and Director of BabyCalm Ltd www.babycalm.co.uk
Coming soon The BabyCalm Book: “BabyCalm: A Guide For Calmer Babies and Happier Parents”, Piatkus,published October 4th 2012.
Can Love and Bonding Solve Child Behavioural Problems?
My second son Flynn is 8, we didn’t have the best start. My much longed for cathartic home waterbirth (after an emergency transfer into hospital first time around) ended as an emergency induction in hospital due to pre-eclampsia after a 4 day stay antenatally. Flynn passed lots of fresh meconium during the labour, he was obviously as stressed as I was during the whole procedure, which meant I was constantly monitored so was unable to move or use the pool, the ferocity of the induction meant I begged for an epidural despite the weeks of hypnosis for birth sessions I had attended during pregnancy.
By the time Flynn was born he was showing some horrible heartrate decelerations which meant he was taken immediately by a paed. After a good few minutes I was allowed to hold him. I was passed a wiped, swaddled, shocked looking screaming bundle. I had torn so the lights were turned up full whilst I was stitched back together. My husband was sent home 2hrs after the birth and I was wheeled to an overheated ward with 3 other women where I remained for the next 4 days. One of the other new mothers had twins and was trying to sleep train and get them on a 4hrly feeding routine despite the fact they were only 2days old – needless to say they cried almost constantly. I was exhausted. Flynn was bathed every day by a care worker and given back to me dressed. He spent most of those four days in his plastic goldfish bowl hospital crib. Everytime I held him and slept I would wake to find a midwife had taken hm from my arms and placed him back in his goldfish bowl. Once they took him whilst I was still awake, I begged her not to – but she said “we don’t allow bedsharing here, it’s dangerous”.
On day four I discharged myself, I felt like I was going insane, in fact I think I probably was.
No, we didn’t get off to the best start – not at all.
If I’m honest that’s all I remember from Flynn’s first year, aside from one snatched snippet of feeding him a banana in a baby yoga class, him wearing a reindeer babygro at Christmas and me stopping breastfeeding at 3mths because I couldn’t handle having him so reliant on me – or indeed close to me – all of the time. That is the grand sum of my memories of his babyhood. As is by now obvious I most certainly had undiagnosed PTSD and/or PND. Having a Psychology background though means it’s easy to fake Edinburgh Scales and tell the health visitors and GPs what they want to hear. So I lied, I lied through my teeth and I convinced everybody I was OK – even myself in the end. Only I wasn’t OK, I was seriously messed up and worse than that I messed up with Flynn, that mother-baby bond just wasn’t there. In truth I almost resented him for being poorly and messing up my birth plans.
Fast forward five years and Flynn had become a real handful, that’s a polite way of saying he was the most awfully behaved child I have ever met, if I tell you his nickname was Flynn Bin Laden that will probably give you some idea. He was never violent though (for that I am eternally grateful!), he just had no respect for authority, me, his father, his siblings or anyone really. He was in constant trouble at school, temper tantrummed like a toddler well into his eighth year and constantly wound up his siblings. He got banned from football club for running around in his pants and refusing to get dressed and he got banned from school swimming lessons for jumping in when they should have been gettting out. He flooded the school toilets (on purpose), he got in serious trouble for pulling down his pants and deliberately weeing on the school playground for a dare. One day he told school he was “going home” and off he went, just walked straight out of the gate and up the street (they reviewed their security PDQ after that event!). He killed two of our chickens (he took one “swimming” and the other on the trampoline with him – you can guess how that ended) and two goldfish (he wanted to “give them a cuddle”) and his piece de resistance was stealing my homeopathic powder wraps (sac lac sachets if any other homeopaths are reading!) and distributing amongst his friends in the playground at school where the dinner lady thought he was distributing cocaine. The school called the police, who promptly turned up on my doorstep (I was part way through teaching a private HypnoBirthing class) to question me on suspicion of drug dealing. Oh no, you couldn’t make it up – Flynn Bin Laden gave Horrid Henry a run for his money!
So – fast forward to last month, I have been called in to see his teacher about a thousand times (I’m probably not exagerrating) and the headteacher (for “serious” meetings) several times. Their solution was basically to pass the buck to me and throw in some antiquated behavioural techniques such as “time out” and reward charts (my hatred of these requires a whole new blog post!). I protested, loudly, at these suggestions. I explained the carrot/stick arguement, I asked them to read Alfie Kohn, I told them about the downfalls of behaviourism and I asked them to instead consider WHY he was acting like this and consider ways of helping – not compounding the problem (my suggestion of Forest School was immediately rejected) which was basically, deep down – an unhappy little boy. I asked for an evaluation from an Ed Psych as I suspected dyslexia. After TWO YEARS he was assessed last month (though from what he says I wouldn’t call it an assessment) – so what did this long awaited report contain? A suggestion for bloody reward charts and stickers in order to make him more controllable – aggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
So the solution to me was to home ed. I would LOVE to home ed. The only problem is Children 1, 3 and 4 love school but would hate Flynn being at home with me and then there’s the slight issue of writing my books and being the Director of an ever growing soon to be very international company. I was left with the awful choice of Work V Flynn. I am ashamed to say work won :-( I couldn’t give him what I knew he needed, but I knew the behavioural approach was NOT for us. I had to find an alternative – quickly.
Last year I began to hear about a technique called “Love Bombing” pioneered by the Psychologist Oliver James. I respect Oliver’s work hugely, particularly since he gave Gina Ford a run for her mega money! (so much so we invited him to be a guest speaker at our Conference in May – Click HERE for info – OK plug over ;-)!!!) and was inspired to give Love Bombing a go after hearing him speak at a local event just before Christmas. I badgered Oliver with my questions and resolved to give it a go after Christmas. By “it” I mean a weekend away, just Flynn and I – filled with activities he had chosen, me not saying “no” but instead constantly telling him how much I loved him (bombing him with love!). Oliver promised that this technique was massively successful and he had witnessed great responses in all the families who had tried it – so much so it is to be the content for his next book.
Flynn and I didn’t manage to get away for the weekend, but three weeks ago we gave Love Bombing a go. I asked him what he wanted to do for the day, as we’ve just had a big extension built he had just got his own room for the first time. He waivered between swimming/bowling and cinema and stayng at home and decorating his room. Staying home and doing his room won. So on Sunday morning he woke and the two of us spent all day in his room, sorting his toys, I decorated one wall with a giant jungle mural (his choice) and we chose some Zebra material for me to make a tent under his bed. We listened to cheesy Disney songs and he drew me “I love you mummy” cards whilst I worked. That night he slept in my bed with me, and the next and the next. The following week we worked on his room some more and that evening we had a “mummy and Flynn” movie night – popcorn and an awful DVD chosen by him which I pretented to love every minute of whilst we snuggled on the sofa together. Next weekend we’re off to see a film together at the cinema (Puss in Boots – I can’t think of anything I’d rather watch less! but again I will feign deep interest in), just he and I. Each evening we have “hug time”, I tell him I love him lots and he regularly sleeps in bed with me and writes me love letters almost daily.
Has it worked? I am not exagerrating when I say he is literally a different child. He has not been in trouble at school for nearly 3wks (we couldn’t go 3 days before), his work at school has improved (he is a year behind for everything except for art), he hasn’t tantrummed about doing his homework for 3wks, we’ve had no incidences at home and he seemes genuinely happier. Flynn Bin Laden is no more. Of course the school and Ed Psych are patting themselves on the back because their new reward chart/sticker scheme has “worked” (they don’t know what I’ve done – they think I’m a troublesome hippy anyway, no point in telling them).
And me? I don’t know who Love Bombing has healed more — myself or Flynn, certainly when we started I had no idea that I would benefit from it, but I have, imeasurably. I feel like I’ve got some of that year back again and I’ve mended that bond that was so badly broken at the start. It seems I’ve been bombed with love too :-)
Since then I haven’t stopped recommending the technique, it is so simple,yet so effective and so, so, so easy. So if you have a troublesome toddler, a problematic preschooler or a tempestous tweenager ditch the reward charts, the time outs, the punsishments and the naughty step and give love a chance instead. You may just be surprised at the results!
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Mother of Four and Director of BabyCalm Ltd www.babycalm.co.uk
Coming soon The BabyCalm Book: “BabyCalm: A Guide For Calmer Babies and Happier Parents”, Piatkus,published October 4th 2012.
An Apology and An Announcement
I really feel the need to apologise for my gross neglect of this blog over the past couple of months, I have sooooooo many topics I want to blog on, so much I want to say, so many issues I want to raise but…..but……but…………how to say this without sounding a complete flake? I’ve been really busy, really, really busy. Busier than really busy, for a bloody good reason.
I’ve only gone and got a publishing contract!
You know that book you really want to recommend to your new mum friend? the one that isn’t full of CIO/CC/Self-settle/routine twaddle – but that isn’t as “way out” as the books talking about living with tribes, or living in biblical times or ones that are really ‘out there’ AP. The normal, mainstream book that is choc full of down to earth science, evidence by the bucket load but written in a way that is accessible to all. A book that talks about babywearing, co-sleeping, being baby led and instinctive without ramming it down your throat or insinuating that you must make massive life style changes and must feel guilty if you have to go back to work. The book I really wish I had read as a new mother?
Well it’s coming – internationally – at the end of this year, I’m so damn excited I need to go and stock up on Tena Lady with the royalty cheque! – a book full of the BabyCalm gentle parenting philosophy with a mainstream twist.
…..and the cherry on the cake is it’s with an amazing publisher, Little, Brown/Piatkus - the publisher of Naomi Stadlen, Patrick Holford, William Sears (in the UK) and……………….Stephenie Meyer of Twilight Fame (do you think I’ll get to meet Jacob? yes, I prefer my men hot and naked rather than cold and dead!). How cool is that?
Bring on the Maternal Revolution! At BabyCalm we can’t bloody wait!
Like most I have been caught up in a never-ending stream of Christmas festivities recently (which is partly to blame for my shocking lack of blogging lately!): carol concerts, nativity plays, Christmas parties, Christingle services and late night shopping evenings. I’ve also had a ridiculously huge amount of business related work this month too and have been frequently away from home at meetings and training sessions or when I am at home - buried in my laptop furiously tapping away at the keys.
My children do not like this. (I do not like this).
Last week, my 6yr old ran into my arms, crying and said “mummy I’ve missed you so much” after I returned from weekend’s training course, my 4yr old clung to me not wanting me to leave, my 8yr old told me “I hate BabyCalm” (when questioned why he said “because it takes you away from us”) and my 9yr old asked me “why do you have to work all the time?” – my flippant answer to him “because we need money to buy all the stuff you guys need” did not sit well – with either him or me (and actually why do I “do” BabyCalm? is it for the money? Lord knows it’s not exactly lucrative! would I sound a cliché if I said “I believe in it and I believe we can make a difference”?).
In my festive frenzy, it hit me – the mountain of presents for my kids waiting to be wrapped is meaningless, will the latest Lego set or the hideous pink Barbie car really mean something to them? is that really what they need, despite it being what they asked for? to me the presents represent my love for them – did I buy so much because I felt subconsciously guilty that I couldn’t give them as much of me as they really needed? is our gift obsessed, materialistic, consumerist nation of parents hiding their subconscious guilt in brightly wrapped bow topped boxes – just like me?
So I made a vow, this year I will give my children what I really wanted to give them all along -the gift of presence, not presents. I will read with them, I will sing with them, I will bake with them, I will play board games with them, I will listen to my daughter’s 1000th rendition of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” as if it’s the first time she’s sung it to me, I will watch Home Alone with them and pretend I like it, I will make snowy Father Christmas footprints and magic reindeer food, I will take them to the Tree Lighting Service and I will let them make pictures with glitter (hmmm actually – I might not be able to bring myself to do that one – Glitter, in my house - eurgh!).
Now……where did I put the wrapping paper and sellotape? I have a remote control Lightning McQueen to wrap……
Happy Christmas Everyone, I hope you get all the presence your heart desires.
Naughty but N.I.C.E – What is The Future For a Caesarean Born Society?
I am breaking tradition here and blogging about birth. When I started writing this blog I firmly wanted to keep it to the first year of life (after birth) only, however sometimes things aren’t so cut and dried, how can I not talk about the recent NICE update when it is everywhere I look/listen – TV, radio, facebook, twitter, emails…? So today I’m changing hats, I’m taking off my BabyCalm hat and putting on my doula and HypnoBirthing teacher hat, with apologies to those of you who usually subscribe for my baby/parenting posts – normal service will resume again tomorrow.
In may of 2009 NICE set out to update the 2004 Caesarean guidelines which have recently been completed and now include a section on the care of women requesting a caesarean section without a clinical indication, for those of you who want contentious reading material you can read the updated guideline HERE. The irony begins with the opening pages of the document where they refer to “Woman Centred Care” and open with the wording “Treatment and care should take into account women’s needs and preferences. Pregnant women should be offered evidence-based information and support to enable them to make informed decisions about their care and treatment.” and “Good communication between healthcare professionals and pregnant women is essential. It should be supported by evidence-based written information tailored to the woman’s needs”. Sounds great doesn’t it? if only….
The really juicy part though is the new addition of this statement:
“When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth, offer referral to a healthcare professional with expertise in providing perinatal mental health support to help her address her anxiety in a supportive manner. For women requesting a CS, if after discussion and offer of support (including perinatal mental health support for women with anxiety about childbirth), a vaginal birth is still not an acceptable option, offer a planned CS. An obstetrician unwilling to perform a CS should refer the woman to an obstetrician who will carry out the CS.”
Specifically here are the guidelines for mothers requesting an elective section:
2.9 Maternal request for CS
-
When a woman requests a CS explore, discuss and record the specific reasons for the request.
-
If a woman requests a CS when there is no other indication, discuss the overall risks and benefits of CS compared with vaginal birth and record that this discussion has taken place (see box A). Include a discussion with other members of the obstetric team (including the obstetrician, midwife and anaesthetist) if necessary to explore the reasons for the request, and ensure the woman has accurate information.
-
When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth, offer referral to a healthcare professional with expertise in providing perinatal mental health support to help her address her anxiety in a supportive manner.
-
Ensure the healthcare professional providing perinatal mental health support has access to the planned place of birth during the antenatal period in order to provide care.
-
For women requesting a CS, if after discussion and offer of support (including perinatal mental health support for women with anxiety about childbirth), a vaginal birth is still not an acceptable option, offer a planned CS.
-
An obstetrician unwilling to perform a CS should refer the woman to an obstetrician who will carry out the CS.
Now this raises so many questions for me:
1) Who discusses, explores and records the mother’s reasons? what special training do they have for holding these discussions? how much time can they give to the mother at this appointment? how are the reasons explored? In reality I fear this “discussion and exploration” will be performed by an overworked registrar with a skewed view of birth in a 10minute appointment, I hope I’m wrong though.
2) How are the risks and benefits of a C-section discussed? who discusses these? how long will the appointment last? what information is the mother provided with to take away and digest, who can she voice questions to that come up after the appointment?
3) Who are the “healthcare professional with expertise in providing perinatal mental health” that these women will be referred to? what is their training? how much do they know about C-Sections, normal and abnormal birth, specifically what are their views on birth? are they aware of other options available to the mother? how will they ensure she is not making a choice based on fear, which really has its roots in ignorance & misinformation – the ignorance of society concerning what birth really is, should be and can be. If the healthcare professional is as scared of birth as many healthcare professionals how will this “support” really help the mother?
4) What other support will be offered? I note support is referenced, but the type is not explicit and is vitally important.
My big concerns though is the omission of these vital points in the guideline:
-
When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth ensure all is done to help her to reduce this anxiety by i) explaining the physiology of birth, including the fight or flight response & oxytocin/adrenaline antagonism and help her to realise birth need not be hideously painful & difficult, that in fact it can be a rewarding, enjoyable, life changing experience for her, ii) help her to talk through her fears with her partner and help her partner to see how s/he can help to make the birth as un-traumatic as possible, iii) thoroughly debrief the mother’s past birth experience, providing her free access to her previous maternity notes and recommending at least a one hour birth afterthoughts session with an experienced, empathetic and pro-natural birth midwife counsellor.
-
When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth ensure that she is offered good non-biased antenatal education, of at least 8hrs in length.
- When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth ensure that she is offered the option of a homebirth and guaranteed the option of birth in a freestanding birth centre (which should always be well staffed and never closed due to staff shortages). Explain fully the benefit of homebirth, how care is much more likely to be from a known and trusted midwife, the benefit of staying in the home environment for both mother and father, the impact on oxytocin when mothers are expected to birth in bright light in a strange environment with lack of privacy and explain how at home this can be very different, how birthing in your own environment can be so much more relaxing and far less scary.
- When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth help her to understand the benefits of waterbirth, including the pain relieving properties & effect on endorphin release, the feeling of privacy, the warmth and support it provides to an aching labouring body and give all women access to a birth pool in labour.
- When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth ensure you provide information on doulas to her, including information on Doula UK’s Hardship fund, making sure she understands she does not have to be rich to afford a doula. Help her to understand how female support during labour can shorten her labour, mean she will need less pain relief and less likely to need intervention (Oh – silly me NICE you did do this in your later comment “Women should be informed that continuous support during labour from women with or without prior training reduces the likelihood of CS.” hmmm, I wonder why you failed to add this to the section for women with anxiety?!).
- When a woman requests a CS because she has anxiety about childbirth ensure as well as the risks of a C-Section you also help her to understand that C-Sections are major abdominal surgery and that as such as well as the physical risks of the operation to her and her baby her recovery time afterwards will be much longer, breastfeeding could be harder, bonding could be harder and she could forever more be wracked with a feeling of “what if”, particularly when she is pregnant again and this time more knowledgeable and decides she would like a VBAC, ensure she knows what you will throw at her in terms of care of a VBAC/trial of scar – i.e: continuous monitoring, prophylactic venflon, no waterbirth, no birth centre, constantly asking about scar pain, clock-watching and treating her like a walking emergency waiting to happen.
Where is this information?
This is why the birth community is up in arms. Not because we are all hippy trippy tree huggers who want everybody to birth in candlelight and incense scented, purple painted bedrooms. No, because we want women to have a REAL INFORMED CHOICE, because we are sick and tired of the medics taking care only of the physical side of birth, woefully neglecting the emotional needs of new mothers, because we’ve seen the after effects — the empty eyes, the problems breastfeeding, the PND and because we know it didn’t have to be that way. Whatever birth the mother may have chosen – it should be one of choice, not of fear, lack of information and lack of support. Birth is not just “one day in your life”, birth is one day in your life that will change your life…forever……and NICE should never forget that. They should never forget what a powerful influence they have on the fragile minds of pregnant women and how far reaching their guidelines can be spanning many, many years after that “one day” both for the mother, her child, her child’s child and generations that follow.
The magnitude of these guidelines is immense. C-Sections are wonderful, life saving major operations, they save lives – wow! - when did they become a lifestyle choice? what happened to the WHO’s guide that there is no excuse for C-Section rates higher than 10%? what are we opening the doors to with this new guideline?
I will leave you with the wise words of Michel Odent, from his thought provoking book “The Caesarean” you can read the rest of the article HERE:
“Human beings have not been programmed for long-term thinking. For millions of years our tropical ancestors consumed the food they could find from day to day in their environment, either by collecting shellfish and small fish in shallow water, by gathering plants and fruits, or by scavenging and hunting. After the comparatively recent advent of agriculture and animal breeding, they had to increase their capacity to anticipate. They were obliged to think at least in terms of seasons. Today we have at our disposal such powerful technologies that we must suddenly learn to think in terms of decades and centuries. It is so in many fields of human activities. It is so, in particular, in the field of childbirth. At a time when the safety of the caesarean can be compared to the safety of the vaginal route in well-equipped departments of obstetrics, a great part of the world population is “born from above”. We must urgently train ourselves to think long term. What are the long-term consequences of being caesarean-born? What is the future of a civilization born by caesarean?”
What is our future indeed?
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Mum of 4, Director of BabyCalm Ltd, Doula, Antenatal Teacher & Psychology Grad
http://www.facebook.com/babycalm
http://www.twitter.com/babycalmclasses
Hands Up – Do you Share a Bed with Your Baby?
A fortnight ago I set out to investigate the incidence of co-sleeping a little, having commonly seen the 60% or 70% figures bandied around. Several research studies out there indicate the range to be somewhere between 40% and 80%, dependent on many factors including ethnicity, age of parent and age of baby.
I decided to run my own mini survey, conducted via Facebook and Twitter which elicited 250 replies from mothers in the UK in just over 24hrs. I’m giving over this blog post to the replies received from the survey.
First I asked simply:
“Have You Ever Slept in the Same Bed as Your Baby?”
WOW.
Next I asked:
“How Often Do You Share a Bed With Your Baby?”
I also asked whether the mother was aware of the risks (SIDs) associated with bed-sharing – 98% replied “yes”. Naturally then I asked whether they were aware of how to reduce these risks – this time 95% replied yes, leaving 5% who share a bed with their baby unaware of how to reduce these risks, a small percentage, but 5% more than I would like to see. For their benefit here is how to reduce and SIDs risks associated with co-sleeping:
1) Only co-sleep if you are breastfeeding (breastfeeding mothers have a heightened sense of awareness to their babies and are therefore less likely to roll onto their baby, rather they tend to assume a protective “cradling” position around their baby)
2) Carefully plan your sleeping environment (sleep with your baby ONLY in bed, never a sofa or beanbag, and ensure the mattress is firm, that pillows, blankets and duvets are kept well out of the way of your baby and that the room is not too warm).
3) Carefully plan the position of yourself and your baby (you should sleep between your baby and partner – never put the baby in the middle of the bed – and ensure your baby is positioned in the crook of your arm – well below your pillows, your body should form a protective “frame” all around your baby, with you on your side similar to this photo. Never sleep with your baby laying on your chest. Check that your baby cannot get trapped between the bed and the wall, or in the side of a bedguard (if you use one). You can buy special guards designed specifically for co-sleeping like THIS ONE.
4) Never share a bed with your baby if you smoke.
5) Never share a bed with your baby if you have consumed alcohol.
6) Never share a bed with your baby if you are taking prescription or recreational drugs.
7) Never share a bed with your baby if you are overtired/exhausted.
8) Remove any necklaces, tie your hair up and don’t wear night clothes with ties that could present a choking hazard.
9) Do not share a bed with your baby if they were a low birth weight or born prematurely.
This leaflet is a great resource, produced by the UK’s UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative in association with FSID.
I wanted to end with some of your words. I finished my survey with the question:
“Why Did You Choose To C0-Sleep?”
Here are some of my favourite answers:
“We chose to co-sleep because our first child wouldn’t sleep longer than 45 minutes in his moses basket, after trying and failing to get him into a routine we decided it was best for our sanity to have him in the bed especially since I was breastfeeding. We co-slept until he was 8 months. Now our daughter has arrived we didn’t even try to put her in a cot/moses basket she was straight in our bed and she sleeps for 4 hours at night which means all of us get a good nights sleep.”
“My baby sleeps well both on her own and in bed with us. We don’t co-sleep every night, usually it’s after her 3am feeding when we keep her in bed with us the rest of the night. So I guess you could say it’s modified co-sleeping because she starts out in her crib. She doesn’t seem to mind either arrangement but I love having her near me, which I never thought would be the case. Before I had her, I was absolutely against co-sleeping and swore I would never do it.”
“Our twin boys are our first babies. We have an ArmsReach, so we planned to co-sleep from the beginning. We suspected it would be easier for my recovery and more comforting for the boys. The bed-sharing was a bit of a surprise to us. It happened in response to lack of sleep, probably. It continued because it felt natural to us. We only stopped bed-sharing regularly at 7 months when the boys became so active we couldn’t safely keep them in bed with us. (The monkeys crawl right for the edge every time they wake in the night.)”
“The bond is amazing. We both sleep better when co-sleeping, and the sleep apnea issues that my little one has dont happen when he is in the bed with me, we have found that while in the bed with me he gets in sync with my breathing pattern.”
“When he was first born he would not sleep on his own, so we started bringing him in bed with us in order to get some sleep! Now he is 6 months and has slept in his own cot for a while now, but still comes in bed with us after an early morning feed (6am ish)”.
“To improve sleep for mother and baby, for safety and baby’s health (physical and emotional), to benefit breastfeeding relationship. Because it’s the norm in most of the world and I know many families who successfully co-sleep. And because it’s nice.”
“Initially, it felt right. I just couldn’t imagine leaving my tiny baby on his own in a room in the dark all night. That felt really unnatural and wrong to me. As a bonus, I get so much more sleep now he’s older and breastfeeding through the night.”
“Because it is far easier for breastfeeding at night and much better for both mother and baby to be close when sleeping. My children are now 5 and 8 and regularly come and get into bed with us if they wake up early in the morning. Or indeed in the middle of the night! I think a family all sleeping together sometimes is a really nice, cosy thing to do, even if the children are watching telly while the parents attempt to sleep….”
“I believe that it is best for our baby and for us. I did a lot of research before she was born and realised that the literature which presents the ‘risks’ of co-sleeping is flawed in that it often does not distinguish between intentional and accidental co-sleeping. We have worked to create a safe sleeping environment (plenty of space, safe bedding etc) and are conscious of the risk factors (e.g. no alcohol). Co-sleeping ensures we all get a better night’s sleep even through growth spurts as I can breastfeed my baby as soon as she needs it, she doesn’t need to get upset in order to get my attention and neither of us has to wake up 100% so it’s easier to get back to sleep! Having a family bed also helps bonding between father and baby as they get more time close to each other despite him being out at work all day – she usually falls asleep holding his finger.”
“It felt beautiful and completely normal for me and my baby. He was happy and I was happy. We both slept well. It made life easy. I also felt entirely confident in following my instincts.”
“Why keep getting up out of bed for night feeds when I can have all night snuggles instead?”
“With my first, my instincts told me this was how my baby & I should sleep at night. I was a bit nervous about doing it so struggled along for a while, sometimes falling asleep on the sofa with him during night feeds! I was exhausted, nothing comforted him like being with me and I soon realised I was being silly ‘fighting’ it and far better & safer to embrace what I knew was right for us. I appeased my worries by reading up on how to do it safely.”
“I breastfed both children and I am too lazy to get out of a warm cosy bed to feed; easier to lie on my side, feed and then fall back to sleep…given that breastfeeding reduces the risk of SIDS by roughly 1 third and I had no other independant risk factors i didn’t view it as ‘risky’ Some of the lowest rates of SIDS are to be found in cultures where co-sleeping is the norm.”
“I waited 15 years for her, and could not be apart from her. 8 IVF’s can do funny things to you.”
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Mum of 4, Director of BabyCalm Ltd, Doula, Antenatal Teacher & Psychology Grad
This morning I was fortunate enough to be put through to speak on air on Channel 5′s “The Wright Stuff” concerning Nils Bergman’s recent Co-Sleeping research. As is usual for the mainstream media the research had been twisted into something far from the truth and distorted to provide titilation and entertainment.
The panel on The Wright Stuff included (as well as Matthew Wright) Sarah Beeny and Anne Diamond (whose son, Sebastian, tragically died from SIDs in 1991 when asleep in his cot in his own room, aged 4mths), you can imagine then the stance taken by the TV show – which was 1) ridiculing bedsharing, 2) focussing on flawed research that says co-sleeping is dangerous and 3) ignoring the research that says otherwise. I called in to point out the flaws in the research and had hoped to be given enough airtime to point out no.3 and call them on their naivety concerning point number 1, but sadly was cut off before I had the chance to do so. I hope my, all too brief, minute of airtime helped in some small way to correct the grossly incorrect information they were otherwise providing (and am grateful to Sarah Beeny for continuing my point after they pulled the phone line), however I have decided to blog about what I wasn’t given a chance to say in the hopes that this post will be shared far and wide!
My personal viewpoint is that all parents should be supported in their choices, and that those choices should be informed. If a parent wishes to bedshare health professionals and wider society have a duty to help them to do this safely. Indeed research suggests that around 60% of all new parents share a bed with their baby, most do this (much like Sarah Beeny admitted this morning) in secret, feeling guilty for doing so and confessing in whispers that they do it. It would be naive to adopt a standpoint like FSIDs and issue a blanket statement saying “The safest place for your baby to sleep is in a cot in your bedroom for the first six months” because 1) that is simply not true in all cases and 2) it ignores the fact that 60% of parents WILL sleep with their baby – surely it makes more sense to help those parents to understand how to minimise risk as much as possible? those 60% of parents are STILL SLEEPING WITH THEIR BABIES DESPITE FSIDS advice – why then do they not realise their blanket statement is failing and support the choices of those parents to sleep safely?
I must confess here I have a vested interest in this subject as I firmly believe co-sleeping saved my daughter’s life. One night, when my daughter was around 2 months old I awoke to find her still – and blue – in the crook of my arm. She had stopped breathing. Instinctively I shook her and blew in her face and to my great relief she breathed, I have no idea how long she had stopped breathing for (her father suffers from sleep apnoea so it appears she has inherited his genes there) or what would have happened if I had not stimulated her to breathe - it doesn’t bear thinking about. All I know is that if she had been anywhere but in my arms then I doubt I would have been jolted awake with a feeling that something was not OK. Did cosleeping save her life? I don’t know, but I thank God we coslept that night.
Co-Sleeping Myths
1) Co-Sleeping is Dangerous
Yes, it can be – so can taking paracetamol be, deadly in fact. Sleeping with a baby on a sofa, sharing a bed with a baby if you formula feed, sharing a bed with your baby if you smoke, sharing a bed with your baby if you have drunk alcohol, sharing a bed with your baby if you have taken prescription medication – yes all of these things are dangerous and MUST be avoided….but, sharing a bed with your baby following some simple rules (which can be seen HERE) is NOT dangerous – in fact there have been NO STUDIES that show the dangers of cosleeping when following the rules set out in the above link). NONE.
2) Two Thirds of all SIDs Cases Occur When the Baby Was Sleeping With a Parent.
The old chestnut wheeled out on the Wright Stuff today. The only thing is this research is Soooooooooo deeply flawed. So full of confounding variables (Confounding Variable = “A confounding variable is a variable which has an unintentional effect on the dependent variable. When carrying out experiments we attempt to control extraneous variables” however there is always the possibility that one of these variables is not controlled and if this affects the dependent variable in a systematic way, we call this a confounding variable.” taken from PsychExchange) that the research is not worth the paper it is printed on, let alone the £££££s invested into the study in the first place..You absolutely cannot say “cosleeping is dangerous” if in your study you have NOT accounted for confounding variables or other risk factors, e.g: 1) was the mother breastfeeding, 2) was the mother (or father) a smoker? 3) had the parent drunk alcohol? 4) had they taken recreational drugs? (many studies say cosleeping is unsafe despite the fact a large amount of their sample contains drug abusers!), 5) had they taken prescription medication? 6) were they sleeping on a firm mattress in a bed or elsewhere – like a sofa? 7) what cover did they use over themselves and the baby? 8) how was the baby sleeping? (in the recommended position or on a pillow?), 9) did the baby have any pre-existing medical conditions? (it’s amazing how many do!), 10) anything else that may have had an effect? (e.g: many died just after a vaccination in lots of studies). It is naive at best and deceiving at worse to use these studies to tell parents not to sleep with their babies.
3) It’s Not Good for the Baby, They Need to Learn Independence
Yes they do, but before independence first comes dependence. When a baby is born they need us, they cannot survive without us, indeed they do not even realise they are a separate entity to us until they are 3mths old. So much research (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Harlow for starters) speaks about the importance of infant attachment, baby-carer bond, and how if an infant is allowed to be as attached to their parent as they need then we can help to create a confident toddler, child and adult – separating an infant from it’s parent before he or she is ready to separate does not make him autonomous or independent, it deprives him of a basic need. I have already written about my experience of this HERE.
4) Co-Sleeping Kills Marriages
Really? because I would have thought that stress & exhaustion with a non sleeping crying baby would affect a marriage far more than a small person in the bed. What about sex? is really the undercurrent here though, let me tell you something, as a new mum if there was one thing that put me off sex it was tiredness from sleepless nights – who gets more of those – bedsharers or non bedsharers? (have a read of James McKenna’s RESEARCH) Then there’s the small matter of the elephant in the room, or in this case – the small wee thing in a babygro in the bed. Use your imagination people! since when did sex only ever happen in a bed? are we really that much of a cliche in England?
Co-Sleeping Truths
1) Co-sleeping Can be Safe
What about those countries where co-sleeping is a cultural norm? During the 1990s, in Japan the SIDs rate was only one tenth of that of the West and in Hong Kong, it was only 3% – co-sleeping is normal in Japan and Hong Kong! maybe our high SIDs risk could even be LOWERED if we followed the East’s example of co-sleeping – that’s quite something isn’t it?! To quote William Sears, MD (and world renowned parenting expert):
“Until a legitimate survey is done to determine how many babies sleep with their parents, and this is factored into the rate of SIDS in a bed versus a crib, it is unwarranted to state that sleeping in a crib is safer than a bed. If the incidence of SIDS is dramatically higher in crib versus a parent’s bed, and because the cases of accidental smothering and entrapment are only 1.5% of the total SIDS cases, then sleeping with a baby in your bed would be far safer than putting baby in a crib. The answer is not to tell parents they shouldn’t sleep with their baby, but rather to educate them on how to sleep with their infants safely.”
October 2002′s “Mothering” Magazine reviewed current world wide research on the issue of infant sleep. Finding that not only is co-sleeping safe,“but it is actually much safer than having your baby sleep in a crib. Research shows that infants who sleep in a crib are twice as likely to suffer a sleep related fatality (including SIDS) than infants who sleep in bed with their parents.”
2) Co-Sleeping Can SAVE Lives
For oh so many reasons including the concept of limbic regulation, gaseous exchange, decreased levels of infant apnoea, and the increased arousability in breastfeeding mums (resulting in heightened awareness to their infants). To discuss just one of the points - Infant apnoea – as I mentioned above in my own anecdotal example. Research has found infant apnoea decreased by up to 60% in studies when babies are near to someone else breathing whilst sleeping! Again this research and so much more is summed up by the wonderful Dr. James McKenna from the University of Notre Dame HERE.
3) Co-Sleeping Means More Sleep For Everyone.
Before I co-slept I spent a good few weeks fighting my son, returning him to his moses basket where he would awaken and cry, yet he would snooze for hours in my arms. Yes he would awaken more regularly and feed more regularly during the night when in bed with me, however his feeds would be shorter and we would feed in a sleep induced haze, never really awakening, in fact when he was slightly older I didn’t even wake at all – he would just latch himself on! this is how nature intended babies to feed, little and often – not tanking them up to last through the night. Time and again research has shown that, contrary to popular opinion, co-sleeping mothers get MORE sleep than those with cot sleeping babies. You can read more on this HERE.
4) Co-Sleeping Helps Breastfeeding & Milk Supply
Co-Sleeping and breastfeeding go hand in hand, indeed we know the research says it is only breastfeeding mothers who should co-sleep with their babies (due to their heightened states of arousal to their infant), we know that the close physical contact – oftentimes skin to skin – that comes with bedsharing can make the breastfeeding experience so much easier. We also know that breastfeeding alone can decrease SIDs risk – imagine what a powerful combination we have in terms of decreasing SIDs risks when we combine safe co-sleeping *and* breastfeeding! This is a great blog on the co-sleeping/breastfeeding synchronicity.
Now Mr. Wright – how about you tackle the topic again with a little more knowledge and a little less bias?
Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Mum of 4, Director of BabyCalm Ltd, Doula, Antenatal Teacher & Psychology Grad
From Roots to Wings: The Bittersweet Transition to Independence
Being a mother is hard, really hard. We all have our own personal challenges, our own Achilles heel, our own triumphs and “feel good” moments. I’ve been reflecting hugely this weekend – mostly because I’ve been super poorly with a throat and ear infection and have spent the past 2 days on the periphery in my household looking in on my children and husband – coping well – without me.
My life was turned upside down nearly 10yrs ago when I became a mother for the first time and now, just after I regained an even keel, I feel as if I am being somersaulted into unknown stormy seas again only this time I’m not sure if I can be selfless enough to do what I know I must – stand back and let my children go, let them break away from me and go out into the world alone.
My 9yr old asked me on Friday if he could walk home alone from school, I immediately said “no”, we live a mile from school and he’s so young, but then I thought more – why did I automatically say “no”? he’s very sensible and actually I know he’s perfectly capable of the journey by himself and statistically speaking children are *more* at risk of a road accident the *older* they get – 11yr olds are TWICE AS LIKELY as a 10yr old to be run over and less than 20% of RTAs happen on the school run (source) – this says to me that parents think it’s safe to let their secondary school child walk to school alone, but not their junior school aged child, much like myself – yet if we don’t give children freedom and trust them from a young age why do we expect them to suddenly be “grown up” enough after they have blown out the candles on their 11th birthday cake? No – it seems the problem is mine, my expectations and ideas and here is where it gets hard to trust your instinct as a mother.
When my children were babies and toddlers my instincts screamed at me to keep them close, they still do now – but whilst that may have been appropriate, necessary even for life with a very young child I’m beginning to trust my instincts less as they grow – for my instincts still tell me to keep the children close to ”protect them from harm” yet I know that by not letting them experience the world – for which they are ready – I may well be holding them back and damaging whatever good I did at the start by fostering a strong attachment. The world just seems such a big scary place now – paedophiles around every corner, cyber stalking & grooming – only when you look at the statistics you realise our children are no more at risk than we were, we just perceive their childhood to be “more dangerous” and we reign in their freedom as a result. Professor Tanya Byron has spoken widely about the “captivity” we hold our children in and the fear of the effect it will have upon their lives. “We live in an increasingly risk-averse culture, where many children’s behaviour is constrained. We raise them and educate them “in captivity” because of our anxieties. We are continually hypervigilant, as our anxieties are fuelled by stories and images of violent and aggressive crimes. And then we label children as troublemakers or failures because, as a society, we often fail to see their potential.”
It’s not only concerns about letting my 9yr old out to play or to walk to school on his own though, it’s the stopping breastfeeding after feeding non-stop for 9yrs (for 4 children!), the bed devoid of small octopus limbs, the buggy in the skip, the 4yr old making her own glass of squash and the 9yr old making his own cup of tea and then this morning all four of them playing in the garden together – having made themselves breakfast whilst I was poorly in bed and my husband was attacking our triffid leilandii with a chainsaw (so loud I doubt he knew the kids had joined him in the garden). I awoke this morning to find all of them together, playing a game of pool, self sufficient and so very happy playing together (it doesn’t always happen I promise – we have yet to solve the problem of sibling rivalry!). Nobody knew I was in the kitchen for a whole hour, nobody called “mummeeee”, nobody clung to my leg when I had a wee, nobody stole my toast or asked me 1001 questions I was too sleep hungover to answer. It was the moment I had dreamed of for years – and now it’s here I’m not sure I like it! I like how confident they are, how happy they are away from me and it makes me smile, but it makes me sad too. I’m not ready to let go, even though they are.
“We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go.
For holding on comes easily–we do not need to learn it.” … Rainer Marie Rilker.
Looking back I realis
e there were many occasions when I had convinced myself that they needed me more than they did really – the not leaving them with anybody else as they “weren’t ready”, the not going away for the night without them as they “wouldn’t sleep without me”, the delaying of increasing hours at preschool because they needed to “be at home with me” – they were my issues, not theirs. On every single one of the above occasions the opposite was true, they thrived without me – and on every single one of those occasions it was *me* and not the child that was not ready to let go. This is an important point, particularly when attachment parenting has guided the first few years. When is the right time to let go? when is it right for the child or for the parent? or both? is that possible? is there a synchronicity in need of attachment and detachment? I’m not so sure, for me I don’t think there has been and can you ever be “too attached” to your child? does this attachment perhaps say more about ourselves and our own needs than that of our children? being truly baby and child led means we must follow their needs for independence as well as dependence. Or as the great quote says “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” (Hodding Carter, journalist and politician).
………but my word is it hard, just as we begin to find our place in life, so it changes again, it’s so much easier to grow roots than to give wings.
“There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world; it’s the beginning of a new life.” unknown.
Do We Do Too Much With Our Babies?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and the more I think about it the more I really do believe that we have babyhood all wrong in our society.
A quick google of “baby activities” near my home reveals the following classes I could take my (imaginary!) baby to, they include:
Baby Massage, Baby Yoga, Baby Sensory, Baby Swimming, Baby Music, Baby Disco Dancing, Baby French, Baby Signing, Baby Ballet, Baby Gym and Baby and Daddy classes. That’s not including toddler activities where you could throw the following into the mix: Toddler Rugby, Toddler Drama, Toddler Football and Toddler Trampolining.
Whoah, what a choice! small wonder so many parents ask me “what should I do to entertain him?” or comment “he must be so bored just being at home with me”. The more these classes crop up, the more mothers feel they should be “doing” something with their babies, the more entertainment they must provide and the more they must to do encourage their development, they learn they alone are not enough for their child, their measure of self worth becomes hinged on the classes they take their baby to and the equipment they provide. My other concern with these classes is once again they often devalue the parent as being their own expert, mothers learn there are specific ways they should touch their baby, specific ways they should move with them, specific ways they should speak and sing to them (and that all of this takes a certain level of professional study) and sometimes this tuition can leave them less confident in their own way of doing things, wondering if they are “doing it right”. I know when I learnt baby massage with my first child I ended up massaging him less after the course as I couldn’t remember all of the specific strokes (and accompanying songs) and worried if I was “doing it right”, my spontaneous touch therefore diminished as a result.
I’m not even going to start on the “educational” baby toys and equipment designed to aid baby’s development including flash cards, baby reading systems and foreign language training DVDs……
My question, simply is “why do we think we need all this stuff?” when did we stop believing that what a baby really needs is time with us? when did we so devalue the importance of babies blending into part of everyday life with us? why don’t we think we are enough for our babies? why can’t we just let babies be babies?
The sad thing is here is that research shows us quite clearly how babies learn and what is important in this process. Here I love Maria Montessori’s quote: “Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.” How do we therefore foster that natural inquisitiveness? by allowing our babies to lead and dictate the pace of their learning? or be hot-housing them through various groups and developmental aids?
Play
Play with our babies starts before they are even born, often without us realising. Rubbing a pregnant tummy, gently prodding a protruding limb and feeling your baby respond. Play carries on spontaneously from the moment of birth – mimicking facial expressions, playing peekaboo, tickling….we do all of this without realising. Play teaches our babies so much perhaps the most notable is turn taking, which becomes one of the most important components of speech. Melanie Klein wrote widely about the importance of play and the formation of phantasy and symbolism for children and is particularly famous for her quote “One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults”. What happens therefore if we always direct a baby’s play? through specific toys or classes? what happens to their creativity if we always take the lead?
Speech and Song
Research now shows us that babies begin to acquire language even before birth. Babies are hot wired for speech and the most important component in their language acquisition is us. Without realising we teach our babies to speak, we teach our babies musicality and rhythm, we teach our babies the art of conversation and turn taking. Not through flash cards or DVD courses, but through our everyday interaction and our use of Motherese. Motherese explains the unconscious way we speak to our babies, we naturally raise the pitch of our voice, lengthen vowels and exaggerate consonants as well as tailoring our language to be age appropriate through the use of short sentences and simply content, motherese also relies heavily on eye contact. Infants naturally have a preference for motherese - or what could otherwise be defined as “baby talk”. We all possess this wonderful innate skill of teaching language to babies, why do we then need outside help and apparatus?
Everyday Objects & ‘Toys’
An everyday object will be as fascinating to your baby as an expensive developmental toy. Winnicott wrote about his spatula experience, where babies were given a tongue depressor to play with – after an initial period of play the babies would hesitate. Winnicott found this hesitation to be of great importance, from this he drew conclusions that it was important the babies were allowed this period of hesitation in order to develop creativity. The concept of heuristic play, introduced by Elinor Goldschmeid in the early 1980s talks about babies exploring objects (and thus the properties of nature) from the ‘real world’, she leaves a lasting legacy in the form of the concept of treasure baskets – baskets containing household objects and objects from nature (see this great article for an explanation of how to put together a treasure basket). Elinor believed that babies ” suck, grasp, touch and feel objects, [rehearsing] behaviours which foster their earliest learning”.
The Environment and Us
Babies can learn so much just by being in our arms, they learn about movement, they become strong, particularly when held tummy to tummy (so much is muted about “tummy time” yet few parents realise a baby is still having tummy time when we hold them in a sling facing inwards!) and perhaps most importantly of all they learn about the environment around them, from the security of a base of human contact. Think about how fascinating a trip into town must be for a baby? or a walk in the country? so many new sounds, smells, sights that you may not appreciate but to a baby it is all new! The importance of holding a baby (facing inwards) is when this stimulation becomes too much they can switch off, when they are directly exposed to it (by facing outwards/not in contact with us) it can become overwhelming. The importance here is to allow the baby to develop and learn at his own speed. What must life be like for a baby in a 
bumbo in front of the TV? their body rigid in a position their muscles and joints are not yet ready for, unable to turn away in front of a loud and bright television set? what must life be like for a baby held artificially upright in an entertainment centre surrounded by bright plastic, tinny noises and flashing lights? where would you rather learn from? and in which environment do you think you would be the most naturally inquisitive and learn the most? the two examples above or held close to your mother’s chest, warm, supported in a physiologically correct cradling position and with her familiar scent, an environment from which you can explore but one you can return to and “shut it all out” when it gets too much?
When will we let our babies just “be”? when will we realise their true needs? I fear we will only depart more from their true needs in my lifetime.
What I would tell my first time self as a fourth time mum.
I’ve been thinking about this lots this week, but particularly today as it was around this day, 10yrs ago I conceived my first baby and 10yrs to me feels like a bit of a milestone so I’ve been doing much navel gazing wondering what I would do if (to quote Cher) “I could turn back time” – or ala Doctor Who transport myself back to meet my first time mum self. I would like to tell myself the following:
1) You’re doing OK
In fact you’re doing more than OK, you’re doing bloody brilliantly, you have a happy, healthy thriving baby boy! go you! WELL DONE!!!
2) You don’t need to be on a diet
Give yourself a break – you’ve just had a baby – there are better things to worry about! in fact in 10yrs time you’ll be wishing for the body you have right now! even if all your new mum friends are going to postnatal exercise classes and slimming world it doesn’t mean you should too.
3) You shouldn’t judge yourself by everyone else
Because they are different to you, their lives are different, their babies are different and you can bet your bum they are as neurotic as you about their parenting skills! never, never, never compare yourself to others. Parenting is a journey, not a competition and we are all different!
4) You shouldn’t compare your baby to other’s babies
Especially not milestones and especially not if you judge your own worth by when your baby does things. In years to come you will revel in your child’s uniqueness and wish so much that you didn’t waste time looking at others so much, for each minute you dwell on them is a minute you miss your own child’s amazing qualities.
5) You don’t need to express milk just because everyone else is
…and you don’t win prizes for having 5lts of frozen breastmilk in funny little bags in your freezer that you don’t really need because you can’t bear to be parted from your baby- and expressing so dad can give the baby a bottle at night is not the only way for him to bond (something I can guarantee you don’t need to worry about anyway as in years to come they’ll be as thick as thieves!).
6) Don’t waste your money on the expensive cot, buggy, change bag, baby mozart dvds, v-tech walker, tiny love mobile etc…
Your baby doesn’t appreciate how much you’ve spent on him, what he really appreciates you can give for free – in abundance and all those things above you spent thousands on, well in 10yrs time you won’t even be able to remember them, your baby got hadly any use out of them anyway and don’t mention the sangenic nappy wrapper! Don’t be too proud to buy second hand, your baby won’t know and you’ll save a fortune, in 10yrs time you’ll buy everything from NCT sales and Ebay and be proud!
7) Don’t drag yourself out to baby swimming, baby yoga, baby music, baby gym, baby French, coffee mornings etc..
You know those classes and groups that you really don’t like? the ones that cost a fortune and the ones that actually if you think about it your baby doesn’t really get much from either. Babies do not need entertainment and attending these classes does not make you a better mum, you give him all the stimulation he needs – and more.
8) Step away from the Gina Ford book (and Tracey Hogg too!)
Burn it, burn it quick! if anything will undermine your confidence and your enjoyment of new parenting it’s this book (and actually so will The Baby Whisperer, even though it seems gentler on first look). It doesn’t matter that ALL your new mum friends follow Gina Ford and have quiet babies that never cry and sleep and eat to the clock and measuring jug, they are not content, they are not something to aspire too, you are not useless because your baby woke 3 times in the night and you have no idea when he’ll next eat or sleep, just because everyone else is doing it – doesn’t mean it’s right! Actually, now we’re on this point, those other books and magazines, throw them away too!
9) Do spend some time learning how to use your karrime.
Don’t sell it on Ebay because it looks too complicated and go and buy a Baby Bjorn instead and don’t stop carrying at 6mths just because everyone else is and others say it will make him lazy. He likes to be close to you and if hold him for as long as he wants there is a good chance he will grow up more confident than the shy, anxious, clingy little boy he is now.
10) Don’t take up everyone’s offer of “looking after the baby so you can go out and get some me time”
Ask them instead to cook your dinner, or clean the house while you sit in piece and cuddle your baby. You are totally normal in not wanting to go out shopping alone for the afternoon and leave your 3mth old with a friend or relative…and that housework? actually forget it, good mums have dirty houses because they spend their time with their babies!
11) Don’t struggle to get your baby to self settle and sleep alone in his moses basket.
There is a reason he sleeps better in bed next to you, you’re not committing some heinous sin by letting him stay with you and admit it, you rather like it too! Refer back to point number 9!
12) Learn about Baby Led Weaning
End of. Throw away the steamer, the funny little pots, the ice cube trays, the Annabel Karmel book, the carefully crafted and expensive organic recipes. In 10yrs you will have the pickiest eater on the planet and having BLW two subsequent babies you won’t be able to understand why you were a slave to the kitchen and made train noises with spoonfuls of pureed butternut squash and sweet potato for so long.
13) The birth was not your fault – forgive yourself
Your “failure to progress”? was really their “failure to wait”. In time you will understand this and forgive yourself and gain the confidence and wisdom you need to have amazing births that settle the demons of this one. For now be gentle on yourself, you should not “feel lucky because you have a healthy baby and that’s all that matters”. It is not wrong to feel jealous of other women’s births and it is not wrong to dwell on how traumatised you felt about yours.
14) Potty Train when he is ready, not when your Health visitor, friend or latest book tells you
Believe me it will be so much easier to do when he’s ready and no, I can guarantee you he won’t be in nappies forever!
15) Health visitors do not know everything
Especially when it goes against what you feel. Controlled crying will not make you all more happy (you will regret that awful night for the rest of your life), weaning at 16wks will not make him gain weight or sleep more (but may well have contributed to his Coeliac disease he was diagnosed with at age 7), he does not need vitamins to supplement your breastmilk – it’s great as it is.
16) Don’t buy the bumbo, doorway bouncer and exersaucer
He doesn’t need them, they place lots of strain on his hips and legs and might even have contributed to his hip and leg issues that you had to see paediatricians for for a year.
17) Read and sing to your baby
No matter how silly you feel, he might not understand the words but reading is so important as is the time you give him when the two of you are together with a book and regarding singing he won’t care if you sing off pitch, music is so important, to you and to him – don’t lose it.
18) Take lots of video
Photos are great, but videos are so much better and in years to come you will lament that you didn’t take more.
19) Don’t keep wishing for him to do things more quickly.
It will come, soon enough he’ll be crawling, pulling up, rolling over, walking……..enjoy him as he is now, for when you try to speed up his development you miss out on so much in the moment!
20) Enjoy every minute – they grow too quickly!
Yes it’s a cliche, yes you were sick of hearing it as a new mum, but it’s oh so true, treasure every single second – because in 10yrs you’ll wonder where that time has gone and be desperate to do it all over again.
What would you say to yourself?
BabyCalm on the web: www.babycalm.co.uk
BabyCalm on facebook: www.facebook.com/babycalm
BabyCalm on Twitter: www.twitter.com/babycalmclasses
Does Maternal Instinct Exist and Is It Worth Listening To?
“A mother understands what a child does not say” (Jewish proverb).
Mother’s instinct is a powerful teacher for the new mum, particularly in modern society when we lack the close proximity and support of the wider family. Gone are the days of girls growing up amongst sisters, cousins, aunts and female friends experiencing the joys and sorrows of motherhood, for many today the first time they hold a baby will be the day their firstborn is born. Modern society’s answer to this great loss of feminine wisdom is the baby manual and the parenting expert, those same experts who, even though they may be well meaning, disempower the new mother and make her squash her instinct even more. Yet the little voice inside telling a new mother to pick her baby up when he cries, when all around her tell her he needs to learn to self-settle and the urgent need to hold a baby close when everyone tells her not to spoil him or make a rod for her own back is powerful, it is wise and it is the only expert you will need as a new parent. As the wise Dr. Benjamin Spock said “I really learned it all from mothers.” Yet those mothers reading from his books wouldn’t believe it until they read it from the great doctor! When we parent by instinct and listen to our babies most often our babies are calmer and happier which in turn boosts our confidence as a new mother in a wonderful never ending spiral of positivity and love.
Ask yourself this, why is it that humans are the only species in the world that need parenting help? Why is it that tiny creatures with even tinier brains can birth multiples, suckle them all, keep them safe and raise them into strong, healthy adults, all with no external input?
In a recent survey of 100 new mothers BabyCalmTM found that 38% felt unconfident as a new mother with 46% feeling that they did not receive enough support, particularly from wider society, including the expert health professionals whose role is to help new mothers. The most shocking answer to our survey though came in response to the simple question: “Have you ever received advice as a new mother that went against your own instinct?” – A staggering 82% replied with a “yes”. 82% of new mothers who were undermined in their role by society, 82% of mothers who were advised that their feelings were wrong, 82% of mothers who may have if they had all listened – taken another step away from “being human”, burying their primal mammalian So much repression of our most powerful teacher.
Interestingly science backs up the idea of mother’s instinct, however explanations of quite what it is and how it works differ hugely. There is, as you would expect, a great divide between the nurture and nature debate. In the one corner there is the belief that maternal instinct is a process of nature, a genetic imprint you might say, and in the other the belief it is a process of nurture and the result of our environment. Both hypotheses have compelling evidence to their belt, however for me it is the nurture side that slightly wins with the idea that mothers are somehow soft wired to respond instinctively to their infants.
Dr Jeffrey Lorberbaum et al at the Medical University of South Carolina conducted research which showed that mothers show a much greater activity than fathers in widespread brain regions when they listen to their own baby crying compared to the cries of other’s babies. Dr Lorberbaum has also conducted research in which his team of researchers identified regions of the brain that are important in maternal behaviour and motivation when listening to babies crying. Their research found that the basal forebrain, midbrain, striatum, anterior cingulate, and the prefrontal cortex form a system that Lorberbaum’s team calls the “maternal circuitry.”
Lorberbaum says ““Conventional wisdom has long suggested that mothers are more attuned to infants, especially their own, than are fathers, our studies suggest that this may be true. Mothers may be very attuned to their own infant as they activate widespread brain regions including ancient regions believed to be important in rodent maternal behaviour. Fathering behaviour may be less hardwired and a more recent evolutionary phenomenon as fathers only activate newer regions of the brain involved in sensory discrimination, cognition, and motor planning in response to cries.”
On a continuation of this theme Dr Craig Kinsley and his team at the University of Richmond and Randolph Macon College carried out research on rats and found that “the ability of mothers’ brains to change in response to the new needs of motherhood enables them to respond with a richer and more enhanced behavioural repertoire. A first-time mother must engage in much behaviour previously unfamiliar to her. In rats, these behaviours include retrieving offspring who try to wander off, protecting young from predators, and leaving those young to forage for food. Brain changes to accommodate these new behaviours might include enhanced spatial ability to better navigate the environment and reduced fear and anxiety responses to leaving offspring or confronting predators and prey in their environment”.
Kinsley also examined predatory behaviour in female rats comparing the behaviour of rats that had never given birth and rats that were lactating. The rats were temporarily deprived of food and then given crickets. In order to feed, the rats had to capture and kill the crickets whilst Kinsley’s team observed. In the animal world, a heightened ability to capture prey means a decreased amount of time the mother spends away from vulnerable offspring and this decreased window of vulnerability means a lower infant mortality rate. The results of Kinsley’s study confirmed this, with the rats that had never given birth taking around 290 seconds to catch the crickets, whereas the lactating group took only about 70 seconds. Speaking of their findings, Kinsley commented: “The mammalian female brain expresses a great deal of plasticity and creativity in service to, and in support of, reproduction, In other words, mothers are made, not born.”
However Anthropologist Professor Sarah Blaffer Hrdy at the University of California believes different, Hrdy has studied primates for more than three decades and believes that the desire of a mother to care for a child depends on her desire to be a mother and the amount of time spent bonding together. Although she concedes that maternal responses exist, she believes they are biologically conditioned, but not true instincts saying “A woman who is committed to being a mother will learn to love any baby, whether it’s her own or not; a woman not committed to or prepared for being a mother may well not be prepared to love any baby, not even her own.”
One Russian study found evidence for maternal instinct at only two years of age. 4180 girls (aged 1-18 years), their mothers and teachers were interviewed in the study The results found that maternal instinct is starting to show during the second year of life where it manifests in the form of playing with dolls, this behaviour, the researchers found, reaches its peak at the age of 3-5 years. The researchers found playing with dolls occurs subconsciously and the formation of family orientation is shaped at an early school age.
Intriguingly though science suggests that maternal instinct is present during pregnancy, well before the baby is even born; in particular two studies looking at maternal predictions of weight and gender. In 1992 Chauhan, Lutton, Bailey, Guerrieri and Morrison researched predictions of foetal weight comparing three methods – ultrasound, clinical estimates (palpation by doctors) and maternal instinct. Of these three measures maternal instinct was by far the most accurate, with almost 70% of mothers to be accurately predicting the weight of the baby to within 10% of their birth weight.
On a similar theme researchers at the Johns Hopkins University conducted a study in which they asked 104 pregnant women who did not know the sex of their baby to predict the gender. Their results found that women with more than 12 years of education correctly predicted the sex of their babies 71% of the time and furthermore the women whose predictions were based on psychological criteria, such as dreams or feelings, were significantly more likely to be correct than those who based their predictions on external indicators such as how they were carrying the baby.
It seems science agrees that mothers do possess an instinct, if only the mothers themselves would believe it!
In my work with new mothers I come cross two main worries:
1) The mothers who are advised to ignore their maternal instincts and parent in a way they have been advised is supposedly superior and are struggling, daily, with the inner conflict.
And
2) The mothers who don’t think they have any maternal instinct and don’t understand their babies.
I believe the root of the problem is threefold: 1) mothers receive too much advice to ignore their own instincts, 2) as a society we do not provide new mothers with the support they really need and 3) we do not value motherhood enough – all three combined lead to new mothers often feeling unconfident and insecure in their new role, so they seek to rectify this by educating themselves – yet the education they receive serves only to undermine their confidence and instincts even more. The answer therefore is simple 1) throw away the books, 2) support new mothers, not by taking the baby so they can rest, but by cooking and cleaning for her, telling her how well she is doing, listening to her fears, her worries, her excitement, her happiness without giving advice or judgment and 3) Understanding as a society what an amazing job mothers are doing and stop seeing motherhood as a second class occupation (I wonder if any stay at home mothers reading have ever had to note their occupation as “housewife” on an application form before?). Mothers are clever, mothers are wise, mothers are busy, they do so much even though they often think they do so little. As Naomi Stadlen quotes in her new book “How Mothers Love”: “It takes time to learn about a baby. It’s an extraordinary process. Mothers are learning about hitherto unknown persons. The earliest discoveries they make are often small and imperceptible. A mother might not realise that she is making any progress.” and again later in the chapter: “These mothers have all read books on babycare. But the books are about babies in general. It is different when a mother considers her own baby together with her own ideals and aspirations. She is alone on her unique path. It can feel frightening to admit that she does not know the way ahead. Yet this seems a valuable beginning to being a mother. It enables her to start from a position of humility, from humility it is easier to learn.”
Finally we need to listen to our hearts more and less with our heads when parenting and most importantly of all, listen to our babies, for they are the key to unlocking our instinct. As the famous dog trainer (yes a dog trainer of all things!) Cesar Milan says “humans are living our lives out of balance. We are in the process of losing the instinctual side of ourselves that make us animal first and human second. And instinct equals common sense….We are masters of reason and logic. We communicate with one another almost exclusively through language. We send worded messages on the internet and cell phones; we read; we watch television. We have lots of education and more information at our fingertips than ever before, which allows some of us to live almost 100 percent in our minds. We agonize about the past and fantasize about the future. All too often, we become so dependent on our intellectual sides that we forget there is much, much more to this amazing world we live in.
To be instinctual means to be clear headed, open and aware of signals we are getting from other people, animals, and our environment all the time. It means understanding our connection to our natural selves and the natural world….without being in touch with our instinctual side, we are dangerously unbalanced…..It is only through balance that we can become fully realised creatures of Mother Nature. The good news is our instinctual selves are lying deep within us, just waiting to be rediscovered.”
So what if?….. What if we trusted our babies? What if we looked deep into those baby blues and asked our infants what they needed? What if we learnt to trust that – just as Cesar says “our instinctual selves are lying deep within us, just waiting to be rediscovered.”? – How would that change the way we parent? What if WE were parented more instinctively, would that change carry on down the generations? And what a change it would make.
By Sarah Ockwell-Smith Director of BabyCalm Ltd.
BabyCalm offer UK wide classes for new parents and parents to be with the aim of empowering parents to understand their baby and build confidence in their own instincts.
Controlled Crying – Miracle Cure, Tough Love or Dangerous Misunderstanding?
It is estimated that 25% of babies suffer from prolonged periods of excess crying and nearly 60% of babies still wake regularly at night at 9months of age (4) small wonder then that so many parents are crying out for help with their baby’s sleep. For most of these this help will come in the form of sleep training involving managed crying episodes. “Controlled Crying”, “Cry it Out”, “Wind Down Crying”, “Pick Up, Put Down”, “Spaced Soothing”, or whichever new term picked by the latest expert to make the whole process sound new or more gentle, these methods are a temporary fix to a problem that can cause much more harm than goood.
Leaving babies to cry for a predetermined period of time in order to teach themselves to fall asleep (or “self settle” as are the common buzz words of the moment) was introduced by Dr Emmett Holt in his 1895 book “The Care and Feeding of Children”, this idea was then popularised by Dr Richard Ferber (which gave rise to the term “Ferberisation”) in his 1985 book “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems”. Since then many babycare authors have picked up on the trend of leaving babies to cry for an increasing period in order to encourage them to get themselves to sleep and not wake in the night, the most famous of these being Gina Ford in “The Contented Little Baby” book.
Does controlled crying work? One cannot refute that it does, however this also depends on your definition of “work”. Does it make babies quiet throughout the night? usually, yes. Does it guarantee long term nights of sleeping through? No, in fact many sleep trained babies regress back to regular wakings around 9mths to 1yr (3) (there is no small coincidence this coincides with seperation anxiety), Does it guarantee “contented babies”? Here many gentle parenting advocates around the world would echo a resounding NO. Another thing to consider also is WHY it works? and perhaps the most important consideration of all – What is NORMAL infant sleep?
Let’s start with an understanding of what normal baby sleep is. When a baby is in utero he borrows the circadian rhythms (natural sleep/wake cycle) of his mother as melatonin is passed to him via the placenta, after birth however, he’s on his own and it takes his wee body a while to be able to do what his mother’s did. In fact it takes him until at least 4mths to get anywhere close and even longer – until he begins school at AGE 4 to really get the same effect. That’s not all though, not only do they lack the hormonal regulators of sleep of an adult – a baby’s sleep cycle is hugely different, in fact it’s very simplistic, composed of two basic states (quiet – deep -sleep and active – alert – sleep) and is about half the length of an adult sleep state. Now this makes perfect biological sense, it keeps our tender young offspring more alert should a predator threaten their life – but what predator will come and gobble them up in their nursery I hear you ask? Nature might be clever, but not quite clever enough to evolve us that quickly, so – for now – we still possess the same innate responses that kept our hunter gatherer predecessors safe. Imagine then that a baby goes through a sleep cycle twice as quickly as an adult, that means they wake AT LEAST twice as much as us during the night, in fact they move into a light sleep state around once every 25 minutes. That means they have the likelihood of waking fully every 25minutes if something alerts them – but we must remember this is a GOOD thing, it plays a vital role in SIDs prevention, keeps them well nourished and in a good state of homeostasis.
Why then do we presume babies “should be able to sleep through by 12 weeks” (or even younger according to some experts!) – for a start that is WRONG, a baby will not “sleep through” – they WILL wake, LOTS they just may not alert us, as parents, to the fact (why cry out if nobody comes?). It is NORMAL for a baby to wake – LOTS – in the night!
Now, let’s look at why babies might cry during the night. Babies always cry for a reason, they simply do not have the required connections in their brain to manipulate us. Sometimes they cry because they are hungry, sometimes thirsty, sometimes cold, sometimes hot, sometime uncomfortable, sometimes needing a nappy change, sometimes needing human contact, sometimes scared, sometimes over stimulated…..sometimes, well who knows, because all babies are different!
Controlled Crying/CIO highlights a gross misunderstanding of a young baby’s brain and neurophysiological development. This presumes tiny babies can form habits and think logically and rationally, the only thing is….they can’t! when a baby is born their brain is incomplete, not only is it smaller than an adults, the vast majority of its 100 billion neurons are not yet connected into networks. Babies simply don’t think like we do – the neocortex – the home of logical thinking – does not really spring into life until 3yrs plus, before that a baby’s brain is very primal – focussed on survival and basic emotions. That said early experiences can and do have a big impact on the wiring of an infant’s brain, a baby’s brain has twice as many synapses (connections) as the child will eventually need. If these synapses are used repeatedly they are reinforced. If they are not used repeatedly, they are eliminated – therefore we can cause permanent changes in the brain structure of our children, both good and bad. Depriving a baby of the love and contact they need in infancy alters the neuroplasticity of the brain, changing the wiring in the relationship part of the brain which affects the individual’s experience of relationships long into adulthood. Research on the impact of early attachments confirms that warm, responsive caregiving is essential to healthy brain development and ironically those babies who were allowed to be attached as a baby are the ones that can TRULY self settle as older children and adults!
So why then does controlled crying/CIO “work”. The easiest way to answer this is to imagine being upset or hurt yourself. Imagine crying, crying for comfort from a loved one and them ignoring you, albeit only for a minute or two before briefly comforting you (with limited speech and eye contact) and then leaving you again, you cry for 2 or 3 more minutes, they come in and half heartedly comfort you before leaving again, this continues for hours. Now ask yourself, would you bother to keep crying for them? or would you finally give up, shut down and push your hurtful emotions inside? The techy answer here is to discuss Martin Seligman’s Theory of Learned Helplessness. Accidentally discovered in 1965 whilst researching the relationship between fear and learning, Seligman discovered that the harnessed dogs in his experiment learned to be helpless (stand still and accept it) when Seligman rang a bell whilst shocking them. Seligman then allowed the, this time unharnessed, dog to move out of the way and rang the bell again. The dog did not move, it had learned to be helpless and did not even try to avoid the painful stimulation, it had learnt it was futile trying to get away from the shocks, just as it is futile for the baby to continue crying when nobody gives them what they really need.
Does controlled crying work? Yes, if you want your babies to learn helplessness and sit in their cot not communicating their needs, then yes indeed it will give you many nights of unbroken sleep!
The negative consequences of controlled crying are many. I shall list them all below:
- babies miss out on stimulating touch
- babies may not receive as much nutrition
- increased cortisol levels *** and neurological damage
- increased pulse, blood pressure and temperature
- vomiting
- potential SIDS risk
- learned helplessness phenomenon
- potential effects on breastfeeding
- potential effects on secure attachment
The Australian Association of Infant Mental Health (AAIMHI) states:
“Controlled crying is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences. There have been no studies, such as sleep laboratory studies, to our knowledge, that assess the physiological stress levels of infants who undergo controlled crying, or its emotional or psychological impact on the developing child.”
I shall leave the final comment here to Dr Paul Fleiss * who sums it all up so well:
”The idea, often heard these days, that babies can and should learn to “self-soothe,” without any physical or emotional interaction with parents, is incorrect. The best and most effective way for a child to learn to lull himself quietly back to sleep after experiencing a night waking is for parents to have demonstrated their dependability and availability when the child was a baby. Otherwise, that emotional upset the baby suffered as a result of the traumatic event that aroused him from sleep in the first place may, be compounded by the terror and frustration of feeling abandoned and unwanted. If a baby learns that his mother will come to him whenever he awakens in distress and cries out for her, he is more likely to develop into a self-reliant and self-assured child who will have the ability to assess and manage his own night wakings without involving his parents unnecessarily. It cannot be overly stressed that depriving a baby or a child of emotional support when he needs or wants it runs the risk of creating an emotionally unstable child and eventually an emotionally unstable adult. Only good can come from cuddling your baby whenever he needs it. “
* = Mistaken Approaches to Night Waking
Excerpt from Sweet Dreams: A pediatrician’s secrets for your child’s good night sleep, Lowell House, 22-28
By Paul M. Fleiss, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.P., 2000
** = when a baby continuously secretes cortisol as an infant it can have an effect on their stress response in later life (they may either over or under produce cortisol when stressed as an adult – either of these is undesirable too much cortisol can lead to anxiety and depression – too little can lead to ambivalence and emotional detachment).
References
Scher “A Longitudinal Study of Night Waking in The First Year”, 2006, Child Care, Health and Development.
