To think that responsive/attachment parenting doesn't give a flying fuck about maternal wellbeing?

[Santaslittlehelper83]

....or the family unit. I recently joined the fb group 'Beyond Sleep Training' as was interested in some different ideas for managing our babies frequent night awakenings. CIO/CC is not for me but I'm not adverse to more gentler methods of ST. I was really disturbed by some posts by quite clearly desperate mums, and the advice in a nutshell seemed to boil down to....'that's normal baby behaviour, deal with it!' There was to be fair some advice re tweaking routines etc, and messages of solidarity but nothing else. A lot of posters were referencing their toddlers/preschoolers who hadn't slept more than 2 hours consecutively since birth...on what planet is that helpful to a sleep deprived mum at the end of her rope!? I think it was almost competetive, like a token of honour with generally a lot of sneering towards families who chose a different approach. I also didn't see the logic of lumping all sleep training methods together....someone sensibly suggested removing nipple gently when baby finished night feed to avoid this becoming a sleep association....this was shot down by a very heavy handed post by the admin.

Of course babies needs are paramount, but Mums (and Dads) matter too.

YANBU, at all. Sleep is treated as a ‘nice to have’ on here too, rather than an actual need to stop mum falling asleep at the wheel or having a mental breakdown.

I have joined (and left) the same group and agree with you - for all the same reasons, and also I found it so deeply disheartening to see the continual posts about older children waking multiple times in the night (nothing against those posts / posters as they needed help, but it fed into my inner monologue that sleep is always going to be a terrible forever). The one-upmanship is so unhelpful. I also found the advice around night weaning quite toxic.

The whole thing made me basically feel totally hopeless!

For me, maternal health always seems to be the elephant in the room with all the usual gentle parenting / sleep accounts on Instagram etc. Unless you say you are on the absolute precipice of a massive mental health crisis, it's basically reduced to "this too shall pass, see if your partner can give you a lie-in every now and then" and it just doesn't go far enough.

Depends what you want to do doesn't it. Safe cosleeping is a way for everyone to get lots of sleep

Facts on baby sleep here www.basisonline.org.uk/

As PP says it's about what you want to do. Is your issue that they don't advocate for sleep training? I don't either. I think you should be able to put your child first for those early years and accept that it sometimes means lack of sleep. Sometimes it seems like people are surprised parenting can require sacrifice. That's just my opinion.

Totally agree. Why people are so desperate to jump on this bandwagon I don’t know- it was first parroted in the 50s and seen as very old-fashioned for a long while after.

Personally I think it's poor social support that's the issue with being able to effectively use responsive parenting and have good maternal health. The approach or umbrella of approaches are all evidence based and support a healthy relationship between caregiver and child, which facilitates the best outcomes for baby into adulthood. I do agree though that someone else needs to be looking out for mum throughout!

After my first 6 years ago I felt like my well-being mattered and I was told to do what was best for me and my baby and us as a family. Then 3 years ago had a baby and it seemed that the narrative had changed including from health professionals and even when I was crying at breaking point because my son was waking every hour and had been for months it was a just get on with it attitude. That type of parenting is fine for some parents and babies but when you have a baby who doesn’t sleep or feed well or is very unsettled it’s really hard and the people that do manage it often just make you feel shit

Yanbu.
it’s another stick to beat up a women with .
Babies need engaged mothers - not depressed sleep deprived zombies . There is a huge wealth of evidence on how harmful to physical health sleep deprivation is from physical to mental health including obesity and increased cancer risk.

there’s an awful lot more of parenting than the parenting stage, it’s a marathon not a sprint.
anyway fwiw routine and minimal stimulation at night go a long way- they get it eventually.

Baby stage not parenting stage.

People wait far too long to get help from sleep experts due this kind of all babies/toddlers/kids sleep badly just get on with it advice.

sleep deprivation is bad for parents, bad for kids and co sleeping is great if they actually sleep better but if they’re still sleeping badly then obviously you need to try a different solution.

Absolutely. People harp on and on about the 'evidence' that sleep training permanently damages babies, of which is there is none, but they don't want to talk so much about the very clear and uncontroversial evidence that poor maternal mental health has a negative impact on child outcomes.

I agree that group is toxic. I don't think it's the mindset that's wrong, it's taking it to the extreme and the competitiveness you see on those groups.

Having said that I found some helpful advice and links to websites by professionals who do care about maternal health too. And eventually I learned it is possible to not sleep train and get rest and sleep too. But I know sleep training helps other parents, other babies, and other families and that's great and I don't like the judgment of those groups.

Babies are shit. Life is shit when you have a baby to look after. I don’t think it helps anyone to pretend that’s not the case. As a parent you have to put your baby first, and unless you have help that means neglecting your own needs.

I absolutely adored it. I did not want to be an inch away from my babies. I even disliked other people holding them. I am a chronic insomniac who used to read all night as a child and apparently I need very little sleep! I had newborn twins and two older ones - one of whose woke up at 5 regularly.

Do I think it works for everyone? No. Did it work for me, yes! Would I EVER suggest to a sleep deprived and desperate mum that she should put herself at risk for the sake of her baby - no way.

You can’t pour from an empty cup. Do whatever it takes - that even might mean leaving a baby to cry if that’s what it takes. Mine weren’t especially good sleepers but equally they weren’t difficult babies or poorly babies or anything along those lines.

i genuinely thought I would be a supremely ‘planned’ mother a la Gina Ford - it turned out that the opposite made me happy. For a while I thought I’d failed compared to the mums with the perfect routines. I soon realised that it’s different strokes for different folks.

As a hcp I did the Solihull approach training which is all about attachment and one of the key messages is that boundaries help babies and children feel 'emotionally held' and things like the importance of good sleep were discussed . It really frustrates me that there's this belief that trying to set any kind of routine particularly at bedtime is comparable to the developing brain as the Romanian orphanages (when the old cortisol level argument gets thrown up every time sleep training is mentioned)

I’ve been in that group for a few years and don’t see what you do at all.

We live in a sleep training obsessed culture and it offers an interesting and helpful alternative. A lot of the advice is very family centred. It validates mum’s and dad’s instincts to keep their children close, to put theirs and their children’s needs above the stupid ideas so many people cling to about teaching independent sleep to infants, that babies are sly or manipulative or intentionally trying to ruin your life.

If it’s not for you then I’m sure you’ll find a different group which suits you better.

A group normalising normal infant sleep habits, cosleeping, the family bed, promoting intimacy between couples despite the previous two, following your instincts and ignoring the prevailing culture for trying to shape babies to fit modern convenience isn’t a bad thing. Over 100,000 people seem to find it useful.

The group isn’t against routines. Not sure why you’d think it was.

Yep. I am pretty sure babies have been given routines for millennia because there is no way parents had time for anything else. It’s a sort of martyrdom, leave them to it.

I've co slept etc because I've had non-sleepers. For me it's not because I necessarily wanted to do this, it's because I had do. I don't like the martyrdom but equally don't like those who insist 'if you just train them/bring in an expert it will all be fine'. Nope. Not with my DC.

I agree. When DD was small I literally hallucinated then fell down the stairs with tiredness, and was told on here to suck it up.

I think some women either had easier babies so don’t really see the problem, or they think they suffered so others can too.

Wow, I could have written it.
Same here, I was set for a routine, ended up baby led. I don't know how it happened but it actually made me less stressed even though normally I plan everything. With my second it was not 100% baby led because having two my attention is always divided, but we still have no routine and go with the flow.

As someone who has coslept with two babies I can assure you it did not result in lots of sleep. The first time it worked great. The second baby woke screaming every 30 minutes all night for 6 months. 3 nights of sleep training using the Ferber method and baby immediately slept for much longer periods, waking up once or twice for a feed only.

Babies are all different

When DD was small I literally hallucinated then fell down the stairs with tiredness, and was told on here to suck it up.
It’s terrible but what can you do about it? You can’t make the baby stop crying or sleep. And you obviously don’t have someone to take the baby and give you a rest or you wouldn’t be in that situation to start with.

I think some people just function better with less sleep than others. I had both of my children in my early 20s, I went from staying up all night partying to staying to up all night with babies and it really didn't phase me. I really loved the baby years and it didn't bother me at all do everything on babies time. We got a puppy when I was 35 and I felt like death after waking up in the night multiple times with her, I can't imagine how I would handle a new born now!

The fetishisation of performance motherhood. Who needs the patriarchy when we happily fasten the chains ourselves. And enough other mothers to press on the guilt if you happen to outwardly wonder whether your welfare matters too.