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.

This x 1000. People have taken attachment theory, which describes the natural and generally automatic process by which children develop relationships with their caregivers and how this impacts their development, and they have interpreted it to mean that you have to follow a certain set of practices/rules for your baby to develop a secure attachment. And they've also taken what happens in cases of chronic neglect and conflated that with not attending to your baby immediately, or allowing them to cry for any period of time.

It's a vastly unhelpful misunderstanding. The concept of 'good enough' (as per Donald Winnicott) is something that a lot more people should be aware of. As long as you're loving and responsive the majority of the time, and you have a generally stable and safe environment for your child, they will be ok.

Sleep training is also ok, and as many have pointed out it exists on a wide spectrum. It doesn't mean shutting the door and letting your baby cry for hours on end until they vomit. I sleep trained when I reached breaking point after months of getting no more than 1-2 hours sleep at a time. It involved a few minutes at a time of keeping my daughter fuss/cry before checking in with her. It literally transformed her sleep overnight, and she was never left for more than a few minutes, and never became severely distressed. It doesn't work for every baby but I was very sceptical that it'd work for her as she was SO reliant on us to get her to sleep at that point. But it was like some sort of magic. Now I lie her down in the cot, she rubs her eyes, rolls over and goes to sleep happily. Crucially, she knows that if she needs us we will come - she still cries when there is something wrong, and when she has been poorly we've had nights where she slept on us for hours because she couldn't settle any other way. We are incredibly responsive, and the fact we sleep trained isn't at odds with this at all.

Long post because this stuff makes me so mad. I work with children and I see the effects of true neglect, and genuinely poor parenting. It really isn't necessary to subscribe to some sort of parenting ideology to raise happy, emotionally secure children.

Of course, the very foundation of a marriage is dad not having to get up and walk to another bedroom to get his end away.

🤣🤣🤣 Talk to me when you’ve got 30yrs marriage under your belt. We attachment parented and your stereotype is bollocks. Neither of us was ever “turfed” to a spare bed or bedroom.

Thanks all for responses...for the record I wasn't looking for a pro or against sleep training debate or advocating any one parenting style/choices. I parent my DC's differently as they are very different individuals...currently co sleeping/breastfeeding my 5 month old who is also rocked to sleep. My first was a very independent sleeper from the get go and would have been too stimulated by rocking/co sleeping....she just wanted to be put in her cot and left to it. No way my youngest would do that!

I just think we have to remember Mum, Dad and the rest of the family....if attachment parenting meets all the families needs crack on. However that fb group and other rhetoric I have seen on here, in conversations in baby groups etc seem to forget about Mum!

I have always known I need plenty of sleep and prioritise that. So we sleep trained both our babies as I couldn't be doing with multiple waking every night. DH did more than his share but had to go to work with a clear head.

More than a quarter of a century later I have well adjusted adult children who are independent and successful but close to us. The one who we used cry it out on once asked if she was supposed to be damaged by it. Because she's not.

No idea why people make things difficult for themselves but each to their own etc etc.

YABU, and looking at extremes.

I found a more gentle and reactive parenting style was definitely for me, and I was bombarded with blame for picking up the baby too much or "insisting" on breastfeeding. And why wasn't I prepared to leave her at 3 months old to go drinking, I must be really precious.

For me learning what was normal baby behaviour made it easier to cope with. It wasn't me doing anything wrong, it was how babies are. Same, it felt good to know that being responsive to my baby as I felt I wanted to be was awful and rod making, it was natural and beneficial. With my second baby cosleeping avoided the insomnia and anxeity that developed through having a frequently waking baby that I was obsessed with getting to sleep on her own so as to not send her to her certain death by sleeping next to her.

To add, most parenting advice is pretty avengelical. People buy into it and then feel the need to justify their choices. It actually doesn't really matter - you do what makes you happy and makes your baby happy. Disengaging from all the "advice" - one way or the other - is really one of the best things you can do.

Honestly while there have been helpful advances in knowledge I think there’s too much information and opinions out there and it makes parents anxious and worried instead of trusting their own judgment. 30 + years ago I had one baby book and mainly did what worked and what we could manage. And it all worked out ok in the end.

It's not the group for you.

I do attachment parenting and it doesn't neglect my wellbeing, it just focuses on my child's needs.

It is biologically normal and the more that is repeated the quicker we can stop having this unrealistic view of child sleeping habits.

Sleep training threads on AIBU are always a clusterfuck, so I'll just pop my head in say I did and have no regrets whatsoever. Anyone who thinks it's wrong can count themselves lucky they never felt the need to use it.

There's a lot of evidence that sleep training is very effective. It doesn't work for every baby, and it can be hard to maintain the consistency required, but studies have shown it to be very effective in improving infant sleep and behaviour, parental fatigue and mental health.

YANBU

I believe we are heading for an epidemic of poor maternal mental health (if we are not already there) because of so-called ‘gentle parenting’ techniques.

The FB group you describe sounds awful, but ime MN is just as bad. For some reason we are telling mothers that their baby’s needs trump theirs and it is normal to have a one-year-old who doesn’t sleep through the night.

It is not.

Co-sleeping is described as the gold-star method on here (and I’m sure elsewhere) even though, while I’m sure it works for some, it is an absolute disaster for many. And yet there is now societal pressure to do it, as if putting your baby in a cot will psychologically damage it.

It’s a disaster waiting to happen. It IS possible to have happy, well-adjusted babies who turn into happy, well-adjusted children and adults while also getting plenty of sleep.

You only have to look at the growing number of mums suffering from burnout and the increasing number who cannot face having a second child to see that this is not working.

Absolutely brilliant post.

I parented in the same way and all of my DCs are happy and close to me. And in fact, the irony is that my babies were LESS distressed than my friends’ who didn’t sleep train, because they were well rested and went straight to sleep.

It works for some, doesn't for others.

We need to all stop beating each other up over it.

Honestly!

That’s the point OP is making. The pressure these days to do it a certain way is insane. In some of these groups/threads you’re basically accused of child abuse if you sleep train in any way.

That’s not right.

I love that group.

It provides something really unique - if you don't want to sleep train then there isn't anywhere else where people won't recommend it. It's a place where people will try to help you with your sleep problems without suggesting you sleep train.

With regards to maternal wellbeing, I think that group is actually quite focused on maternal wellbeing but they focus on ways to get some sleep for yourself rather than focussing on how to make your baby sleep. In other places, if you ask for help with sleep deprivation then sleep training is given as the solution and I often found, back in the day, that I didn't get much sympathy from anyone if I said I'm sleep deprived but I won't sleep train. Like it's my fault.

The group resonates with a lot of people and a lot of people find it helpful. If it's not helpful to you then you don't have to be in it!

I took the parenting attitude that it was like an airplane going down. Mask on for me first! I figured if I wasn't sorted then my kids wouldn't be and if my husband and I didn't have time together we wouldn't be a stable unit for the kids. I.e. if I'm tired and hungry I'm not going to parent well.

I guess some might see this as heartless / selfish but we're thirteen years in of parenting with 18 years of strong marriage and the kids don't seem too messed up...😁

But as someone said to me, you have to do what comes right and natural to you. I couldn't have been a co sleeping attachment parent because it goes against how I naturally behave. I'm waaaaay more Monica!

Find what works for you.

It’s NOT the reality though — or at least, it doesn’t have to be.

Part of the problem is that we’ve normalised poor infant sleep after the newborn stage and mums feel that they have to ‘accept’ it because that’s what babies do.

You only have to see the number of threads on here with mums at their wits end to see that it doesn’t work. No one’s coming on here saying ‘I wish I hadn’t sleep trained’.

That's fine if you have a child who naturally sleeps enough for you to function. It's reasonable to expect parenting will require a sacrifice of lie-ins or late evenings out. But if you have a child who wakes up every hour for a year, or who won't sleep unless you're holding them, you're not giving up something you enjoy, you're being deprived of something you actually need.

Is there evidence that it works?

There is evidence that it "works" in that improves parent confidence and perception. I understand that, you do desperately want it to work because your borderline suicidal. Doesn't mean the baby is actually sleeping more.

I think that we need to change our expectations of early motherhoods. We need less emphasis on getting back to "normal" after birth and more support on adjusting to a totally new way of life

Normal has a wide variation though. Just like you can have a normal pregnancy and go into spontaneous full term labour anywhere from 38 weeks to 42 weeks, it’s the same with infant sleep.

Normal includes babies that sleep anywhere from 1hr to 6hrs at a time To make a value judgement and call the cat napping type of baby not normal and having “poor sleep” isn’t helpful to mothers or babies. Where would you arbitrarily draw this line between normal and not normal? A baby that sleeps less than 4hrs?

There is a certain amount of acceptance required to this fact that normal includes variation, because otherwise you set up unrealistic expectations that all babies will fit into a square peg hole if the mother does a bit of “sleep training”. And then comes the judgement of if your baby is a round peg instead of a square peg, then you are failing and your lack of sleep is your own fault.

You’re denying the lived experience of many mothers who have said on this thread, and I include myself in this, that sleep training isn’t for all babies and even on those it can work on, it will have different results.

I was as kind and responsive to my children as the nest person but I hate that nauseating term "gentle parenting ". It's high handed and superior. You can carry a baby around for 3 months, we all have, but when you have a toddler or two who also needs your attention it is absolutely reasonable to try to get the baby into some kind of habit where they take a nap (or two if necessary) in the day. They are SO miserable without, and your toddler can suffer if they don't get some attention, and in my case, a nappy change. Yes, the baby wasn't happy initially, but they got used to it fairly quickly, and the toddler got some lunch!

Next

A lot of people claiming to be perfect mums and putting on performances in public are plain old lying. Remember Peaches Geldof eulogising about attachment parenting and missing out the heroin bit? Or Lilly Allen claiming mothers should want to be with their kids all the time until she had her own and said small children were boring?

See, I find the opposite. Any sleep training method that involved letting my baby cry just wasn't for me (no judgement at all to anyone who uses CIO) and I really resisted cosleeping until about 6 months. We were up every hour or sometimes less, and it was at a point where I was regularly falling asleep holding my son in bed which is obviously far, far more dangerous than any risk from planned, safe cosleeping with a six month old.

So as a result, my 15 month old still cosleeps with us and I'm not going to bother trying to get him in his own bed until he's a little older, old enough to understand a little more. I'm aiming for before 3.

Anyway, I've felt lots of judgement about cosleeping - there's plenty on this thread, there was one comment in particular asserting that mothers only cosleep because they're selfish and want to feel needed .

I think this is the issue - most mothers end up feeling judged for their choices, because there's a vocal minority of mothers who insist on being cruel about anyone who parents differently to them. I assume it stems from insecurity.

My mum coslept with me, and my grandmother coslept with her children too. But my grandmother in particular has also described times where she couldn't respond to crying (she had three young children after all!). She doesn't see that as remotely contradictory, because she parented in a time where she was just left to follow her instincts. She didn't read any parenting books, she didn't have masses of stuff online about different "approaches", and she didn't feel any need to align herself with a particular approach and follow the rules to the letter. She just parented the way she instinctively wanted to.

I think that is the most healthy approach - trust your instincts. We're all doing our best, and what other people do has zero affect on you. AFAIK, there's no evidence that sleep training causes emotional damage. There's also no evidence that sleep trained babies sleep better than non-trained babies in the long run. So just do what is happiest and healthiest for you and your family, and know that the people who are judging you are probably just very insecure about their own parenting.