Sleep depriving tiny babies is cruel

[PathofLeastResistance]

I need to vent on this and say stuff I feel I can never say to people?s faces.

Sleep is needed for cognitive development and sleep deprivation is used as torture yet noone teaches parents about it, except to what to do when they?re older and have established problems. Babies need an incredible amount of sleep and there are detrimental consequences for them if they don?t get what they need. Breastfeeding introduces challenges to help them get the sleep they need and I wish I?d known what I know now before I had my first baby. Many first time mothers (me included) never consider their babies sleep requirements and are never advised on it. We took our babies out wherever we went leaving them to sleep whenever they could. When they cried from tiredness we would misinterpret their cries as hunger or boredom and feed them or produce some new plastic toy to dazzle them with.
They then would develop a wide eyed exhausted gaze which would cause people to comment on how ?they?re taking it all in? when they?re actually overwhelmed.

It is amazing quite how much sleep little babies need. Before 12 weeks they need about 16 hours a day . My 9 wk old feeds about 7 times in 24 hours taking a total of 5 hours 15mins. Assuming he goes straight back to sleep after his night feeds and one day feed. Then after the other 4 day feeds he has 40mins before he needs to be asleep and as it can take 10mins to get him to sleep he can only really be awake 30 mins after a feed. Ime babies under 2 months can stay awake for a max of between 1 and 2 hours. If kept awake longer than that period they not only struggle to sleep immediately after but also struggle to sleep in the evening, for the night.

I do realise that the first few weeks when establishing breastfeeding are an exception. Until breastfeeding is established the baby by definition isn?t full and they have to work at increasing your supply. Living with a hungry baby is really hard and they inevitably can?t get the sleep they need while they need to be awake and feeding constantly or else when they sleep only briefly before waking hungry. One problem in parents? perception after these weeks is that their baby can?t sleep and we become quite used to having an awake baby for company. The baby then cluster feeds due to the sleep deprivation and the mother is left thinking there is no time between feeds to bother trying for a nap. I remember myself and other mums at the time commenting on how our babies didn?t sleep anything like the amount the books suggested (as if that was their fault ) and we would miss our babies company if they slept more during the day!

However, once breastfeeding is established we should be trying much harder to get our babies to sleep in the day. My first was unable to sleep unaided, unless exhausted, after those first 6 weeks. She needed to be rocked and have a finger to suck before she would sleep. We naively only gave her the opportunity to sleep at night. It could then take up to 3 hours of various tactics before she eventually succumbed. Demand sleeping does not work . Babies need a quiet, dark, comfortable environment and many need help getting to sleep. We shouldn?t be offering them this only at the end of the day and we shouldn?t be left to learn it the hard way.

Vent over. Carry on.

Path, you are talking complete and utter b*llocks.

Babies are designed to sleep wherever and whenever. They're meant to be carried about by their mothers, not shut in a dark room by themselves, and if carried will sleep whenever they need to regardless of what the mother is dong. I've cooked many a meal whilst BabyDragon slept cocooned in the sling. I even tossed pancakes whilst she snoozed on me.

That is how little babies are meant to sleep - when they want to and not when you deem it to be nap time.

I take my newborns to the cinema and they sleep in the carseat.

Did you help your baby to have good sleep routines whilst in utero?

Because if you didn't, it's too late and you're doomed and your baby will be an axe murderer.

NB: I don't have a problem with anyone who wants to put their baby in a dark room, alone, to sleep - it's a parenting choice. I do have a problem with preachy people saying you're cruel if you don't do something this way.

oh Path I really do think you should reconsider your last postt - there are mothers on MN who have lost babies (and young children) to SIDS - while they slept in their cot - who didn't fit into any of the things you mention. (ie they were put down to sleep properly, come from reasonably well off families, and non-smoking households).

You are treading on very dangerous ground there.

Ok- very rarely die in their cots.

Babies don't die in their cots as long as they are put to bed correctly.

Are washerupper and path same person?
This is he weirdest thread ever.

Never say never. Sorry.

Babies are nevertheless safer sleeping in their cots than elsewhere.

Personally i think my baby was safer sleeping with me than in a cot.

Possibly the most peculiar thread I've ever read on mumsnet.

I'd have thought one thing you'd learn after having three children is that there are no hard and fast rules, each child is different.

Path, you made a comment that you were upset to see a colicky baby cry for 2 hours which partly promted this thread. The point is lost as colic isn't overtiredness and putting the baby to sleep in a darkened room wouldn't have made any difference to getting it to sleep if it was in pain.

My DD was a nightmare sleeper, she'd sleep for hours if held but for 30mins exactly in her cot. How, pray does that fit with what you're saying? It. You. make no sense.

My two slept better with noise.

Dd2 [3 months] likes the light on albeit low] and prefers music or talking while she drifts off.

She will sleep anywhere.

Ok, this is interesting. Having read the OP I'm not sure what point she is trying to make. I think most of us would agree that babies need sleep. Surely how they get that sleep - whether in a cot, a bed co sleeping, sling, pram etc. isn't that big a deal?

I agree that babies probably need some help in learning to settle themselves to sleep but question whether that should take place immediately after birth when this tiny little creature who has been warmly cocooned in the womb now has to face the outside world. Why can't the routine queens cut tiny babies just a little slack?

Now ds is 13mo he does indeed benefit from a cot in a dark room but before 3 months old frankly he wasn't interested and who can blame him? This is why he spent a great deal of time in a sling and co slept. I believe that because I didn't push it,leave him to cry it out etc. he's now a pretty chilled out little lad who, by and large, sleeps pretty well.

As for the stuff about SIDS, I'm not going there. There but for the grace of god and all that.

Pathoflastresistance. For what it's worth, I agree with you. I made the mistake in the early days of misinterpreting crying for hunger, boredom, anything else but sleep. It took me about 6 weeks to work out that if my DS started crying, I'd left it too late. I started a naptime routine, and everything else just fell into place. Not suggesting this would work for all babies, but it did work for mine.

PoLR you'd be interested in Healthy Sleep Habits Happy child, all about brain development and sleep patterns. He says that sleep is very irregular before 6 weeks. Talks a lot about watching for tired signs and importance of good quality sleep.

Thanks Uberalice. I'm very grateful you said that. But look out - people on this thread will assume you are an advocate of controlled crying / that you formula feed and that you make a spreadsheet about your baby everyday.

Macaco - thanks. I may well look into that. It'll give me some hard figures to throw at people next time. (There won't be a next time - I'm too bruised from this - but you know what I mean).

"2) that they sleep better in the dark"

Well no actually...

Dd2 slept for 4 hours this am, with the curtains open.

Path, I think you'll find a lot of people on this thread probably FF or/and used CC. They're not objecting to that. They're objecting to you using angry words and faces to describe how you feel about other people and their babies sleep habits because you now feel you've 'got it right'.

With the benefit of all your experience I'd have thought you'd realise that parents are muddling through as best they can and learning on the job. No one would intentially cause harm to their baby with sleep deprivation (unless they were some kind of abuser).

You said yourself you 'didn't get it right' to begin with so why now, when you feel you have, do you think it is right to lecture people.

FWIW, you haven't necessarily got it right. You've found domething that works for you. That's great. I do hope it continues. I'd hate for your 18 month old to start waking every night all night and you start blaming yourself.