I’m seeing lots of controversy about sleep training. How do I know what I should do? I am falling apart from lack of sleep but I really feel like letting my baby cry is wrong. -Seraphina
Well, well, well.
Attachment.
Biologically normal.
What do you mean, aren’t kids allowed to cry?
Being a mom in this day and age makes it very easy to feel like you need to follow the right advice or risk traumatizing your child forever.
I myself struggled with how to address this when my now preschooler was a baby. I NEED my sleep. Those early days were rough.
There are many ways to approach sleep and really as all things in parenting is a risk benefit analysis.
(Just know the risks to babies are still not that high when letting them cry, and babies who sleep with you at night are still at risk for attachment disorders).
So the risks of sleep training here are not life changing. However there are many approaches. Some sleep coaches take the approach of “it’s not really crying it out, we don’t just let the baby cry!”
Others will say, just because they cry doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do.
I do think if you are going the sleep training route you need to make sure you are following some sort of schedule set up, and a specific method so you really don’t just let your baby cry for 45 minutes straight.
The Peaceful Sleeper is a great supportive sleep coach, with lots of love for those babies.
There are other ways.
One method I was fond of was the Full Feedings method. The premise is if a baby eats enough, sleeps enough, and has all their needs met, they will not need to wake at night and will naturally start sleeping through the night. Just a forewarning, those feeding and sleep schedules can be very intense.
Others like the gentle sleep coach and Hey Sleepy Baby, make sure to support moms with different ideas but definitely follow, “It’s biologically normal for babies to wake.”.
Something that sometimes irks me with these comments, is that it is not biologically normal for me as an adult to only get a three hour stretch. What these coaches do have, are ways that you can get longer stretches for the baby, but they will never push sleep through the night schedule.
So really the answer is, is your baby suffering as a result of you not sleeping? Will short term work and listening to your baby cry make your home a more peaceful one? Can you find other work arounds to make sleep easiER?
As a no judgment space this answer from the Anonymous Mama Mentor is, trust your gut, mom. Out of these three options you will have one that works for you.
Happy rest, and get some sleep!
