After being sent a link about the Pampers Nappies (with Tresillian Family Care Centres) Sleep Report I ummed and aahed about writing this post. You see, there are things I definitely agree with in the report, things I disagree with and emphasis which I believe is placed purely for promotional purposes (which I do not go into here).
I have posted about sleep before and I am fortunate that Immy is a good sleeper, though I sometimes wonder if it is a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg – is she a good sleeper by nature or is it as a result of the environment we have created surrounding sleep? I guess we will never really know. So here are my thoughts about the report (any information in italics has been taken directly from the report)…
“97 percent of Australian mothers with children under two have suffered with the adversities of sleep deprivation, which is impacting on their ability to enjoy quality time with their baby and in some cases, even life in general.”
Babies, toddlers and even children sleep differently to the way adults do, it is just a fact of life and we need to get our heads around this in order to stop our constant internal struggle as parents, surrounding sleep. Every baby, toddler and child sleeps has different sleep habits and preferences and even babies and toddlers who sleep well have ‘off’ nights – teething, illness, developmental changes, ambient temperature – any and all of these things effect their sleep. On top of this, their sleep patterns and needs change often too. You just feel like you have a handle on things and *kabam!* it all changes again.
While there are definitely things that we can do to help our children sleep, we also need make changes within own lives, our own expectations, even our own standards (unmopped floors be darned) to be better able to cope in those moments when we are sorely sleep deprived. Our lives are so busy – busy, busy, BUSY! Is it any wonder that we struggle to keep pace when we are existing on less sleep? Maybe the key is slowing down.
Slowing down our busy lives, slowing down our routines, slowing down the emotion and frustration which builds in the face of our tiredness. I think slowing down, spending more time on pause or play and less time in fast forward could help. I know that as a child I spent an awful lot more time hanging around at home then many children do nowadays, I honestly recall there being less places to be, less demands on our time, the daily routine was simpler and therefore slower.
Many mums, in an attempt to get some much needed shut eye, are taking a complacent attitude towards sleep habits in an effort to get their baby to sleep, oblivious to the fact these habits could be making matters worse for them. Some of these habits include letting their baby fall asleep while feeding (46%) and allowing their baby to sleep with them in their bed (41%), neither of which are conducive to healthy sleep patterns for either mum or bub.
This part of the report annoys me. I know Tresillian advocates a ‘feed, play, sleep’ routine and they are clearly adverse to co-sleeping but many families nowadays choose co-sleeping, it forms part of their beliefs about parenting, it is part of their parenting style. I don’t co-sleep but let me tell you a secret, I fed Immy to sleep. Not once, or twice, but until she was 20 months old, twice a day, and until a week ago, once a day. It worked for us. And I can assure you, she has very healthy sleep patterns.
I have fed her to sleep, patted her, rocked her, told her stories, sung her lullabies, and I still do, not to sleep now (at 26 months) but to help her learn to relax before sleep. Has it created bad ‘habits,’ I suppose the fact that we help Immy to relax before she goes to sleep could be described as a bad habit but I prefer to see it as teaching her to unwind. I also think that she is now so secure in herself and her place in the world because of our love, support and devotion to her needs that when we do change the circumstances surrounding her sleep (like recent weaning from breastfeeding), she is better able to cope with the change.
…Even at 18 months old, around half of Australian mums surveyed admit they still don’t have a regular routine and circumstances dictate their toddler’s sleep
patterns.
As a complete routine junkie, it has always been important to me that Immy’s feeding and sleeping times are respected. I can probably count on one hand the number of times Immy has not been in her own bed for her afternoon nap. In fact, my own mother gasped just yesterday when I suggested Immy could have her nap in the car on the way home from an outing we are planning, not because she didn’t agree with what I was saying but because she couldn’t believe that I was suggesting it. I honestly and wholeheartedly maintain that a flexible routine based on the needs of the child makes for a happier, emotionally secure little person. Babies, toddlers and kids like knowing what comes next, they just do.
Tresillian encourages mums who are struggling with sleep patterns to get professional help before it starts to impact them negatively.
I agree that Mums who are struggling should seek help but I wonder if the range of professional help available represents and respects the range of parenting styles within our society. I had a friend take her baby to a sleep clinic as a result of ongoing night waking and then I watched her struggle back home to listen as her child became more and more emotionally upset as she followed the settling routine which the centre had advocated. Listening to that little bub cry and get more and more angry at her mama broke my heart, I can only imagine how it actually felt for my friend. What if I need help but I refuse to use a ‘controlled comforting/crying’ approach, what alternative assistance is available for me?
I wish the government funded assistance programs for families would actually help families within their own homes with practical suggestions and professional support, moving away from the home to a ‘sleep centre’ only in those cases where it is absolutely necessary. That the family and the sleep ‘problem’ could be supported in a more ‘holistic’ manner involving consideration of all of the possible influences on the baby’s sleep; whether it be constructive recommendations to change the sleeping environment, or the routine, or alternative strategies to try for feeding or settling, or even a suggestion to try a different brand of nappy for better nighttime sleep! Wouldn’t this be better for Mum and bub and the family as a whole?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
Now we know her sleep issues were related to sensory processing disorder but didn't at the time. The things the nurse taught us back then we still use to help Heidi get to sleep now she is 5yo.
I think that going elsewhere to teach sleep skills would have been detrimental. My husband was working nightshift at the time and I would have had lots of trouble finding somewhere for my older daughter (then 20months old) to stay. Also I was so exhausted (2 hours sleep a night for 6 weeks = not good) that traveling anywhere would have been dangerous.
I pretty much agree with you. I find it amazing what modern women expect of themselves, which means we need sleep and therefore need to 'fix sleep problems.' And there is an entire industry out there to help us, so normal baby behaviour is reclassified as wrong. Why can't we instead focus on other ways to help young families with cleaning, meals, laundry, creches or social groups, rather than reinforcing the myth that babies should sleep because parents have to do it all alone.
My baby was not a sleeper - day and night was difficult and I was one of those mothers the Tresillian report described who couldn't enjoy life in general for 16 months! I didn't want to use controlled crying or other sleep training techniques (which meant I didn't get much sympathy from friends - attachment or natural parenting isn't very well known here) and felt Julian had his own routine which I needed to nurture.
Tresillian DID help me recognise Julian's changing habits though and nurture those and the Australian Breastfeeding Association supported my feeding him to sleep. Finally at 16 months old none of the usual soothing methods worked and Julian couldn't sleep - Tresillian to the rescue again! They explained that Julian had entered a new development phase of his sleeping and was seeking to sleep on his own. Tresillian gave me some techniques to use for this phase and in one night Julian was finally sleeping soundly on his own - now our night and day sleeps are wonderful and I can't believe how I managed to get through that first 16 months.
Friends who have used the Tresillian sleep centre have had poor results, the baby usually learns to sleep there but back at home they revert to their own sleep pattern.
I would do it again - allow Julian to disrupt my sleep - I wouldn't take back any of the nursing and cuddling in the night, Julian seems so happy and secure.
Obviously I'm a co-sleeper. I have 3 children who were all born in a 4 year period and we just made the bed bigger s more children arrived. We have a queen and a double mattress on the floor and we all (including my shift working husband) get plenty of sleep. I don't have a clock in the bedroom and I don't count the number of feeds overnight. I do sleep through a lot of feeds lol.
Of course (like everyone) we have rough patches where someone is unsettled but the family is all so used to the noises of bed sharing that it's usually only me and whoever is unsettled that loses any sleep.
I understand that parents do what is right for their own families but I hate how these "sleep schools" make co-sleeping sound so hard. I never have to leave bed to resettle a child. I don't have the worry of different environments or changes in schedule-as long as I'm there ( or another trusted adult as they get older) it doesn't upset their sleep. There is no need to "re-train" after illness or holidays.
At 5 years old my oldest has just gone into her own bed and room at her request-with no difficulty. So they do leave eventually ;-)
Apologies for the length!
I agree with teaching a child to 'relax' and unwind before bedtime, we still read quietly to our children before bed, BUT I think children should learn to fall asleep by themselves.
I've just made the decision to put my 9mth old into family day care for 2 days per week. It is either this, or go bonkers, because I'm not only exhausted, I'm discouraged, too.
I think another thing is that many western mothers are on their own, with no support to give them a much-needed breather from time to time. Many of us, don't have extended family around (the village to raise a child scenario), and we are left to do everything and be everything, to everyone!! It's no wonder many of us are sleep-deprived wrecks!!
I think you gave a nice balanced response to this...
You can probably guess that I'd not be too impressed with this article... I find a large amount of it distasteful and initially wanted to write a huge ranty post about why...which I still might do... LOL
I can only speak from my own perspective (in Melbourne, where the main sleep centre is Tweddle, and private consultants seem to be growing by the day) but this rings so very true to me. With my first baby, who was a craptastic sleeper (despite me having worked hard to create a healthy sleep environment - I agree with gangster-chan here, how they sleep is partly luck), the sleep consultant we hired was entirely insensitive to any desire we had to not use CIO in any form, and simply flatly insisted that that was what she was here to do, and if we didn't want to do it, we shouldn't have hired her. (We ended up letting her go after one night, a night in which I more or less fought all night to comfort my baby, and where she attempted to physically restrain me from doing so).
That said, some of her chat, once we'd calmed down and evaluated it, made sense. She had correctly identified that for *my* baby (not every baby), breastfeeding to sleep was in fact a problem. It was necessary to redirect her sleep association away from being exclusively about breast and towards other comforting routines and rituals. We used that insight to develop our own settling strategies and help her to sleep better.
I wish there was some more nuanced support available that recognised that parents and families of all different types can need sleep help, and offered a range of techniques and ideas to help people where they are at. Because I will be frank here, when you have three children to take care of, a spouse who is frequently away for work, and limited familial support, having a baby that wakes 5x a night for extended periods *is* going to become a major issue sooner or later. (My current situation!) But still and all, I won't CIO her because I don't want to, and this means my access to professional help is very restricted.
Erin isn't a good sleeper. As she's gotten older she's starting to get better (sometimes), but by an large she's still not sleeping through the night. She has her own issues which were not solved with a bedtime routine - in fact she's a child who doesn't cope well with a routine as such.
She has sensory issues which aren't severe but seem to appear most at night . She's also very sensitive and insecure so she does require a lot of reassurance and settling before she goes to sleep. We've never fed to sleep, that's another one of our issues, but we have co-slept. Some nights this has been the ONLY way we've both gotten any sleep.
I guess my point is, from my own experience, the "tried and true" method of raising your kids and getting them to sleep well isn't a cut and dry process and no one method has the answer because kids really are all different. Some are the complete opposite of "normal".
I had unrealistic expectations of his sleep based on (a) what my daughter had done and (b) what the books/ sleep experts say should happen if you just follow their program properly!
I was definitely cramming too much into my son's life (and my life) when he was a tiny bub, as I was keeping up with all the activities for my daughter (mother's group, play-group, swimming...). Because I had too many out-of-home committments, I resented being woken every hour through the night.
I went to the residential sleep program at Karitane (similar to Tresillian) with my son at age 7.5 months. It worked well for us, though I found it harrowing (not the routine part, I was already doing that, but the controlled crying part). On our first night there, listening to my son scream for literally 2.5 hours, sleep for 20 mins,then scream another 45 mins (before they finally said I could feed him!),I had a melt-down myself. The only reason the program worked for me, was that my son caught on fast and only really spent a few minutes crying softly before each sleep after that first night. I certainly couldn't have gone through that first night more than once.
You are right to point out that there is one type of help offered, and one type only. I was happy to follow the program for the most part. On the first night however, I requested to feed my son earlier, knowing he would go to sleep quicker (He never fed to sleep, but the feed would make him drowsy and we weren't there for problems getting to sleep initially, but for constant night-waking anyway). I was not allowed to feed because it hadn't been "long enough" since the previous feed.
I would never recommend the program to someone without them being aware of the parenting philosophy that is followed. If you are happy with routines and controlled crying and just need some help to implement those things for your child, then I think it is helpful.
I have done it all.....tresillian at 9 weeks, karitarne at 10 months, feeding to sleep (even at Tresillian!), sleeping on a mattress half sitting up while my son slept on my chest for 4 hours at a time!!, rocking, patting, soothing music, co-sleeping which he still does at 5 years old. I have always been a single parent and just did whatever I needed to do. My son has his own bed in his own room and has had since he was two and sometimes does sleep in there but he just prefers to sleep with me...as long as we are both sleeping that all that matters!