Sleep Theories

Baby E finally seems to be over the worst of this teething episode for the moment. She has 3 or 4 teeth poking through the gums and her pain seems to have subsided somewhat. She's no longer fussy, clingy and crying for most of the day. She's sleeping for longer stretches at night, and she went down for her naps today fairly easily, without the hour or two ordeal it's been the rest of the week.

I've been thinking a lot about sleep issues lately.

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There are different schools of thought on approaches to baby sleep (and some of the differences apply to parenting in general, of course). One is that babies need to be scheduled and must be taught to fall asleep on their own, and that you will spoil them by responding to their cries before the allotted time. This philosophy assumes that babies must be taught independence and structure from a very young age. Sometimes this goes along with being very parent (or adult) centered. The child is expected to adjust to the way the parent decides to do things.

The other extreme is that babies should never be left to cry without some kind of intervention, and that it's important for them to know that a parent is always there when they are needed. This philosophy assumes that bonding, security and trust are the main goals of parenting an infant. The philosophies on this end of the spectrum are more child-centered. This is often very child-centered, and sometimes results in the parent structuring life around the child's needs and desires.

There are all kinds of teachers and methodologies on every point of the scale from one extreme to the other. They all seem to be adamant that their way is best, and that you will do severe (and possibly permanent) damage to your child if you do things a different way.

I tend to think that the best approach is somewhere in between. That there has to be some kind of balance between structure and flexibility. That the needs of parent, baby and other family members all have to be balanced together.

But picking an actual method is the trick. Each approach seems to have some great arguments in its favor, and lots of people who are convinced it works.

So I compromise by feeling guilty when I let Baby E cry and feeling guilty when I don't.

Theoretically, we do have a method that seems to work fairly well. But it seems that every time we travel or Baby E gets sick, or whenever we allow her to skip naps or keep her up late because we have company or are out somewhere, we end up back at square one. It can take up to two weeks or more of consistency before she settles into the routine again after any variance. So it seems like we're constantly trying to recover our routine after a disruption.

We try to make sure she's completely fed, dry and as comfortable as possible before putting her down. The amount of time we spend rocking, feeding and nursing varies according to whether she seems to be settling down and relaxing or not, but once she's in the crib we try not to take her out again.

I don't mind letting her cry for a while when I know it's just stubbornness or she's blowing off steam, but if she's truly sick or in a lot of pain I won't do it. This week she cries and fusses a lot even if I'm holding her--all morning off and on (the last few days more on than off) from the moment she wakes up until sometime in the afternoon, not just at naptime.

Generally I go through the routine, make sure she has a full stomach and a clean diaper and lay her down. If she's still escalating after 10-15 minutes or so instead of winding down, I go in and try to calm her down and then leave the room again. My limit is about 20-35 minutes of flat-out non-stop screaming or 60-90 minutes of sporadic screaming before I will get her up.

If she seems like she's winding down instead of up I might leave her longer, but if she's still escalating at that point I will get her up and try holding her, nursing, giving teething tablets, or that sort of thing. I'm just not comfortable letting her go much longer than that, because in my experience with my kids it makes them much more clingy, unhappy and difficult overall in the long run when they cry and cry with no answer.

I really don't like the idea of letting her cry for a long time with nobody answering her cries, and I honestly don't think it's good for her to be screaming so hard for a really long period of time day after day (one commenter on Moxie's sleep thread said that her kid cried and cried every single night for 12 or 18 months!). It would be okay if it were just for a few days and then she didn't cry so much, but that's not what has happened for us. (CIO worked with AJ, but with MM after a few weeks of 1-2 hours of screaming every night we gave up and tried some other methods.) At the same time, I want her to know that she can't manipulate us and just stay awake forever.

DH and I agree on those things, and when she's not ill or in pain we do OK, but we haven't hit on a good way to handle things when she is truly hurting. We've been sick so much this winter that it's made it difficult to stick to a routine when we make exceptions for illness.

When there is nothing wrong and she is just being stubborn, she fluctuates more in her crying rather than just constantly escalating over the course of the hour or whatever. In that case we don't get her up again once she's in bed for the night, but we will go in and talk to her after 20 minutes or so and sometimes try giving teething tablets or changing a diaper (she sometimes poops after we lay her down for the night, and we won't leave her in a poopy diaper all night) or something like that if she's not settling down. Sometimes we'll stay in the room while she cries in her crib, except on the nights when it seems our presence is causing her to get more worked up instead of calming her down. At times it has been a 2 to 4 hour ordeal even with not getting her up or not taking her out of the room, and we're just not willing to leave her crying alone in the room for that long.

Anyway, I think I'm going to have to turn into one of those moms who tries never to be away from the house at naptime or bedtime, because it seems she just doesn't handle disruptions in her routine well. It seems Baby E might need more consistency than we're giving her.