i soooo enjoyed reading this ..............and reminds me of how i struggled
with all the opposing advice.........my experiences lead me to observe that
historically it seems that things tend to move from one extreme to another ,
and very rarely balanced in the middle.......sadly particularly in regards
to mother/baby/child issues.............it seems to keep many researchers
employed as practices seem to come in and out of fashion .....often
unfortunately literally throwing the baby out with the bath
water...........from this point of view i dont often regard our human
species as terribly intelligent .......it seems that the need to be 'right'
is more important than respecting and celebrating differences............
i was brought up to the best of my dutch parents abilities and there were
many 'rules' in relation to baby -care .........it was such a confusing time
, as parents and grandparents tell me it still is now, due to continual
changes..........none of which seem to be the answers ......anyway there i
was at 24 yrs of age with my' rules' born of conditioning , my nursing
training which had taught us that 'tummy' sleeping for babies was the beez-
neez ......thinking my poor mum was completely ancient,ignorant and
misinformed when she looked aghast at me putting cameron to sleep on his
tummy......... then at the same time dr spOCK with his then philosophy of
'demand' feed/sleep/sing/etc, much of which he subsequently retracted
....abit like ferber....but then i guess as long as people are open and
learning then its a good thing that we can 'change' ........
my conditioning told me that no way was i going to be a good wife if i let
the baby sleep in the matrimonial bed!........so my firstborn was in the
bassinet in the next room ........for me it just didnt feel right at all,
after 9 months of carrying this precious baby, to be so 'separate'.....i
managed to at least bring the bassinet into our room after a few
nights......but i never slept that well and nor did the baby.....and nor did
dad .......by the time our second son was born, thanks to an older friend, i
was starting to trust my own intuitive wisdom more and more....i tuned in
more to his needs particularly when he was unwell or unhappy and would take
him into our bed and feed him only for short periods..........it felt so
natural, yet somewhere still feeling as if i was doing something
wrong........with our third child i was a little more informed and confident
that unless there was smoking/drugs/alcohol/obesity and/or an instinctive
feeling that i might roll on her that i could at last relax and enjoy
sleeping with my baby.......however, much to our dismay this baby was a
mover and a shaker and disturbed dads sleep ,so the solution for all of us
, which worked for everyone was to lift her into her own bed ,with the
safetsleep sleepwrap on of course!once she was fast asleep.....it was great
as she had all the warm fuzzies of cuddles with mum and dad and brestfeeding
(for 18 months), i relaxed more, dad got more sleep and every morning she
would wake up in her own bed.......everyone was happy.....
....thanks for this article.....i will be ciculating it!...........i was
surprised that james mackenna and his wonderful work on co-sleeping was not
mentioned ..... you can see a link to his site on www.safetsleep.com
nytnyt
miriam
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gloria Lemay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <undisclosed-recipients:>; <undisclosed-recipients:>;
<undisclosed-recipients:>; <undisclosed-recipients:>; <@uniserve.com>
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 6:05 AM
Subject: [ozmidwifery] Co sleeping
From Laura Shanley:
Did you see the article in last week's Times about co-sleeping (12/29/05)?
Not too bad! I'm enclosing it below. The last paragraph says it all!
Love, Laura
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/fashion/thursdaystyles/29sleep.html?pagewanted=all
And Baby Makes Three in One Bed
By AMY HARMON
Published: December 29, 2005
JENNIFER JAKOVICH has spent most of her 5-month-old daughter's life
dodging questions from friends, family and strangers about how and where
Chloe sleeps. But since hearing that Dr. Richard Ferber, the country's
most famous infant sleep expert, has relaxed his admonition against
parents sleeping with their babies, she has taken a different tack.
Jennifer and John Jakovich (with Chloe) consider themselves vindicated by
the reversal of Dr. Richard Ferber, the infant sleep expert.
"I now mention Ferber's new view while openly admitting to co-sleeping,"
said Ms. Jakovich, an engineer in San Diego. She has broken the news to
friends that Chloe sleeps in the same bed with her and her husband, John,
a computer programmer. "I feel I have now been given the green light, that
it's O.K."
The Jackoviches are part of a growing group of American parents who share
a bed with their baby, a common practice in the rest of the world, which
had become nearly taboo in this country. A survey by the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development has found that about
one-fifth of parents with infants up to eight months old said the baby
usually shared a bed with them, more than triple the number of a decade
ago.
The trend appears to be driven largely by the increase in breastfeeding
working mothers, who say it allows them to connect with their babies and
still get some sleep. But given the prevailing cultural distaste, many
parents say they have felt compelled to hide their shared sleeping
arrangements.
It is a testament to Dr. Ferber's influence that even the halfhearted nod
he has given the practice in interviews has inspired a kind of collective
coming-out party among co-sleeping parents. Transcripts of his network
news and talk show appearances last month are being circulated on the
Internet and recited on the playground.
"Even though I shouldn't have to defend myself, it is nice to have that,"
Ms. Jakovich said. Like many other parents, she never intended to sleep
with her daughter. "My view was that granola-hippie-type people co-sleep,"
she added.
But Ms. Jakovich, 30, quickly found that she slept better when she didn't
have to get up in the night to nurse Chloe. To make things more
comfortable, the Jakoviches took one side off Chloe's deluxe crib and
pushed it up against their mattress, which they upgraded to a king-size.
The old Dr. Ferber would not have approved. In his best-selling 1985 book,
"Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems," he advised parents to let babies cry
for intervals of up to 45 minutes without responding, to train them to
sleep on their own. Should the child cry so hard that he throws up,
parents are to clean up and leave again. "If you reward him for throwing
up by staying with him, he will only learn that this is a good way for him
to get what he wants," Dr. Ferber wrote.
Parents who take a baby into their bed instead, the book suggested, damage
the child's development as an individual and are probably only trying to
avoid their own intimacy problems. "If you find that you actually prefer
to sleep with your infant," it warned, "you should consider your own
feelings very carefully."
Practiced by millions of parents and widely promoted by pediatricians,
Ferberization and its variations tap into the American desire to imbue
children with independence from an early age. Setting babies apart in
their own cribs also eases a typically American tendency to see sleeping
arrangements as sexual rather than social, some anthropologists say.
Concerns about safety, albeit contested, added to the consensus against
bed sharing, so that a baby's completing a sleep-training regimen has come
to be seen as a developmental milestone comparable to crawling or cutting
a first tooth.
Now, in a flurry of publicity for a revised version of Dr. Ferber's book,
he has allowed that his technique is not suitable for all babies and that
children can develop healthy sleep habits sleeping in their parents' bed.
A spokeswoman for Dr. Ferber's publisher, Marcia Burch, the vice president
for publicity at Touchstone Fireside, a division of Simon & Schuster, said
he had been taken aback by the interest in his position on bed sharing and
that Dr. Ferber, the director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders
at Children's Hospital in Boston, would not comment further until the new
edition is published in March.
"He totally underestimated the reaction," Ms. Burch said. "He totally
misunderstood that this was going to be really big news."
Still, Dr. Ferber's shift has sparked celebration among some parents, who
have faced criticism for defying the American dictum that babies should
learn to sleep alone. And in a child-rearing battle that has become as
ideological as it is intimate, others say vindication is in order, not
from Dr. Ferber so much as from fellow parents who evangelize his
teachings with moral fervor.
"It is at her next doctor's appointment, her 12-month checkup," Christina
Harrison said of her daughter, Alyssa, "that I relish the chance to bring
it up the most." Ms. Harrison, 29, let Alyssa cry until her voice was
hoarse at her pediatrician's urging. "It was horrible."
Ms. Harrison has resolved to sleep with Alyssa until she is happier about
being in her own bed.
Stephanie Lazure, 31, hopes to show a clip of the ABC News interview with
Dr. Ferber to her husband's boss, who bought the couple Dr. Ferber's book
as a baby present. "She comes over and shakes her finger in the baby's
face and says, 'You have to learn to self-soothe,' " Ms. Lazure said.
"It's not that I feel criticized. It's that I feel my baby is being
criticized for not sleeping."
Pressure not to co-sleep isn't coming only from relatives and other
parents. Many pediatricians discourage the practice because they worry
about parents rolling over and smothering the baby. But the question of
how co-sleeping affects the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, known as
SIDS, is contested. Last month the American Academy of Pediatrics SIDS
task force released a statement discouraging parents from sharing beds
with their babies.
But the academy's own section on breastfeeding argues that bed sharing is
safe in many circumstances and can benefit babies by facilitating
breastfeeding. And an epidemiological study published in the fall in the
journal Pediatrics found no higher sudden infant death risk for infants
older than 11 weeks unless the mother smokes.
"Some of the opponents of bed sharing persist in their beliefs in spite of
the scientific evidence," said Dr. Martin Lahr, who is an author of the
paper on bed sharing.
Co-sleeping has long been embraced by devotees of Dr. William Sears and
his philosophy of "attachment parenting," who dismiss Dr. Ferber's earlier
methods as cruel. Ferber fans have in turn derided co-sleepers as
sacrificing themselves and their romantic relationships in the name of
spoiling a baby who needs parents to set limits.
But many of the new co-sleepers appear to base their sleeping arrangements
on a blend of pragmatism and pleasure, rather than on a particular
approach to parenthood. Some push together queen mattresses with twin
mattresses, others snuggle closer together or improvise each night. Cribs,
Pack 'N Plays and bassinets become useful repositories for toys and
laundry.
Rita Hunt Smith, 39, a children's librarian in Hershey, Pa., began
co-sleeping with her first son, Ezra, after spending an agonizing night
listening to him cry in the crib down the hall. Then she came to treasure
the closeness it forged among Ezra, her and her husband, Kurt, a graphic
artist.
Now 3½, Ezra spends most nights in his own bed, while the Smiths'
14-month-old son, Fletcher, sleeps with them. Perhaps because her husband
has an older son from a previous marriage, Ms. Smith said, he has been
supportive, even though he would like more room for his 6-foot-3 frame.
"He knows the day is coming when they won't even want to be in the same
room with us, so let's soak it up now," Ms. Smith said. Upon waking,
Fletcher, who has just begun to talk, greets his parents with "hiya."
Ms. Smith said she used to be highly secretive about their co-sleeping,
but has begun talking more about it during baby story-time sessions she
runs. Her mother, though, "continues to think I'm ruining my sons' sleep
habits forever," she said.
Child development experts have said that Dr. Ferber was likely to be
reacting to accumulated research since his earlier edition that supports
the notion that babies have different temperaments and that their
development is best served when parents are able to adapt to their
individual needs.
"It is clear that children of differing temperaments need different things
at night, just as they do during the day," said Sara Harkness, the
director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health and Human
Development at the University of Connecticut.
Dr. Harkness, who has conducted cross-cultural research on infant sleep
habits in several countries, said no studies have borne out the connection
originally drawn by Dr. Ferber and others between teaching babies to sleep
alone and their ability to develop autonomy.
"It's an American myth," Dr. Harkness said. "It's fine to think about
training children to be independent, but there has been this misguided
effort to extend it to an area where it's really not developmentally
appropriate."
Some co-sleeping parents say they do not need advice from experts to
decide where their baby should sleep.
"With no intended disrespect to Dr. Ferber, I do not need his opinion to
validate my view that co-sleeping is the healthiest, safest and most
natural sleep situation for my child," Kristi Buxton, 29, a microbiology
researcher in Portland, Ore., wrote in an e-mail message. "The individual
who has most influenced (and radically changed) my beliefs about
co-sleeping is my child."
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