I’m reading “Health Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Several people have told me that setting up consistent sleep habits right from the beginning is vital to having a successful child. I have a few qualms with the book. (Though I’m only 30 pages in.) One, Dr. Weissbluth, is definitely trying to prove his point, often without recognizing the validity of other points. One part in particular bothered me. He talked about how children that nap are content, happy, attentive, and obedient; while children who don’t nap are bratty, hyperactive, and fussy. Anyone know a high energy child who refuses to take naps? Could it be the high energy that is the result of the non-nap, instead of the non-nap the result of the fussiness? Is this perhaps a questions of correlation instead of causation? Maybe all children could be prevented from exhibiting such behavior if they had rigid nap schedules as infants. I don’t know.
However, it has made me think about sleep more. Weissbluth brings up that everyone has different sleep needs. My mother would tell you, that I have always needed my sleep, as a child my body took care of that. If my family was watching a movie and 9:00 rolled around, I would simply fall asleep- despite how fascinating the movie might have been. Unfortunately, this trend hasn’t faded out since I grew up. Tom still doubts me when I tell him, I really did like the movie, even though I fell asleep 20 minutes into it. (Luckily this no longer occurs at 9:00 but rather 11:00) Actually, I have a horrible “habit” of falling asleep anytime I’m in a moving vehicle, dark room, or reclining position. The only class I ever feel asleep in in college was art history- why- those darn dark power point presentations
In high school and college I managed off of much less sleep than I afford myself now. It wasn’t until after taking a physical wellness for musicians class, where the professor emphasized the importance of sleep, that I decide to experiment with getting more than my regular six/seven hours. Up until then I had rigidly kept my bedtime at 11:00/11:30 up and rose by 6:00- to the shock of my fellow coeds. However, at the encouragement of the teacher to find one area of our lives where we could demonstrate more “wellness” I decided to try to get eight hours of sleep a night. Ok, long story short, I haven’t gone back since. When I sleep eight hours I sing better, am more creative, am less stressed, find more things funny, and am much more likely to pick up conversations with strangers. When I sleep nine, I’m downright cloud-ridden. Last Tuesday I only got seven hours of sleep before my long teaching day. I got through the day, and no body but myself would have noticed much of a difference. I wasn’t lethargic, but I wasn’t as interested in my students, wasn’t as able to make conversation, wasn’t as attentive to technical issues, and more likely to let things go unheeded. Yesterday I got nine hours, you would have thought each student was my sister the way we laughed, sang, and smiled. Each left beaming, nearly skipping out as they said, “Thanks, see you next week!”
Knowing this, I am quite concerned about motherhood. Having a child is known for stripping one of sleep, and I’m worried that I’ll become an ogre. So, perhaps I will be a nap nazi, not only so that my child will exhibit the “calm, attentive, creative” behavior that Dr. Weissbluth promises, but also so my child will have a smiling, loving mother.
10 responses to “Sleep”
I would actually recommend the AAP’s book on sleeping (and the one on breastfeeding, for that matter — before the baby is born). The AAP collectively recommends strongly against the Weissbluth method. “Crying it out” has been linked with failure to thrive.
As for our own personal sleep habits with Julie, we’ve always taken our cues from her. She’s never had a rigid bedtime or naptime. We put her down when she’s ready. It’s worked wonderfully for us. She’s a really laid-back child naturally, and she’s just so easy-going. Part of that is just her personality, and part of it — I think — is that we’ve let her lead in some areas, instead of boxing her into something that’s convenient for us. This has its ups and downs though. She’s been pretty flexible, which is good, and she has had periods where she’s been on a pretty specific schedule but her own doing. But there are other times, like when she’s changing things up (which takes a month or more sometimes), when it’s hard to make daytime plans because I don’t know if she’s going to be ready for a morning nap or an afternoon nap. Also, with bedtime, this summer has been crazy — she pushed her bedtime back to 9:00ish, and I think that’s partly because of daylight savings, but not entirely. I’d like her to go to bed earlier, but she’s at a tough age to force that one her — two-year-old rebellion.
I have had that same thought! I don’t do well without sleep, and the idea of not getting even close to enough is scary.
Hey Kjirsti,
Good for your for the reading you are doing! I think its good to have some ideas before the baby starts. To me, the main point I took from Healthy Sleep Habits is that you do need to watch your child’s window of awake time and when they start to get sleepy. It’s not about rigid scheduling..christian’s schedule is different everyday. The point is that I know he can be awake about 2 1/2 hours before he gets tired…as you continue to read, you’ll find out that for the 1st four months, babies can only be awake for 1-2 hours at most, so the point is, you shouldn’t try and keep them up in hopes that it will make them sleep longer, etc..I think the main point of his book is to not let children get overtired so that they can put themselves back to sleep at night. I don’t really feel like he is saying to “cry it out..” I took it more like if they wake up in the night and have a full tummy, a dry diaper, etc…give it 15-20 minutes and they may just go back to sleep by themselves…
There are so many books out there for parenting infants and it’s kind of exciting to find ideas you like. I really liked BabyWise, the focus is mostly on nursing but it includes a lot of sleep schedule stuff too because they’re so linked together. I tell you I liked the book, but I’ll also tell you as much as many of the ideas worked for me, I learned very quickly that some things just weren’t worth stressing over. The book emphasized so much that you should not allow your infant to sleep while nursing, but no matter what I did, Noah zonked out the minute he started eating until he was about 9 weeks old- that’s also when he started sleeping through the night so maybe there was some great advice there, but I couldn’t MAKE Noah do it until he was ready. Find a theory you think you can live with and just try not to stress if things aren’t working the way you had planned- the fact that you care enough to worry about it even for the baby comes shows you’re going to do great! As for turning into an ogre without the sleep… you may, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll get adjusted to the schedule. I am one who went to bed at 8 p.m. until I was about 14 years old and I still love getting a full 8 hours of sleep, but I handled the night schedule with Noah as well as anyone could possibly expect. The real problem came when he had been sleeping through the night for a while and then started waking up again for a couple of weeks, he was about 6 months old and I am pretty sure I turned into some kind of monster then. Luckily I have a very supportive husband who happens to be a fantastic father and was able to pick up the slack there while I got my sleep.
P.S. I am kind of a rigid schedule mom, I need the predictability as much as I feel Noah needs it so now, even at almost 3 years-old, he takes a 2-ish hour nap after lunch, around 12:30 and goes to bed at 8 p.m. His schedule was pretty regular too even as an infant, but I never felt like I had to force it, it just worked out that way with who he is and our parenting philosophy. Like I said, you listen to the advice given you in books and from family and friends, you find what works for you, and you go with it- there’s nothing a loving, caring, capable parent can do too mess up their child for life, and you can always adjust things if what you’re doing doens’t seem to be working.
My son is now 13 months old… he’s never had a rigid anything lol. I take my cues from him, and he pretty much created his own schedule. Looking back on it, he wakes up between 6 and 7 am, and his first nap happens 2 hours after he wakes up (almost to the minute, he gets CRANKY). He sleeps about an hour, then is awake until about 2 or 3 when he starts to get cranky again, and he’ll sleep another hour. Then he goes to bed around 8 or 9. Granted, like I said, he is 13 months now, but he’s had that schedule (on his own) since he was pretty young since I had to go back to work when he was 8 weeks old. Ruston is one of the happiest babies I have ever seen.
I don’t believe in the “cry it out” thing, especially when they are really little. Babies under about 6 months aren’t developed enough to have their bodies understand that it’s okay to stop crying and go to sleep… their bodies are more in the “I need to cry because I’ve been abandoned” stage, and it’s actually somewhat unhealthy for them to cry for too long when they are that young (higher blood pressure and whatnot). Now that Ruston is older, we have had a few times where we let him cry, but there’s a method to it. Let him cry 5 minutes, go calm him down, walk out, let him cry 10 minutes, go calm him, walk out, let him cry 15 minutes, etc until he’s asleep. The next night you go in 10 minute increments, and so on, and after about 3 nights or so, they should be pretty good at falling asleep and staying asleep. It’s also good in the middle of the night to just wait a bit and really listen to the cry of the baby… if it’s more whiny, they might fall back asleep, as opposed to a full out CRY, then they probably need some assistance. Really, it comes with time to figure it all out for your baby though.
Sorry, that was a longer post than I meant it to be. (And in case you’re wondering… I used to be a Hesse in Moses Lake, so that’s how I know who you are). 🙂
I loved reading Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. I don’t know why everyone thinks its the Cry It Out method. That’s not what I took from it. What I got from it is that infants/children/adults need more sleep than what we think. I also became more aware of when my child was ready to fall asleep. I also adopted a routine for bed time. I became more aware of sleep, its affects, and its purposes. We definitely protect our naps in our house. I think as long as you understand the importance of sleep it doesn’t matter the method you take to make sure you are getting enough.
After a few weeks of living like zombies because Ryanna was sleeping all day and screaming all night, I spent between 2am to 6am one morning reading Babywise. Although nothing exact, we implemented a regular feeding/playing/sleeping schedule. With this schedule, Ryanna’s (and, consequently, our) night sleeping began to improve. Then, after Ryanna’s doctor mentioned that her body weight was sufficient to allow her to sleep through the night without eating, we let her do it. And yes, that means we let her cry. The first two nights were bad. But from night three on she slept through the night. Judge for yourself whether Ryanna has “thrived,” but I will assure you this: we became exponentially better parents once we got consistent sleep.
Children and sleep is a very interesting discussion. Instead of a long post about all our positive and negative parenting experiences and theories related to sleep lets talk about this via phone or when we come visit.
Becoming Babywise, as mentioned by Derek, is a great, great book. It was very realistic with changes you can make according to what works for you and your baby. It is great to know that your child will wake, feed, play then sleep. It’s a pretty natural cycle for them and will be for you too. The first baby is such a learning experience! You’ll do great!!