Coping with Sleep Deprivation
For new parents, a certain level of sleep deprivation is part of the job description, but how can one stave off the negative effects or at least minimize them?
For new parents, a certain level of sleep deprivation is part of the job description, but how can one stave off the negative effects or at least minimize them?
Dr. Haig suggests infant night waking is an evolutionary trick for babies to increase mom's postpartum amenorrhea and suggests sleep training is therefore okay. But is this the whole story?
Used to being told you're creating "bad habits" by doing things like nurse your child to sleep or respond to their cries? If so, this post is for you - I won't tell you to change these behaviours, but rather to look at them as they are: biologically normal.
Most "expert" bits of advice rely upon the assumption that what works for one baby will work for all... Yeah, right.
Many parents who expect and accept their babies waking and crying end up frustrated when this stage doesn't magically pass in toddlerhood. Here are some of the many reasons toddlers wake and cry at night (and why they are deserving of our responsiveness too).
We often talk about how normal most sleeping patterns are, despite being seen as abnormal in our society, but what about the situations where your infant's sleep truly is abnormal? That it's telling you something else is wrong?
We all know about the “booby traps” that prevent parents from breastfeeding successfully, but what about the “snooze traps”?
Ever hear that your child should be sleeping through by 3 months of age? Or that night waking is a sign of something wrong? Here are some of the myths about night wakings and the actual facts associated with them.
It saddens me that this needs to be written but it does. Too many media outlets and "baby experts" are out there telling parents to ignore their instincts and their babies.
There is an endless array of questions and judgments and ‘should’s associated with both infant sleep and feeding. But this hasn’t always been the case. It used to be a simple matter of mother breastfeeding and mother and infant sleeping together with no judgment and no questions about quality or quantity of sleep.