Since nursing babies that wake at night usually want to breastfeed, nighttime waking concerns are often seen as a breastfeeding problem. A new study in Pediatrics presents information about how babies sleep that could lead to problems for breastfeeding families if it is seen as how babies should sleep. It says in summary:
CONCLUSIONS The most rapid consolidation in infant sleep regulation occurs in the first 4 months. Most infants are sleeping through the night at 2 and 3 months, regardless of the criterion used. The most developmentally and socially valid criterion for sleeping through is from 22:00 to 0:600 hours. At 5 months, more than half of infants are sleeping concurrently with their parents.
Unfortunately this study does not talk about feeding choices. Many breastfeeding mothers find that milk production drops significantly when they go for many hours without breastfeeding or pumping. The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine has just blogged about problems with this study – particularly if it is used as a guide for parents:
I am dismayed by the publication of the study of Henderson et al which ostensibly documents the normal patterns of sleep in infants in the first year of life. The population studied was non-random, self selected and not representative of the varied ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic diversity of a normal population. Thus, just on these grounds this inevitable selection bias precludes any conclusions.
Anthropologists and sleep researchers Helen Ball and James McKenna write in their letter to the editor:
The publication of this paper perpetuates the western cultural notion that infants can and should sleep “through the night” from a very young age. However, encouraging young babies to sleep “through the night” is one of the most effective means of killing a mother’s ability to sustain breastfeeding and denies a young infant a third of its daily nutrient intake. Regular nighttime suckling is crucial for successful lactation and is an important modulator of infant sleep architecture and arousal patterns. How can a research paper published in 2010 on infant sleep development possibly overlook or ignore the relevance of night-time breastfeeding? How could the reviewers overlook or ignore such a fundamental omission?
I hope that this study does not get used to undermine breastfeeding by making parents feel like there is something wrong with their breastfed babies that do not sleep through the night in the first year.
Holding babies skin to skin is so good for babies and mamas! Here is a website with nice online video to enjoy. The babies are adorable, the information is invaluable. http://www.mystfx.ca/InfantSkinToSkinContact/
It looks like we just plain need to pay attention to new parents. Both new mothers and fathers need care and support. Here’s a link to an NPR story summarizing a study of new fathers and depression.
Pregnancy-related depression comes as a surprise to most men it hits. Psychologist Will Courtenay of Berkeley, Calif., has made a career of helping men with depression and maintains the website SadDaddy.com. He says there’s a myth in this country that men don’t get depressed, and that’s a danger.
“The cultural myth that men don’t get depressed also communicates to men that they shouldn’t get depressed — or at least, not express it. And so they don’t. They’re more likely than women to try to hide their depression or to talk themselves out of it,” he says.
Interesting thought about child development: (related to breastfeeding because how and where babies sleep is totally related to how easy it is to breastfeed)
Sometimes, child development experts in the United States regard adults in other communities as irresponsible if young children handle dangerous materials or tend infants, because they assume that young children can’t do such things. However middle-class U.S. families also expect children to do some things that are seen as inappropriate or even dangerous in other places, such as sleeping by themselves from the first months of life, engaging in school-like discourse or beginning to learn to read in the toddler years.
From The Cultural Nature of Human Development by Barbara Rogoff (2003, p.170)
I also like the book, Our Babies, Our Selves by Meredith Small for reading more about how different cultures parent babies.
Lots of breastfeeding questions that I hear are really questions about normal baby behavior. In our culture many parents don’t get to spend much time with babies until they have their own — and then they only spend lots of time with their own baby. It can be very reassuring to know what is normal. The blog, Secrets of Baby Behavior, tries to share research-based information with parents. I like this blog a lot.
Another resource is a new program called text4baby. Mothers can sign up for this program and get free texts to their cell phone about pregnancy and baby’s first year. The texts are timed to match baby’s age and if baby is born early, mothers can update their account. The program is sponsored by the US government and several private companies. My main concern with this resource is that it may be oversimplified and make some parents less comfortable with parenting. Anyone out there using this already? What has your experience been?
The New York Times photojournalism blog has a readers’ photos display on families. Lots of love in these pictures and at least one breastfeeding photo. Can you spot it?
Wishing you all a very good new year — Adria
This cartoon shows why so many breastfeeding mothers end up sharing their sleep space with their babies.
Breastfeed In Your Sleep