New Mom: Sleep Study

A recent study just came out about babies and sleep and guess what? The more sleep your baby gets, the better. And guess what else? If your child doesn’t get enough sleep, they may have problems associated with sleep deprivation, such as higher anxiety levels, stress, and depression. Well, knock me over with a feather. It couldn’t possibly be that children who are already disposed to anxiety, stress, and depression subsequently have trouble sleeping, could it? The study seems to ignore this possibility and many other life factors that may contribute to sleep problems. But, what really bothered me about the study — or perhaps more accurately, the news reports about the study — is that it vilifies parents who comfort their children to sleep and do anything more than put their baby in a crib at 5 months old and just walk away.

Admittedly, my skepticism about the study was fueled by a sound bite from an expert on ABC World News’ coverage of the study who said, “The problem begins when parents hug and rock their babies to sleep.” In the word’s of another ABC News reporter, John Stossel, “Give Me a Break!” I’m all for getting your baby to sleep through the night, and for getting her to be able to comfort herself to sleep on her own. In fact, I’m very proud of the fact that we’ve gotten New Girl to sleep through the night, and we suffered the difficult sleep training it took to do it. As for falling asleep on her own, that happened much more gradually. I LOVED hugging her and rocking her to sleep, and so did she. But it took months of gradual steps at a much older age before we were both ready to give it up. I know that sleep is good for babies and the ability to self soothe is an important skill for all children. I’m not sure any of us need a major research study to teach us that. But what I’m sure we don’t need is another group of researchers offering a one-size-fits-all solution, packaged to maximize headlines, without regard for the added anxiety, stress, and more sleepless nights they’ve heaped upon millions of loving, caring parents who do the most natural thing in the world when they hug and rock their babies to sleep.