The No-cry Sleep Solution (4 page)

Babies and young children are emotional rather than rational crea-tures. A child cannot comprehend why you are ignoring his cries for help. Ignoring your baby’s cries, even with the best of intentions, may lead him to feel that he has been abandoned. Babies are responding to biological needs that sleep “experts” either ignore or deny. It is true that a baby whose crying is ignored may eventually fall back asleep, but the problem that caused the night waking in the first place has remain unsolved. Even if parents have checked to make sure that the baby is not sick or in physical discomfort, unless they pick up the baby, interact with him in a compassionate way, soothe him, or nurse him until he falls back asleep, the underlying or accompanying emotional stress will remain.

The most sensible and compassionate approach is to respond immediately to your child’s cries. Remind yourself that you are the parent, and that giving your baby reassurance is one of the joyous responsibilities of being a parent. It is a beautiful feeling knowing that you alone have the power to brighten your child’s life and banish fear and sorrow.

Kate Allison Granju, in
Attachment Parenting
(Pocket Books, 1999), writes:

Babies are people, extremely helpless, vulnerable, and dependent people. Your baby counts on you to lovingly care for her. When she cries, she is signaling—in the only way she knows how—that she needs you to be with her.

Introduction

7

You know what it feels like to cry in fear or distress. It feels terri-ble. And it’s no different for your baby. When your baby cries—for whatever reason—he experiences physical changes. His blood pressure rises, his muscles become tense, and stress hormones flood his little body.

Babies who are subjected to cry-it-out sleep training do sometimes seem to sleep deeply after they finally drop off. This is because babies and young children frequently sleep deeply after experiencing trauma.

This deep sleep shouldn’t be viewed as proof of the efficacy of the [cry-it-out] method but rather evidence of one of its many disturbing shortcomings.

Dr. William Sears, in
Nighttime Parenting
(Plume, 1999), says that letting a baby cry it out creates “detachment parenting” and goes so far as to warn parents against this approach. “Parents, let me caution you. Difficult problems in child rearing do not have easy answers. Children are too valuable and their needs too important to be made victims of cheap, shallow advice.”

What Other Parents Have to Say About

the Cry-It-Out Approach

As I spoke with parents about this new book, many came forward to share their personal experiences with letting their babies cry it out.

“When we tried letting Christoph cry it out, he cried for two or three hours every night for eleven nights in a row. He became fearful and fussy all day long. Since we gave up that awful idea, we’ve all been sleeping better.”

—Amy, mother of ten-month-old Christoph

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

“We tried letting Emily cry herself to sleep when she was nine months old. It worked for a few days, and I got really excited. But then she went right back to her old pattern. It’s never worked since.”

—Christine, mother of eighteen-month-old Emily

“With my first child, I worried about doing things the ‘right’ way and so I tried to do cry-it-out sleep training. I discovered that there are so many relapses even after doing it—traveling, sicknesses, bad dreams, new situations, etc., etc., etc.—that it wasn’t worth it to do it in the first place. Doing it once was bad enough; I couldn’t stomach multiple cry-it-out sessions.”

—Heather, mother of fifteen-month-old Anna

and three-year-old Brandon

“We tried the cry-it-out method; our pediatrician told me to just let him cry all night if necessary. Well, he cried off and on for four hours, slept until 2:30 a.m., and then cried off and on until I got him up at 6 a.m. It was absolute torture! I found the ‘crying’ part of the idea works, but there was no ‘sleeping’ for either of us.”

—Silvana, mother of nine-month-old Salvador

“With our firstborn, we dutifully worked at getting her to sleep in her crib and finally did let her cry, believing we were doing the right thing. It was not the right answer for her at all. At one point, she cried for more than an hour and was literally foaming at the mouth. I was so sick over this and (obviously) still feel bad about it. From that point on, she slept with us. She is almost three now and sleeps well in her own bed. If she has a nightmare, she

Introduction

9

is welcomed into our bed. I am currently breastfeeding and co-sleeping with our son. He is not the best sleeper, but I feel strongly that my parenting does not end at night, and if crying is the only solution I’m not interested.”

—Rachel, mother of ten-month-old Jean-Paul

and three-year-old Angelique

How Does a Baby Feel About Crying It Out?

No one can really tell us how a baby feels about crying to sleep, but many people guess—taking advantage of a baby’s lack of voice to present their own case. In my research for this book, I viewed a video by a sleep “expert” who stated, “Letting your baby cry herself to sleep is not physically or physiologically harmful, even if she cries for hours.” This apparently is his rationalization to make parents feel better about letting their baby cry. I was so appalled that I immediately conveyed this information to my husband, who is a caring, supportive, and involved father to our children. The statement haunted him so much that he responded the next morning via E-mail with his answer to any parent who hears this advice: If you believe what this “expert” says then you are going down the wrong road with your child. Don’t think for a minute that your tiny baby is not affected by this attitude. This insensitivity to your child’s feelings can be born here and bred into other areas as he grows. If he wants you to hold him during the day, and you’re too busy with other things, you can convince yourself that he won’t be permanently harmed by your inattention. As he gets older, when he wants to play ball with you but you’re otherwise occupied, you can rationalize that he’s better off playing with his friends. If he wants you to attend a school function and you are too tired, you can argue that your presence really isn’t necessary. You are setting up a pattern in babyhood that will follow for the rest of your life in your relationship with your

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

child. There are times to encourage independence in your children, but parents should choose those times with wisdom.

On that same video, the author offers this terrifying statement to sleep-deprived parents. “She will
never
learn to fall asleep unless you let her cry.” Really? Tell this to my four children who now sleep through the night. Tell this to the millions of babies who
do
eventually sleep through the night without ever having to cry it out.

No one truly knows how crying it out affects a baby in the long run. After all, one cannot raise a baby twice and note the difference. And no one really knows how a baby feels when he is left to cry it out. Jean Liedloff presents a very likely perception in her volume on anthropology,
The Continuum Concept
(Addison-Wes-ley, 1977). Here, she describes a baby waking in the middle of the night:

He awakes in a mindless terror of the silence, the motionlessness.

He screams. He is afire from head to foot with want, with desire, with intolerable impatience. He gasps for breath and screams until his head is filled and throbbing with the sound. He screams until his chest aches, until his throat is sore. He can bear the pain no more and his sobs weaken and subside. He listens. He opens and closes his fists. He rolls his head from side to side. Nothing helps. It is unbearable. He begins to cry again, but it is too much for his strained throat; he soon stops. He waves his hands and kicks his feet. He stops, able to suffer, unable to think, unable to hope. He listens. Then he falls asleep again.

Renewed Resolve, but Tired Nonetheless

So, reading all these books had strengthened my resolve
not
to let my baby cry himself to sleep. Nevertheless, with the perspective of experience—as a mother of four—I refused to feel guilty for wanting a good night’s sleep. I wanted sleep. I wanted answers.

Introduction

11

There
had
to be answers.

My research began in earnest. I searched the library and book-stores, and I took to the Internet. Predictably, I found abundant articles and stories on babies and sleep. Observations and laments were easy to come by. But solutions? The same two schools of thought appeared over and over: cry it out or live with it.

Parents, though, seemed to fall into only one main category: sleep-deprived and desperate. Here’s how Leesa, mother of nine-month-old Kyra, described her condition:

I am truly distressed, as the lack of sleep is starting to affect all aspects of my life. I feel as though I can’t carry on an intelligent conversation. I am extremely disorganized and don’t have the energy to even attempt reorganization. I love this child more than anything in the world, and I don’t want to make her cry, but I’m near tears myself thinking about going to bed every night. Sometimes I think, “What’s the point? I’ll just be up in an hour anyway.” My husband keeps turning to me for answers, and I’m to the point where I nearly yell at him,