The No-Cry Sleep Solution
Elizabeth Pantley's Gentle Ways to Help Baby Sleep Through the Night
Mar 31, 2008
When parents struggle to get baby to sleep through the night, they are often advised by everyone from health professionals to family members to let the infant cry it out. However, research shows that this is approach is detrimental to mental and emotional wellbeing. Elizabeth Pantley argues that it is possible to help your baby to sleep through the night without resorting to neglect.
Problems with Crying it Out Sleep Training
Myths about infant sleep can lead parents to conclude that leaving baby to cry, as part of a programme to sleep train, is an acceptable way to achieve a good night's sleep. However, the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health advises against crying it out. Margot Sutherland in The Science of Parenting (DK Publishing, 2008) and parenting expert and paediatrician Dr Sears explain that this ‘method’ is harmful to future brain development and emotional wellbeing. For further information, see Reasons Not to Sleep Train.
Solving Sleep Deprivation with Personal Sleep Plans
Pantley speaks from experience: two of her four children were poor sleepers, and one regularly woke eight times a night at the age of one! She knows the desperation that parents feel when they are barely functioning from lack of sleep. This experience makes parents vulnerable to well-meaning but ill-informed advice to leave baby to cry, rather than responding to his/her nighttime needs.
The book emerged out of Pantley’s extensive research as she looked for solutions to her baby’s sleep problem. Unlike other baby books on the market, she doesn’t prescribe particular courses of action, but gives a ‘menu’ of sleep solutions to create your own ‘personal sleep plan’, according to what you feel is best for the family.
Whether parents co-sleep or sleep separately to baby, Pantley shows how to use different cues to make nighttime a more pleasant experience. The mechanics of sleep and how babies’ sleep differs from adults, is discussed in a straightforward manner. Sleeping ‘logs’ are encouraged to track your progress, and the safety of baby’s sleeping set-up is prioritised.
Encouraging Healthy Sleep Associations
One of Pantley’s key ideas is that daytime sleep is linked to nighttime sleep. To this end she gives ideas on improving the quality of baby’s daytime naps. While routines, both nap and bedtime, are emphasised, it is more in the interests of encouraging a variety of healthy sleep associations than to ensure baby fits conveniently into parents’ lives, as other parenting books, such as ‘Secrets of the Baby Whisperer’ often imply. There are ideas for newborns and for babies four months and up, although Pantley mentions that babies are usually only developmentally ready to sleep right through, from four months.
The book’s style is encouraging, humorous, accessible, and above all, compassionate – for both babies and sleep-deprived parents. And if success is slow to come, Pantley encourages parents to keep going and gives ideas on how to analyse what they could do differently. She discusses how to deal with disturbed parental sleep after baby is sleeping through.
This book is a very welcome addition to the gradually growing trend of attachment parenting-oriented parenting books. One only has to look at some online parenting forums to see how many people are using and discussing its ideas. Instead of providing blanket solutions, it acknowledges the uniqueness of every baby and parent, and promotes a sense of trust in one’s own intuition as a parent.
