When my son was about four months old, I hit a week of obliterating exhaustion.
He was waking every 45 minutes, all night, every night. He?d thrash his little disoriented limbs in the bassinet, bleating a tiny note of alarm. I?d jolt awake, get up and breastfeed him back to sleep. I remember googling, Can you die from sleep deprivation"""""" The three-step instructions on a box of oatmeal appeared to me as an opaque and maddening riddle.
Desperate, I signed a contract with a gentle sleep consultant. ?That?s a totally normal infant sleep pattern,? she reassured me, laughing warmly. And in the next breath: ?We?ll fix it.?
Should something that?s ?totally normal? be ?fixed?" I wondered. I shrugged it off. I was just so tired. And everyone from our paediatrician to the moms at our music class had given us the same speech: “If you don?t sleep train, your baby will never learn to self-soothe or fall asleep independently.” But as I awaited the customized sleep plan, that moment in our conversation kept bugging me. So I started reading about why babies sleep the way they do.
Understanding baby sleep
The first thing I learned is that there are various and conflicting views on this topic! Baby sleep is controversial.
But what resonated with me the most was the belief that no matter why babies wake at night?hunger, cold, loneliness, discomfort?they need to be reassured, over and over, that their caregiver will respond. It made sense to me...