Your baby probably sleeps like a baby
A little while ago, I was having a conversation with some mum friends about our babies’ sleep. I described my daughter’s sleep as “terrible”. I told them, she wakes up loads through the night, she only settles when she’s breastfeeding, she’s still in our bed and we haven’t even tried to move her into her own room yet and she definitely isn’t sleeping through the night.
What I’ve now come to realise is - my baby’s sleep is not terrible and has never been terrible. My baby sleeps like a baby.
These conversations are so common amongst parents. We compare sleep notes, we are envious when one parent’s baby is sleeping through the night, we share sleep schedules we’ve bought from sleep consultants who promise us they can get our baby sleeping through the night.
Some parents choose to sleep train, often in desperation, then when their baby stops crying in the night and “sleeps through”, they share this with their parent friends who decide to sleep train too because they want their baby to sleep through the night too which perpetuates the cycle.
The sleep industry appears to be capitalising off biologically normal infant sleep. Creating a problem with babies sleep that perhaps doesn’t exist. Babies wake frequently in infancy, this is a fact. We can’t train a baby to sleep, what we are doing instead is not responding to their need for support. We are relying on so-called “sleep experts” (who work in an industry that isn’t yet regulated) and not trusting our own instincts to respond to our babies.
The real problem is our society. Our society’s expectations on us as parents. We don’t have a village around us to support us so we can rest when we are woken frequently through the night. We aren’t supported on our breastfeeding journeys often, and we are told that formula fed babies sleep through the night. Partners have to return to work two weeks after the baby is born and mothers often need to return to work too. Cots and prams are encouraged which separate a baby from their caregiver and cosleeping is not promoted as standard by care professionals.
I believe we need to normalise biologically normal infant sleep. The narrative needs to change. A baby waking in the night is normal, they wake for many reasons:
to protect against SIDS
they’re transitioning sleep cycles
to feed
to suckle for comfort
to snuggle into a caregiver for comfort
because they need to reposition themselves
because they have a bit of wind
they’ve been woken by a noise
they’re too hot or too cold
they need to breastfeed to get back to sleep
teething
learning a new skill
I want to gently let you know - you are not creating a bad habit by supporting your baby back to sleep. Your baby does not know how to self soothe, they rely on your parent brain to co-regulate them to help them return to a sleep state.
The simile “Sleeping like a baby”: to sleep very well, to sleep peacefully throughout the night, is misleading. Sleeping like a baby is to wake up throughout the night, it is not synonymous with a full night’s sleep.
Now let’s allow our babies to sleep like babies and manage our own expectations.