That podcast that we’re all talking about
There’s been a very important topic flying around the infant sleep space right now as a prolific sleep researcher, who wrote an excellent book on adult sleep, interviewed an MD who is peddling his infant sleep training book on a podcast. I felt a like I might have been a bit harsh when I first wrote that initial sentence and so after I got my initial feelings down about the Instagram posts, I went and listened to the podcast to make sure that I wasn’t taking things out of context. I guess I was hoping that the podcast wasn’t as bad as the content of those square tiles, but, it was actually worse and had me cringing throughout.
The MD, used his title and specialism in sleep to shrink infants to nothing but undeveloped blobs who eat, sleep and digest, who have nothing more than sleep and caloric needs. Yet again, we see infant development not even getting a little sneak peek into the conversation and no respect is given to the neurological development of babies. Let me say this again. A children’s sleep specialist doctor, speaking on a popular globally accessible podcast, failed to even think about the brain development of infants and even ridiculed those who are against sleep training their infants. I was so disappointed in the usually lovable podcast host who discussed the issue with a giggle as “thorny waters”.
I was pretty shocked with the low level of emotional or scientific knowledge on infants from this children’s sleep doctor.
The conversation glides over topics with the notion that somehow, babies suddenly switch to needing to be fed on demand and sleep when they are tired when they are newborn but then as soon as they hit the 12-week age, habits need to be set. Are you kidding me? The “you must sleep train” rhetoric to “protect your sleep” gets old very fast and my usual compassion for who the person speaking is and what their experiences that led them to these ideals, faded fast. You cannot separate infant development from brain development and sleep needs. But this is exactly what the discussion did.
Our babies, human babies, really young people are so undeveloped at birth and yet, we have (de)volved as a society to forget that and forgetting that there are actual reasons why infants need responsive care. We have largely forgotten that we are a carrying species and so we try to mold infants into our new normal. Our W.E.I.R.D. social experiment. In the US, mothers can end up having a mere 2 weeks off work after having a baby. Now, I don't want this piece to go on for too long, but that is extraordinarily unnatural, traumatic for many, and problematic. Those poor mothers, those poor families, and those poor babies. It’s not the situation that we birth the most undeveloped mammals on earth that needs fixing. We don’t really want babies to pop out in a school uniform, ready to alphabetize a filing system. Why would we want that? We need to address the fact that families are grossly undersupported in a way that is inhuman. There’s something really wrong in this world when we are trying to drive infant development to go far, far faster than is biologically possible, yet we still push for that independent sleep and “self-soothing” behaviours so that, somehow we can survive with just two adults trying to raise a family, with one of those adults being alone in many of the aspects of care if they are lucky enough to have that situation.
Then it went on. And it totally dive bombed. The MD started talking about room sharing and bed sharing. Holy moly, I did not see this coming. The first bit I was expecting because I had such low expectations of where the conversation was going and he vilified badsharing. Of course he did. But, he took another step. He said that research proves that bedsharing is linked to an increased risk of suffocation in the first year of life, especially those first 6mths and I quote, there’s “a real risk there of something terrible happening”. I want to swear. How dare he.
Unplanned bedsharing carries risks. Bedsharing with intoxicated adults carries a lot of risks. Bedsharing with a soft mattress full of stuffies and thick blankets and pets and toddlers carry risks.
Planned bedsharing however, with:
a healthy, full-term baby
who is placed flat on their back
kept at breast height
without any heavy or excessive blankets or sheets
protected by the mother in the cuddle curl position (instinctual)
on a firm mattress, away from walls,
no other children or pets,
no-one is in the bed who has been drinking, smoking or taking any recreational drugs or prescribed drugs that may make them sleep heavily
has all the risk factors near eliminated. If however, we are talking of SIDS and not accidental suffocation in bed, babies die in cribs alone, too. And as crib sleeping is also associated with declining breastfeeding rates, we can include that in the increased SIDS factors.
But, to add acid to the wound here, he then went on to say that although the AAP guidelines recommend to keep babies in the same room to sleep. He actually advises against it. What? He said that if you’re up in the night with your baby in your bedroom, you are more likely to fall asleep in your bed with your baby, but his warped reasoning was that this wasn’t going to happen if you supported your baby back to sleep if the baby’s bed was in another bedroom.
Parents don’t choose to fall asleep with their babies in unsafe spaces. But, an estimated two out of three parents fall asleep with their baby on the sofa. Literally, one of the most dangerous places to fall asleep with a baby. There are ways to make your bed safe for infant sleep and without that foresight and planning for difficult nights, parents fall asleep in dangerous places with the baby. People fall asleep at the wheel of a car with the wind blowing in their faces and the radio turned up in a desperate bid to stay awake. Having them go to another place to avoid an adult bed that can be so easily made safe is tragic and heartbreaking. Parents today are at breaking point.
Is this a good time to mention the money being made in the sleep training industry? Maybe that’s another post.
I want to talk about the issue surrounding infant and adult clashing sleep needs, in the wider context. The issue isn't with the baby. We need to fight for the ability for our infants to have responsive care and develop on their own timeline. You cannot rush neurological development. You can delay it - for sure, but by simply taking away support, babies don’t develop skills. In fact, we know that when our brains are experiencing stress, the pathways in mature brains (brain maturity doesn’t happen until people are in their mid-twenties at least) disconnect from the regions that facilitate learning.
The sleep-deprived families who are just surviving should not be the ones to have to tackle this fight. They are barely getting by. When people who use their educational level to promote such irresponsible and potentially harmful “techniques” that we have all the research now that proves as being so, it’s really taking advantage of a vulnerable group. I am not saying that this MD’s intentions were harmful, I am saying that what they were saying is harmful, regardless of if they knew it. The sleep science they were discussing does not incorporate infant and child brain development or mental health.
The most important and poignant piece of this is that babies do not have the brain functioning the flush out all of the hormones that are released around stress. They do not have logic and reasoning. They do not know that you will always be there. They don’t have object permanence even. If you are out of the room, they get scared, and let’s think about this: if they get hungry or have trapped wind for example, those sensations, could very well make them feel scared because they won’t know, why they are having those sensations or even know that they will pass. Unless your infant is a super chill, easy-going baby (which you also cannot change or train into, btw), then they will start to get upset and they will continue getting more and more upset until either a responsive caregiver comes in to help the stress hormones flush, co-regulate and soothe, or, their body goes into energy saving mode and they shut down. It’s the freeze stress response and what happens after this is not true sleep even if it looks like it. It is not restorative sleep. They have shut down. Sleep training research shows that sleep training does not change the sleep of babies. What it does change is the signaling of the baby to their caregivers.
I’ve noticed an underlying tone that I never really hear said out aloud, but it is certainly felt. There seems to be a notion that if someone has chosen to have a baby, they have made that decision on their own or with their partner and so, they should be the ones to fully support that individual unit. No one owes them. Yes, no one owes anyone this kind of thing. But, if we truly understood the issue at hand, others would know when they can stand in to support their loved ones and friends. If they knew that responsive care was exactly what the infants needed and all the difficulties that present, people would gladly do things like offering to pick stuff up whenever at the store, pop in to hold the baby so mom could grab a shower, take a nap or (god forbid) have an hour to herself to stay sane and happy. If people knew the wide range of normal for infant sleep, when their friend said they had a rough night, the person listening would know not to give shoddy advice on needing to sleep train and instead say, “come on over, I’ll make you some food and you can tell me all about it.” Our society has a silent pandemic of loneliness. We’re isolated and lonely and we don’t know why. Being a friend is fulfilling and satisfying on a level that can heal. But that’s another discussion.
The one positive thing that came from this podcast was seeing the comments that filled the Instagram space that supported and called out the need to consider infants’ neurological and human needs.
