#breastsleeping

[misiaclive]

Ink explorations of our nights together

[responsiveparenting]

Posted @withregram • @heysleepybaby Have you heard of these mystical babies that sleep 7-7 or “through the night?” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ There is no standard definition for “sleeping through the night” because truly NO ONE sleeps all night without waking. We all lightly rouse between sleep cycles, we just eventually get better at falling back to sleep unassisted. We might adjust the blankets, roll over, get up to pee or get a drink, check the clock, etc, but then we fall back asleep without needing help from our parents. Babies don’t have this option- they can’t tell us if they are too cold or hot, or in pain, or if they are thirsty or hungry, or if they just need some reassurance that we’re still close by. So they might rouse and start crying, looking for us to help them get back to sleep. This is NORMAL infant behavior, especially in the first year and especially for babies who are breastfed. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Consolidation of sleep, or the linking of more than one sleep cycle, is developmental and totally dependent on each baby’s unique time table. By 3 months, about 70% of babies are consolidating sleep (either day or night) but by 4 months (hello progression!) about half revert back at some point (Sweet Sleep). ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “Sleeping through the night” is generally defined by researchers as ANY 5+ hour stretch during the night. If you’re breastsleeping and your baby lightly rouses, feeds, and goes right back to sleep, this is also considered to be sleeping through the night. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ So how many babies out there are sleeping through based on these definitions? (My own experience in the comments!) #sleepthroughthenight #babysleeptips #normalinfantsleep #breastsleeping #cosleeping #babysleephelp #sfsleepconsultant https://www.instagram.com/p/CGlAGiqHlCb/?igshid=1s7xu34d6li1h

[fisherbodytalk]

By definition cosleeping is having 2 individuals sleeping within sensory range of each other. So essentially every parent will cosleep with their infant in one of it's diverse ways. Be it a bassinet in the parent's room or their bed. The term cosleeping often gets used interchangeably with the idea of sharing the same sleep surface with the child. This creates an issue as cosleeping is labeled as inherently dangerous whereas the reality is separate surface cosleeping is recommended for a minimum of 6 months, ideally the first year of life for safety. Sleeping with an infant on a couch, recliner, air mattress, water bed IS ALWAYS DANGEROUS. Bedsharing CAN be dangerous IF 1. Baby is bottle fed 2. Mattress is too soft, has Bedframes, gaps to walls or furniture where baby can get trapped. Bedding ,pillows in area or other hazards you would keep out of a crib (blind cords etc). 3. Adult is intoxicated or medicated 4. Baby is not full term or healthy. 5. Baby is overdressed/overheated, swaddled or not on their back. Breastsleeping, the beautiful dance of baby sleeping at the breast (not up near face & pillows- where a bottle fed baby wants to be) where the nursing person is attuned to the baby and naturally in a cuddle curl position can be inherently SAFE and within our natural biology. Breastfeeding is the essential key in safe bedsharing. #biologicallynormalinfantsleep #breastsleeping #cosleeping #infantsleepeducation #sleepconsultant #sleepsafe https://www.instagram.com/p/CBB2K3AHecQ/?igshid=q807d5xj03z9

[alvlysmile]

#mommonday #sleepwhenthebabysleeps #breastsleeping #makingitwork #modelmom #legsfordays #momlife #naptime #snacktime https://www.instagram.com/p/B9O9Stmggqx/?igshid=1dq4c2svihz2u

[childbirthrite]

Parents everywhere tend to think that the way they raise their children is the best way, and Americans are no exception. Contemporary American parents seek to optimize their children’s lives, treat them as equals, and reduce their risk of harm to zero; anything less may seem negligent. Yet many of the practices Americans hold as sacred are quite rare in other countries — and the burdens Americans place on themselves are often unwarranted.

[childbirthrite]

Bed-Sharing and Co-Sleeping: Research Overview

A fabulous review of issues surrounding bedsharing and co-sleeping by Dr. Helen Ball of Durham University.

I went off searching for this article for a doula client who had questions about co-sleeping. I read it several years ago when my first child was two years old (so after two years of co-sleeping), and one part that I found particularly interesting was the description of the “protective” sleeping position that breastfeeding mothers naturally assume while bed-sharing with their babies. In this position, mothers face the baby, position the baby near the chest, and curl around the baby with an arm above and their legs below. It’s thought to be an evolutionary behavior that is beneficial for protecting the baby from any outside predators, and also from the adults in the bed. I found that I assumed that position instinctually when sleeping with both of my infants, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable position for my body. Even if I wanted to toss and turn, something in my brain held me in that position, the one safest for my babies. That’s pretty amazing. 

[dover]

"McKenna and Gettler point out that over many years, behavioral and physiological studies document how breastsleeping mothers exhibit impressive behavioral sensitivities to their infants’ presence and behavior even while in deeper stages of sleep."

[feedingthebaby-blog]

Sarah M. writes:

Here’s what it was like to nurse my second son: we snuggled. While he slept, I read literary criticism; when he was at the breast, I read YA romances. Sometimes we made sweet faces and sounds. I’m not making this up. Asher grew; I slept. It was amazingly great.

It was only when I realized how content I felt with Asher that I realized exactly how fucked up I’d been with Elliot, my first son. I guess you’d call it something like PPD?  I don’t know; I was tired.  I was so so worried.  In the grand scheme of breastfeeding sagas, it’s pretty minor: he didn’t eat, he fell asleep at the breast every time, he would not wake up to eat, and my life was a blur of clocks and boobs and pumping and bottle feeding and my relentlessly sleeping child. Finding the time to wash the pump parts was more than I could stand. 

All this lasted an indeterminate amount of time. By the calendar, the worst of it went on for only about three weeks; on other scales of reckoning, I am still in a three am room watching my son lying naked on the hard wood floor and not waking up, despite the fact that the lactation consultant assured me that this nude discomfort was a guaranteed way to rouse him.  Surely, he was dying.

During the day, I would look out the window at the bustle of life below me and stare desperately at every child.  That child, I thought to myself, did not die. It seemed miraculous. There was a part of me that knew that my child was clearly going to live. What was at risk, from a medical perspective, was never death but just formula. Yet here’s the thing: I couldn’t really see those things as separate. Or rather, I felt formula as only a slower version of death. 

I did not expect to be so crazy. I’m not, usually, and I felt protected by the example of my super-sane and loving mom. But what I didn’t understand, before hand, was how strange the transition from pregnancy to mothering would be. In my belly, Elliot was safe; my body knew how to nurture him. In my arms, Elliot was only as safe as I could volitionally make him; my dangerous, sleepless mind had to serve as an intermediary between my body’s desire to care and his body’s half-formed urge to persist. Milk became a cipher for all the love I wanted to give him, and all my fear that my love would be rejected, or not enough.

That milk carries this unreasonable weight seems to me both an obvious outcome of our strange mammal bodies, and an unnecessary outcome of a culture rich enough to have philosophies about matters that, in every other moment in time, was simply an issue of survival. 

I’m glad I breastfed both my sons. Some people who told me to give my baby formula were not supportive of my breastfeeding, and they were not supportive of what I was going through.  But they are no more at fault for my isolation and guilt than other well-meaning people who, in the name of “helping” me breastfeed, failed to help me find a middle path, and failed to tell me about the high price—to my sense of self, to my marriage, to my ability as a mother—about the drive to exclusively breastfeed. 

A final piece of the story: at two or three weeks in, I was in such despair that I decided I would ask my husband to give Elliot one bottle a night without me nursing him; then, I could, once a night, get four consecutive hours of sleep. I was scared that this would mean the end of breastfeeding.  Instead, it saved breastfeeding, because it saved me.  With just a little sleep I could begin the slow task of putting my mind back in order. So that’s my small bit of hard earned wisdom: once a night, four hours. It can be hard to give yourself that much, but it is not even close to what you deserve.