I've been thinking a lot recently about the way that social media portrays sleep support for babies. It feels like there is so much pressure on parents to choose a parenting camp as you scroll through your feed. Either you should be rocking your baby to sleep every time they wake and co-sleeping with them, or you should be teaching your baby to self-soothe and making sure they're not dependent on you. Self-soothing is either the enemy or the goal. Maybe you already feel like you align with one of those positions. Or maybe you feel like neither is right, but you're not sure what else there is to choose. It's exhausting and we shouldn't be putting more pressure and judgement on parents at a time when they're already juggling so much!
So what's all the drama about, and why is the parenting media so polarised?
Well, much of it is to do with the conflation between self-settling and self-soothing. These are often used interchangeably on social media and in parenting books and blogs, but they really aren't the same thing. And understanding the difference might just change your view about the whole idea of these two parenting camps.
Self-soothing is the action of going from a state of heightened emotion - anxiety, fear, upset, anger - to a place of calm. It's the ability to regulate your emotions and your nervous system, to quieten the response of the most primordial areas of your brain. This is a skill that it takes time and practice to learn. Let's be honest, most adults are fairly rubbish at brining themselves from a place of big emotions to a state of calm in a short space of time, without some external support too, be that a big hug, a run around the block or a glass of wine. It is therefore unreasonable to think that a small baby has the skills to be able to self-regulate big emotions with no support from a caregiver. Our children won't be capable of anything close that level of emotional maturity and regulation for several years. Anyone who's met a toddler before has probably been made fully aware of that! That's why I don't believe in using a cry-it-out technique where babies are simply left alone until they stop crying, however long that takes. Yes, they'll stop crying eventually, but we're expecting something from them that they aren't developmentally capable of doing.
Quite separate to this, self-settling is the ability of a baby who is warm, comfortable, well-fed and reasonably calm to be able to fall asleep without significant external support. In other words, for a happy baby to be able to fall asleep without needing to be fed, bounced, rocked, walked or patted to sleep each time. Most very recent newborns are actually able to do this and will fall asleep in those first few weeks with relatively little input from you, at least some of the time. But as our babies get older they come to rely on a variety of sleep associations to help them fall asleep.
Now, sleep associations are not a bad thing. They are your power tools. If you're using something to help your baby to sleep, whether that's something passive like white noise or something active like bouncing on a birthing ball; if it's working for baby and you are happy doing it, then don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There are no wrong answers when it comes to sleep, there's only what's right for you right now, and that can change over time.
However, if your power tool is no longer feeling right for you, if you're up every 2 hours all night and have been for months, if you feel like things are going backwards, then it might be time to look at that balance between self-settling and self-soothing again.
Self-settling is a skill that your baby can learn in time. Self-soothing isn't. When I work with parents I explain that it's your job to help your baby reach a state where they are fed, warm, comfortable and calm. It's your baby's job, with some initial support up they learn this new skill, to fall asleep. And you'd be surprised how quickly babies can learn that skill of falling asleep without external input. Most are capable of making the transition in just a couple of weeks when supported by a parent who is calm and consistent. A baby who is happy self-settling can start to join long stretches of sleep at night, only calling out to you when they require soothing because they are hungry, wet or uncomfortable. And of course, you'll then provide the support they need to get into that fed, warm, comfortable and calm space again. But, you'll only be doing that once or maybe twice a night with good stretches of sleep in between.
If you're ready to move to a place where you do the soothing, but your baby does the settling, then come and have a chat about how I can support you to build the knowledge and skills you need to help your baby.
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