Alternatives to sleep training

[Anonymous]

Too many people assume poor infant sleep is only a problem for the parents, which in fact it can also interfere with healthy development in your infant. Quality sleep is important at every age.

[Anonymous]

We aren’t sleep training our seven month old in the strict sense but we are using some “sleep hygiene” strategies to help us help her. I nurse her to sleep (drowsy but awake has never resulted in anything other than awake-but-screaming for us...) but we do “the pause” if she wakes after bedtime. About 50% of the time she goes right back down, so we know she *can* self soothe if she doesn’t need anything. She still wakes after about 6 hours for a meal, which is developmentally appropriate if somewhat inconvenient— six hours is typically one AM. She goes right back down for another long stretch after, and is usually up for the day around seven.

People get way up in their feelings about this. Try to ignore the noise and focus on what you and your baby need— but be honest with yourself so you can’t be undermined by the mommy shamers. In my view, yes, being left to cry after always being picked up and soothed is probably a bit traumatic, but so is being vaccinated and we do it anyway in their long term best interest. If my baby couldn’t sleep for a long stretch I’d worry about her development and try a more regimented sleep training system, but as it is when she’s had bad weeks it’s always corresponded to teething, and she gets her equilibrium back.