Guide to Your Child's Sleep Review
AAP's Bad Advice on Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping and Sleep Training
Why you should avoid the American Academy of Pediatrics "Guide to Your Child's Sleep".
When babies and children suffer from sleep problems, the whole family suffers. Parents often turn to books to find answers. The American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child’s Sleep should not be one of those books. It states that babies should not be allowed to fall asleep while breastfeeding and recommends sleep training over co-sleeping.
AAP Recommendation: Don’t Let Baby Fall Asleep While Breastfeeding
The AAP believes that a baby should be put to bed in a crib awake so that he can learn to soothe himself to sleep. This advice was obviously written by someone who has never breastfed a sleepy infant. It is impossible to keep a baby from falling asleep at the breast at bedtime.
According to Kellymom’s Breastfeeding and Parenting website, nursing regulates a baby’s temperature, heart rate and blood pressure and puts a baby to sleep. It is natural and normal for a baby to fall asleep at the breast. There is no need to wake a sleeping infant in order to force him into self-soothing. If the mother is not co-sleeping with her baby, she can wait until the infant is in a state of deep sleep before moving him to the crib or bassinet.
AAP Says Avoid Co-Sleeping
The AAP does not recommend co-sleeping and believes that it prevents babies from learning how to sleep on their own or with the help of transitional objects. Transitional objects are stuffed animals or pacifiers.
The AAP goes so far as to suggest that families that co-sleep should seek financial assistance if they cannot afford a crib. The say mothers who have decided to co-sleep should seek counseling for loneliness, and that married partners who co-sleep with their children are in need of marriage counseling. The implication is that parents who are listening to their instincts to care for their babies are somehow defective and should seek counseling to override this tendency.
Unfortunately, the AAP also states that co-sleeping increases the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). They give no evidence to support this statement. According to Dr. William Sears, pediatrician and author of The Attachment Parenting Book [Little, Brown and Company, 2001], co-sleeping actually reduces the risk of SIDS. Sears believes that a mother’s breathing helps regulate her infant’s breathing. Babies who co-sleep are also more likely to sleep on their backs or sides, which has been proven to decrease the risk of SIDS.
AAP Encourages Sleep Training
The cry-it-out method of getting an infant to sleep involves leaving an infant alone in a crib to cry himself to sleep. Some methods suggest only checking on the baby if the cries are a sign of distress. Others suggest checking periodically until the baby has soothed himself to sleep. The AAP recommends either method and strongly suggests that parents not pick up their crying infant at bedtime. This will interfere with the self-soothing process.
What the AAP fails to consider is that crying itself is a sign of distress in an infant. When an infant cries, he is telling his parents that something isn’t right. Babies need holding and loving. Sleep training is not baby friendly and will leave a baby feeling abandoned. A baby may learn how to self-soothe, but that same baby is also becoming desensitized and learning that those adults that have been entrusted with his care are not trustworthy.
The American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child’s Sleep is not recommended as a parenting book. Any bits of good advice that may be in there are overshadowed by the misinformation on breastfeeding, co-sleeping and sleep training. This AAP book does not follow attachment parenting principles.
Sources:
American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child’s Sleep. George J. Cohen, M.D., F.A.A.P., Editor-in-Chief. Random House, 1999.
Kellymom, Breastfeeding and Parenting website
Dr. William Sears website
