Babies are pretty tough.

As a writer, blogger, and mouthy Jewish Mama, I’ve done my fair share of jumping on to the third rails of motherhood, including breastfeeding, vaccinations, and, yes, sleep training.  Yes, I have opinions about all of these issues, but I also respect that every child is different, every family is different, and my opinions are not necessarily relevant for anyone else.

Which is precisely why I can’t stay quiet in response to Renee’s recent piece against letting babies cry it out. I don’t know Renee, but from what I have read, she seems to be a thoughtful, concerned, and loving grandparent.  I respect her opinions, but I don’t necessarily agree with them.

Yes, some doctors believe that crying it out is harmful to babies. In some cases, they may be right. But there are other doctors who disagree, and they’re right too. There are studies in support of both perspectives, and there are so many different factors to consider, that I don’t see how there can be one best answer for every family. The truth is that anytime anyone tells me that there is one right (or wrong) way to raise a baby (short of blatant abuse or neglect), my little red flag goes up and my cynic light starts flashing.

I have a few concerns with Renee’s piece.  First, sleep training is not an all-or-nothing practice. The phrase “crying-it-out” triggers images of babies wailing and screaming for hours on end, and that is rarely what actually happens. In my house, I will let my daughters cry for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, because I have learned through trial and error that going into their rooms agitates them even more. I would rather have them cry for 10 minutes and get a good night’s sleep then go into their rooms and spend the next hour (or longer) trying to soothe them back to sleep (which rarely works with my girls–they really prefer to put themselves to sleep).  The point is, there are gradations of letting your babies cry, and for many families, if some amount of crying results in more and better sleep for everyone, it may well be worth it.

Furthermore, the idea that we should never let our babies cry because chronic fatigue is all part of the parenting job is a rather privileged view.  The soul-crushing exhaustion that all parents have experienced at one point or another is a lot more tolerable if one is home during the day and can nap for a few minutes when the baby is asleep.  (As a part-time SAHM, I can attest to this.)  But for those parents (especially single parents!) who have to work out of the home, who have to get up, go to the office, and be functional in their interactions with other adults, well, that level of continued fatigue just isn’t an option. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: sleep, Sleep training

Our resident grandmother blogger, Renee Septimus, likes to take on controversial topics: Breastfeeding, cell phones, and now, sleep. When she posted yesterday that letting babies cry it out was a form of cruelty, we were surprised to see the strong show of support she got from Kveller readers (more than 100 Facebook likes!). Parents piled on with support in the comments section citing that “extended crying in infants causes brain damage.” Brain damage!

That’s a lot of judgment to heap on parents who have found that this method works for their families. When we reached out to bloggers to see if they wanted to respond, one woman said she wanted to but didn’t feel ready to talk publicly about her sleep choices. “Sleep has become more private than breastfeeding,” she said.

Then the responses started flowing in. So, today, we are publishing two posts by women who disagree with Renee. As always, we here at Kveller think the most important thing is to support parents in their choices (unless said parents are doing really bad things like feeding their kids Twinkies all day long).

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: judging, sleep, Sleep training

I am taking a deep breath and entering the controversial arena (second only to the hoo-ha made over breastfeeding…and maybe cell phone use) of the Ferber (cry it out) vs. Sears (no cry) debate. I am emboldened and empowered by a recent article sent to me entitled “Why I No Longer Believe Babies Should Cry Themselves to Sleep,” by family physician Gabor Maté of Vancouver, who, as a doctor and parent, now regrets that he practiced this method himself.

Dr. Maté writes that he has come to believe that the Ferber method is “harmful to infant development and to the child’s long-term emotional health” because of the “intrinsic memory” imprinted in the nervous system which “encodes emotional aspects of early experience.”  The message the infant receives when left to “cry it out” is that the world is a hostile place, indifferent to her feelings. She experiences a sense of abandonment when her cries (the only way she has to communicate) are ignored and, rather than learning the “skill” of falling asleep as Ferber claims, her “brain, to escape the… pain of abandonment, shuts down. It’s an automatic neurological mechanism. In effect, the baby gives up. The short-term goal of the exhausted parent has been achieved, but at the price of harming the child’s long-term emotional vulnerability.”

When my kids were “Ferberizing” my grandchild, I told them straight out that I can not let a baby cry more than (tops) 45 seconds. It is unbearable to me and I could not accept the responsibility of doing that even for the baby’s nap. I didn’t get fired. (But then again, I work for free. They know a good deal when they see one.)

When I had my own babies, I generally nursed or cuddled them to sleep while I rocked them. When they got older, we had a long relaxing nighttime ritual while I snuggled with them in their beds. When they woke in the middle of the night and wanted to come in bed with us, I rolled over. When they got so big that their head was on my stomach and their feet were on my husband’s face, and no one got a good  night’s rest, I put a special Mickey Mouse sleeping bag on the floor near my bed and told them they could come into the room any time and scoot into the bag. Dr. Maté quotes scientific studies which confirm what I, and other mothers, intuited. We would have emotionally healthy and secure children if we answered their cries, if we recognized that they were crying because they could not speak and if we believed that answering those cries was essential to their well-being and did not “spoil” them. (As, years ago, my mother-in-law insisted it would. I ignored her. Which is good advice for daughters-in-law everywhere, including mine.)

When an infant cries, she is trying to communicate something and we parents have to figure out what that is. When she cries when being put to bed, I believe it means- I need my mom or dad (or other caregiver) to hold me to make me feel safe and secure. As Maté writes, “The baby who cries for the parent… is expressing her deepest need—emotional and physical contact with the parent.”

Yes, I did have exhausting nights–we all have them no matter what we do. The occupational disease of parenthood is chronic fatigue. That’s just the way it is- pretty much for the rest of your life. If you’re not up because of crying or childhood illness, you’re up worrying about something. About anything. Forever.

And yes, there were nights when the kids were small that we all slept like refugees, several children in the bed lying between us, their parents. But it worked for us–for the baby, for us as a married couple, for our family.

Now that I am no longer perennially exhausted from the demands of young children, the feel and smell of a little body in bed next to me is a delicious treat. My grandchildren know that any time they sleep over, they can come and hop right in next to Savta.

They sleep well and my dreams are sweet.

UPDATE: Moms respond here and here about why they totally disagree!

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: Ferber, Sears, sleep, Sleep training

We’ve been sleep-training our baby, which means moving the big boy temporarily into our room so he and the baby don’t disturb each other with their midnight mayhem.  I’m antsy to reclaim my space, and after one recent failed attempt to bring them back together I railed at my husband: that’s it! We need a house! We need more rooms!

Ever the Vulcan, he calmly explained to me that by the time we find a house, bid on it, get financing, close and move in, presumably the sleep issues will have already worked themselves out. Spoken like a man who grew up in a little apartment in a big city.

I, on the other hand, grew up in a big house with more rooms than we really needed. And as our family grows, sometimes our two bedroom apartment in Washington DC feels like it’s bursting at the seams. We’ve started to understand why almost all of our friends dutifully left downtown for the suburbs when baby number two came along. And yet we stay…happily, most of the time.

Raising children in a big city is a mixed bag. For instance: We live in the nation’s capitol. This is awesome, and means that my older son gets to see the White House, the Capitol Building, the Smithsonian museums, and the memorials as a matter of course, and has an amazing array of international friends. It also means that the Vice President’s motorcade zooms past our apartment—noisily—at all hours of the day and night. And I suspect that suburban moms don’t have to stand over their children’s cribs loudly shushing to drown out the sound of the Free Tibet protest down the street.

Then there are the people. Cities seem to economically favor the young and unencumbered and the older and established. What this means, practically, is that in addition to a few 4-year-old playmates at shul, my big boy has befriended the 86-year-old retiree who studies Talmud with my husband and a gaggle of doting young professionals. I love that his world is full of these positive and sometimes unusual things—older Jews continuing to be active and razor sharp, younger Jews voluntarily engaged with Jewish life.  I also kind of wish, though, that our community was filled with more families that looked like ours.

In my imaginary suburban life, I send my kids into the backyard to frolic with the (as yet imaginary) dog on our beautifully manicured lawn. But here in real life, I guess I’ll content myself to grab the kids and head to one of the seven beautiful playgrounds walking distance from our cramped city apartment. While we’re there we’ll probably hear at least four different foreign languages and meet a bunch of new people. Maybe the suburbs can wait.

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: Moving, Sleep training