Why Your Baby Won't Sleep

Let me begin by saying that this is not, I repeat - not, a post on how to get your baby to sleep. There is an abundance of books, blog posts, and magazine articles out there offering tips, suggestions, and how-tos on that subject. And I think I've read most of them. Probably three times. No, this post is on reasons why you might find yourself searching for answers each day on something you could be doing differently so that your baby will either sleep more or longer.

At our house, Ian was a great sleeper from the time he was born. Long stretches, late mornings, great naps...needless to say, we were spoiled (and proud of what good parents we were since we had obviously provided such a wonderful environment for our new baby). Then he turned 5 months old and it all went downhill. First it was teething, then an ear infection, then he was crawling and thought he should practice that new skill each night, then separation anxiety hit, followed by another ear infection, then RSV, then learning to walk...there was always something keeping him from sleeping. I read every book and did everything I was supposed to, but he still wasn't sleeping. We even tried the cry-it-out method for part of one night out of sheer desperation and exhaustion even though I knew better. The book that had suggested it failed to explain what to do when you have a baby that will cry so long that he begins bursting blood vessels in his eyes. All three of us ended up in tears and cuddled together that night.

I became more sleep deprived than the college students I got up to teach each morning and I felt like I could model for one of those Dove commercials about how "Such and such percent of mothers admit to letting themselves go". One all too early morning, my irritable husband turned to me and asked, "You've got the training. What do we do?" I burst into tears. He was right. I have a good deal of training in child behavior modification and infant development, and yet I was resorting to Googling what to do. At this point, the helpful books were thrown across the room. Then I calmed down and changed my frame of reference.

I tell parents that I work with that if a child isn't following through on a behavior to reexamine the request in order to see if its an appropriate expectation. So that's what I did. The question I was asking shifted from "WHY ISN'T HE SLEEPING?!" to "Should I expect him to sleep?" I realized that no, this wasn't an appropriate expectation for my son. I do think some babies can do this - just not all, and maybe not even most. Being honest, this didn't automatically get us more sleep, but as parents, we definitely began handling it better and with a lot less guilt - which was a big relief to us all. And he did start sleeping better, in part because he got older and in part because we started listening more we closely to what he was trying to tell us.

Through my own research, here are 10 of the things I found out (a lot of which I already knew but was too tired to remember):

1. Most moms have more trouble with getting their infants to sleep than they like to admit. In our society, it's sort of a maternal status symbol to have your baby sleeping through the night. Remember that secret when you start comparing yourself and your baby to another mom who's bragging on how well her infant sleeps.

2. During the first year it is actually safer for babies to sleep more lightly and wake more frequently. Breastfeeding moms too sleep more lightly, so are likely to be woken more easily by their babies.

3. Babies don't have an "in sync" circadian rhythm until around 10 months, so will have more difficulty regulating their sleep cycles and be more easily disrupted in those same sleep cycles.

4. If babies become too distressed, like what can happen from prolonged crying, they will fall asleep because their little bodies basically shut down. This is not the sweet slumber we want them to get. Its a survival response that I don't suggest using.

5. Babies don't manipulate and they don't realize that their desires aren't needs. So if they start to cry because they "want" to be held in the middle of the night, they are really convinced that they need to be held, and so are programmed to let you know they have an unmet need until you respond. If you delay your response, you're trying to send the message "See, you don't really need that." Unfortunately the message they get until they're older is "My need isn't going to get met."

6. The U.S. is one of the only cultures that has an expectation for infants to sleep through the night. Most others don't even try to make it happen until 2 or 3 years.

7. Separation anxiety is real. Around 6 months babies realize that they are separate from their moms (it's called self-other differentiation). For the first time they begin to realize that this means that she might not be there when they need her. So you'll get the panicked crying of the 8 month old in the middle of the night who wakes and can't find his mother or even the babbling of the 9 month old who's talking just to see if mom is around to hear her.

8. Routines are good, but babies change so quickly (especially after 6 months) that often their changes blow your routines out of the water (I do recommend bedtime routines since dependability does help with infant anxiety).

9. Babies with more difficult (I prefer the word passionate) temperaments are more likely to have trouble sleeping. They take more to wind down, get wound up more easily, and tend to sleep more lightly.

10. Infants have different sleep cycles than adults do. All of us use part of our lighter sleep as a time to store information. Infants are learning a lot more than adults each day so spend more time in that light sleep - causing them to be woken more easily. Also, when adults dream, our bodies undergo a temporary paralysis. It's what keeps us from acting out our dreams at night. Infants and young children (along with some individuals with sleep disorders) have brains that haven't developed the ability to put their bodies to sleep and so are more likely to sleep walk and talk. Infants will do this too. For instance there were a few weeks where I regularly had to go in and lay Ian back down at night because I'd find him standing up in his crib completely asleep but crying.

In summary...don't assume your baby isn't sleeping because of something you're doing or not doing. She may not be sleeping because she simply isn't developmentally at a place where that is possible. I'm actually suspicious if part of the reason all the infant sleep books are able to claim their methods work is because the moms using the techniques just have babies that grow up and get to a point where they're ready to sleep!

This all being said, you still may be sleep deprived - just maybe more knowledgeable on why. Babies have been this way for a very long time, but our schedules just keep getting busier and we just keep trying to do it all ourselves. We used to live in closer communities or around family that actually expected to help out sleep-deprived parents. We can't expect our babies to adapt to our schedulest, so if possible, this is a time to call in reinforcements. Family, friends, neighbors...it really does take a village to raise a child, so don't feel as if you're less of mother if you ask for help.

If you do want a book recommendation, out of all of them I think The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley is highest on my list. I have since analyzed the stack of infant sleep books that all say different things and my conclusion is this: Most of them agree on one big point - that if you go pick up/nurse/soothe your infants when they cry at night, you will be teaching them that if they cry, you will respond. The point of disagreement is that one camp believes that such a lesson is a bad thing and the other that its a good thing. I for one have never met a parent with grown children who looks back to when those children were infants and says "I think I held them too much," but I have met several who wish they had held them more. I still tell myself that when Ian wakes at night and I'm sitting in his nursery shivering and exhausted. I smell his hair, touch his skin, and think about how as much as I would love to sleep, I really don't want to rush moments like these.