By Kate Curry
Infertility. Attachment Parenting. Sleep Training. Can you say 3 other concepts that can stir up so many emotions in the parenting community?
Let me just say up front that I will be discussing my own personal journey with these 3 heavyweights. I don’t expect (nor want!) everybody to have the same views as I do. I will discuss trends I see and books I have read on the subjects.
But at the end of the day, this is one person’s journey. Maybe my journey will make you feel less alone. Maybe it will show you a point of view from “the other side.” Maybe you will completely disagree and this solidifies your decision to do something else. It’s all good.
Infertility – as the kids say, IYKYK (‘if you know, you know.”) Before experiencing infertility firsthand, I did not understand the depth of emotions that come with this.
Before it was me, I thought rationally about it, “It must be really hard to want a baby and not be able to have one.” I consider myself a pretty empathetic person, and I genuinely felt sad for people I knew who were going through this. That sadness was nothing compared to the reality of infertility in my own life.
Words can’t describe the depth and breadth of emotions associated with infertility: shame, sadness, loneliness, jealousy, hopelessness…. I could go on. I tear up just thinking back to those feelings. They are so heavy, so all encompassing.
Then (after the right treatment) that magical and seemingly miraculous thing happened, and I was pregnant. For me, what was a joyous time was also a very stressful and scary time. After working so hard for this, it felt like it was this precarious gift that could be taken back at any moment.
I counted down the weeks until the baby could potentially survive if she was on the outside, and each passing week felt momentous. I was getting closer to this becoming a reality.
During this time, I also spent a ton of energy researching pretty much everything: pregnancy, birth, babies, sleep, schedules, etc. I read lots of books, took classes, went on online forums, the works. (And took naps, too. Lots of naps.) Better to keep busy than get anxious thinking about all the negative “what if’s” lurking in the back of my mind.
With a background in psychology and special education, I had some ideas about how I wanted to raise a child. I knew I wanted it to be somewhat child-centered (within reason) and employ positive parenting techniques. I wanted to validate a child’s emotions but also hold boundaries. I wanted to be responsive but also foster independence.
So that’s obviously a lot (and I hadn’t actually had any kids yet so you know how it is). But with the ideas of child-centered, responsive, and validating I ran into a lot of Attachment Parenting information.
For those unfamiliar, Attachment Parenting comes from Dr. Sears and has 8 basic principles:
- Preparing for pregnancy, birth, parenting
- Feeding with love and respect
- Responding with sensitivity (validating emotions)
- Use nurturing touch
- Engage in nighttime parenting
- Provide constant, loving care
- Practice positive discipline
- Strive for balance in personal and family life
Sounds great, right? But then here comes reality.
And reality involves sleep.
For the first 8 months of my daughter’s life, I was doing as much of the attachment strategies as I possibly could, both day and night. I had never been more exhausted in my whole life (see one of my earlier blog posts about me looking in the fridge for my car keys).
To Dr. Sears’ credit, he does say that you will need help and support. It’s impossible for one person to do it all. However, in real life, that doesn’t always work. I do have supportive people around, but my husband has to work and the grandparents live over an hour away. So, who’s helping me with the day to day and night to night? How was I supposed to get more than a couple hours of sleep at a time?
I would say I was functioning on about 4-6 hours of interrupted sleep every day. That was not working for me.
In Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep, he goes into detail about all the research he has done that shows how harmful it is for humans to consistently get less than 8 hours of sleep. Each hour less of sleep is linked to even more and more health problems (and even earlier death). It’s a great read for any sleep nerds (like me!) who love to see all the interesting research done.
One of the things he found in his research was how lack of sleep is such a huge factor in car crashes. And if you’re anything like me, you have to take that baby out in the car to get stuff done. Here’s what he found:
- Operating on 6-7 hours of sleep – 1.3x risk of car crash
- Operating on 5-6 hours of sleep – 1.9x risk of car crash
- Operating on 4-5 hours of sleep – 4.3x risk of car crash
- Operating on less than 4 hours of sleep – 11.5x risk of crash
As an exhausted mama, I did not know all this specific safety information, but I did feel like I wasn’t performing at my best. I knew my memory was awful, I was emotional, and I couldn’t concentrate. I remember thinking, how was I going to be the fun, creative mama I had pictured myself being when I could barely get up off the couch? What was I going to do when I had to keep up with a toddler?
I knew something needed to change. I needed sleep.
But then you go on the internet and see that sleep training does not mesh with attachment parenting. Attachment parenting encourages co-sleeping and “nighttime parenting” (responding to wakings and comforting baby back to sleep).
There’s actually a lot of things out there telling you that you are a bad mom if you want your baby to be an independent sleeper. What a hard thing for a sleep-deprived Mommy to go online to search for help and feel attacked. That’s just really not OK. (And for those of us that struggled with infertility, it feels so awful to think we would do anything to hurt this miracle we tried so hard to get, but I’m sure that’s the case with all other mamas, too!)
I had to push past all that noise to see that, scientifically, sleep training has not been found to be harmful to children. Large, longitudinal studies have been done and found no negative effects of sleep training. Actually, the one thing that was consistently found in studies was that moms’ rates of depression were significantly less when they were in the sleep-training group.
I found a moderate sleep training solution that felt right to me. At this point, I knew my baby. I knew that when we began sleep training, she was crying because something was changing. I could hear her cries and I watched her (admittedly too much) on the monitor. She was not in pain or scared – I know what those cries sound like. I was setting a new boundary for her, but I was also there to support her through it.
It was an adjustment for both of us, but I knew this was what needed to happen in my family.
And I can’t tell you how life-changing it was for my family when she became an independent sleeper. I started sleeping, too! I was happier. I had more energy. I was able to spend time with my husband in the evenings. I actually started to feel like myself again.
And so was baby! Baby was getting so much more, restorative sleep without all the night wakings. She was happier, too. She started to flourish and learn in such a beautiful way.
I knew it had been the right decision for my family. I absolutely, 100% believe that to this day. That’s why I became a sleep coach: to help families like mine that really need that sleep. To help overtired mamas do what they feel is best for their families.
So, it is OK for someone who has gone through infertility issues to sleep train. (Or not, do what’s best for you). It is possible to still be a sensitive, responsive parent with a really secure relationship with your child and still sleep train.
Look at the 8th principle of attachment parenting – balance between personal and family life. If you are so sleep deprived that you are not functioning and it’s unhealthy, then your balance is off.
I’m a sleep coach, and I still stand behind so many principles of attachment parenting. I am sensitive, validating, responsive, and use positive parenting strategies (I’m also a human so, you know, doing my best at all these things). My nighttime parenting just looks different now because I put her in the crib, tell her I love her, have some time for me, and then sleep through the night.
I believe in taking parts of everything that feels right to you and works for your family and bringing them all together. If you don’t want to sleep train, don’t. If you want to take parts of sleep training that feel right to you and use them and leave other parts out, do it.
Here’s what I’ll end with. No matter how you got to this point of your parenthood journey, listen to yourself and do what is best for you. And don’t let the other people’s journeys and choices make you do or not do what you know is best.
And please please please, can we all be a little bit more accepting of other people’s choices? Parenting is hard enough without the black cloud of internet hate hanging over you.
Feel free to drop a comment if any of this resonated with you or if you’ve got a different point of view you want me to hear. I’m open.