When I read about someone blogging about Ferberizing or Sleep Training (neglect cry-it-out) their poor little dependent being that wants nothing more than her mama’s love, and will be denied.

Just makes me want to throw up, it’s so sad.

That’s all.  I need to stop reading some blogs, but it’s like driving by a car accident – I don’t want to see the gore, but I read out of some sick sense of curiousity.

Then I get sad.  And then I hug my babies closer.

Very interesting chapter on the “entwined relationship” between a baby and her mother and father.  Again, this is from the awesome book “Our Babies, Ourselves” by Meredith F. Small.  Here’s my blog #1 and blog #2 about some of the great research and information.  Get this book… you won’t regret it!

…More remarkable, lab research has also shown that the connection between babies and parents is deeply physiological.  In one study of infant reaction to mothers, fathers, and strangers, an infant girl was brought into a lab and set in a plastic seat that was curtained off from distractions.  The baby was then approached by her mother, then her father, and then a stranger.  Chest monitors on the baby and the adults showed that the baby synchronized her heart rate to that of the mother or father when they approached, but she did not synchronize her heart rate to the stranger’s.  The data suggests that babies and their caretakers are entwined in a homeostatic relationship, with the baby clicking in with the parents to achieve some sort of balance.

(my note:  this is perhaps why co-sleeping is safer than crib sleeping, since baby synchronizes her heart with ours?  Reason #572 to have a family bed!!)

…We are convinced that a “good” interaction, mother and baby synchronize with each other from the beginning, and that the pathways may be set up in intrauterine life ready to be entrained, especially by the mothers, immediately after birth. 

Entrainment then explains why infants left alone will cry.  They are dealing with the unexpected – they are alone.  Being tiny primates, the are adapted to expect an entrainment, and physical and emotional attachment, a connection with a more mature version of their kind.  They cry out of surprise, out of confusion, out of an unconscious “knowing” that something is wrong.    … Regulatating its world by sleeping, crying, or staying quietly alert is the most powerful thing a baby can do, says Brazelton, and we should respect this ability and tend to it (emphasis mine).

(my note:  notice they do not cry to “manipulate”, that word seen all too often written by “experts” who advise a mother to ignore their baby’s basic needs and leave them to cry – to “train” them… makes ME cry!)

From all we know, every primate baby is designed to be physically attached to someone who will feed, protect, and care for it, and teach it about being human – they have been adapted over millions of years to expect nothing less.

And yet there are parents out there that believe neglecting their crying child is the right thing to do.  Somewhere in their minds and hearts, they lost that nurturing, loving connection, and I hope they will learn it before it’s too late.

http://mothering.com/guest_editors/quiet_place/quiet_place.html

God bless Peggy O’Mara, for articulating and researching what we already knew, that Rosin is just wrong:

In her article, Rosin describes her cursory review of the medical literature on breastfeeding to shore up her personal decision to possibly forgo it, and concludes that all the talk about the benefits of breastfeeding is just “magical thinking.” But it’s irresponsible to imply that such a brief and biased analysis of the medical literature could somehow trump the conclusions of the world’s leading health organizations and medical authorities. By now, the superiority of breastmilk to formula is axiomatic.

Peggy asks us:

This is no time to waver: Powerful economic and political forces are continually undermining breastfeeding progress. Surely, we need state and federal protections for breastfeeding—that’s a given. To achieve our national health goals, we—like our sisters around the world—also need guaranteed health care, paid family leaves, and caregiving credits. Bottle-feeding is an old-school feminist solution to inequality. The equal-rights arena of today is breastfeeding.

Read the article – it’s fantastic.

http://www.mothering.com/how-stats-really-stack-cosleeping-twice-safe

How the Stats Really Stack Up: Cosleeping Is Twice As Safe
By Tina Kimmel
Issue 114 September/October 2002

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association (JPMA, the crib manufacturers’ lobby) recently launched a campaign to discourage parents from placing infants in adult beds or sleeping with them, based on data showing that infants have a very small risk of dying in adult beds.1,2 The CPSC implies that infants in adult beds are at greater risk than infants in cribs, but as we know, and as they know, babies also die in cribs.

What we need to do is calculate the relative riskiness of an infant sleeping in an adult bed versus a crib. We can do that by dividing a measure of danger for each situation by the prevalence, or frequency, of that situation, and then comparing them. (Oddly, the CPSC never presents relative risks.) Using government figures, we can perform a rough calculation to show that infants are more than twice as safe in adult beds as in cribs. This is aside from the many other advantages of cosleeping or bedsharing, such as increased breastfeeding and physiological regulation, the experience of having slept well, parents’ feeling of assurance that their child is well and happy, the enhanced security of psychological attachment and family togetherness, and family enjoyment.3

Let’s begin by looking closely at the CPSC data. The anti-cosleeping campaign is based on a dataset that contains the 2,178 cases of unintentional mechanical suffocation of US infants under 13 months old for the period 1980 to 1997. CPSC-authored articles about these data reflect only the small portion of deaths that occurred in adult beds.4 However, these data also have been published with summaries of the cause-of-death codes on all 2,178 cases.5 This complete dataset is further summarized in Table 1.

Of these 2,178 infant suffocation deaths, we are certain of only 139 occurring in an adult bed. For 102 of these, we know that a larger person (presumably a sleeping adult) was present, because the cause-of-death code is “overlain in a bed.” That does not tell us exactly what caused the death-that is, whether the baby died and then was lain on, or died as a result of being lain on. We can assume that the 37 deaths involving waterbeds occurred in adult beds, since few child waterbeds exist. That gives us a total of 139 infant suffocation deaths known to have occurred in adult beds in these 18 years.

The same data show that 428 infants died due to being in a crib. It is likely that there were preventable risk factors (such as using a crib in need of repair) involved in these crib-related deaths. But that doesn’t change our calculations, because the deaths did occur. Similarly, our calculations do not change due to the preventable risk factors (such as intoxication) involved in adult-bed deaths (and other overlying). Note that advocates are raising public awareness to increase the safety of both these sleeping arrangements, with the hope that all these deaths will decrease.

We can’t use the other 739 bed- or bedding-related cases in our analysis, because the place of death is not specific enough; these deaths may have occurred in a large adult bed, a single-size adult bed, a child’s bed, or a misused crib. Nor can we include the remaining 760 deaths, as we have no idea whether they took place in a sleep situation at all. We also know nothing about the presence or absence of an adult, although a nearby, aware caretaker could have prevented many of these deaths.

So for only 567 (139 plus 428) of the deaths do we know whether they took place in an adult or infant bed. Thus, from 1980 to 1997, 75 percent of the mechanical suffocation deaths of US infants with a known place of occurrence took place in cribs, while 25 percent took place in adult beds.

While it is tempting to make the observation that three times as many babies died in cribs as in adult beds, if three times as many babies were actually sleeping in cribs as in adult beds, the risk would be the same in either place. Based only on this crude death-certificate data, we do not know which is safer. We still need to know how many babies were actually in adult beds or cribs-that is, an estimate of how common cosleeping was.

To estimate cosleeping prevalence, we can turn to the CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS).6 PRAMS has been surveying mothers of infants, usually between two and six months of age (but occasionally up to nine months), since 1988. Approximately 1,800 new mothers are sampled each year in each participating state. The sample is rigorously selected to represent essentially every birth in the state, and the response rates are high (70 to 80 percent). Most of the 100 or so PRAMS questions involve prenatal and well-baby care and stressors.

States have the option of adding their own questions and have asked about cosleeping. The basic question asked is, “How often does your new baby sleep in the same bed with you? Always; Sometimes; Never.” (Some states add “Almost always.”) PRAMS data, therefore, can be used to ascertain cosleeping prevalence in participating states and may be the only data of this kind.

Table 2 shows the results of this question on the PRAMS survey from 1991 through 1999, the most recent data available.

We see from these data that roughly 68 percent (100 percent minus the 23 to 43 percent who “never” coslept) of babies in these states enjoyed cosleeping at least some of the time. Data from the United Kingdom are similar: Helen Ball’s Sleep Lab found that around 7 percent always coslept, 40 percent did so for part of the night, and 33 percent never coslept.6

Now let’s try to estimate a single cosleeping prevalence rate from these data. Let’s say that babies who “sometimes” cosleep do so about half the time. Over all the years of this sample, around 42 percent of babies coslept “sometimes.” Let’s also say that “always” or “almost always” means 90 percent of the time. Roughly 26 percent of infants coslept “always” or “almost always.” Adding “always/almost always” (90 percent of the time x 26 percent of babies) to “sometimes” (50 percent of the time x 42 percent of babies), we get 44 percent of babies ages two to nine months who were cosleeping at any given time, presumably in an adult bed.

Now we can use these figures based on CPSC and PRAMS data to calculate the riskiness of these two sleep arrangements, although it’s important to understand the limitations of doing so. For example, these PRAMS data are from only five states (although more will be available in the future), while the CPSC data are from the entire US. The years in which the PRAMS cosleeping data were collected are not the same as those covered by the CPSC dataset, although they overlap. The CPSC covers infants zero to thirteen months, while PRAMS asks about infants two to nine months. The CPSC collects demographic details such as state, income, race, and age of mother (as does PRAMS), as well as time of the death, but they are not easily available to do a more detailed analysis. One or both of these data sources lacks information on impairment of caretaker and other known sleep risk factors, exact sleeping and furniture arrangements during different times in the night, overcrowding and other motivation for cosleeping or crib sleeping, clinical pathology findings, previous health of the infant, etc. Plus, a complete risk analysis should include all causes of infant deaths, including SIDS.

Nonetheless, these data are important population-based sources of information on sleep risks that we would not have otherwise. So let’s go ahead and use them to estimate a risk ratio for cosleeping. We take the 25 percent of the suffocation risk in the CPSC data linked to being in an adult bed and divide it by the 44 percent of babies who were actually in adult beds. Then we divide that fraction by a similar fraction for cribs, i.e., 75 percent divided by 56 percent. (If we multiplied each of these fractions by an overall infant death rate, we would have the actual risk for each group.)

This result shows that it was actually less than half (42 percent) as risky, or more than twice as safe, for an infant to be in an adult bed than in a crib. Based upon these calculations using the CPSC’s own data, we can say that crib sleeping had a relative risk of 2.37 compared with sleeping in an adult bed.

Therefore, cosleep with impunity-but, of course, be sure to follow the safe cosleeping guidelines described in this issue of Mothering.

 

Tina Kimmel, MSW, MPH, is a PhD student in social welfare at the University of California-Berkeley and is writing her dissertation on “The Effect of Welfare Reform on Breastfeeding Rates: Findings from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System.” Previously she worked as a research scientist for California’s state health department. She would like to acknowledge the state PRAMS epidemiologists who shared their analyzed data for this article: Rhonda Stephens, MPH (Alabama), Chris Wells, MS (Colorado), Ken Rosenberg, MD, MPH (Oregon), Melissa Baker, MA (West Virginia), and especially Kathy Perham-Hester, MS, MPH (Alaska) for her valuable insights. Tina has two children, Rosie (27) and Jesse (21), and one grandchild, Eli (4)-all born at home and all cosleepers.

 

 

I had intended on keeping up a series about this great book by Meredith F. Small, Our Babies, Ourselves, but got a little sidetracked!  Here’s the first “installment” that I did a few months ago.  I really highly recommend this book to anyone with children or planning to have children.  Great read!

I was reading the chapter on the San, or “bushman” as we may call them.  Here was an interesting blurb from that chapter (bold emphasis is mine):

…Women often give birth in the bush alone, witch is considered a sign of strength and achievement.  Babies are never left at home when mothers go out to gather, an odd fact in that there is always someone at camp who could babysit.  But the mother-infant relationship is considered sacrosant, so babies stay with their mothers at all times.  Women wear a large multipupose animal-skin garment, the kaross, which functions as both a cover-up and a holding device.  Babies sit in a special sling within the kaross, a soft palate lined with grass. This sling is nonrestictive and allows the baby to wiggle around, moving its arms and legs at will.  It also assumes constant mother-infant contact; anthorpologist Melvin Konner found that San infants have more than twice the amount of passive contact with their mothers than do babies in industrialized societies.  The sling is hung on the mother’s hip, not on her back, and so the baby has good access to the breast and sees everything from the same vantage point as its mother.  …

Although San babies cry, they do not do so for long, and none of them cries excessively or inconsolably; more than 90 percent of their total crying events during the first nine months last less than thirty seconds.  Babies are fed when they cry and often when they do not cry.  San breasts are long and flexible, and it is up to the baby to manage its feeding by holding on to the breast and sucking whenever it is hungry – called “continuous feeding” by Melvin Konner.  Interestingly, we in the West call this kind of feeding “on demand”, but in fact there is no demand being placed here.  As soon as possible, babies control their own feeding and there is no conflict between mother and child over the time or amount of milk allowed, until weaning, which occurs at almost four years of age.

The chapter goes on to reiterate that Sans babies surpass their Eurpoean peers in motor skills.  Babies are never placed on their backs and allowed to “flail about” – they feel the constant vertical position encourages these motor skills.

I think we have a lot to learn from the San.  Now, I certainly understand that in our society, women have careers outside of the home and other obligations that would make such constant contact impossible.  But clearly there is some middle ground that can be met here.  Our industrialized society focuses too much on “independence” and “structural learning” that we have lost sight of the basics, which are even more crucial to the healthy development of our babies.  Our society likes to call it “spoiling” when a mother immediately tends to a child’s cry.  Our culture believes a child will “never” leave a parents bed if they lovingly, naturally co-sleep.  We are such a narrow minded society, thinking about nothing but trying to mold babies, from birth, into adults.  Mozart in the womb, Baby Einstein CDs, preschool at age 2.  All these babies really need is love, and a chance to be babies.

We need to get back to basics.  We must, or our society will degenerate more than it already has.  A child raised with as much mother-baby contact as is humanly possible, fed “on demand”, has it’s ever single need tended to as soon as possible, and is never left to cry – ever, will grow up to be a better adult.  And a better parent.

We parent the way we are parented.  Let’s help continue the cycle of attachment and love.

 

and counting… I didn’t think we would go this long, but we’re going strong!

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/childrens-health/2008/12/11/a-parents-guide-to-managing-vaccinations.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=vn

I love that the CDC says, and I quote, “CDC recommendations aren’t set in stone; the agency advises doctors to “explore acceptable options,” if that’s what parents prefer, such as immunizing on an “alternative schedule” or delaying vaccinations until a child is closer to school age.”

People being advised by their doctors that there is only ONE way to vax your children need to be re-educated.  We’ve lost the meaning of the word “recommendation” and seem to think it means “must do it this way or else”. 

I don’t believe vaxes cause autism, per se.  I think they may trigger something that’s already there, but I don’t know.  That being said, it would be a rare occurrence, if it happens.  I do believe in fully vaxing my children (sans flu and chicken pox, which I don’t find necessary).  However, I don’t believe, after lots of research, that a little baby needs all those shots at one time – there’s no medical reason I need to overload her little immature system with so much at once, when it’s perfectly fine to spread them out.  I have friends that have been called stupid for delaying vaxes.  I had to leave my own family doctor of over a decade because she told me it would be “irresponsible” for her to delay vaxes.  Why is this ignorance and unwillingness to explore options so rampant?

Great article, I love that a major media outlet is supporting Dr. Sears’ book.

Why babies should never sleep alone.
 

At very least, we hope that the studies and data described in this paper, which show that co-sleeping at least in the form of roomsharing especially with an actively breast feeding mother saves lives, is a powerful reason why the simplistic, scientifically inaccurate and misleading statement ‘never sleep with your baby’ needs to be rescinded, wherever and whenever it is published.

 

Hat tip to my fellow blogger and Attached Parent, Megan.

It just makes sense.

Ignoring a baby’s crying is like using earplugs to stop the distressing noise of a smoke detector. The sound of a smoke detector is meant to alert us to a serious matter that requires a response – and so is the cry of a baby. As Jean Liedloff wrote in The Continuum Concept, “a baby’s cry is precisely as serious as it sounds.”

Stressful though it may be, infant crying should be seen not as a power struggle between parent and child, but as a gift of nature to ensure that all babies can grow to adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust.

http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/babycries.html

I got such great responses from my “Did you know” (Pregnancy & Childbirth)” that I figured I’d do a quick one on newborns too!  Just some money- or time-saving tips from a mom that’s been there… four times.

Did you know:

• That you don’t have to sterilize bottles, nipples, and pacifiers?  Warm soapy water or your dishwasher are just fine.  Save all that time you’d waste (and the money on those commercial sterilizers!) and snuggle your baby, while the dishwasher safely cleans your things.
• That you don’t have to separate baby’s clothes and/or wash them in a different detergent?  Unless your healthy baby has a VERY RARE sensitivity to your regular detergent, don’t waste your money on “special” (read:  money-making) brands marketed towards your baby’s clothes. 
• That fabric softener is just fine.  I’m sure you’ve heard/read/been told that baby’s clothes have a flame retardancy in them that fabric softener will destroy.  Well, the flame retardancy is a NASTY chemical that I personally don’t want near my baby’s skin anyways; over time it will wash out; and I would rather have soft, good smelling clothes on my baby than ones that a cigarette can be put out on!   The supposed flame retardancy won’t save your baby’s life in the event of a fire, in my opinion.  I use liberal fabric softener so my baby’s clothes are soft next to their delicate skin.
• That your municipal tap water may actually be safer than bottled water and/or “nursery water”?  your city water system is monitored very closely, and unless a warning has been posted, it is absolutely safe and fine to use for your baby’s bottles if you use formula.  Bottled water and nursery water are not as stringently regulated, are most likely from municipal sources anyways, are are frankly a waste of money.  Use your tap.
• That your bottles don’t need to be heated up?  If your baby likes it, give her room temperature or even cool formula.  Makes life much easier when you’re out and about, and don’t need to try to figure out how to warm a bottle.  This also makes middle of the night feedings easier.  Have a bottle of room temperature water on the nightstand, with a container of formula right there.  Mix it in a second and feed baby – no heating, no fuss.
• You can bite their little fingernails to trim them when they are sleeping in your arms, if you’re afraid to use clippers or just can’t seem to get them short enough with them.
• That a sink bath is just fine.  I never had a separate plastic bath that I had to fill/bathe/wash/store for such a short amount of time.  Wash baby in the kitchen sink so you’re not bending over, then in about 6 months or so, or when baby outgrows the sink and can sit up, move to the “big” bathtub.  Easy, and free.
• Generic formula is just fine?  If you have to formula feed, save a LOT of money and buy generic.  All generic formulas must meet the same strict safety, nutrition, and manufacturing guidelines as the priciest products on the market.  The reason they’re less expensive is that the manufacturers of generic formula don’t spend millions of dollars on research or on marketing, and they don’t give away free samples the way some other formula companies do. They simply sell a product that meets the standards set by the United States Food and Drug Administration.  It does also boil down to baby’s taste – baby may prefer one over another, but most will be just fine with the taste of the store brand.  Buy generic diapers too, and save a lot!
• Cold air is not your enemy.  Just because it’s winter, don’t stay huddled inside.  Take baby for a walk in a sling or a carriage – it’s really quite good for them.  And no, cold air – in and of itself – does NOT make one sick, regardless of what grandma told you!
• Skip the highchair, and get a booster seat instead.  Most companies have boosters that grow with your baby.  High chairs take up a LOT of room, are harder to clean, aren’t portable, and baby isn’t truly at the table with the rest of the family.  Boosters are very easy to clean, baby sits right at the table, you can take it with you, and she can use it well into her toddler years, unlike a bulky highchair.
• If baby’s diaper just seems to always leak at night, and a larger size doesn’t work, don’t waste your money on the expensive double padded nighttime diapers.  Just slip a cheap generic feminine pad in night diaper.  It works.  Really.  For a fraction of the cost.
• If your baby sleeps in a crib instead of your bed, try layering sheets (mattress pad, absorbant pad, sheet, absorbant pad, sheet, absorbant pad, sheet) so middle of the night leaks or spit ups are easily cleaned – just rip the top two layers off and everyone goes back to bed fast!

I’m sure there’s more rattling about in my mind, but for now I will leave you with these!  If any experienced mom has hints of her own, feel free to comment and we’ll have a nice compilation for a new mom or two!

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