Red Flags when considering a baby sleep approach

I don’t need to tell you how many different approaches, conflicting advice there is out there today when it comes to baby sleep - a Google search of ‘sleep training’ yields a whopping 945,000,000 responses.

I am not going to go into the whole impact of being surrounded by such approaches and advice (stick around, I’m sure I’ll go into it often), but I will give you the support to make the best decision for you and your family - from someone who knows whats important when it comes to your relationship with your babe.

Read on, my love, before you make a decision about who or what you want to work with; and just know, that you don’t have to work with anyone - baby sleep support is not a rite of passage.

1.      THEY PATHOLOGISE NORMAL INFANT SLEEP.

The expectations that our society as a whole have on our little babes can be soooo far from what is biologically normal. If the approach that you are looking at tells you that your baby should be sleeping through the night, should be sleeping for x number of hours per day and night – they probably don’t understand biologically normal infant sleep.

2.     THEY GUARANTEE THAT YOUR BABY WILL BE SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT.

Sheesh, this one gives me hives. We can’t control our baby’s sleep. I’ll say that one again: we can’t control our baby’s sleep. We can set up the environment and rituals conducive to sleep, but sleep is a primal, biological function (like breathing and pooing) and it is theirs to own. If they guarantee that your baby will sleep through the night in x number of days, I would assume it is through extinction crying / cry it out / hardcore controlled crying, so that the baby hopefully learns in a short few days not to call out anymore.

3.     THEY BANG ON A LOT ABOUT SELF-SOOTHING.

There is much discussion about self-soothing, and it is often used interchangeably with self-settling. In simple terms, self-soothing is the ability to come down to calm from a heightened state of stress, and babies are simply not capable of this. They do not have the mature brain development to be able to regulate their emotions on their own – they need us to do this on their own, to co-regulate with them, and in the early days, regulate for them.

Self-settling is the ability for a baby to settle off to sleep on their own. Some babies are happy to do this if they are comfortable, warm, fed, calm & connected and have an easy-going temperament.

Your baby does not need to self-settle though, and if your sleep approach tells you that all of the problems lead to your inability to teach them self-soothing or self-settling, run, don’t walk.

4.    THEY RECOMMEND A GENERIC SCHEDULE.

This is not baby-led, this doesn’t take into account individual variations of sleep needs, feeding needs, and unique temperament. It causes stress to the parents and stress to the baby. It encourages spaced feeds which can be detrimental to the breastfeeding relationship, it encourages rigidity and delaying or ignoring responses to baby’s cues. Need I say more?

Schedules SUCK for babies.

Rhythms & rituals are helpful for babies to feel safe and to know what’s coming next - but this can look like little routines around sleep time, a gentle rhythm to your day, and is not by the clock.

5.    THEY DON’T APPRECIATE YOU AS THE EXPERT ON YOUR BABY.

I they talk to you as if they know more than you do about your baby (they don’t), that is a pretty disempowering way to work. YOU are the expert on your baby, and they should be your guide, your coach, cheerleader – not someone who knows everything about what your baby needs.

6.     THEY GIVE YOU STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO RESPOND TO YOUR BABY.

Sleep has become so pathologized and complicated – a rigid step-by-step guide as to how to respond to your baby doesn’t honour who your baby is, your own maternal instinct and your drive to respond, and your wisdom to work out what your baby needs in the moment yourself. Any timed checks (“return in 1 minute for 1 minute, then 2 minutes later for 30 seconds, etc.) are not responding to your baby’s cues in the moment.

If you need to look at a plan every time your baby cries to work out what to do, you may be getting off track.

7.     IT MAKES YOU FEEL SHITTY, ANXIOUS, OR LOSING CONFIDENCE.

I’m encouraging you to tune into your own instinct here – if it makes you feel shitty, give it a miss. If it makes you think everything’s your fault, give it a miss. If it makes you feel like you need to talk to an expert every time there’s a bump in the road – it’s not for you. Remember how you’re the mama and the expert on your baby?

If you are working with someone individually and they are sending you encouraging texts such as “Be strong! You’ve got this! Don’t pick him up!” I would be inclined to say ‘no thanks babes’.

8.    THEY DISCOURAGE ‘NEGATIVE SLEEP ASSOCIATIONS’.

Bloody negative sleep associations! Sleep associations are sleep associations, no negative or positive – it is just about whether these particular sleep associations are working for YOU or not. You love feeding to sleep? Great! Keep it up. No-one can tell you that’s a negative association. How rude.

9.    THEY ENCOURAGE NO EYE CONTACT AT BEDTIME.

Honestly, this one really hurts my feelings. As someone who reeeally values the parent-child attachment relationship, I know how damaging this advice can really be. There’s a difference between keeping night feeds boring, and encouraging no eye contact during the bedtime routine; i.e. as soon as you walk into the room for sleep. It is so confusing for a baby to see that their whole world, their protector, their primary caregiver – to be completely unavailable emotionally, so regularly. If you want to learn more about this, you can look at the ‘still face experiment’ on YouTube by Edward Tronick. Also no eye contact whilst you’re settling them back to sleep – i.e. put a blanket between you and your baby whilst you pat their mattress?! I’m calling BS.

10.   THEY STEP OUTSIDE THEIR SCOPE OF PRACTICE.

If a sleep consultant with no breastfeeding training is giving you breastfeeding advice, that’s really unprofessional. International board certified lactation consultants go through a buttload of training and clinic hours before they can see their own clients. Breastfeeding can be complicated and should be valued and referred out as required.

 This list isn’t exhaustive either but I don’t want to overwhelm you. Just use your own wisdom and instinct as to how a sleep approach feels for your family, and do your homework. You don’t have to listen to someone who is telling you stuff that doesn’t feel good for you.

If you’re looking for no BS, honest sleep information that is steeped in evidence and real-life, check out my Sleep Guide.