Sleep

Or lack of it, is a topic that you’ll find the majority of parents discussing at one time or another.

When new parents were asked what thing they couldn’t do without in those early weeks, one of the top 5 answers was ‘sleep’. And barely a mums meeting goes by without discussing which baby is sleeping through, which baby is up every 15 minutes, and what can be done about it.

So it’s definitely a hot parenting topic. Yet there is no universal answer as to how to get babies to sleep through the night. The reason for this may well be that actually, babies simply aren’t meant to.

Historically, babies would sleep in the family bed, and be breastfed throughout the night on demand, thus following their own natural rhythms and dictating to their parents what they required and when. Breastfeeding babies naturally sleep more lightly and wake more often, and this is one of their inbuilt survival instincts. Amazingly, research has shown that breastfeeding mothers who are co sleeping automatically adjust their sleeping rhythms to be in tune with their babies, and therefore even if they are waking frequently, they don’t experience so much of the disorientation that comes with waking abruptly from a deep sleep when you didn’t expect it. The oxyctocin production which is stimulated by the baby feeding also enables the mother to feel relaxed and fall back to sleep easily afterwards. (Or once the baby is old enough to ‘help themselves’, even to sleep through feeding! Many is the time I found the Wee Man having a little snack without me realising…)

So, although mothers may be waking two or three (or more) times a night, they are still able to function relatively normally during waking hours. Whilst it may be frustrating at the time, rest assured, it is natural and it will pass.

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.