Yep. It broke my heart to read about the husband “sleeping through the night at 1 month old” - that’s a person who learned at only a month into life that nobody cared. We’ve had research for some time showing that babies left to cry it out have resulting brain damage and increased cortisol (stress hormone) levels. Yeah, you trained your baby; you trained them to understand they were alone and in danger at only four weeks old.
Learning and adapting to a baby’s schedule - when a particular child’s rhythms lead them to be likely to eat, nap, be wakeful, and sleep - is a good thing for baby and family. But putting a tiny baby on a schedule that isn’t innate to their system is not, because to do so requires techniques that are meant to override their internal schedule.
The number of parents I’ve seen even nowadays who do cry-it-out (CIO) techniques but they’ll insist they aren’t CIO because they stand next to the crib and rub the baby’s back… sigh. If you were distressed and needed to be held, fed, or other, and all you got was someone patting you on the back, do you really think your system would be like, “Oh, it’s good! My needs aren’t getting met, but there’s a hand on my back, so all is well”? I mean, think of how frustrated we are when we’re venting to a friend and they start trying to solve the problem instead! Being given the wrong response to a problem doesn’t help us feel better.
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Learning and adapting to a baby’s schedule - when a particular child’s rhythms lead them to be likely to eat, nap, be wakeful, and sleep - is a good thing for baby and family. But putting a tiny baby on a schedule that isn’t innate to their system is not, because to do so requires techniques that are meant to override their internal schedule.
The number of parents I’ve seen even nowadays who do cry-it-out (CIO) techniques but they’ll insist they aren’t CIO because they stand next to the crib and rub the baby’s back… sigh. If you were distressed and needed to be held, fed, or other, and all you got was someone patting you on the back, do you really think your system would be like, “Oh, it’s good! My needs aren’t getting met, but there’s a hand on my back, so all is well”? I mean, think of how frustrated we are when we’re venting to a friend and they start trying to solve the problem instead! Being given the wrong response to a problem doesn’t help us feel better.