by Rita Brhel
Even as little as a generation ago, the expectation was that all babies sleep through the night. Parents assumed they must teach them to do so through “sleep-training,” often involving cry-it-out methods.
Many grandmothers and great-grandmothers continue to perpetuate this erroneous standard today with questions like, “Does he sleep through the night yet?” and “Is she a good baby?”
I believe all parents make the best decisions given the knowledge, resources, and support they have at the time. And the same holds true for family members who give advice like sleep-training a newborn. It’s what they know and therefore the advice that they pass on. It takes time for new ways of doing to trickle down into society.
This is why, despite increasingly widespread breastfeeding support and improved knowledge of biological infant behavior, the presumption that a newborn should sleep through the night persists.
Here are 5 reasons why newborns who sleep through the night should raise concerns:
Newborns are designed for physical closeness with their parents, especially the mother. This ensures the baby’s survival. Apart for too long and the baby will cry, becoming more and more frantic. But eventually, the baby will give up, his biological system assuming abandonment.
Physically these babies may appear to be the quintessential “good baby,” but biologically their bodies are a storm of stress hormones.
Newborns need proximity to their caregivers, plenty of physical contact, and frequent breastfeeding. This is what signals to the newborn’s body that all is well and his survival is ensured. Even if we take out the emotional component out of this, babies raised with less stress understandably grow better.
Newborns, with their tiny tummies, are designed to nurse at least 8 to 12 times in 24 hours.
A breastfeeding newborn is sometimes going to nurse off and on for a few hours — also known as cluster-feeding — and sometimes will stretch out nursings so there’s a couple hours between. This is completely normal, and exactly how breastfeeding is supposed to work. Babies need to nurse frequently not only for growth and nutrition, but also for the health factors contained in breast milk to get that immune system jump-started. Frequency is also partly why breastfeeding is protective against SIDS.
Also completely normal is that a newborn will want to wake several times at night to nurse. And that may include some cluster-feeding. In the early weeks, until your pediatrician says it’s okay to go longer, the most a newborn should sleep at one time overnight is four hours without being woken to eat.
With older babies, many parents notice that there are times when they sleep longer at night and other times when they begin waking up several times at night to nurse again. This is also very normal. Baby has to get all the calories in that he needs somehow, and if he’s not getting them in by breastfeeding as much during the day — whether mom’s busy schedule or baby becoming more active — he’ll wake up hungry at night more often.
But something to consider is what an adult perceives as “sleeping through the night” may be much different than what is actually considered “sleeping through the night” for a baby. Babies by 6 months old may be to the point of sleeping 5 to 6 hours at a time at night. This is considered “sleeping through the night.” It’s unrealistic to expect a newborn, or even an older baby, to sleep 8, 10, or more hours a night straight through.
How much breast milk a mother’s body makes depends on how much and how frequently milk is removed, by breastfeeding and/or pumping. Even if a mother is squeezing in the recommended minimum of eight nursing sessions during the daylight hours, the longer period without milk removal sessions overnight signals to the body that not as much milk is needed.
Essentially skipping overnights initiates the weaning process! So then the body begins to produce less milk, not just at night but during the day, too. To make more milk, it’s imperative that a mom breastfeeds (or pumps) more often, including overnight.
Here’s another tidbit to add to the case for breastfeeding at night: A mom’s milk-making hormone, prolactin, is highest at night. So moms are producing more milk at night, which makes breastfeeding at night a great tip in increasing a low breast milk supply.
Bonding with baby is all about both parents and baby learning each other’s cues, and parents learning how to best respond to those cues. This first step in the parent-child relationship also sets the foundation for attachment. If parents are sleep-training so their baby will sleep longer at night than that baby is biologically designed to do, there is a serious lack of attunement. Those parents are essentially ignoring their baby’s emotional needs, which is the very start to their relationship.
While it’s not impossible for parent-child relationships to change, it’s a lot harder once patterns of relating to one another are set — such as a parent dismissing a baby’s emotions cues, and the baby, therefore, learning that the parent is not interested in a two-way relationship. It snowballs into toddlerhood and onward unless the parent consciously chooses to break those relational habits. But take it from me, it’s very difficult to do and may take years to earn a child’s trust back.
Finally, I hope parents consider that teaching babies to sleep through the night before they’re ready also teaches them to not seek help when they need it. Likely a mom would know if her baby had a health concern, but toddlers who were sleep-trained as infants may not reach out to parents at night. It’s not just situations like a bad dream or a potty-training accident, but also more serious situations like feeling nauseous or having an asthma attack.
Certainly, most parents probably give leniency in sleep expectations when these issues arise, but a child shouldn’t grow up feeling that only her physical needs are important. Denying a baby’s emotional needs is serious, too.
