I am, it should be noted, on a very steep learning curve as a first-time Dad. I have learned so much these past months as I walked with my wife through her pregnancy, through the delivery, and now through the work of caring for our daughter. Having never changed a diaper before a month ago, I’m turning very nearly into a pro. And I’m keenly aware of Cerys’ noises, smell, movements every moment that I’m home with her. My workout schedule — which for years averaged 10-18 hours a week or more — is down to three hours of running in any given seven-day period. Something amazing is happening if I’m willing to forego my beloved addiction in order to get a different kind of high, the “Daddy high” which I’ve been on these past thirty days since her birth.
And I’m learning a lot about parenting theory and styles. Our pediatrician is a big advocate of breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and attachment parenting. And my goodness, I’m as much of an advocate for this as any father (who has a limited right to push his partner to breastfeed) could be! (I try and respect my wife’s privacy on this blog, but the breastfeeding is, blessedly, not the problem that I understand it can be for some folks.) I certainly am a big advocate of the co-sleeping and of picking up Cerys whenever she cries. I’m getting four hours of sleep a night on a good night, but frankly, couldn’t care less. My wife is at home with Cerys all day; at night, when breastfeeding is done, it’s my job to get the girl back to sleep, however long it takes. She’s usually up between 3:00 and 4:30AM, and we sit in the sleigh glider in the nursery, each with one eye on Bloomberg business television and one eye on each other. I sing to her an eclectic mix of lullabies; her favorite these days seems to be (perhaps problematically) “Der Gute Kamerad“, a German song I’ve known since I was very small. I am exhausted much of the day, wired on obscene amounts of caffeine, and deliriously happy. I may be teaching full-time, but by God, every other moment I can give will be with my wife and my splendid bouncing daughter.
We’ve had a doula around to help out my wife during the day while I’m teaching. Today, Mariela told my wife and me about her experience working with families who want to practice the “cry it out” technique of training infants to sleep. With babies as young as Cerys — who is just one month — these parents will let their babies cry in the crib for hours, offering no more reassurance than a simple whispered, “I’m here if you really need me” while standing over the infant. The idea is to condition the baby to understand that there will be no response, and presumably to teach the kid to give up and sleep. Mariela, said in her experience, the babies cry until they are too exhausted — or until, in her words, “they give up hope.” Both my wife and I were frantic at the very thought of our girl “giving up hope.” She never cries for more than thirty seconds before we pick her up, and we’re both determined to have that commitment continue. I may be brutally tired, but — frankly — I don’t care, and neither does my wife. It’s been a month of long nights’ journeys into days, and it’s been the most blessed month of our exhausted and happy lives.
I’m not trying to start the “mommy wars” or the “Daddy wars”. This isn’t about the right or the wrong way to parent. All I know is what I intend to keep on doing, which is answering that plaintive wail at whatever hour it is heard, however bone-weary I may be. Every human being will face a time in his or her life where they need to just “cry it out”, but as far as Cerys is concerned, infancy is not that time.
I personally don’t like attachment parenting and I hated breastfeeding. But I have problems with being touched too much by anyone. However, when they’re that little, they can’t be trained to not cry anyway. That’s the only way they have to communicate what’s wrong. So go ahead and pick her up whenever you think she needs it.
Once they’re a little older, more aware, and better able to entertain themselves (9-10 months and up or so), then the cry it out method works better, so long as they’re not crying because of hunger or wet diapers or whatever. But again, if you’re not comfortable with that, then there’s no reason not to pick her up. You can’t exactly spoil a baby.
I trust your doula is a smart and experienced child-care provider, but that is entirely the wrong idea behind the “cry it out” method. Most well-known baby-raising advice has some kind of common sense behind it, so please use your own common sense before judging other methods.
The “cry it out” method is NOT for children who are not physically and emotionally ready to sleep through the night (like Cerys); it does NOT involve letting babies cry for hours and hours or until exhaustion; and it is NOT about them “giving up hope.”
It is about giving a child emotional comfort and support in order to practice the learned skill of falling asleep and sleeping through the night without always needing to be rocked, comfort nursed, picked up, or played with at 3am. It is not for every child, or every family, just as attachment parenting and co-sleeping is not for every family.
thanks, you two! I’m learning this all very fast, exploring a world to which I had given precious little attention until very recently. I like attachment parenting, but am deferring to my wife on what style we uses — it’s her body that gives the nourishment, not mine. My wife loves it so far, but who knows what will happen.
Perhaps I misunderstood Mariela, as I had thought she was talking about one month olds like our girl, and I was horrified. We might indeed change things about as she gets older, but for now, she is getting constant attention and devotion,and we can’t imagine otherwise.
I hate labels like ‘attachment parenting’ that suggest you have to follow a pre-packaged set of parenting techniques. That said, I never got ‘let them cry it out’ either, and our neediest child has absolutely no problem going to sleep on her own. They eventually figure it out.
Keep on learning, Hugo! It gets easier to judge what works and what doesn’t, and why, as time goes on and you try again with other children. Of course, I’m just guess there will be other children…
My wife and I never cared for some of the extremes of “attachment parenting,” or whatever you prefer to call it. We–or mostly me; like you, the unofficial rule throughout the life of our four daughters has been that nighttime is Melissa’s rest time, and my time to tend to the children if they wake up–are willing to hold them and rock them to sleep or do whatever is necessary to comfort them (and with our third child, who was very colicky, that process could take hours of long walks and drives in the car), but our bed has been off-limits. Melissa didn’t want to share her sleeping space with the children; that was her refuge, and insisted upon it. It’s worked out pretty well. But again, lots of differences out there.
Yes, lots of differences indeed! Thank you for sharing, Russell and Myth!
Hugo, am I totally misremembering that you swore, just last year, that your marital bed would never contain a child?
Just turn on the TV. The Weather Channel soothes the little tykes, or the Golf Channel.
Our doula also warned us of the “crying it out” thing–and, funnily enough, with all the attention she’s getting, to the point of pre-empting her having to cry because my inner clock tells me to wake up at 4 a.m., her normal feeding time, Noelle has no problems going to sleep on her own. Of course, she’s in the co-sleeper, right next to my bed. ;-)
Attachment parenting, shmattachment parenting. Pick and choose what fits you best. The important thing is that your little daughter learns through your actions that you’re always there for her and thus can grow into a confident young woman–and, as all the parenting books say, you can’t spoil a baby. Of course, those books don’t tell the reader when the “baby” status ends. I’m guessing with senior prom maybe. Or the 25th birthday.
just wanted to say you’re not really a daddy unless you start to obsessively record your daughter’s sounds, every moves, “artwork”, etc on the latest hi-tech gadgets. that way when she’s 21, you can just randomly blare out the “coo-coo” sounds in the house and wake her on the rare occasion she’s gone to bed early.
Tam, part of parenting is learning to forehead-smack yourself about a lot of the self-righteous “well I would never….” and “My kids will never….” pronouncements you made before you had kids. ;)
Mythago, agreed. Tam, I did say that. And am rapidly amending that position, at least for the case of an infant!
Heh. I thought at the time that it didn’t sound at all like how you’d actually behave when faced with the needs of an actual child.
mythago,
For once you got it exactly right. A lot of young adults have strong ideas about how parenting should be done. Many of them come out of that attitude once they have to raise children themselves. I sure did!
My son is almost 3 years old and I still race to his bedroom in the middle of night to comfort him if he starts crying. I can’t imagine allowing him to “cry it out”. He spent the first year of him life sleeping with me and breastfeeding and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think the parent/child relationship is built upon trust and if they can’t trust you to be there when they cry, how can they trust you with the major dilemas they’ll encounter later in life? The “cry it out” method should be considered child abuse in my opinion.
I thought you’d change your mind on that one too.
I was adamant that no babies would ever sleep in my bed too, until I had them. It’s just easier, especially with breastfeeding, to let them stay after they’ve been fed and changed. Everybody gets more sleep that way.
We do half and half. Baby girl sleeps by the bed typically until the 2:00 or 5:00 AM feeding, then often enough sleeps by me (I have my mom’s trick of maintaining a trickle of awareness of the baby even through sleep) after that. She opposes going back in her car seat (yes, the car seat, because she hates the bassinet and so do we, it’s too tall) at that hour because it’s typically gone cold and the bed is nice and warm.
Attachment parenting my ass. That comment about “prepackaged” parenting is dead on. Both sides would have you believe that you’re either raising a massively entitled little brat by co-sleeping or that you’re psychologically destroying your child’s beautiful independent rainbow-colored soul by not co-sleeping. My major concern with co-sleeping is that it may not be safe. The “co-sleeper” item is great, though, and I wish we’d bought one. It’s the right height for pulling out baby / popping her back in. Which the bassinet isn’t, and the car seat or other baby recliner isn’t much better (too low instead of too high).
Finally: “Cry it out” is NOT for babies who don’t yet have enough brain to do operant learning. Take it from a clinical psych grad student with a fair grounding in development. Also: “Cry it out” is NOT about just letting them cry all night long. Take it from a clinician in training who DOES exposure therapy and knows that throwing people in the deep end ain’t civilized.