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A method to promote sleep in crying infants using the transport response [pdf]

338 points by cwwc 4y ago

denkmoon 4y ago
I've never seen a graphical abstract like this before, what a fantastic idea.
papandada 4y ago
Dad on my 3rd baby (2 months old now). I'm like a WWE ref, I lift up my son's arm to check if it drops without resistance, after walking/dancing for a few minutes. Then fast to his bed if so.
sjckciodjcr 4y ago
Just tried this on my newborn and it seemed to work! I know there are folks saying this isn’t a new finding but i find the timings really helpful. Previously I was walking the baby too long which was wearing me out but having research based timing advise helps a lot.
- ya3r 4y ago
  It only works, if it consistently works. And it only doesn't work, if you tried it consistently and it didn't work.
  - wfme 4y ago
    That's not even close to true. Things can work well at first and then stop working after a while. That doesn't mean it didn't work initially. If we only prescribed pain medication based on your definition, practically none of them would make it through. Your body adapts to its environment and as such very few things will work in perpetuity.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      Bumbing the baby in the cart over a threshold worked very very well initially, for like 3 months, and suddenly stopped working at all. I feel a great deal of confusion is stemming from that advice might come to late or to early in the childs life.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure our 4 day old will react exactly the same way to this as he does when we put him into the next to me cot straight after a feed. Which is to say he'll sleep for 2-5 minutes, realise he's further away from the breast than he wanted to be and wake up. What works for us and our previous child is cosleeping. After I saw both my partner and our eldest fall asleep simultaneously after finishing a feed I became a convert.
  - ciphol 4y ago
    For a lot of parents, cosleeping is effective in the short term but counterproductive in the longer term. Also, it's a SIDS risk.
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      When controlled for alcohol and drug use it's actually pretty a pretty insignificant risk. 50% of families admit to cosleeping in the UK, I suspect that's likely to suffer significant under reporting. I think it's far better to do it deliberately, knowing where the baby is and deliberately positioning to avoid the possibility of rolling towards them, than to do it via exhaustion at 4am. And our 3 year old coslept until 6 months and has slept 8pm to 8am in her own bed ever since so if that's counter productive I'll take it.
  - wil421 4y ago
    Congrats! I’ll have my third in the next 2 weeks. We noticed the same thing with my first 2 kids. They’d wake up from a dead sleep after putting them down. Once my second child was 3-4 months old we would let him cry for about 1 minute and found he usually went to back to sleep. Worked well. With my first we would run in immediately and I still think she has going to sleep issues.
efitz 4y ago
They should teach this to new parents before they let them leave the hospital. My wife and I went to the hospital’s parenting class before the birth of our first child. They focused on a lot of skills for infant care but not much on new parent sanity.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
Use the hairdryer. It works like wonders.
- gsinclair 4y ago
  I put my infant in a carrier in front of the washing machine and dryer a couple of times. It was great!
  - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
    Yeah, it's like inside momma's belly.
rpmisms 4y ago
I think most experienced child-carers could tell you this, but it's great to see it made explicit. I personally favor a bounce->rock->walk->sit pipeline, but ymmv based on the temperament of the child.
mabbo 4y ago
As the parent of a 6.5 month old, this is very interesting. We had figured out that once she falls asleep, we wait 8-10 minutes for her to get really deeply asleep before putting her down. But the transport to calm crying, that is really going to come in handy.
doctoboggan 4y ago
As a parent of a 5mo old I had to discover this on my own. Luckily my daughter makes it abundantly clear that she does not like me to sit while I hold her. Our midwife even said that babies like to know you are up and ready to escape predators. Not sure how true that part is.
- denom 4y ago
  I think of it as a fitness measure: Are you active enough at moving towards food gathering sites, preparing and surveying the landscape, creating and fine tuning your tools? If it is an approval of sorts on behalf of the child, then it also points to some really basic learning that is beginning to flow between the parent and child
  - rnd33 4y ago
    That's a mind-boggling theory actually, that some general survival skills are encoded in the parent-child relationship. Basically you have to become a parent to level-up your survival skills. I wouldn't put it past evolution to encode useful information wherever possible, but it would be hard to prove that theory.
- georgeburdell 4y ago
  I thought it was just my kids. We like to think of them as requiring "the path of greatest effort"
- hugh-avherald 4y ago
  Not clear whether evolution would select for crying in the possible presence of predators (so fighting adults can be woken) or for silence (to avoid attracting attention as prey).
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    I think babies cry when they get tired to warn parents they are going to fall asleep soon, so that parents know they have to take them somewhere safe to sleep.
xyzzyz 4y ago
Cutting edge research indeed. We need to spread the news, tell all the parents that carrying kids helps sooth them. There is no way that parents could have come up and tried this on their own.
- tjcvirage 4y ago
  I independently found my way to a similar approach. However, having resources available to new parents is immensely valuable when you're at your wits end. Actually, you could say the same about all manners of recording history; Story telling, art, education, music. Why bother with any of it if people can figure it out for themselves? Because we progress further when we work as a team and share knowledge.
- jjcon 4y ago
  I also find it hilarious when studies point out the blatantly obvious - but I'd rather see this way more often than tons of unreplicable crap churned out.
- brink 4y ago
  To be fair, some of us (me included) are about to be parents for the first time. I'll take all the good pointers I can get, obvious or not.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    Don’t worry, this one will come up naturally. In general, I recommend taking all advice with a grain of salt: not because it is bad advice, but because no kids are the same, and what works with one will not necessarily work with another. Just take it easy and try to not worry too much. The unbroken chain of your ancestors have all figured it out, and so can you. And congratulations!
    - notinfuriated 4y ago
      And, what works on one kid one day, may not work the next!
  - 4y ago
mensetmanusman 4y ago
I try to recommend to new parents to get a big room air purifier to clean the air where the baby sleeps but also to add a nice low bass noise (from the motor) that you can’t get from a white noise generator. Our filtrete has been running non-stop for 11 years (kind of crazy). Definitely helps keep them asleep and non sensitive to sudden noises in town/city.
- Solstinox 4y ago
  Long term exposure to constant droning sounds could cause issues in language centers of the brain. When we rely on sounds for kids, we stick to sounds that mimic the more random/non-droning sounds you encounter in nature. Birds chirping in a forest, evening crickets and frogs etc.
  - cachvico 4y ago
    > Long term exposure to constant droning sounds could cause issues in language centers of the brain. Citation?
    - Solstinox 4y ago
      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030418081607.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030418081607.h...
  - pgm8705 4y ago
    > Long term exposure to constant droning sounds could cause issues in language centers of the brain. Do you have a source for this? We've always used white noise.
    - ezekg 4y ago
      They may be citing a study that circulated recently about how white noise is the reason why we have an autism epidemic. I can't seem to find the study, though. But I do remember laughing.
slothtrop 4y ago
> It should be noted that, unlike most behavioral interventions for infant sleep difficulties, 9,10 this protocol does not address any long-term improvement of sleep regulation. I'd expect as much since this is the first thing a parent tries to do. Holding the baby when they wake crying several times a night will calm them, not exactly revelatory, but can come in handy even for more lasting solutions. I find the lit/consultants have wildly varying degrees of severity for approaches, including for gradual extinction. The mistake I think we made prior to seeking intervention is feeding-to-sleep for too long, i.e. the baby would drink a bottle right before bed and get knocked out (mostly). They were always accustomed to being asleep in arms before being put down. I think if you feed slightly earlier in the routine-chain, with the lights on, you go a long ways to avoiding this issue, since you can rock them while they're awake for a time before putting them down. In some branded variants of graduated extinction, they suggest making sure your baby is super wakeful and basically dropping them in the crib right away after reading a book - this seems needlessly harsh when going from the opposite extreme, which is reflected in the baby's level of crying. We found that it went well to rock them until they were calm and drowsy (but still awake) before putting them down. The protest was mild and short-lived, but of course that's only our experience.
- dcsommer 4y ago
  This. Be very careful implementing this paper's technique. It does NOT promote long-term sleep independence, which should be the goal. Crying before sleeping is not inherently bad. The objective function is not to greedily minimize crying. If you are interested in materials on sleep training, I recommend taking a more holistic view than a single paper. "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" is a good reference.
hsn915 4y ago
I found this out by just trial and error. Hold and walk until they sleep, then keep walking for 5-10 minutes, or just sit down for 10 minutes before laying them on the bed.
chriskanan 4y ago
I found that a SNOO was very effective in the first 6 months. It is expensive, but it was way better than being even more sleep deprived. It plays white noise and rocks the baby if it senses them stirring. https://www.happiestbaby.com/ https://www.happiestbaby.com/
- jonpurdy 4y ago
  For those who intend to have one child only, they now have a rental program where they ship you the SNOO, you use it up to 6 months, and ship it back. Works out to about the same as what you'd lose by buying it new and reselling it at the end. Highly recommended!
d--b 4y ago
Ok this we figured out. What I need to find out is what to do in the car. Our kid mostly calms down while walking, but unlike his older brother the car vibrations do not make him sleep at all. And so once he starts crying in the car, we have no way of calming him down, beside stopping the car and carrying him. It seems like very bouncy driving (a sequence of high acceleration followed by sudden braking) helps, but it’s kind of wreckless, makes my wife sick and my older kid angry. Help!
- deleted 4y ago
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- sailfast 4y ago
  Probably just need to gut it out for a couple road trips and try not to show the kid how stressed out you are while it’s happening - kinda like a thunderstorm. It gets better. Good luck. Intermediate tactics: white noise in the back seat, maybe some lullabies, singalongs, make sure the seatbelts aren’t too tight, maybe a drink or pacifier, etc - whatever to keep things quiet for a bit.
- PakG1 4y ago
  I got nothing. For us, we discovered that if we time car trips around their bedtime or naptime, she cries a while and then conks out. Then when we reach our destination, we take her out and put her in an adjustable lay-flat stroller (if outside) or to bed (if home). The process of getting her to conk out while we drive? Just pure grit, endurance, and lots of singing lullabies, which may simply be correlated, rather than causative. Sometimes it takes a while. :(
- dflock 4y ago
  If their car seat is rear facing, do they have one of those mirrors on the adult seat, so they can see what's happening/see you?
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    This made a huge difference for us when Gjcp_v2.0 was small enough to be in a rear-facing car seat. You can see them, they can see you.
Bakary 4y ago
I wonder if the reason babies cry so often is because they are "supposed" to be carried by their mother constantly in a hunter-gatherer setting.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  They're supposed to be nursing... I don't know why people are being weird and complicated about this. If the baby is crying, breastfeed.
  - chomp 4y ago
    1.) Some women will never produce milk in sufficient quantities after the child is born, just due to random luck. 1a.) Formula is expensive, takes minutes of effort to prepare, and not always obtainable. 2.) Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Comfort nursing at certain stages of the child's life will end up sleep training them in a negative way. 3.) Some babies are born with impairments that do not allow them to nurse effectively, or at all. 4.) Moms need a break from nursing too.
    - dgfitz 4y ago
      Tell me you’re not a parent without telling me you’re not a parent. Babies cry for very few reasons, and reason number one, two, and three, is hunger.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        Depends on age. When teething number one two and three are teeth.
        dgfitz 4y ago
        Teething is miserable no doubt, going through it now. My comment assumed we were talking children who were not yet teething. Possibly a bad assumption on my part.
betocmn 4y ago
Some more important conditions from the method used: > Experimental sessions started approximately 1 to 2 hours after the last feeding > In most cases when mothers laid the infant down, mothers held the infant with one hand behind the neck and shoulders, and the other hand under the buttocks or thighs. The mother laid the infant on its back in 18/19 samples of the 1-month-old and older infants, and 7/7 of the neonate samples, whereas one infant was laid with a sideways landing, later to be turned on its back. >To examine the effect of sleep duration on the sleep/wake outcome, the interval between the initiations of infant sleep and laydown was calculated. The timing of the infants’ sleep onset was defined as the initiation of the behavioral sleep state, satisfying both of eye closure and no vocalization.
itsmemattchung 4y ago
> Waiting 5 to 8 minutes before laydown prevents infant awakening LOL. Definitely did not work on my (now 3 year old) daughter during the infant phase.
- Cyph0n 4y ago
  Same. I personally found it very difficult to tell the difference between actually asleep vs. starting to fall asleep.
  - ezekg 4y ago
    I use the paci as a cue. Once it falls out of their mouth, they're usually asleep. (Usually...)
    - coffee_beqn 4y ago
      None of my kids would ever even take a pacifier. There are so many different babies that there is certainly no one true method.
      - ezekg 4y ago
        Absolutely agree. Every baby is different. Took a couple months for my last one to take a paci because he had a small tongue tie that we had to work through.
- russdill 4y ago
  That's the number one thing about all these advice articles. Every kid is different. That's great to have tips of things to try, but there's absolutely no secret formula and 4 kids is a really small sample size.
hexeater 4y ago
I have twins, they share a room. they are 19 months old. They have been sleeping through the night since 10 months old. My technique is I put them to bed fully awake at the same time every night. They each get a half full bottle, and I say good night. Before I goto bed, I put another half full bottle in their cribs, and they find it on their own when they wake up. And then I see them in the morning. I had to let them cry it out for a few weeks, but now they just goto bed with no crying. In the morning they talk to each other until I go into the room. I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. too exhausting for everybody. Being able to goto sleep on your own is a skill! And it's a self taught thing.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  > In the morning they talk to each other until I go into the room. Brings a tear to the eye. I think (because I have no experience) twins must have a deeper human connection than non-twins, and if so, I wonder if can / is applied to other relationships. I wonder if there's any vestigial evolutionary benefit. Semi-related funny story: When our second was old enough to go into a cot, rather than a bassinette, we tried putting both the kids into the same room when they slept. It was fine... for the few minutes it took for the youngest to realise that there was "someone else" in her room, and started scream-crying, which woke up and set-off the eldest into scream-crying. We thought the fucking room must have been on fire or something, never moved so fast in unison with my wife before or since. It was existential dread at the time. It's hilarious now. (It really was just that the youngest wasn't used to having the eldest also in the room, it worked fine together for a few years after that until they eventually wanted their own rooms - between times, however, they were actually comforted by having each other in the same room - also brings a tear to my eye.)
  - e3bc54b2 4y ago
    > I think (because I have no experience) twins must have a deeper human connection For all its worth, I know at least 2 pairs of twins who cannot stand each other.
    - 4y ago
atestu 4y ago
No one’s mentioned the Ferber method yet, it’s what got my daughter to start falling asleep on her own and do full nights at 5 months old. Took about 4 nights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferber_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferber_method
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  This is an excellent method. Our first kid was very difficult, but that changed after learning the Ferber technique. We've used it with subsequent children with great success.
  - ed25519FUUU 4y ago
    We’re 3 kids into a “softer” version of the Ferber method and also report that it works well.
    - nicolas_t 4y ago
      Same here we transitioned at 8 months old from sleeping in our room in a side sleeper to sleeping in his own room on his own bed by using the Ferber method, it worked great. We did soften it somewhat by setting the maximum interval at 7 minutes (we couldn't stand longer than that). It might have slightly reduced how quickly the method works (although we started to really see great progress 4 days in which is in line with the book).v
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  This was called "controlled crying" when we did it, and it worked a treat on our first and, as far as I can recall, wasn't necessary for our second (yes, lucky!). It was surprisingly quickly effective, maybe a week. Recommended. I do remember that quite sharp 'parental pain' (it's hard to describe, it's like an intrinsic 'hunger to help') of knowing that we have to get through the next X minutes of baby crying without going in there. It's good to have a supportive partner so you can both keep each other in check (or to put it how I'd prefer: "well, we're both bad parents if this doesn't work, it's not just me").
jiggawatts 4y ago
This works with our boy. We have a bedside digital clock, and I've found he requires 5-7 additional minutes after he closes his eyes and appears to be asleep before I can put him down. Any earlier and he'll wake up and cry.
dereg 4y ago
There's so much snark here but I love this. I'd take reading papers like this over mommy blogs every day of the week, even if it's to state the ostensibly obvious. Does anyone have any other interesting child-rearing resources in this style?
- ptsneves 4y ago
  From time to time i go through this cdc[1] website. It is quite comprehensive on child rearing tips. For a longer form reading i went through [2] and still visit it from time to time. I like it because it discusses multiple approaches and methods and discusses what works and what does not. A bit more scientific, but the gist of it is that most of children's behavior problems are actually parenting problems. Recently I was trying to figure out why my 1,5 years boy had more liquid poop only when he was in the kindergarten. This made him need to be home quite often. Turned out they were giving him some drink with fruit that made him drink too much water. Given that children do not have perfectly function water absorption in the colon if they drink too much, their stool gets more liquefied. The liquefied poop gets confused for viral diarrhea and he then needs to stay home. I got that insight from [3]. After resumption of diet and removal of sugary fruit from the water, he has been fine for a while now. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/parents/essentials/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/parents/essentials/index.html [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/ [3] https://adc.bmj.com/content/79/1/2 https://adc.bmj.com/content/79/1/2
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    Sugary drinks for 1.5 year olds, at kindergarten? Capri-Sun and the like should be banned in schools and daycare, people don’t realize it’s not that different from giving their children Coca-Cola every day.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      GP didn't say sugary drinks, but rather water with sugary fruit (all fruit is sugary). Big difference!
- 4y ago
xupybd 4y ago
I must be lucky. Our new born is out after a few minutes on the pacifier. Normally out until we wake him for the next feed.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
Sleep on a human being for the first year was the only solution for us
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darepublic 4y ago
Just remember holding my kids, walking, sitting, and counting to 100 one or more times, and then gently laying them down. Those nights of counting.
- swivelmaster 4y ago
  I did something similar but then I had to press my hand on his back or butt so he felt like he was still being held, then count to 100 and release it as slowly as possible. Babies are ridiculous.
ashton314 4y ago
Watch out for tongue tie: if the connective tissue that's right underneath the tongue goes too far forward, it can make it so the baby can't breath normally through their nose when on their back. If your baby sleeps with their mouth open, that's a sign. Our baby had this and couldn't sleep on her back until we got it fixed. I am not a doctor—talk to someone competent first!
- russdill 4y ago
  Tongue tie is so heavily over-diagnosed and even treated right now. Just an aside to those in the thread, get a diagnosis from a pediatric dentist or other doctor, not a lactation consultant and not from the doctor that is responsible for doing the revision.
  - Nebasuke 4y ago
    This might depend on where you are. If you're from the UK, the only way of getting this diagnosed within any reasonable time frame is a lactation consultant. Most NHS staff is not trained to diagnose tongue tie, which is not surprising given their historical roots. Tongue tie was quite obvious for my first daughter (it even runs in my family), but hospital staff still refused to do a proper diagnosis and said it was fine. It was not, and impacted the breastfeeding.
  - adaml_623 4y ago
    What are the percentages? What's the correct rate and the false positive diagnosis rate? Or are you just anecdoting?
    - russdill 4y ago
      It is a complex issue. Tongue tie is a real thing that causes real problems and lack of a diagnosis can lead to a lot of unneeded suffering and distress. Compounding this pediatricians are often not very responsive to breastfeeding concerns. However, the placebo effect here is really strong. Firstly because tongue tie revisions are to fix issues that very often are the kind of thing that resolves on it's own. Secondly because parents are told they will see some sort of fix and they are putting their child through a procedure than can be painful so they will really want to see an improvement. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804819/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804819/ "A desire to increase rates of breast feeding initiation and absence of standardized criteria for the diagnosis of ankyloglossia have resulted in runaway rates of frenotomy for newborn infants in some parts of Canada." https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-022-00481-w https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/... You'll see a really unfortunate statement like this in almost every article discussing the issue "Randomized controlled trials of optimized lactation support vs. frenotomy and of scissors vs laser in performance of frenotomy are needed." https://undark.org/2021/05/26/hidden-tongue-ties/ https://undark.org/2021/05/26/hidden-tongue-ties/
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bheadmaster 4y ago
I see so many people mentioning letting infant children "cry it out" to make them go to sleep on their own. I am not qualified to talk about this subject, but something inside me just finds that method horrifying. I've read about a lot of mental issues having roots in early-childhood abandonment - apparently, when kids are left alone to cry, their body releases hormones which stop the crying, but doesn't stop the anxiety. In a nutshell, the baby still feels like crying, but it just doesn't. There are probably studies (and I will appreciate all info given in the replies, be it studies or personal experience), but something about me just can't accept "cry it out" as a healthy method of raising infants. Infants should be in proximity of their mother until they are old enough to detach on their own - that's how it works for the whole animal kingdom, no?
- papandada 4y ago
  Having a 6 year old refuse to sleep without a parent in bed because of "attachment parenting" tends to make one wonder if there's not some merit to having gone through some pain in the early stages. Thankfully, there's someone selling every possible take on parenting advice to meet every intuition seeking affirmation. (I skip that part and just go straight to my own intuition. I think we need diversity.)
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > Having a 6 year old refuse to sleep without a parent in bed because of "attachment parenting" tends to make one wonder if there's not some merit to having gone through some pain in the early stages. How often does that happen in reality? Are there any studies? What is your personal experience? Honest question, as I really don't know. > Thankfully, there's someone selling every possible take on parenting advice to meet every intuition seeking affirmation. There's no need for such a dismissing attitude. I clearly stated I am not an authority on the subject and I'm welcoming all and any information in the replies. I'm just discussing here, and without actual knowledge, intuition is my starting point.
    - papandada 4y ago
jaimex2 4y ago
Haha I'm sure there's an interesting story behind what lead to this research.
eru 4y ago
I feel a bit left out by the authors only talking about 'maternal holding'.
piyushpr134 4y ago
Bleh. Has academia run out of topics of research? Every parent knows this. Next research try to establish that lullaby or singing to baby actualy works in making them asleep! Nonsense use of public money. Moreover, this is more about feeding the baby than moving it. Feed the baby and walk it around a little and they sleep. Try this on a hungry baby and see fall apart! Useless research!
- adaml_623 4y ago
  The irony of this comment at the bottom of 200+ comments arguing about what every parent knows
  - piyushpr134 4y ago
    He he. At times world needs reinforcement
reitanqild 4y ago
For kids over 1 year, some sanity saving notes (I have more than 4 kids, was about to go crazy when I got my second and then learned the things below): - everyone wakes halfway up multiple times each night to see if everything is OK. Make sure they don't fall asleep with anything that can't stay with them during the night: music, tv, light, food, drink or another person (you or others). - to teach kids to sleep, make them feel safe about it. What I did was walking in at a fixed schedule, starting at exact 3 minutes between the first night (I used a digital kitchen timer back then, a smartphone later) and increasing by two minutes every night. Surprisingly fast, my kids learn that I didn't disappear, and he'll be around even if they don't cry. Once they realized this they started playing with the toy the were allowed to keep in the bed. But, keep in mind: don't stop coming back if they are silent. A major part of the idea is that they realize that they don't have to do anything to make sure we don't forget them. Oh: and keep a very close ear with them in the beginning so they don't wake up and think they are alone. I never really could get myself to accept the idea that "they need to cry themselves to sleep" and every thing I tried before this didn't work on my oldest. This worked on my oldest kid, she started sleeping through the night within a week and also became calmer and I got my sleep back. With the rest of them it took 2-3 days only since I started earlier (shortly after they was a year old). Maybe other methods work too, but this was easy for us and we didn't have to let the kids cry to sleep or anything else I have seen recommended online that I didn't like.
- bboygravity 4y ago
  Is this Elon's secret account? :p
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - iamacyborg 4y ago
    Na, he’s talking about parenting, not fathering
- danw1979 4y ago
  The visiting the room at regular intervals works great. I only have two, and left it late with both. 5yo just fell asleep on his own for the first time a few weeks ago, still hates the idea, but doesn’t scream at least, now he knows I’ve not abandoned him…
TruthWillHurt 4y ago
That's how I put my newborn to sleep initially, and it works, BUT there's a problem here - If the baby falls asleep in your arms, when he lightly wakes up middle of the night he expects to be in your arms, instead he finds he's alone in bed, and wakes up fully, panics and starts crying. It is usually recommended to place the baby in his crib while awake, for him to fall asleep there and wake up in the same place he fell asleep in. This is according to "sleep training", and I can testify it absolutely works (after two difficult nights where baby needs to adjust to falling asleep alone)
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cycomanic 4y ago
My partner is a doctor mainly working in early childhood prevention. When she did some recent training on evidence based early childhood care (which is surprisingly rare, most early childhood care is not really evidence based), she learned a couple of things that she said she really would like to have known when we had our children were born. One is that you get told a lot about averages. So commonly parents get told that babies (should) sleep around 12h a day. What nobody talks about is the variance. There are babies who sleep only 8h a day and others who sleep close to 20h. So you end up with parents who thing they need to get their child to sleep, even though the child is absolutely not tired. Also a lot of people talk about not giving children too much impressions/stimulation. Which is also generally false, giving them stimulation will actually make them tired and sleep better, they also learn stuff. Obviously you don't do that just before or when going to bed.
- badcppdev 4y ago
  More anecdotally there really seems to be a problem with many 'shoulds' involved in childhood care. I have a good friend who was given contradictory instructions by health care professionals while they were still at the hospital with their child which developed into a situation where 'professionals' were chastising the parents for following instructions correctly. This is a real bind for parents who don't have easy access to second opinions or are in a position where the health professionals misuse their position of authority to prevent discussion of situations.
- bruce343434 4y ago
  > early childhood prevention What does this mean?
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    Lol, I didn't realise how this sounds, I was essentially combining preventive care (measures to prevent disease...) and early childhood care.
- seanc 4y ago
  My brother gave me some great meta-parenting advice; "You're going to get a lot of parenting advice, but keep one thing in mind. Those folks aren't telling you how to raise your kid. They're telling you how to raise _their_ kid. But you're not raising their kids, you're raising you're kids. So take all that advice with a grain of salt."
setzeus 4y ago
Oh man is it finally my time to shine? I'm the CTO of a startup working on exactly this (pediatric sleeping): https://www.restfullysleep.com/ https://www.restfullysleep.com/ Fun fact there are 3 total methods to naturally promote sleep.
- djenendik 4y ago
  Please go ahead and profit off the exhaustion and desperation of others.
  - earth_walker 4y ago
    Please go ahead and provide proven solutions to those of us who are exhausted and desperate. If you profit while you're at it too, it's a clear win-win!
    - djenendik 4y ago
      by all means, please go ahead and buy this product, but know that this product is available in your public library.
  - eggsmediumrare 4y ago
    By this logic, do you have a problem with grocery stores?
    - djenendik 4y ago
      and is world hunger solved?
- domh 4y ago
  Just FYI, the images on your site appear to be lazy-loading and on Firefox, it's creating a very stuttered experience. I thought it may have been the size of the images, but none of them are HUGE (there are a couple over 1MB though).
- zehnfischer 4y ago
busydevman 4y ago
I'm literally implementing seated portion as a I write this comment. This is my third kid, and we definitely discovered this the hard way during our first baby. There are a few windows that you can soothe and successfully put a baby down to sleep. Despite all our kids being otherwise different, putting them down as babies worked exactly how this method describes.
twodave 4y ago
Any sleep-training that doesn’t begin with teaching the baby to self-soothe is bound to be a lot of work for the parents. If you perform this task for your child then you will inevitably end up repeating it whenever they stir during their sleep time. Babies can learn structure and routine and follow predictable sleep/wake patterns if they’re taught to, and they are capable of soothing themselves. So long as you’ve taken care of all their other physical needs (fed, dry diaper, secure swaddle if they’re still in that stage) then any intrusion into their sleep time teaches your child that you will come in and be with them if they stir. Even infants will pick up on this very simple cause/effect relationship and abuse it to their advantage. I have adopted 4 special needs kids, and my wife (who knows much more than I do on the subject) has successfully managed to have them all sleeping soundly relatively early, often through the night after 3 months, and never in our bed. This approach does require some patience and letting the child “cry it out”, but this is how they learn to be the master of their own sleep.
- finnh 4y ago
  self-soothing FTW. Although, funny story: sleep training went great with our first kid - maybe one hour of "cry it out" and then everything was fine for the rest of the night and all following nights. So when the second one came along, and we had managed to forget everything about the care of newborns because we formed few permanent memories during the haze of sleep deprivation, we thought to let him cry it out _on the very first night home_. Literally a 3 day old baby. Fortunately when we came fully awake we stopped mumbling "cry it out" to each other and remembered, right, newborns need food in the middle of the night. For months. "Cry it out" has to wait a bit...
  - twodave 4y ago
    It does, but you can still establish “this is night” and feed the baby in a very low-stimulus (dark, no talking, keep them swaddled, etc.) environment for those night feeds. That “dream-feed” is basically just eating, checking the diaper and putting them back down for the next 4 hours. Obviously if they cry for more than 15 minutes or so you go check on them (e.g. make sure the diaper is still dry), but by keeping the intervention to a bare minimum you keep them in a state of more or less teaching themselves to do the actual sleeping part :)
dustinmoris 4y ago
istjohn 4y ago
I've found it also helps if the infant is snugly wrapped. I think it keeps her from realizing she is no longer being held.
jerome-jh 4y ago
Baby sling / baby carrier is just miraculous. First daughter with second wife was crying a lot and we had to carry her much. With the sling you can basically carry the baby, have the hands free and keep on with your stuff. You also have to learn to recognize the stages of sleep. Hold the arm of the baby up and down. If the arm remains in the air, this is light sleep. If the arm feels heavier and goes down all the way, this is deep sleep. Only then put the baby into the cot. This is quite important to know.

338 points by cwwc 4y ago

I've never seen a graphical abstract like this before, what a fantastic idea.

Dad on my 3rd baby (2 months old now). I'm like a WWE ref, I lift up my son's arm to check if it drops without resistance, after walking/dancing for a few minutes. Then fast to his bed if so.

sjckciodjcr 4y ago

Just tried this on my newborn and it seemed to work! I know there are folks saying this isn’t a new finding but i find the timings really helpful. Previously I was walking the baby too long which was wearing me out but having research based timing advise helps a lot.

ya3r 4y ago
It only works, if it consistently works. And it only doesn't work, if you tried it consistently and it didn't work.
- wfme 4y ago
  That's not even close to true. Things can work well at first and then stop working after a while. That doesn't mean it didn't work initially. If we only prescribed pain medication based on your definition, practically none of them would make it through. Your body adapts to its environment and as such very few things will work in perpetuity.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Bumbing the baby in the cart over a threshold worked very very well initially, for like 3 months, and suddenly stopped working at all. I feel a great deal of confusion is stemming from that advice might come to late or to early in the childs life.
VBprogrammer 4y ago
I'm pretty sure our 4 day old will react exactly the same way to this as he does when we put him into the next to me cot straight after a feed. Which is to say he'll sleep for 2-5 minutes, realise he's further away from the breast than he wanted to be and wake up. What works for us and our previous child is cosleeping. After I saw both my partner and our eldest fall asleep simultaneously after finishing a feed I became a convert.
- ciphol 4y ago
  For a lot of parents, cosleeping is effective in the short term but counterproductive in the longer term. Also, it's a SIDS risk.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    When controlled for alcohol and drug use it's actually pretty a pretty insignificant risk. 50% of families admit to cosleeping in the UK, I suspect that's likely to suffer significant under reporting. I think it's far better to do it deliberately, knowing where the baby is and deliberately positioning to avoid the possibility of rolling towards them, than to do it via exhaustion at 4am. And our 3 year old coslept until 6 months and has slept 8pm to 8am in her own bed ever since so if that's counter productive I'll take it.
- wil421 4y ago
  Congrats! I’ll have my third in the next 2 weeks. We noticed the same thing with my first 2 kids. They’d wake up from a dead sleep after putting them down. Once my second child was 3-4 months old we would let him cry for about 1 minute and found he usually went to back to sleep. Worked well. With my first we would run in immediately and I still think she has going to sleep issues.

efitz 4y ago

They should teach this to new parents before they let them leave the hospital. My wife and I went to the hospital’s parenting class before the birth of our first child. They focused on a lot of skills for infant care but not much on new parent sanity.

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

Use the hairdryer. It works like wonders.

gsinclair 4y ago
I put my infant in a carrier in front of the washing machine and dryer a couple of times. It was great!
- lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  Yeah, it's like inside momma's belly.

rpmisms 4y ago

I think most experienced child-carers could tell you this, but it's great to see it made explicit. I personally favor a bounce->rock->walk->sit pipeline, but ymmv based on the temperament of the child.

mabbo 4y ago

As the parent of a 6.5 month old, this is very interesting. We had figured out that once she falls asleep, we wait 8-10 minutes for her to get really deeply asleep before putting her down. But the transport to calm crying, that is really going to come in handy.

doctoboggan 4y ago

As a parent of a 5mo old I had to discover this on my own. Luckily my daughter makes it abundantly clear that she does not like me to sit while I hold her. Our midwife even said that babies like to know you are up and ready to escape predators. Not sure how true that part is.

denom 4y ago
I think of it as a fitness measure: Are you active enough at moving towards food gathering sites, preparing and surveying the landscape, creating and fine tuning your tools? If it is an approval of sorts on behalf of the child, then it also points to some really basic learning that is beginning to flow between the parent and child
- rnd33 4y ago
  That's a mind-boggling theory actually, that some general survival skills are encoded in the parent-child relationship. Basically you have to become a parent to level-up your survival skills. I wouldn't put it past evolution to encode useful information wherever possible, but it would be hard to prove that theory.
georgeburdell 4y ago
I thought it was just my kids. We like to think of them as requiring "the path of greatest effort"
hugh-avherald 4y ago
Not clear whether evolution would select for crying in the possible presence of predators (so fighting adults can be woken) or for silence (to avoid attracting attention as prey).
- newaccount74 4y ago
  I think babies cry when they get tired to warn parents they are going to fall asleep soon, so that parents know they have to take them somewhere safe to sleep.

xyzzyz 4y ago

Cutting edge research indeed. We need to spread the news, tell all the parents that carrying kids helps sooth them. There is no way that parents could have come up and tried this on their own.

tjcvirage 4y ago
I independently found my way to a similar approach. However, having resources available to new parents is immensely valuable when you're at your wits end. Actually, you could say the same about all manners of recording history; Story telling, art, education, music. Why bother with any of it if people can figure it out for themselves? Because we progress further when we work as a team and share knowledge.
jjcon 4y ago
I also find it hilarious when studies point out the blatantly obvious - but I'd rather see this way more often than tons of unreplicable crap churned out.
brink 4y ago
To be fair, some of us (me included) are about to be parents for the first time. I'll take all the good pointers I can get, obvious or not.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  Don’t worry, this one will come up naturally. In general, I recommend taking all advice with a grain of salt: not because it is bad advice, but because no kids are the same, and what works with one will not necessarily work with another. Just take it easy and try to not worry too much. The unbroken chain of your ancestors have all figured it out, and so can you. And congratulations!
  - notinfuriated 4y ago
    And, what works on one kid one day, may not work the next!
- 4y ago

mensetmanusman 4y ago

I try to recommend to new parents to get a big room air purifier to clean the air where the baby sleeps but also to add a nice low bass noise (from the motor) that you can’t get from a white noise generator. Our filtrete has been running non-stop for 11 years (kind of crazy). Definitely helps keep them asleep and non sensitive to sudden noises in town/city.

Solstinox 4y ago
Long term exposure to constant droning sounds could cause issues in language centers of the brain. When we rely on sounds for kids, we stick to sounds that mimic the more random/non-droning sounds you encounter in nature. Birds chirping in a forest, evening crickets and frogs etc.
- cachvico 4y ago
  > Long term exposure to constant droning sounds could cause issues in language centers of the brain. Citation?
  - Solstinox 4y ago
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030418081607.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030418081607.h...
- pgm8705 4y ago
  > Long term exposure to constant droning sounds could cause issues in language centers of the brain. Do you have a source for this? We've always used white noise.
  - ezekg 4y ago
    They may be citing a study that circulated recently about how white noise is the reason why we have an autism epidemic. I can't seem to find the study, though. But I do remember laughing.

slothtrop 4y ago

> It should be noted that, unlike most behavioral interventions for infant sleep difficulties, 9,10 this protocol does not address any long-term improvement of sleep regulation. I'd expect as much since this is the first thing a parent tries to do. Holding the baby when they wake crying several times a night will calm them, not exactly revelatory, but can come in handy even for more lasting solutions. I find the lit/consultants have wildly varying degrees of severity for approaches, including for gradual extinction. The mistake I think we made prior to seeking intervention is feeding-to-sleep for too long, i.e. the baby would drink a bottle right before bed and get knocked out (mostly). They were always accustomed to being asleep in arms before being put down. I think if you feed slightly earlier in the routine-chain, with the lights on, you go a long ways to avoiding this issue, since you can rock them while they're awake for a time before putting them down. In some branded variants of graduated extinction, they suggest making sure your baby is super wakeful and basically dropping them in the crib right away after reading a book - this seems needlessly harsh when going from the opposite extreme, which is reflected in the baby's level of crying. We found that it went well to rock them until they were calm and drowsy (but still awake) before putting them down. The protest was mild and short-lived, but of course that's only our experience.

dcsommer 4y ago
This. Be very careful implementing this paper's technique. It does NOT promote long-term sleep independence, which should be the goal. Crying before sleeping is not inherently bad. The objective function is not to greedily minimize crying. If you are interested in materials on sleep training, I recommend taking a more holistic view than a single paper. "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" is a good reference.

hsn915 4y ago

I found this out by just trial and error. Hold and walk until they sleep, then keep walking for 5-10 minutes, or just sit down for 10 minutes before laying them on the bed.

chriskanan 4y ago

I found that a SNOO was very effective in the first 6 months. It is expensive, but it was way better than being even more sleep deprived. It plays white noise and rocks the baby if it senses them stirring. https://www.happiestbaby.com/ https://www.happiestbaby.com/

jonpurdy 4y ago
For those who intend to have one child only, they now have a rental program where they ship you the SNOO, you use it up to 6 months, and ship it back. Works out to about the same as what you'd lose by buying it new and reselling it at the end. Highly recommended!

d--b 4y ago

Ok this we figured out. What I need to find out is what to do in the car. Our kid mostly calms down while walking, but unlike his older brother the car vibrations do not make him sleep at all. And so once he starts crying in the car, we have no way of calming him down, beside stopping the car and carrying him. It seems like very bouncy driving (a sequence of high acceleration followed by sudden braking) helps, but it’s kind of wreckless, makes my wife sick and my older kid angry. Help!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sailfast 4y ago
Probably just need to gut it out for a couple road trips and try not to show the kid how stressed out you are while it’s happening - kinda like a thunderstorm. It gets better. Good luck. Intermediate tactics: white noise in the back seat, maybe some lullabies, singalongs, make sure the seatbelts aren’t too tight, maybe a drink or pacifier, etc - whatever to keep things quiet for a bit.
PakG1 4y ago
I got nothing. For us, we discovered that if we time car trips around their bedtime or naptime, she cries a while and then conks out. Then when we reach our destination, we take her out and put her in an adjustable lay-flat stroller (if outside) or to bed (if home). The process of getting her to conk out while we drive? Just pure grit, endurance, and lots of singing lullabies, which may simply be correlated, rather than causative. Sometimes it takes a while. :(
dflock 4y ago
If their car seat is rear facing, do they have one of those mirrors on the adult seat, so they can see what's happening/see you?
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  This made a huge difference for us when Gjcp_v2.0 was small enough to be in a rear-facing car seat. You can see them, they can see you.

Bakary 4y ago

I wonder if the reason babies cry so often is because they are "supposed" to be carried by their mother constantly in a hunter-gatherer setting.

bpodgursky 4y ago
They're supposed to be nursing... I don't know why people are being weird and complicated about this. If the baby is crying, breastfeed.
- chomp 4y ago
  1.) Some women will never produce milk in sufficient quantities after the child is born, just due to random luck. 1a.) Formula is expensive, takes minutes of effort to prepare, and not always obtainable. 2.) Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Comfort nursing at certain stages of the child's life will end up sleep training them in a negative way. 3.) Some babies are born with impairments that do not allow them to nurse effectively, or at all. 4.) Moms need a break from nursing too.
  - dgfitz 4y ago
    Tell me you’re not a parent without telling me you’re not a parent. Babies cry for very few reasons, and reason number one, two, and three, is hunger.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      Depends on age. When teething number one two and three are teeth.
      - dgfitz 4y ago
        Teething is miserable no doubt, going through it now. My comment assumed we were talking children who were not yet teething. Possibly a bad assumption on my part.

betocmn 4y ago

Some more important conditions from the method used: > Experimental sessions started approximately 1 to 2 hours after the last feeding > In most cases when mothers laid the infant down, mothers held the infant with one hand behind the neck and shoulders, and the other hand under the buttocks or thighs. The mother laid the infant on its back in 18/19 samples of the 1-month-old and older infants, and 7/7 of the neonate samples, whereas one infant was laid with a sideways landing, later to be turned on its back. >To examine the effect of sleep duration on the sleep/wake outcome, the interval between the initiations of infant sleep and laydown was calculated. The timing of the infants’ sleep onset was defined as the initiation of the behavioral sleep state, satisfying both of eye closure and no vocalization.

itsmemattchung 4y ago

> Waiting 5 to 8 minutes before laydown prevents infant awakening LOL. Definitely did not work on my (now 3 year old) daughter during the infant phase.

Cyph0n 4y ago
Same. I personally found it very difficult to tell the difference between actually asleep vs. starting to fall asleep.
- ezekg 4y ago
  I use the paci as a cue. Once it falls out of their mouth, they're usually asleep. (Usually...)
  - coffee_beqn 4y ago
    None of my kids would ever even take a pacifier. There are so many different babies that there is certainly no one true method.
    - ezekg 4y ago
      Absolutely agree. Every baby is different. Took a couple months for my last one to take a paci because he had a small tongue tie that we had to work through.
russdill 4y ago
That's the number one thing about all these advice articles. Every kid is different. That's great to have tips of things to try, but there's absolutely no secret formula and 4 kids is a really small sample size.

hexeater 4y ago

I have twins, they share a room. they are 19 months old. They have been sleeping through the night since 10 months old. My technique is I put them to bed fully awake at the same time every night. They each get a half full bottle, and I say good night. Before I goto bed, I put another half full bottle in their cribs, and they find it on their own when they wake up. And then I see them in the morning. I had to let them cry it out for a few weeks, but now they just goto bed with no crying. In the morning they talk to each other until I go into the room. I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. too exhausting for everybody. Being able to goto sleep on your own is a skill! And it's a self taught thing.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
> In the morning they talk to each other until I go into the room. Brings a tear to the eye. I think (because I have no experience) twins must have a deeper human connection than non-twins, and if so, I wonder if can / is applied to other relationships. I wonder if there's any vestigial evolutionary benefit. Semi-related funny story: When our second was old enough to go into a cot, rather than a bassinette, we tried putting both the kids into the same room when they slept. It was fine... for the few minutes it took for the youngest to realise that there was "someone else" in her room, and started scream-crying, which woke up and set-off the eldest into scream-crying. We thought the fucking room must have been on fire or something, never moved so fast in unison with my wife before or since. It was existential dread at the time. It's hilarious now. (It really was just that the youngest wasn't used to having the eldest also in the room, it worked fine together for a few years after that until they eventually wanted their own rooms - between times, however, they were actually comforted by having each other in the same room - also brings a tear to my eye.)
- e3bc54b2 4y ago
  > I think (because I have no experience) twins must have a deeper human connection For all its worth, I know at least 2 pairs of twins who cannot stand each other.
  - 4y ago

atestu 4y ago

No one’s mentioned the Ferber method yet, it’s what got my daughter to start falling asleep on her own and do full nights at 5 months old. Took about 4 nights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferber_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferber_method

ARandomerDude 4y ago
This is an excellent method. Our first kid was very difficult, but that changed after learning the Ferber technique. We've used it with subsequent children with great success.
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  We’re 3 kids into a “softer” version of the Ferber method and also report that it works well.
  - nicolas_t 4y ago
    Same here we transitioned at 8 months old from sleeping in our room in a side sleeper to sleeping in his own room on his own bed by using the Ferber method, it worked great. We did soften it somewhat by setting the maximum interval at 7 minutes (we couldn't stand longer than that). It might have slightly reduced how quickly the method works (although we started to really see great progress 4 days in which is in line with the book).v
BLKNSLVR 4y ago
This was called "controlled crying" when we did it, and it worked a treat on our first and, as far as I can recall, wasn't necessary for our second (yes, lucky!). It was surprisingly quickly effective, maybe a week. Recommended. I do remember that quite sharp 'parental pain' (it's hard to describe, it's like an intrinsic 'hunger to help') of knowing that we have to get through the next X minutes of baby crying without going in there. It's good to have a supportive partner so you can both keep each other in check (or to put it how I'd prefer: "well, we're both bad parents if this doesn't work, it's not just me").

jiggawatts 4y ago

This works with our boy. We have a bedside digital clock, and I've found he requires 5-7 additional minutes after he closes his eyes and appears to be asleep before I can put him down. Any earlier and he'll wake up and cry.

dereg 4y ago

There's so much snark here but I love this. I'd take reading papers like this over mommy blogs every day of the week, even if it's to state the ostensibly obvious. Does anyone have any other interesting child-rearing resources in this style?

ptsneves 4y ago
From time to time i go through this cdc[1] website. It is quite comprehensive on child rearing tips. For a longer form reading i went through [2] and still visit it from time to time. I like it because it discusses multiple approaches and methods and discusses what works and what does not. A bit more scientific, but the gist of it is that most of children's behavior problems are actually parenting problems. Recently I was trying to figure out why my 1,5 years boy had more liquid poop only when he was in the kindergarten. This made him need to be home quite often. Turned out they were giving him some drink with fruit that made him drink too much water. Given that children do not have perfectly function water absorption in the colon if they drink too much, their stool gets more liquefied. The liquefied poop gets confused for viral diarrhea and he then needs to stay home. I got that insight from [3]. After resumption of diet and removal of sugary fruit from the water, he has been fine for a while now. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/parents/essentials/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/parents/essentials/index.html [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/ [3] https://adc.bmj.com/content/79/1/2 https://adc.bmj.com/content/79/1/2
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  Sugary drinks for 1.5 year olds, at kindergarten? Capri-Sun and the like should be banned in schools and daycare, people don’t realize it’s not that different from giving their children Coca-Cola every day.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    GP didn't say sugary drinks, but rather water with sugary fruit (all fruit is sugary). Big difference!
4y ago

xupybd 4y ago

I must be lucky. Our new born is out after a few minutes on the pacifier. Normally out until we wake him for the next feed.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago

Sleep on a human being for the first year was the only solution for us

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

darepublic 4y ago

Just remember holding my kids, walking, sitting, and counting to 100 one or more times, and then gently laying them down. Those nights of counting.

swivelmaster 4y ago
I did something similar but then I had to press my hand on his back or butt so he felt like he was still being held, then count to 100 and release it as slowly as possible. Babies are ridiculous.

ashton314 4y ago

Watch out for tongue tie: if the connective tissue that's right underneath the tongue goes too far forward, it can make it so the baby can't breath normally through their nose when on their back. If your baby sleeps with their mouth open, that's a sign. Our baby had this and couldn't sleep on her back until we got it fixed. I am not a doctor—talk to someone competent first!

russdill 4y ago
Tongue tie is so heavily over-diagnosed and even treated right now. Just an aside to those in the thread, get a diagnosis from a pediatric dentist or other doctor, not a lactation consultant and not from the doctor that is responsible for doing the revision.
- Nebasuke 4y ago
  This might depend on where you are. If you're from the UK, the only way of getting this diagnosed within any reasonable time frame is a lactation consultant. Most NHS staff is not trained to diagnose tongue tie, which is not surprising given their historical roots. Tongue tie was quite obvious for my first daughter (it even runs in my family), but hospital staff still refused to do a proper diagnosis and said it was fine. It was not, and impacted the breastfeeding.
- adaml_623 4y ago
  What are the percentages? What's the correct rate and the false positive diagnosis rate? Or are you just anecdoting?
  - russdill 4y ago
    It is a complex issue. Tongue tie is a real thing that causes real problems and lack of a diagnosis can lead to a lot of unneeded suffering and distress. Compounding this pediatricians are often not very responsive to breastfeeding concerns. However, the placebo effect here is really strong. Firstly because tongue tie revisions are to fix issues that very often are the kind of thing that resolves on it's own. Secondly because parents are told they will see some sort of fix and they are putting their child through a procedure than can be painful so they will really want to see an improvement. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804819/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804819/ "A desire to increase rates of breast feeding initiation and absence of standardized criteria for the diagnosis of ankyloglossia have resulted in runaway rates of frenotomy for newborn infants in some parts of Canada." https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-022-00481-w https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/... You'll see a really unfortunate statement like this in almost every article discussing the issue "Randomized controlled trials of optimized lactation support vs. frenotomy and of scissors vs laser in performance of frenotomy are needed." https://undark.org/2021/05/26/hidden-tongue-ties/ https://undark.org/2021/05/26/hidden-tongue-ties/

deleted 4y ago

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bheadmaster 4y ago

I see so many people mentioning letting infant children "cry it out" to make them go to sleep on their own. I am not qualified to talk about this subject, but something inside me just finds that method horrifying. I've read about a lot of mental issues having roots in early-childhood abandonment - apparently, when kids are left alone to cry, their body releases hormones which stop the crying, but doesn't stop the anxiety. In a nutshell, the baby still feels like crying, but it just doesn't. There are probably studies (and I will appreciate all info given in the replies, be it studies or personal experience), but something about me just can't accept "cry it out" as a healthy method of raising infants. Infants should be in proximity of their mother until they are old enough to detach on their own - that's how it works for the whole animal kingdom, no?

papandada 4y ago
Having a 6 year old refuse to sleep without a parent in bed because of "attachment parenting" tends to make one wonder if there's not some merit to having gone through some pain in the early stages. Thankfully, there's someone selling every possible take on parenting advice to meet every intuition seeking affirmation. (I skip that part and just go straight to my own intuition. I think we need diversity.)
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > Having a 6 year old refuse to sleep without a parent in bed because of "attachment parenting" tends to make one wonder if there's not some merit to having gone through some pain in the early stages. How often does that happen in reality? Are there any studies? What is your personal experience? Honest question, as I really don't know. > Thankfully, there's someone selling every possible take on parenting advice to meet every intuition seeking affirmation. There's no need for such a dismissing attitude. I clearly stated I am not an authority on the subject and I'm welcoming all and any information in the replies. I'm just discussing here, and without actual knowledge, intuition is my starting point.
  - papandada 4y ago

jaimex2 4y ago

Haha I'm sure there's an interesting story behind what lead to this research.

eru 4y ago

I feel a bit left out by the authors only talking about 'maternal holding'.

piyushpr134 4y ago

Bleh. Has academia run out of topics of research? Every parent knows this. Next research try to establish that lullaby or singing to baby actualy works in making them asleep! Nonsense use of public money. Moreover, this is more about feeding the baby than moving it. Feed the baby and walk it around a little and they sleep. Try this on a hungry baby and see fall apart! Useless research!

adaml_623 4y ago
The irony of this comment at the bottom of 200+ comments arguing about what every parent knows
- piyushpr134 4y ago
  He he. At times world needs reinforcement

reitanqild 4y ago

For kids over 1 year, some sanity saving notes (I have more than 4 kids, was about to go crazy when I got my second and then learned the things below): - everyone wakes halfway up multiple times each night to see if everything is OK. Make sure they don't fall asleep with anything that can't stay with them during the night: music, tv, light, food, drink or another person (you or others). - to teach kids to sleep, make them feel safe about it. What I did was walking in at a fixed schedule, starting at exact 3 minutes between the first night (I used a digital kitchen timer back then, a smartphone later) and increasing by two minutes every night. Surprisingly fast, my kids learn that I didn't disappear, and he'll be around even if they don't cry. Once they realized this they started playing with the toy the were allowed to keep in the bed. But, keep in mind: don't stop coming back if they are silent. A major part of the idea is that they realize that they don't have to do anything to make sure we don't forget them. Oh: and keep a very close ear with them in the beginning so they don't wake up and think they are alone. I never really could get myself to accept the idea that "they need to cry themselves to sleep" and every thing I tried before this didn't work on my oldest. This worked on my oldest kid, she started sleeping through the night within a week and also became calmer and I got my sleep back. With the rest of them it took 2-3 days only since I started earlier (shortly after they was a year old). Maybe other methods work too, but this was easy for us and we didn't have to let the kids cry to sleep or anything else I have seen recommended online that I didn't like.

bboygravity 4y ago
Is this Elon's secret account? :p
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- iamacyborg 4y ago
  Na, he’s talking about parenting, not fathering
danw1979 4y ago
The visiting the room at regular intervals works great. I only have two, and left it late with both. 5yo just fell asleep on his own for the first time a few weeks ago, still hates the idea, but doesn’t scream at least, now he knows I’ve not abandoned him…

TruthWillHurt 4y ago

That's how I put my newborn to sleep initially, and it works, BUT there's a problem here - If the baby falls asleep in your arms, when he lightly wakes up middle of the night he expects to be in your arms, instead he finds he's alone in bed, and wakes up fully, panics and starts crying. It is usually recommended to place the baby in his crib while awake, for him to fall asleep there and wake up in the same place he fell asleep in. This is according to "sleep training", and I can testify it absolutely works (after two difficult nights where baby needs to adjust to falling asleep alone)

deleted 4y ago

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cycomanic 4y ago

My partner is a doctor mainly working in early childhood prevention. When she did some recent training on evidence based early childhood care (which is surprisingly rare, most early childhood care is not really evidence based), she learned a couple of things that she said she really would like to have known when we had our children were born. One is that you get told a lot about averages. So commonly parents get told that babies (should) sleep around 12h a day. What nobody talks about is the variance. There are babies who sleep only 8h a day and others who sleep close to 20h. So you end up with parents who thing they need to get their child to sleep, even though the child is absolutely not tired. Also a lot of people talk about not giving children too much impressions/stimulation. Which is also generally false, giving them stimulation will actually make them tired and sleep better, they also learn stuff. Obviously you don't do that just before or when going to bed.

badcppdev 4y ago
More anecdotally there really seems to be a problem with many 'shoulds' involved in childhood care. I have a good friend who was given contradictory instructions by health care professionals while they were still at the hospital with their child which developed into a situation where 'professionals' were chastising the parents for following instructions correctly. This is a real bind for parents who don't have easy access to second opinions or are in a position where the health professionals misuse their position of authority to prevent discussion of situations.
bruce343434 4y ago
> early childhood prevention What does this mean?
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Lol, I didn't realise how this sounds, I was essentially combining preventive care (measures to prevent disease...) and early childhood care.
seanc 4y ago
My brother gave me some great meta-parenting advice; "You're going to get a lot of parenting advice, but keep one thing in mind. Those folks aren't telling you how to raise your kid. They're telling you how to raise _their_ kid. But you're not raising their kids, you're raising you're kids. So take all that advice with a grain of salt."

setzeus 4y ago

Oh man is it finally my time to shine? I'm the CTO of a startup working on exactly this (pediatric sleeping): https://www.restfullysleep.com/ https://www.restfullysleep.com/ Fun fact there are 3 total methods to naturally promote sleep.

djenendik 4y ago
Please go ahead and profit off the exhaustion and desperation of others.
- earth_walker 4y ago
  Please go ahead and provide proven solutions to those of us who are exhausted and desperate. If you profit while you're at it too, it's a clear win-win!
  - djenendik 4y ago
    by all means, please go ahead and buy this product, but know that this product is available in your public library.
- eggsmediumrare 4y ago
  By this logic, do you have a problem with grocery stores?
  - djenendik 4y ago
    and is world hunger solved?
domh 4y ago
Just FYI, the images on your site appear to be lazy-loading and on Firefox, it's creating a very stuttered experience. I thought it may have been the size of the images, but none of them are HUGE (there are a couple over 1MB though).
zehnfischer 4y ago

busydevman 4y ago

I'm literally implementing seated portion as a I write this comment. This is my third kid, and we definitely discovered this the hard way during our first baby. There are a few windows that you can soothe and successfully put a baby down to sleep. Despite all our kids being otherwise different, putting them down as babies worked exactly how this method describes.

twodave 4y ago

Any sleep-training that doesn’t begin with teaching the baby to self-soothe is bound to be a lot of work for the parents. If you perform this task for your child then you will inevitably end up repeating it whenever they stir during their sleep time. Babies can learn structure and routine and follow predictable sleep/wake patterns if they’re taught to, and they are capable of soothing themselves. So long as you’ve taken care of all their other physical needs (fed, dry diaper, secure swaddle if they’re still in that stage) then any intrusion into their sleep time teaches your child that you will come in and be with them if they stir. Even infants will pick up on this very simple cause/effect relationship and abuse it to their advantage. I have adopted 4 special needs kids, and my wife (who knows much more than I do on the subject) has successfully managed to have them all sleeping soundly relatively early, often through the night after 3 months, and never in our bed. This approach does require some patience and letting the child “cry it out”, but this is how they learn to be the master of their own sleep.

finnh 4y ago
self-soothing FTW. Although, funny story: sleep training went great with our first kid - maybe one hour of "cry it out" and then everything was fine for the rest of the night and all following nights. So when the second one came along, and we had managed to forget everything about the care of newborns because we formed few permanent memories during the haze of sleep deprivation, we thought to let him cry it out _on the very first night home_. Literally a 3 day old baby. Fortunately when we came fully awake we stopped mumbling "cry it out" to each other and remembered, right, newborns need food in the middle of the night. For months. "Cry it out" has to wait a bit...
- twodave 4y ago
  It does, but you can still establish “this is night” and feed the baby in a very low-stimulus (dark, no talking, keep them swaddled, etc.) environment for those night feeds. That “dream-feed” is basically just eating, checking the diaper and putting them back down for the next 4 hours. Obviously if they cry for more than 15 minutes or so you go check on them (e.g. make sure the diaper is still dry), but by keeping the intervention to a bare minimum you keep them in a state of more or less teaching themselves to do the actual sleeping part :)

dustinmoris 4y ago

istjohn 4y ago

I've found it also helps if the infant is snugly wrapped. I think it keeps her from realizing she is no longer being held.

jerome-jh 4y ago

Baby sling / baby carrier is just miraculous. First daughter with second wife was crying a lot and we had to carry her much. With the sling you can basically carry the baby, have the hands free and keep on with your stuff. You also have to learn to recognize the stages of sleep. Hold the arm of the baby up and down. If the arm remains in the air, this is light sleep. If the arm feels heavier and goes down all the way, this is deep sleep. Only then put the baby into the cot. This is quite important to know.