sleep

Does Your Baby Actually Want You to be Tired?

~ heavygemma ~ Leave a comment

vintage-tired-mum

So in a small departure, this week’s post takes a look at a theory from evolutionary biology not anthropology. This is not my specialism so apologies for any over-simplification but I thought it was so interesting it was worth writing about.

Mother and baby: a relationship in harmony or in conflict?

Most people in the West have pretty incoherent and conflicting beliefs around the relationship between mothers and their babies. On the one hand having a baby is seen as the most natural thing in the world, mothers and babies are seen as working in harmony, each biologically programmed to work together for the best possible outcome. On the other hand, birth is incredibly dangerous, babies are exhausting and are occasionally described as ‘manipulative’ for wanting more milk or crying a lot. Harmony on the one side and conflict on the other. Evolutionary biologist David Haig, addresses the subject of infant sleep with the intention of illuminating just how little harmony there often is. Continue reading →

When Was the Last Time You Had a Good Night’s Sleep?

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ab6

Interrupted sleep is the most common complaint of new parents in the UK. Tiredness, fatigue, exhaustion, all the synonyms come into play when describing what for many is the hardest part of being a parent, especially when the children are still very young. Everything I’ve read indicates that we have unrealistic expectations of how well and long babies should sleep but also how well and long adults should sleep too. There’s such a lot of fascinating research on sleep that I’d like to return to this subject – there’s so much to say!

There is a school of thought that says that babies and toddlers who don’t sleep through the night shouldn’t be expected to. If we look at sleep practises around the world, bed sharing and breastfeeding during the night are so common that putting babies in their own room to sleep all night can seem rather bizarre. Are we really the only culture that doesn’t sleep with their babies? Would it be better if we did? Should babies be sleeping through by six months or a year? Continue reading →