Find Healing in the Messy Middle
If you are someone who has cared for infants you know that there’s a deep divide in child rearing when it comes to sleep. Those who follow The Cry It Out method and those who follow the Cosleeping method. One encourages self soothing for good sleep and the other encourages attachment for good sleep. There’s also a messy middle ground but these two distinct methods were the most talked about 10-13 years ago when child rearing began in earnest here.
The Cry It Out method has hard boundaries. Put the baby in the crib, let them cry or self soothe until they fall asleep. Rinse and repeat. The Cosleeping seems like the opposite: baby is constantly attached to you, no separation, let them sleep with you and your presence soothes them to sleep.
While I don’t doubt that my first child might have slept better if I gave them the hard boundaries of crying it out, the trauma that we experienced in childbirth kept me from comfortably embracing this strategy. Emotionally and physically, I needed to be close to my child to be sure they were okay and not going to have a seizure or stop breathing (something that happened when my child was a newborn).
The problem was, while my body and emotions knew I needed to find another way, mentally I didn’t trust myself as a parent because all the books I read gave me one extreme or another and I felt a lot of shame that my child couldn’t sleep through the night.
My naturopath midwife wisely told my husband and I that we need to do what works for our family. That’s when we threw ALL the sleep books out that filled me with the notion that I was a failure (which was all of them) and started to work with what helped all of us sleep the best. It wasn’t a perfect journey, but we figured it out and now my oldest (at 13) sleeps through the night and has for years..
I also observed what other parents were doing that helped their kids sleep better. So, when baby number 2 rolled in (with much less trauma at childbirth luckily), I had the wisdom we gained from raising our first plus some new methods that worked even better. It worked like a charm for baby 2 and I integrated what I could for baby 1.
For those who are sleep curious here’s what worked for us: Instead of trying to get our children to sleep at the time everyone said to, we held our baby in an Ergo (baby wearing contraption) until they looked sleepy and then we transitioned baby to the crib or wherever they were going down and sleep happened. No crying, no requirement to cosleep, no requirement to be in bed by a certain time. Just peaceful sleeping.
Now the lessons here are many fold and are relevant for a myriad of health challenges. It’s important to:
Look holistically at the challenges you are having. In our case, we all needed sleep, but our approach also needed to address the trauma we had experienced.
Customize your approach: Just because a book, a person, an app says this is the best way, it’s not always what works for you. It’s definitely helpful to have an expert in the form of an actual person to guide you - a teacher, healthcare practitioner, a mentor, etc.
Follow your emotions: if your process is piling on unpleasant emotions like shame, anxiety, anger, depression, fear these are good signs you need help in shifting your perspective and/or very likely need to change how you are doing something. When something fills you with ease, peace and joy this is also a great indicator that you’re onto something.
Be an observer: While we can often sense when something is wrong by tuning into our emotions, it’s hard in those moments to observe yourself and see what you are doing well. You can observe what others are doing not so much to build envy, but to build skill and self awareness.
Experiment and find your balance point: I actually tried both methods and neither felt completely right but one felt closer to what I needed so that’s where I landed. It made it easier for the second time around to find equilibrium.
Share your findings in community: We all have struggles and usually if one person is struggling, someone else has been there ahead of you and found new ways forward. We all benefit from sharing with each other. As important as sharing the struggles are, sharing the wins helps us to see our progress and celebrate.
If you are searching for more support specifically with your sleep (not your baby’s) consider trying acupuncture or the practices suggested in Overcoming Insomnia Self Care Tools Course on The Joy of Healing Academy.
