From family beds to cry-it-out, sleep methods are a highly controversial topic among parents and professionals alike. Thi issues around co-sleeping vs sleep training gets parents in a tizzy.
Having tried both methods, I’d like to share a holistic view on a good night’s sleep that has everyone’s best interests in mind.
Co-Sleeping
Parents who subscribe to Attachment Parenting (AP) commonly co-sleep with their infants either in the same bed or at least in the same room. As with more mainstream sleep strategies, there are pros and cons, myths and realities to co-sleeping and AP methods.
Skeptics declare that bed-sharing babies are in danger of suffocation. This is a myth. As long as you and your partner do not smoke or over-use alcohol or drugs and your mattress is firm, your baby should be safe in your bed. Note: It is unsafe to sleep with a baby on a sofa or armchair.
Proponents of co-sleeping claim it leads to more independent, confident or outgoing children, or that sleep sharing somehow leads to a child with higher self-esteem. While it remains to be seen if co-sleeping will influence your baby’s personality, the bonding experience that may occur for mom and dad may boost their own self-esteem as parents.
Co-sleeping Pros
- More Sleep – Co-sleeping babies can breastfeed easily throughout the night, disrupting parents’ sleep less in the early months when baby requires night time feeds.
- More Bonding Time – Sleeping together allows for extra time spent enjoying and building a close relationship with your baby.
- Simple Soothing – Co-sleeping makes it easier to respond to babies, so they may fall asleep faster when they wake during the night and cry less
- Decrease Risk of SIDS – Studies show that less Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is reported for babies who co-sleep.
Co-Sleeping Cons
- Less Rest - Sharing a bed with an infant can take time to get used to, and parents may not sleep as well when bed-sharing with baby.
- Less Freedom for Parents – Babies used to sleeping next to mom and dad may have a hard time falling asleep when in someone else’s care. Additionally, transitioning from co-sleeping to solitary sleeping is usually difficult and may lead to bed-sharing when it no longer works for everyone involved.
- Over-dependent Baby - Babies who are used to being nursed to sleep do not learn to get back to sleep when they wake from natural sleep cycle, requiring their parents’ help well beyond infancy.
- More Challenging Intimacy – Co-sleeping forces parents to compromise in terms of their love-making in bed. Though it’s possible to get creative, the demands of having a baby tend to overshadow inventive sex.
Sleep Training
Sleep training involves helping your baby learn to fall asleep easily and eventually, stay asleep throughout the night. Most experts consider “sleeping though the night” to be a 5 hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep. Sleep-trained babies typically sleep in their own room in their own crib, although co-sleeping families can utilize routines as well. Sleep training typically involves:
- Sleeping, waking, and often feeding at the same time to establish a routine that works with your baby’s own biological clock while not confusing day and night.
- A quiet, safe, separate sleep environment for babies that provides a comforting atmosphere without distraction.
- Following a nightly, pre-sleep routine, such as a warm bath, some quiet time spent together and feeding before bed time.
- Teaching baby to fall asleep on her own with minimal distress and without being nursed, rocked, or bounced to sleep.
There are many variations of sleep training, but the basic gist is that if you start routines early and are persistent and consistent, most babies (even “bad” sleepers) catch onto the routines by about four months of age without the notorious crying that give these methods a bad name. Older babies (especially beyond 6 months) may require a bit more crying before they give up their co-sleeping habits, but the transition can usually occur within 3 consecutive nights of a new routine.
Critics of sleep training believe that leaving a baby to cry herself to sleep is not only cruel and heartless, but also detrimental to babies’ emotional development and may cause unnecessary or even harmful physical distress.
Proponents believe that sleep training is the swiftest way to teach good sleep habits as well as providing a healthy, restful environment for the whole family. Allowing a baby that is not hungry, sick, stuck in a dirty diaper or otherwise in need of physical care to cry a bit while learning to soothe herself to sleep is normal and not torture. Most sleep training methods provide options for “no-cry” or minimal crying, and parents who use these methods usually can recognize those times when their baby is too distressed to fall asleep on her own.
Pros of Sleep-Training
- More Sleep – Once a sleep routine is established, the whole family sleeps for longer stretches uninterrupted.
- Contented Baby – Sleep trained babies know how to fall asleep without assistance of mom and dad, tend to be well rested, and adequately fed – all of which makes for a happy, calm baby.
- Good separation = good connection – Parenting requires constant attention and connection to your child. Having the ability to unplug and recharge allows for better bonding and connection during the waking hours.
- Happy Mommy - (and Daddy). Well-rested parents can be more present for themselves and their children, are able to make better decisions, have more patience for the challenges of parenting, and have more ability to experience the joys of parenting as well.
Cons of Sleep-Training
- Front Loaded Effort – During the early days of establishing a routine (when a new mother is already exhausted and overwhelmed from birth, breastfeeding, and adjusting to a new baby), mama may get less sleep and feel more stressed as she must wake at night to go to baby for feedings.
- Extra Discipline Required - Routines take time and consistency to establish. It may be frustrating and seem like baby will never catch on for the first several weeks of trying. Having a mentor who’s done it before may help.
- Less Flexibility - Schedule babies are best kept to their routine on a regular basis. This may not work for parents who prefer to take the baby along to social engagements on a regular basis or are just not good with sticking to a schedule.
- More Gear – Co-sleeping requires your bed. Scheduled babies tend to sleep in a crib in their own room. You will also need a baby monitor to listen for baby’s cries from your room at night and black-out curtains to simulate night during nap times.
Choose a Sleep Strategy that Feels Right
Both co-sleeping and sleep training have their plusses and minuses. As the parent to your child, it is up to you to pay attention to what feels right regarding sleeping arrangements (and all other decisions). There is no right or wrong way, only what works for you and your baby. This may be die-hard attachment parenting, conventional sleep-training, or somewhere in between. Peer pressure aside, decide for yourself, and turn out the lights.
PS. If you’re interested in trying sleep training, I highly recommend The Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford – My current bible on sleep routines after severe sleep deprivation with baby #1. Gina is known for her hard-core routines, and some of her concepts (especially regarding formula, water, and solid food) need to be taken with a grain of salt, but the concept of proper sleep/feeding patterns makes sense and, if you stick with it, will result in your household getting more sleep and more peace.
I co-sleep with my baby as she has eczema and I want to know when she scratches at night. So that’s one more pro to co-sleeping but of course, it’s more tiring for parents.
You mention a few possible psychological problems as cons for co-sleeping/bed sharing babies, but none for sleep-trained babies; the “over-dependent baby” was of particular interest. Seems counter to what I’ve heard from other parents who have tried both co-sleeping & bed-sharing, where kids who are left to sleep training are typically less confident and more dependent later in life & their co-sleeping siblings are more self-confident & independent.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your interest. This is certainly a hot topic among parents and experts, but in my personal and clinical experience, babies who have more structure tend to be more confident because boundaries create a sense of security. This applies to everything from sleep to daily routines and discipline. It’s not to say you can’t co-sleep and have structure, but especially with older babies (above 6 months) I don’t see it happening very often. That said, every parent needs to find what is best for their child and their family.
Anecdotally, I don’t find this (what Dan said about co-sleepers being more self-confident and independent) to be true among lots of people with small children that I know. Both the co-sleepers and the sleep trainers seem to have quite healthy, well-attached kiddos, all with phases of clinginess or dependence.
We started out co-sleeping at first with a mini-bed tucked into the family bed (so my husband wouldn’t crush the baby) and then with an Arm’s Reach Co-Sleeper and this worked so well for us. I was able to just scoop my daughter in one arm and slide her over to me to nurse in the middle of the night and we often just fell asleep like this unless I was somehow able to stay alert enough through the nursing to return her to her own sleeping space. What I realized as she was growing was that it was becoming harder for her to fall back asleep because she could see me and wanted to play in the middle of the night. We detached the co-sleeper from the bed and dropped the bottom so it was more like a playpen and that seemed to solve the problem for about a month. And then she started sleeping so lightly that every night when I crept into the room to go to sleep, she would wake and, therefore, need to be nursed and taken to the potty (this was around 7 months and we practice part-time EC). My husband and I decided to sleep in another room one night to see how long she would sleep if we weren’t in there disturbing her and she slept 10 hours straight for the first time! It was then decided she needed her own room and a full-size crib. The first time I set her down for a nap in her new bed and surroundings, she cried in protest for about 15 minutes and fell asleep but didn’t cry at all when I set her in there for the night. She sleeps much better now and I can even sometimes hear her just babbling and playing in the mornings instead of flat-out crying because she sees me and I haven’t quite woken up to come to her. I always imagined we would have a ‘family room’ for several years, but our daughter decided on her own that she wanted to be separated from us. I just wanted to post this for any parents who might be undecided about their approach on this part of child-rearing and let you know that even if you have a plan in mind, sometimes you need to just go with the flow.
Thank you for posting a “balanced” opinion about this that doesn’t make one type parent evil and the other the most amazing parent ever! We have 5 kiddos and expecting another soon. We did sleep training with our first three (a little different each time)… but they did start out in our room to make nursing easier… just *usually* not in our bed. Then with #4 we were doing sleep training but I was probably “more lenient” because of the chaos of 4 little kiddos… and I couldn’t handle him crying (even though with the others… there hadn’t been a lot of crying). Eventually he was sleeping pretty good… then at 3 months he got pneumonia which messed up everything previously done! Then after he got better… he was waking in the night still (after he had been sleeping through the night) and we were in a small house where he had no room of his own… so we were kind of “stuck” until we moved so he could have a room of his own… around 6 months old. It was then that we retrained him to sleep through the night. I think it only took about 2 or 3 nights of him crying a little bit after he woke in the middle of the night before he began sleeping through the night again. I was so exhausted from this little guy. With our next… we did sleep training & I plan to do it again this time around. Now that my kids are 11, 9, 7, 5 (the little “attached” guy), and 3… EVERYONE is a great sleeper EXCEPT the little “attached” guy!! He is more insecure and scared of crazy things than any of the others have been. Is it because we did sleep training after 6 months? Is it just his personality? Is it other things going on in our lives? Who knows!! But the fact that he is the only one we parented differently in the way of sleeping… I am certainly going to avoid that way this time around if at all possible! SO… thank you for not making me feel like an evil parent for sleep training my child! ;0) BTW, we always have the HAPPIEST babies! Everyone comments on that. Hopefully this new one will be happy as well! AND we’ll all be WELL RESTED!!
We never would co-sleep but never would let baby “cry it out”, we always put our baby to bed awake but sleepy and she’d fall asleep 95% of the time. The first few weeks the baby slept in our room we were awake most often and neither of us well rested.
Any recommendations for helping a 15mo old AP kid learn to fall asleep? He’s such an amazing little boy and I love him to pieces, but I can’t have him sleep with us and nurse all night long any longer. We cosleep and I still breastfeed. I nurse him to sleep and start him off in his own bed. Then like clockwork, he wakes up around 12:30, give or take and hour, I bring him to our bed and I nurse him there. And ever since he got out of the newborn stage, he’s nursed a min. of 4 times, and sometimes up to 7 times, between midnight and 6am. It’s killing me!!!!!!!!!! I do not sleep through the nursing sessions any longer, I haven’t since he was a newborn. I also work full time. At this point, somethings got to give. But I’m not sure if I should follow sleep training books thinking that they’re geared toward infants. I don’t know. I need a break from this.
I think Elizabeth Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution does have a section on older babies. Other than that if you are committed to not using any kind of CIO, have you looked into whether there’s a local sleep consultant you can hire that specializes in no-cry? It might be pricey, but perhaps worth it to help with your sleep deprivation. Even then though, I suspect it will be a long hard road. Good luck!
We have been using this night-weaning method with some success (link below) for our almost 2 year old co-sleeping little boy. I never thought we would “sleep train” but I realized we actually have been putting firm routines in place for over a year (since about 7 months) and this could be a form of gentle “training.” He goes to bed at the same time with the same routine every night, nursing to sleep and then I get up. I join him in bed a few hours later. Of course, then he is waking up to nurse every 45-90 minutes after that, and after almost 2 years I’m really feeling a need to change things. Dr. Gordon’s plan seems gentle in that you do not leave your child alone- but they DO cry when they realize they are not going to get to go to sleep their usual way. Dr. Sears, the main advocate of attachment parenting, even says “a child crying in the arms of loving parents is NOT the same as cry-it-out.” And the advantage with a toddler is that you can explain it to them.. “nursies are sleeping…. mommy sleeps, daddy sleeps, nursies sleep. you can have nursies in the morning” or whatever. There is a picture book, too, called “Nursies when the Sun Shines” that is very cute and about a co-sleeping little boy who learns that when the sun comes up he can nurse, but at night everyone sleeps. Hope that helps. Good luck!
http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html
Love this, thank you for a well-balanced piece about sleep!
I wanted to add that I do believe that some babies just have a REALLY hard time sleeping and need to cry to learn to sleep. My son needed vigorous bouncing and then careful transfer to bed, then nursing to sleep, he really NEVER fell asleep on his own. I tried many different routines and schedules, and his little nervous system just wasn’t able to sleep with any of the no-cry methods. (I guess I’m a little defensive, and I like to let people know that trying the no-cry method is a great idea to try, but it may not be effective with some babies, and not to feel like a failure if it comes to letting your baby cry. They will cry often over the next few years when all manner of things don’t go their way, including bedtime.)
So the night he turned 6 months we started cry-it-out sleep training, and there was a lot of crying. I do think there is huge variability in baby’s temperament and some baby’s just need to cry. He is very happy and confident and is quite a good sleeper now at 11 months.
For all of you saying cry it out is okay (Janna) well IT’S NOT. It is NOT okay to let a little baby lay there and scream it’s head off! What is wrong with you people? And yes, I have a four year old and I know what I’m talking about. I got up every 2 hours to feed/change him in the beginning, then after a month, every 3 hours, slowly he started sleeping longer and longer. I frequently co-slept with him too. I have never been that exhausted in my entire life. I thought I was going to lose it but I did it because I’m his MOTHER and I refused to let my child lay by himself screaming. It is heartless to do that, it is wrong, get over yourselves and pick your child up. The sleep deprevation is only temporary and everyone goes through it. Deal with it.
Wow, this is really rude and uncalled for and trying to shame me as a mother is not OK. I’m sorry it was so hard for you, I’m sure you did what you thought was best for YOUR child. I did what I thought was best for MY child.
Yes it was hard and I got through it. My point is, it’s hard for ALL parents when it comes to not getting enough sleep and all parents go through it. Cry it out is cruel. Sorry if this offends you or anyone but letting a little baby lay there and cry is just mean.
Sounds like this Mama (Janna) tried many sleeping tactics with her baby. She had to do what she felt was best. No one has any right to judge her because she knows her child best. Mother’s work is hard enough without people telling her she’s “wrong.”
You have one child. What worked for your one child’s temperament might not work for every kid. One of my 3 was a high needs baby and if I didn’t catch his sleepy cues in time and get him to bed, I had a choice to either hold him and try to nurse him while he arched and screamed, or swaddle him and put him in his quiet dark crib where he would cry for a few minutes and fall asleep. We all figure out what works for our individual children and families. No need to be rude.
My son is 17 months old. I follow his sleep rhythm and he is becoming a better sleeper all on his own; I don’t interfere or do any type of “sleep training.”
1-3 months he slept 5pm-5pm, he would wake up at 10pm, 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am to nurse.
4-10 months he slept 6pm-5:30pm, he would wake up every hour to hour and a half to nurse.
10-15 months he slept 6pm-5:30pm, he would wake up at 9pm, 12am, 2am, 4am and 5am he would nurse till 5:30am and wake up
16-now all of the sudden he became a better sleeper. Note: day light savings. Goes to bed at 8pm wakes up 1am, 4am, and 6:30am and nurses till he wakes up. Several days he even slept through the night! Then his cuspids started to come in and he started to wake up more frequently.
It almost seems to me that infants go through so many “painful” developmental stages (GERD, maturing of digestive tract, teething etc…)during their first 1 – 1 1/2 that some babies just want/need pain relief. I think (based on what I read) that the pain is relieved through suckling on the breast. I say that because my son would only really nurse well once or twice per night (10 – 15 minutes) the rest of the time he would suckle for 5-10 seconds and fall back asleep. This suggests that he is suckling not because he is hungry, but because he needs comfort. Furthermore, since he sleeps some nights better than other nights this suggests that he only needs comfort when he wakes up frequently. I also notices that some of these nights were related to his teething and colds. The nights during which he mostly sleeps he must have felt content because he did not wake up.
In short, my experience has been that my son woke up/wakes up for a reason. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell what that reason is but I noticed he became a better sleeper without me having to “sleep train” him. It will be interesting to see if he’ll finally start sleeping consistently through the night without my interference to “sleep train” him.
As a side note, before I got pregnant and til my son turned 12 months, I had no clue what “Attachment Parenting” was. I read a bunch of breastfeeding books and basically, followed my instincts for the first year. Then I saw a magazine cover with a toddler nursing is when I learned about AP. I feel relieved that I finally found a style of parenting that was more in line with what I have been doing.
I’m not one for putting labels on what I do. But I guess others would label what I’ve ‘done’ as co-sleeping with a bit of sleep training too. The first 2-3 weeks my daughter would NOT sleep in the bassinet next to the bed. I would go out to my chair and feed her there and fall asleep. I can’t really feed her in any other position than the football hold (shape of breasts and nipples makes the other way too difficult). I could get about 2-3 hrs of sleep before she would wake up and be hungry. I finally figured out her bed was too cold next to the window so my husband and I switched sides. She actually slept 4 hrs in her bassinet! My daughter is almost 4 months old now. She still sleeps in her bassinet as her new room is not done yet. She will sleep up to 11 hrs through the night. I didn’t do anything special to get this to happen. In fact it amazes me on how much she will sleep at night. I feed her before bed and make sure she is warm. I have been putting a blanket over the bassinet to keep the light out as it’s still my room. Oh and she takes 2-3 hr naps in the covered bassinet just fine too. I wish I had advice other than setting up some kind of routine you and the baby are happy with.
You have one child. What worked for your one child’s temperament might not work for every kid. One of my 3 was a high needs baby and if I didn’t catch his sleepy cues in time and get him to bed, I had a choice to either hold him and try to nurse him while he arched and screamed, or swaddle him and put him in his quiet dark crib where he would cry for a few minutes and fall asleep. We all figure out what works for our individual children and families. No need to be rude.
I strongly disagree with the statement, ” Babies who are used to being nursed to sleep do not learn to get back to sleep when they wake from natural sleep cycle.” This just simply isn’t true. I have always nursed my daughter to sleep. My husband and I did a combination of bed sharing and co-sleeping until my daughter was 8 months old (for the last month of room sharing she slept in her crib in our room). At 8 months, we moved her crib into her own bedroom and continued to nurse her to sleep. She immediately began sleeping for longer stretches at night and began waking only 1-2 times per night to nurse and sleeping from 7 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.
My daughter is now 17 months old and still nurses to sleep (which only takes 20 minutes) and has only been waking once a night to nurse (and sometimes not at all) since 12 months with no encouragement or training from us.
The idea that babies who nurse to sleep will never learn to sleep longer on their own is myth.
Very true! There is NO basis for this statement at all. Your child WILL learn to fall asleep alone (all kids do), but kids do it at different stages based on their own physiological development.
What bothers me most is that all research suggests you should never engage in sleep training prior to six months (if at all). Even Dr. Ferber who started it all said it should not be taken up earlier than six months. The developing circadian rhythm and natural diurnal system is still developing and the body needs that time without any external intervention. We have known this for years and yet uninformed and ignorant people (like Gina Ford or Tizzie Hall) promote techniques that counter all we know of child development. No one is saying you can’t implement gentle techniques to help a child older than six months sleep in ways that may help the whole family, but sleep training isn’t that and isn’t considerate of the child.
Sooo appreciate that you acknowledge the validity of both of these options! People have a tendency to be very hard core about which method they choose, and so much of the literature out there just produces mommy guilt- as if you are going to ruin your child if you don’t pick the “right” sleep method. Parents need to feel free to pick what is best for their baby and family! Thanks!