A new mum talks about the pressure she gets from family and friends, to persuade her, against powerful personal feelings, to impose rigid routines on her young baby. The answer is simple. Most people don’t discuss their finances or sex life with their relations and friends either. Just don’t tell them.
Lately, I understand, there has been a frisson of activity on a parenting page regarding a blog I wrote in 2014. In the blog about preventing sleep problems in six month olds I quoted from my book “Your Cherished Baby’ and suggested:
Ideally, he should be put down drowsy but awake. If possible there should be minimal fussing after tucking in. Unless it is your choice and the baby’s habit, once down, avoid rocking, cuddling or patting to sleep. And if it is, you have a choice to gradually (step by step, night by night) wean the baby off such input […]
Just lately I’ve had a question from a couple of mothers through email and Facebook asking me what to do as their babies are now 6 months old and they are still exclusively falling asleep at the breast.
A paediatrician to one of them told her to stop this, and the other was told that ‘feed, play, sleep’ was some kind of gold standard to work towards as early as possible.
It’s perfectly okay for babies to continue falling asleep at the breast if you are both happy with it. There is nothing essential about separate sleeping and nothing biologically important […]
I’m getting confused between how to teach my baby how to “self-settle” and not employing “control crying”. Can you explain the difference, at what age you can start to teach self-settling and the best way to do it?
This is a couple of edited excerpts from the chapter on “Sleep” from my new book “Your Cherished Baby” published by Pan Macmillan and released on the 1st August 2014.
Read on…… IIt is important to understand that babies up to the age of about six months have almost no ‘working memory’. That means that they can’t really ‘learn’ anything at […]
Many thanks for looking after our baby Hayden in Hospital and he will be seeing you again around 6 weeks. A question about swaddling, Hayden really likes to be swaddled, he will be 1 month old tomorrow. How long should we continue to swaddle him? I have read about some concerns after 1 month with interfering with mobility and development? What is your advice?
D Done properly, swaddling is a useful and safe practice for young babies. It quite definitely helps to calm them and improves their sleeping pattern for a couple of reasons:
