Pediatrician
Dr. William Sears, in The Baby Book (Little, Brown and Company, 1993) says,
“Encouraging a baby to sleep too deeply, too soon, may not be in the best
survival or developmental interests of the baby.”
There are two
best ways to put babies to sleep
1) The parent-soothing method
2) The self-soothing method.
Both have
advantages and also possible disadvantages
1 1) Parent-soothing
method.
When
baby is ready to sleep, a parent or other caregiver helps baby make a comfortable
transition from being awake to falling asleep, usually by nursing, rocking,
singing, or whatever comforting techniques work.
Advantages
Baby learns a
healthy sleep attitude – that sleep is a pleasant state to enter and a secure
state to remain in.
Creates` fond
memories about being parented to sleep.
Builds
parent-infant trust
Disadvantages:
Because of
the concept of sleep associations, baby learns to rely on an outside prop to
get to sleep, so—as the theory goes—when baby awakens he will expect help to
get back to sleep. This may exhaust the parents.
2.
Self-soothing method
Baby is put down awake and goes to sleep by himself.
Parents offer intermittent comforting, but are not there when baby drifts off
to sleep.
Advantages:
If baby
learns to go to sleep by himself, he may be better able to put himself back to
sleep without parental help, because he doesn’t associate going to sleep with
parents comforting. May be touch on baby, but eventually less exhausting for the
parents.
Disadvantages:
Involves a few
nights of let-baby-cry-it-out
Risks baby
losing trust
Seldom works
for high-need babies with persistent personalities overlooks medical reasons
for night waking
Source
familias-madeira.com/Elizabeth.Pantley.The.No.Cry.Sleep.Solution-1.pdf
askdrsears.com/topics/health-concerns/sleep-problems/31-ways-get-your-baby-sleep-and-stay-asleep
