Sleep is a huge topic for new parents. I write these words with a 4 month old baby asleep on my chest. She sleeps well there. But last night, she woke up every hour between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., which was when we had to get up to get ready. And she’s not even in the worst configuration for a baby her age. Sometimes she manages to sleep for five hours straight.
I would do anything for this little creature, but it’s no picnic for anyone that she wakes up so often. After a certain point, you eventually get over the feeling, caused by sleep deprivation, that tiny ants are biting the inside of your skull.
As scientists say, sleep is a biological necessity. Deprived of sleep, your body begins to malfunction. There is evidence that a baby refusing to sleep can cause depression in their parents and if you know enough about it or have children yourself, you knew that before a study told you.
The question is: how can you get your baby to sleep more? And the answer, odd as it may seem, is that we don’t really know (and if someone on Instagram claims to have the secret… it doesn’t work).
A scientifically revealing method
One of the main methods suggested by health authorities to help toddlers sleep is sleep trainingor sleep training, also called the “Ferber method”. The content of the concept may vary depending on people. But as a general rule, it involves letting the baby cry without rocking or comforting him so that he learns, ideally, to calm down on his own.
So, rather than picking up your child as soon as he starts crying, you wait a little bit, say two minutes, before going there and saying comforting words to him, without rocking him to sleep. Then, gradually, you lengthen the waiting time. The idea is that the baby will learn to fall asleep on his own, without parental intervention and that ultimately he will have better quality sleep.
An overview of studies over the past thirty years on the Ferber method seems to indicate that it works.
In some parental circles, this practice is extremely controversial. The waiting phase is real torture for parents, to the point that many claim that it is a harmful method for children (the most substantiated evidence we have to date does not allow us to affirm that it is particularly so). But nothing is worse than hearing your tiny baby screaming in the next room while waiting for an alarm to go off to comfort him.
However, it may be worth it if the method really works. What does science say? An overview of studies over the past thirty years on the Ferber method seems to indicate that it works. Although some of it is a bit dated (like this random study from 2002, for example), the data seems pretty consistent.
If you randomly divide a cohort of parents into either a group that intervenes with their babies and is instructed to let the child cry in a controlled manner (with instructions usually provided by a midwife or pediatric nurse) or a no-intervention control group, you find that parents who use the controlled cry method report that their babies sleep better.
One example: A 2007 study conducted a trial on 328 mothers, some of whom randomly received the controlled crying advice and some of whom did not. Those who received the counseling reported better sleep in their child after three months and were even found to be less depressed after their child passed the age of 2. And this small study conducted in 2016, which tested a type of controlled crying called “progressive extinction”, also showed significant benefits on sleep, according to parents trained in the Ferber method compared to those who had not been trained.
An improvement in the quality of babies’ sleep, really?
Sleep training seems extremely effective, but there is a problem. As you noticed, all of these studies measure parent-reported outcomes. However, our biases program us to believe that our hard work pays off in one way or another. If you order parents to torture themselves by listening to their child cry without intervening, it is quite likely that they will claim that the method had benefits, even when it did not.
There is a scientific study that analyzes the improvement in the quality of sleep of babies to whom the method was applied. In a study published in 2015, a team of Canadian researchers divided a cohort of families in two: one part received advice from sleep training and safety, the other only safety advice (know, if you haven’t had a baby recently, that there is a wealth of advice in the area of infant sleep).
The parents were instructed to put an actigraph – a device that records movements – on their baby for the entire week of the experiment. This allowed the researchers to assess not only whether parents thought the Ferber method improved their child’s sleep, but also whether it was a reality.
Although sleep was not objectively improved, parents in the Ferber-trained group reported less depression, less fatigue, and better sleep quality.
The scientists found that the rate of nighttime awakenings measured objectively by actigraphy was the same in both groups. While sleep training had slightly lengthened the infants’ longest sleep periods, there was no sign of any notable improvement in sleep among those whose parents had been trained in sleep. sleep training. On the other hand, the method doesn’t harm sleep either; your baby won’t stay awake forever if you don’t rock him or her.
But another element emerges from this data. Although sleep was not objectively improved, parents in the Ferber-trained group reported less depression, less fatigue, better sleep quality and more alert intellectual faculties.
Benefits at least for parents
Which raises an important question: What’s the point of sleep training? According to the Canadian researchers, these results show precisely what they expected: it does not prevent children from waking up. On the other hand, it reduces the time and effort it takes for parents to get the baby back to sleep and, very importantly, it gives parents control over their child’s sleep that they did not have before. If your sleep-trained baby is waking up as much as before, but you feel like he’s able to go back to sleep on his own, sometimes even without waking you, that’s huge.
So yes, to a certain extent, we can say that it works. Depression and burnout are, after all, largely subjective experiences. If parents report an improvement in the quality of sleep thanks to controlled crying, then we can argue that there is a benefit even if, in fact, babies do not sleep more than before.
Importantly, this method also reduces a crucial indicator: parental anger at the infant who refuses to sleep. One of the hardest things about being a parent whose child doesn’t sleep is the level of rage you can reach at 4 a.m., even though you know you shouldn’t get angry, because he’s just a baby. Reducing this feeling of helplessness, even rage, felt by young parents is in itself a success.
Whether or not you choose to use sleep trainingwhich has its limits, there is nevertheless a glimmer of hope for all young parents who struggle painfully in the trenches of broken sleep in the early days. In all studies, children’s sleep eventually improved over time. Getting your baby to sleep tonight may remain a mystery. But all babies, whether they’re sleep trained or not, eventually sleep through the night.
