Why We Chose Not to Sleep Train
The great debate.
Whether or not to “sleep train” your baby is one of the most talked about and controversial topics facing new parents today (wow, I sound like Chris Harrison from The Bachelor). If you talk to new parents who sit on either side of the fence, there are strong opinions across the board. But they are just that, opinions. Now that our baby mostly sleeps through the night consistently (started around 13–14 months), I wanted to know if there was any scientific data that is pro one way or the other. We chose not to sleep train our baby. Partly because we didn’t feel it was the right choice for our family and partly because we weren’t able to. In either case, it’s a decision made by each family, but for some reason this topic draws A TON of judgement from both sides.
Side note: it’s hilarious to me how new (and exhausted) parents can sometimes be a little naive when asked if their baby is sleeping through the night because their answer is more often “yes” than “no.” Maybe they’re lying, maybe they’re telling the truth, but if your baby goes to bed at midnight and wakes up at six, I personally wouldn’t qualify that as “through the night.” But hey, don’t judge my parenting and I won’t judge yours (this should be the motto we all live by).
Living in Chicago is full of many benefits — like deep dish pizza and sharing your one bedroom apartment with your baby— and as new parents living in the city without a car, having a pediatrician in walking distance was imperative and of utmost importance since we knew we’d practically be living there. Luckily, there was a practice in our backyard led by the son of a world-renowned pediatrician and sleep expert whose book is a staple in the libraries of new parents. There’s absolutely no way our baby wouldn’t be a fantastic sleeper, because we’re getting advice from a doctor whose family has an entire METHOD named after them. This should be easy, right?
WRONG. Dead wrong. So incredibly wrong.
Did we follow the method to the letter of the law? Of course not. Did we try? Not really. Why not? Didn’t you probably bring this torture on yourselves? Maybe.
Look, here’s the deal. We’re first time parents. We have no idea what we’re doing and all we can do is trust our natural and biological instincts. This is the foundation in which we’ve decided to parent our child — by trusting our instincts and our baby like most of them, is an extremely complicated little human.
For the first three or four months of her life, she would cry for HOURS on end and we had no idea why. Since she couldn’t talk she couldn’t tell us why she was so upset. Doctors and nurses all said the same thing. She’s just a “colicky” baby or she has acid re-flux so they referred us to a GI specialist who put her on antacids. That didn’t work, so we thought maybe it was the formula we were giving her (another decision we made as a family and the other heavily scrutinized topic) so we studied up on that. During this tough time period (for all three of us), the only method that seemed to help stop the crying was the Five S’s. You can read more about it here, but the Five S’s to help soothe your baby are:
- Swaddle (self-explanatory)
- Side (lay baby on its side in your arms)
- Shush (create white noise by shushing or using a sound machine, etc…)
- Swing (light gentle jiggle like jello)
- Suck (give them a pacifier)
To our genuine surprise, this really worked and sometimes was how we would get her to sleep because she was comfortable — it’s one of our big takeaways from our early days of parenting.
So after we learned about the Five S’s and did more research on different types of formula and their ingredients (spending an unbelievable amount of money trying a bunch), we came to a revelation: she wasn’t allergic to milk, rather she had a cow’s milk protein intolerance. This intolerance caused all of the screaming because her stomach was in KNOTS and we had no idea, because how could we. Yet, we felt like WE were the ones that were causing her all this pain. Sweet. Great job, team.
This takes us to around the six month mark where we’ve discovered this intolerance and the doctors recommended we put her on the most expensive formula on the market, Neocate, a hypoallergenic baby formula that’s typically only used for kids with severe milk allergies. There are other options out there to help with this kind of thing made by the two big formula brands — Similac and Enfamil — but after trying a bunch, Neocate was the only formula that seemed to agree with her. Go figure — my kid is the one who is too sensitive for Costco ANYTHING (formula, diapers, wipes, etc...). RIP my bank account.
All of this context is important because she obviously hadn’t been sleeping through the night at this point and would wake up every couple hours for a dream feed. She would take most of her formula overnight (we’re talking like 15–20oz) because she just wouldn’t take much during the day and this was the only way for us to make sure she was getting nutrition. We tried tasting Neocate for some terrible reason and it tasted HORRIBLE. It literally burns your throat so no wonder she had to take it while unconscious because it tasted like hot garbage and we weren’t sleeping a wink because we had to keep feeding her overnight. This of course was an ongoing discussion we had with our doctor and while it’s not ideal, we had to make sure she was taking in enough formula so it became necessary.
Even if we wanted to, our doctor did not recommend us sleep training her at that point because she wasn’t “eligible.” By that he meant that she wasn’t eating enough during the day that would allow us to start weaning her off of dream feeds and letting her start to “cry it out” or “self soothe.” Mix her ineligibility with our personal beliefs and we came to the conclusion that sleep training was not going to work for us. It goes against our natural biological instincts. Were cavemen putting their kids in other caves and putting on noise-cancelling headphones or cringing while ignoring their babies cries so they could all sleep at night? Probably not.
OK, so what does the data say? Honestly, it doesn’t point one way or the other. There are studies that show sleep training works and won’t cause psychological damage and there are studies that show whether you let them cry it out or not, eventually babies will start sleeping as they get older and start developing regular sleep patterns.
It’s a tough decision and it shouldn’t be made lightly. The whole point I’m trying to make is that no method is better than the other. You should do whatever you’re comfortable with and go with what is going to work best for you and your family. If you choose to sleep train, that’s great! If not, also great! We’re exhausted beyond belief, but this is the path that we chose and our baby is getting there. She’s taking her sweet-ass time, but she’s getting there. So stop judging us, assholes.
