Working with Infant Biology Instead of Against it to Build Sustainable Sleep Relationships
I remember working with a client who told me, “I just want to be less scared of my baby at bedtime and overnight.” The fear came from the lack of control, the extensive bedtime routine that didn’t have guaranteed results, and the predictable overnight wakes. This mom was not only exhausted, as all parents are to some extent, but it was impacting every aspect of every day. She experimented with tips and schedules that she read online, both parents were involved in the routine and were equally invested in figuring out a solution… but they were still feeling stuck in an unsustainable situation around their baby’s sleep and knew they needed support.
I talk about this client because I think her story can resonate with a lot of parents. That feeling of anxiety as bedtime rolls around, asking yourself “gee I wonder how little sleep I am going to get tonight?”, and the longing for the phase of life before you had your baby, when sleep was guaranteed.
It is perfectly normal to grieve the life you had before your baby. You can love your baby more than life itself & wish you could go back to before. Both feelings can exist at the same time.
I entered the world of infant sleep as a postpartum doula. My clients would tell me about their little one’s sleep, ask if I had any tips to offer, and wanted me to give them the blueprint on how to make their baby sleep longer. I felt stuck. Through observation, I knew how babies usually slept but really could not respond their questions and feel confident in my answers.
And so began my journey into the world of infant sleep. Little did I know I would become so passionate about normalizing ideas around infant sleep, responsive parenting, and helping parents follow their instincts. I will talk about how I helped the client I was describing earlier, but I think it’s important that you first understand my philosophy around infant sleep.
It’s no coincidence that our babies want to be held all the time, waking within minutes of you laying them in the bassinet. If you’ve noticed contact naps can sometimes last 3-4x longer than crib naps, it’s because your baby knows that you, your heartbeat, your motions and your emotions are a safe place to rest. It’s not because you’ve taught them to be dependent, its biology. A baby’s sleep cycle is usually around 30 minutes long; when they rouse between cycles while laying on your chest or safely beside you, they can gently glide into the next cycle. In the first year, babies communicate through the senses, so when they rouse between cycles in the bassinet and cannot sense your presence, they will likely rouse fully instead of gliding into the next sleep cycle.
Where this gets confusing for parents (and I don’t blame you) is when sleep consultants who prioritize adult sleep over biologically normal infant sleep, tell you that babies can learn to fall back asleep on their own. They tell you to let your baby figure it out. Now, developmental biology tells us that from 0-3 years of age, the part of the brain that is developing is the limbic system (emotional brain), so how could your 4-month-old think about falling asleep when the cortex (thinking brain) doesn’t develop until 3 years old?
As the limbic system (emotional brain) is developing, the way we can communicate with our little ones is through connection, words, & the senses. We can guide their little bodies into sleep with our touch, our closeness, our voices. This is nurturing the dependence that babies need to develop their emotional brain. It’s why contact naps, co-sleeping, and shared spaces in the first year of life work so well for many families. The more we nurture this part of the brain, the more equipped they will be to fall asleep & stay asleep as they get older.
There is this concept that circulates in the sleep world called self-soothing. Sleep trainers tell you how to gradually leave you baby for longer and longer periods of time until they stop crying and fall asleep. Now that is true. That is what they are telling you to do, and that is the result.
However, the result is not because they learned how to self-soothe. It’s because their limbic system (emotional brain) and brain stem (survival brain which is present at birth), learn that crying will not result in their parent coming to tend to them, so they should not waste their energy by crying. They stop crying and fall asleep out of exhaustion. Sure, you’ve achieved the desired result of you getting more sleep, but at what cost to your baby’s development? Babies who are sleep trained still wake in the night, but instead of calling for help and being settled back to sleep, they exist in this fight or flight state until they fall asleep.
As you can see, sleep training is not the path I wanted to take when it comes to supporting my clients achieve sustainable and developmentally appropriate sleep with their babies. But I also don’t want parents to think there is nothing you can do to improve sleep. I wanted to help parents tune in to their baby’s sleep needs, teach them why babies sleep the way they do, and help them understand when something isn’t ‘normal’.
I do this by carefully evaluating each individual client’s sleep experiences, then through a combination of face-to-face meetings and email correspondence, teach them how to trust their instincts, how to work with sleep regressions instead of against them, and how to address the root cause of their baby’s sleep disruption if it does fall outside of ‘normal’.
Attachment-focused sleep support is always tailored to each unique family. It always respects developmental biology. It helps parents and their babies develop and maintain sustainable sleep relationships.
So how did I apply this sleep philosophy to my client that I mentioned above? Through their intake form, I was able to identify 1-2 things that were likely disrupting their baby’s sleep that fall outside of ‘normal’. I explained how these things relate to sleep and how they can address them. I then looked at the routines they wanted to change, including an extended bedtime routine, and talked about how to slowly make meaningful adjustments that do not include crying but can still produce the desired result. We used mom and dad’s superpowers as this little baby’s attachment figures to do it all! Throughout everything, I listened to their concerns, validated their feelings, encouraged them to listen to their instincts and cut out the noise. When they realized that they don’t have to follow strict sleep schedules, but instead can watch, learn from, and meet the little baby’s needs who is right in front of them, everything clicked and that fear lessened.
This is why I do this work. It feels bigger than just sleep. It feels like I am a cog in a machine helping a generation of parents work with their babies instead of against them to build healthy and restful sleep relationships.
My name is Katie Franklin, and I am a Baby-Led Sleep Specialist, Postpartum Doula, & CPST. While my support as a doula and CPST are limited to my community, I offer sleep support virtually and therefore support families across Canada.
Source: Dr. Greer Kirshenbaum, PhD, Nurture Neuroscience
