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ThinkGeek Advocate Letting Your Baby Cry

ThinkGeek — "stuff for smart masses" — are selling a baby 'sleep trainer' in their Newborn/Infant category. The promise is to get your baby "sleeping through the night in two weeks". Now, personally, when I signed up (metaphorically) to being a parent, I knew I would be parenting at night as well through the day. I figured sleepless nights and all that malarkey were part of the deal. I certainly didn't sign up for leaving my infant to cry themselves to sleep night after night.

I feel very strongly about 'cry it out' methods, and it's counterpart 'controlled crying'.

For starters, it encourages social pressure to have your baby sleeping through the night from a young age, and this is not normal behaviour. It's not normal for an infant to sleep through, and those that do are an exception, not the rule. Many adults do not sleep through the night (waking to urinate, get a drink, whatever) so why do we expect the same of a baby fresh from the comfort of the womb?

Secondly, there is sound research into the harmful effects of prolonged crying in infants, due to increased cortisol levels. Cortisol is released by the body as a reaction to stress (e.g. when an infant is left alone in his/her cot with nobody there for comfort, not knowing when a caregiver will return); it suppresses the immune system, and destroys nerve connections in critical portions of an infant's developing brain¹.

Controlled crying/cry-it-out causes the baby to shut down. In fact, this is how it 'works': baby gives up, and sleeps deeper/for longer. A promising thought if you're sleep-deprived, but deep sleep — much like when baby sleeps on his/her tummy — prevents the baby from waking as easily if there is a 'problem', e.g. if breathing is interrupted. This is so serious, that the Back to Sleep campaign was created². If preventing deep sleep from sleeping on the tummy caused a big drop in SIDS deaths, surely other causes of deep sleep could be connected to infant death too? I'm not a scientist but it's a logical connection to me.

Anyway, back to ThinkGeek. One of the most worrying things about this is the categorisation and subsequent description of the product. It's in the Newborn/Infant category for starters (who in their right mind would leave a newborn to cry themselves to sleep?). Secondly, this line:

NOT sleeping through the night? You might be teaching your baby that behavior

A claim made with no obvious scientific backing to scare parents into buying this pointless product, and ultimately into leaving their baby to cry. Furthermore, a study on infant sleep behaviour from 1994 shows a wide range in normal infant sleeping behaviour, which is at odds with this claim³.

Lastly, under the product spec, we have:

For ages 4 months and older

This disturbs me on many levels. Dr Ferber, one of the biggest advocates of controlled crying, does not recommend using his methods on children under 18 months. He puts a lower limit at 6 months, but notes that the younger the infant is, the less successful the 'training' will be. Ferber acknowledges that his method doesn’t teach kids HOW to fall asleep on their own, infants are simply denied access to a caregiver, and left to work it out for themselves.⁴

In light of this, I contacted ThinkGeek. I explained that not only had I purchased quite a lot from them, but had referred customers who had spent hundreds of dollars. I then outlined my findings, expressing discomfort at their willingness to back this product. Their response?

Please let me know if you have any other questions. Have a great day!

...and that's it. They blew me off. Not even so much as an acknowledgement that they had read my e-mail. I can only take from this that ThinkGeek advocate leaving babies to cry against the advice of multiple experts. Not a company I can support, and as such have removed all product links to ThinkGeek from my previous posts and pages. I will no longer be making purchases from ThinkGeek, and encourage any of you who feel similar that you make it known.

References

¹Schore, A.N. (1996), “The Experience-Dependent Maturation of a Regulatory System in the Orbital Prefrontal Cortex and the Origen of Developmental Psychopathology,” Development and Psychopathology 8: 59 – 87.
²Helping Baby "Back to Sleep" [pdf]
³Armstrong KL, Quinn RA, Dadds MR. (1994), "The sleep patterns of normal children."
⁴Dr Richard Ferber (2006), "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems"

For more information, please see my delicious bookmarks tagged 'controlled crying'

Update @ 18:55

ThinkGeek have added the following comment to the product page:

This doctor-designed system is for healthy babies 4 months and older. Please consult your pediatrician to see whether this system is right for your geekling. ThinkGeek doesn't advocate letting babies cry (especially when the world is full of hugs & bacon), but the system has helped lots of parents and babies sleep better. Moral of the story: Consult your doc before buying and keep on being the best geek parent you can be.

What a cop out.

HiPP Baby Club Aggressive Marketing

I signed up to HiPP Baby Club a while back to vote for a friend's picture in a competition they were holding. When signing up, you're asked to specify details of your children such as how you're feeding them (I specified breastfed), their age, etc.

So, there's me checking my e-mail first thing this morning to find an e-mail from the baby club titled "5 months old - Weaning special". Now, Isabel has only just turned 5 months today. You're not supposed to start weaning until at least 6 months (see NHS no rush to mush page). This is based on studies that show early weaning is damaging to the digestive health of babies. I've already made clear my thoughts on early weaning so I won't go on about it, but I just couldn't believe how bloody blatant this push to early wean was.

It wasn't even subtle about it; there were several misleading lines, including:

6 months is the recommended age to begin (for development reasons you shouldn't leave it any later than this), but some babies may be ready sooner.

and:

Signs to look for
Baby still seems hungry, even after more milk has been given
Showing an interest in your food
Putting toys and objects in their mouth
Able to sit up well with support

For starters, milk (either breast or artificial) is the only source of nutrition a baby needs for the first year of life; food is for fun, to explore tastes and textures. Even hungry babies don't need early weaning because solid food contains less calories! Secondly, there is no "developmental" reason to delay solids, it is in fact recommended by many professionals to delay solids (more so if there's a history of allergies). As for the signs to look for... total tosh! Isabel has been doing those things since under 3 months old, are they suggesting I should have weaned at 12 weeks?!

I tried to unsubscribe to the mail and the web page gave me an error, so I sent them a ranty response and smugly deleted their mail thinking it'd be the last I heard from them.

No such luck. The postie interrogated me at lunch time to give me a bright green cellophane-wrapped package. I could barely hide my excitement! ;) Mind you, it was short-lived. Lo and behold, yet more HiPP weaning crap. Free samples of follow-on and night time formula (don't even get me started on this shit) and a sachet of baby rice. Nowhere on the accompanying letter was it mentioned that the recommendation is to wait until 6 months before weaning. In fact, the wording positively encourages you to start asap: "the perfect start", "Babies love organic goodness" etc.

I can't stand this sort of aggressive marketing, and rest assured that the whole lot went in the bin. I'll start weaning Izz after 6 months, not before, and certainly not on to HiPP products!

Your Stupidity Knows No Bounds

So, clearly being one of these crazy rambling mummy types now it's only logical that I browse a few of those crazy rambling mummy type forums. The first baby-oriented site I joined was babycentre. It's shite; loaded down with adverts and full of total muppets who shouldn't be allowed to breed. However, that aside, there are also some very funny and very intelligent mums on there who entertain me regularly.

Now, out of boredom while feeding Izz I decided to browse a few of the groups I wouldn't normally look at. My "birth club" for starters, which I abandoned shortly after the boobmonster was born because I got sick to death of reading about babies being force-fed hungry baby formula to sleep through, and tales of babies being left to cry. From there, I ended up in the "Early Weaning" board. Bearing in mind that the recommendation is to delay the introduction of solid foods until 6 months (26 weeks), because prior to that food can leak from the digestive system as it's not properly matured, imagine my horror to find:

my daughter is 11 weeks on monday but is acting like she wants more then just milk. [..] i have baby rice and rusks in

and...

my lil boy is 9 weeks been feeding for 2 wks x

and...

my boy was 9lb 7 oz when born is now 10 weeks and 14lb on hungry baby milk. [..] Want to give him some baby rice now before bed so he will sleep.

I just... wow. Words cannot describe how stupid and selfish you have to be to force a child to consume more than they're physically ready for. I'm well aware that they used to suggest weaning at 4 months, but I'm pretty sure the Department of Health didn't increase this just for shits and giggles.

Of course, you mustn't disagree with these women because mums know best!

Thank F... for Co-Sleeping

Confession time: we co-sleep. Shock! Horror! Apparently this is going to cause me to roll onto and murder my child, yadda yadda yadda.

It's all accidental of course. I didn't plan to co-sleep, and we didn't start this way. Still, when you're feeding a newborn who's waking every few hours for a feed there's nothing worse than having to drag your weary arse out of bed, fetch baby — who by this point is wide awake and hungry, and letting you know about it — feed said baby and then get them back to their cot/crib/whatever without waking them up again.

So, I quickly learned that it's much easier to just stick baby on their side, attach to boob, and go back to sleep. Baby feeds, baby sleeps, no movement or arsing about involved.

Isabel was having a rare disturbed night last night. Waking more frequently than normal and having difficulty settling (she was busy singing and gurgling to herself instead) and I realised that, were we not co-sleeping, I'd have had to get up and down about 8-9 times last night.

It's no wonder parents of young babies are expected to be exhausted, quivering wrecks. Personally? Couldn't be better, cheers for asking. ;)

Adventures in Hospital Land

AKA what a bloody ridiculous week and a half.

First off, my Internet dies and nobody seems to know who's at fault. BT says it's not them (phone line/exchange) and Plus.Net say it's not them and everything is fine at their end. We change cables, test alternate router, etc. End up having to make several calls to Plus.Net who elevate the call and eventually find the problem.

Just as that's mid-way, I start getting abdominal pains... and how am I supposed to diagnose myself with Dr Google without the interwebs? Anyway, cue call to Mum and have her advise me to go to A&E. They tell me I have gallbladder colic, fill me full of paracetamol (they wanted to use pethidine but I refused because I'm breastfeeding) and send me home.

Cue two days of gradually increasing pain, doctors appointments, pee and blood tests before I head back to A&E and get admitted - this was last Thursday (Feb 25th). They're telling me they think I have gallstones floating about somewhere inside and that's causing the problems. Not an issue in itself, but because I'm breastfeeding, they suddenly have lots of problems with finding a solution.

Now, bear in mind that we have big campaigns in the UK to encourage mums to breastfeed. Every NHS maternity ward/baby clinic is plastered in posters lecturing on the goodness of boobie juice, telling us we're doing best by our babes etc... and yet a hospital, full of well-educated medical sorts, can't seem to find their arses when it comes to treating a breastfeeding mum. I was told, point blank by some jobsworth bitch who obviously didn't think I should have taken Isabel with me to A&E, that hospitals were dirty places, the medication too strong and that Izz would have to go on to formula.

I don't particularly enjoy breastfeeding — it's a means to an end — but I cried. How dare this woman, who didn't know me, start making demands of my baby and our feeding. She wasn't the last person though... all of the doctors/surgeons start lecturing me about how Izz would need to go on formula.

I had to fight to be treated with breastfeeding-friendly antibiotics. I had to fight to keep my baby on the ward with me. I had to fight to breastfeed her on demand, whilst nurses and doctors were prodding me every 5 minutes with needles, blood pressure checks, temperature checks, etc.

After x-rays and scans, piss tests, blood tests etc they came to the conclusion that I had a gallstone blocking the bile duct. It was causing the liver to dump bilirubin out into the urine and through my skin, turning me yellow. They wanted to remove the gallbladder and were pushing me to put Izz on formula so that I could have the operation because they insisted that I'd not be able to feed for 48 hours post-op (yet, caesarean mothers can feed straight away?) It was total bollocks.

In they end, they shipped me off to another hospital to have an endoscopy. After fighting with yet another childness staff nurse about how I should be feeding my child ("you must express now") because she assumed the drugs would not be breastfeeding friendly (we had to hand her printed research, which she refused to give back; she ended up calling the pharmacy to confirm we were right) I had 2 gallstones removed. I soon returned to normal colour and, yesterday, I was able to come home.

Throughout this I've had nothing but sarcasm, bullshit and pessimism from a stream of predominantly male doctors/surgeons. I spent 4-5 days worrying about my daughter's digestion, diet etc before we finally got in touch with the hospital maternity department and had our argument and theories backed up by one of the lactation consultants who came to my ward and kicked arse. I am so angry about my experience with a so-called pro-breastfeeding NHS that would have caused any less than stubborn mother to cave and fill her child full of shit.

And on that note... it's time to change her nappy.