October 30th, 2011 by mothershipster
ARTICLE EXPLAINING NEW (OLD) FINDINGS THAT ATTRIBUTE OPTIMAL INFANT DEVELOPMENT TO CO SLEEPING http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2054393/Bad-news-dads-Babies-share-mothers-bed-age-good-hearts.html
“Babies ’should sleep in mother’s bed until age three’
Newborn babies should share their mother’s bed until they are at least three years old”- Daily Telegraph 10/29/11
Most of you know, that like physicians, my hands are tied when it comes to recommending how you treat your newborn. Those who know me well also know how frustrating this is. Usually, I say go with your gut, and do what’s best for your family, and hope for the best. Then I watch with anguish as a mother frantically pushes her baby in a stroller, and tells me “her baby doesn’t like to be carried.” So sad. Sad that these same mothers tell baby wearers that they are “spoiling their baby.”
To spoil is to ruin. You cannot spoil a baby; a newborn infant; by carrying it “too much.”
You can spoil, i.e., ruin a child’s life-into adulthood-by not carrying her at all.
I cannot tell you to let your baby sleep on their stomach because that’s the only way they will sleep.
I cannot tell you that SIDS is a myth, and there is no scientific basis behind the “back to sleep” campaign.
I cannot tell you that many of these “SIDS’ cases were actually homicides-suffocation by parents.
I cannot tell you that co-sleeping is best for baby, and best for you because you will sleep.
I cannot tell you that there has never been one incidence of SIDS in a non-smoking, non drinking, home with parent who are not obese, nor use pillows or blankets.
I cannot tell you that autopsies on infants are a relatively new procedure, and SIDS was implicated automatically.
I can tell you that breastfeeding itself lowers the “risk of SIDS.”
I can tell you that every new parent who thinks they can solve their child’s sleep problem is kidding themselves if they are not swaddling their baby. That’s all I can say without getting attacked. I’ll leave the rest up to these researchers and doctors. Please read them.
VIDEO OF DR. NILS BERGMAN:
http://vimeo.com/16323781
“The very best environment for a baby to grow and thrive, is the mother’s body,” says Dr Nils Bergman, a doctor specializing in Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) in South Africa. “When placed skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, the baby receives warmth, protection and food, and its brain can develop optimally. Not feeding the baby often enough and leaving it to sleep alone after a feed can result in the baby getting colic”, he adds. “The mother’s skin is the baby’s natural environment, and both physically and emotionally the healthiest place for the baby to be”.
Failure to be kept in conact with the mothers skin, maintains Bergman, is not only a negative behaviour but also creates a state of pathophysiological stress. This is true for healthy full-term babies, as well as those born prematurely. As with other mammals that are moved from their natural environment, human babies react with protest and despair. In the protest phase, the baby tries intensely to re-establish contact with its correct environment, the mother, usually by crying.
If that fails, the baby becomes too tired to cry anymore. Instead it lapses into a state of despair in which the individual withdraws in order to conserve energy and concentrate on survival. The result of this is a lower body temperature and heartbeat, while at the same time there are greatly increased levels of stress hormones, because a baby separated from its mother, is in fact stressed. When the baby is returned to its correct environment, which is skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, the temperature and heart rate quickly return to normal levels.
Human babies are biologically extremely immature when they are born. Nils Bergman points out that the newborn’s brain size is only 25% of its final size, which he compares with 45% in chimpanzees and 80% in antelopes. Not until around one year of age does the human baby’s brain reach 80% of its final size. Compared with other mammals, we should have a 21-month pregnancy.
Despite their immaturity, human babies in their proper environment, which is skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, can take care of themselves, says Nils Bergman. He refers inter alia to the research of Ann-Marie Widström, that healthy newborn babies without any prompting and without assistance, can crawl up to the mother’s breast, find the nipple, latch on and start to breastfeed.
Dr Bergman says that babies sleep in cycles of 1 to 1 ½ hours. But even if the baby is asleep, the brain registers whether or not it is in its right environment (skin-to-skin with its mother or separated from her). Of course babies can be made to sleep alone and for longer periods, but that is a learned behavior, not a natural or healthy one.
The development of the brain is benefited and normalised by skin contact.
The greatest advantage of the baby being kept skin-to-skin with the mother for 24 hours a day, and being breastfed freely, is the development of the brain, Nils Bergman points out. A baby is born with a maximum number of synapses (that is, potential connections) between the nerve cells. Neurological pathways become established between the synapses that are used, and unused synapses die off. By 6 months of age, all the baby’s brain cells are fully developed. After that, it is the neural pathways that have been formed which become the important determining factor in the quality of life that the individual will experience. These neural pathways can be stress-related or pleasure-related paths, depending on the environment in which the baby is placed – closeness to the mother, or separation from her.
In the first 8 weeks of life, skin-to-skin contact is the most important stimulant for the development of the brain. He says this continuous physical contact is an essential requirement if the fundamental structures of the brain are to be developed in a healthy way. After this requirement, the most important stimuli that the brain needs for normal development are eye contact, and the physical need to be carried by the parents. Sometimes babies have to go through painful procedures or stressful situations, and at such times it is even more important for the baby to have skin contact with the mother.
In Western societies one often hears the advice given that babies be put down to lie on the floor in order to develop their back muscles. Nils Bergman emphasises, “What is commonly done is not necessarily normal, or what should be done”. A baby who is carried, develops in a very different way from a baby who is left lying down. The physical differences relating to where the baby is placed, are not in or of themselves of primary importance, he says, it is the final outcome, optimal brain development resulting from being carried by the parents, that matters.
“Only in the last century we have abandoned our three million year-old pattern of caring for children. We have replaced continuous carrying of the child, co-sleeping with the parents, and breastfeeding on immediate demand with leaving the child to lie alone, ignoring its crying, and feeding it every four hours with formula”, he adds.
Mothers need support.
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