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Home › Articles › Crying Issues › Crying Baby, Sleepless Nights

Crying Baby, Sleepless Nights

Why Your Baby Is Crying and What You Can Do About It

By Sandy Jones

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Shared Sleep Is Good for Parents, Too
Ironically, the very thing that most parents do to get more sleep results in their getting less sleep. Typically, parents decide that they can sleep better if the baby is in another place, and so they put the baby in a crib in a separate room. The baby becomes frightened by the isolation and cries out to bring the parents close. A parent, aroused from sleep by the crying, gets up and feeds the baby, who goes to sleep in the parent's arms. The parent returns the baby to the crib and goes back to the other bedroom to sleep. The baby sleeps until hunger pangs and loneliness arouse him again. The baby cries, the parent is aroused, and so the night passes.

Instead of getting more sleep, the parent actually gets less sleep this way than if the baby were within arm's reach. A breastfeeding mother can nurse her baby without getting up or even waking fully. She need not sit up waiting for the baby to finally fall back into a deep sleep. And many parents have found that sleeping with their babies decreases the frequency of night wakings, so the parents themselves get more rest.

You can test this idea yourself by taking your baby into bed with you for a few nights to see if his night waking and crying are reduced. You may want to make some notes on his behavior first, so you can accurately compare his sleep patterns in isolation and in your bed.

By giving in to your baby's inborn need for closeness, you may find that you not only help him conserve his energies for emotional and physical growth, but you conserve your own energies as well.

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