I was having a conversation with my husband recently that sparked this blog post. We were discussing why people need sleep coaches now when they haven't in the past. I have some thoughts, and these are only my personal opinions. Feel free to comment below if you have other opinions.
Why are there so many coaches nowadays? We have Relationship Coaches, Parenting Coaches, Potty Training Coaches and Sleep Coaches to name a few. I have a few ideas why we have these helpful people as part of our lives now. I am going to focus on sleep coaches, but I think many of the following reasons apply to other coaches being part of our lives as well.
1. Families are more spread out. In the past, families were closer together and thus new parents had more help. When my children were born, my parents did come to stay near us (they live in New York, we live in Virginia) , but once my children were a few weeks old, I had no close help. With my daughter it was not a big deal, she was a relatively easy child and I was getting sleep. She was also my first, so I had no other children to take care of. Then my son came along. My daughter was 2 and I had a very cranky baby who barely slept. How I wished my family was close then! How nice it would have been to have them come over a couple of times a week just so I could get a nap in. I do not believe I am the only one who has been in this predicament. And this is when a Coach comes in handy. In this case, I could have used a sleep coach to walk me through my son's sleep issues and reassure me while I was trying to improve his sleep.
2. Overload of information. I searched for Child Sleep Books on Amazon.com. After narrowing it to just the books in Parenting & Relationships there were 350 results!! I know when my son was not sleeping, I bought a couple of books, but which one was right for us? And more importantly, which one would work?! Here is the great thing about a sleep coach - most of us have read a lot of these books and we've been trained on many of the methods. We find out about your child and how you parent and we recommend the method that we believe will work the best in your situation. And then we guide you through the changes as you make them. A book cannot take into consideration your child and the differences each child has.
3. More women working and not staying home. I am in no way judging this, I just personally think this is one of the reasons why more people use sleep coaches. If a woman is not working, she may have time during the day to possibly take a nap and get caught up on some sleep. Of course if she has other children to take care of, this is probably not the case. And especially if she has to work, she will not have time to catch up on any sleep during the day. Some women are going back to work when their babies are only 6 weeks old, and thus they are probably not getting much sleep.
4. More children are being breastfed. There have been studies that show that initially, breastfed babies may wake more during the night than formula fed babies. This difference however disappears as the babies get older. Here's a link to the study: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20111018/Link-between-breastfeeding-and-long-term-sleep-issues.aspx This does not mean I am advocating formula instead of breastfeeding so your baby will sleep more. In fact, when my son was a baby I switched him to formula hoping he would sleep better (he was also going down on the weight percentile chart and I unfortunately did not have a doctor or lactation consultant that was working with me to continue). I was so tired, I was hoping this would be the miracle, but I was wrong.
5. No, you cannot spoil a newborn! In the past, mothers were told not to hold their babies too much or they would be spoiled. Take a look at this infant care brochure from 1929. Infant Care Brochure. I find this quote particularly interesting (and so wrong!): "He should learn that hunger will be satisfied only so often, that when he is put into his bed he must go to sleep, that crying will not result in his being picked up or played with whenever he likes". This is from the newborn section! So if parents were indeed letting their babies cry at young ages and fall asleep on their own, they would probably have no choice but to fall asleep. Luckily today, we realize that letting a baby cry it out as a newborn is not a good idea. And there are many kinder, gentler ways to encourage good sleep habits in children of all ages, without leaving them along to cry along.
So these are some of the reasons I've come up with that may cause more people today to seek out help than in the past. Do you have other ideas? In all, I am so much happier with where we are now as compared to years ago! I do not believe that "training in self-reliance should have begun by 1 year" as the Infant Care Brochure I mentioned earlier states!
Michelle Winters
Gentle Sleep Coach, Greenproofer
www.sleepwellsleepsolutions.com
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