Parents debate whether it's wrong to sleep train babies.
Welcoming a new baby to the world is a wonderful but daunting experience, and no matter how much you try to prepare, there will always be something you aren't fully prepared for.
For many parents, that thing is lack of sleep.
You can hear parents talk about exhaustion and sleep deprivation and still be wholly unprepared for what a baby who isn't a great sleeper does to to your psyche. It's no surprise that many parents turn to parenting books and "experts" to try to figure out how to get their babies to sleep, which is where the idea of "sleep training" comes in.
Sleep training is a broad term for teaching or training a baby to go to sleep (or back to sleep) without needing to be soothed by a parent or other caregiver. There are many sleep training methods that range from fairly common sense to borderline abuse, which is one reason it seems to spark big debates between parents. Everyone's talking about a different method when they defend or vilify sleep training.
Sleep training usually involves letting a baby fuss or cry for some length of time, which some see as problematic because of research on the importance of responding to babies' cries. Others say that a little crying is a small price to pay because it's healthier in the long run for baby and parents to get good sleep.
Of course, there's a huge difference between "crying or fussing for a few minutes" and "wailing and screaming with no end in sight," and that's where the big disconnect comes in. For some parents, sleep training entails the former, and it works, so they swear by it. For others, it entails the latter, and it's a nightmare, so they think it's horrible.
There's also a huge difference between "I'd love it if my baby would sleep all night without waking" and "I think I might die if I don't get a 4-hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep." Desperation makes many parents who might not love the idea of sleep training to give it a go.
I have some personal experience with this. My first baby wasn't a great sleeper. I remember thinking, at six weeks postpartum, "There's no way a person can survive on this little sleep." I adored my baby, but the sleep deprivation from waking up several times a night for weeks on end felt like literal torture.
She started sleeping through the night when she was a few months old, but that didn't last long. Teething happened. Then crawling happened. It seemed like just when she'd get into a nice sleep routine, some milestone would throw us right back to waking up and crying multiple times a night. She slept in our room next to our bed, so it was easy enough to nurse her back to sleep, but it was still night after night of disrupted sleep.
I was desperate to try something, but I wasn't keen on the idea of sleep training. It's a natural instinct to respond to your baby's cries, so walking away didn't feel right. One book had suggested leaving the baby in their crib to cry by themselves and not pick them up no matter what. If they got so upset that they threw up, you were just to clean them up and do the same thing again. Um, no thank you.
But I had heard other parents say they tried different sleep training methods that involved leaving them to cry for just a few minutes, going in to pat/comfort them, leaving them again for a little longer, and going back and forth until they eventually fall asleep. I read so many parents say something like, "It took like 15 minutes of fussing for them to fall asleep the first night, 5 minutes the second and after that they just went right to sleep and didn't wake up until morning!"
If only all babies slept this peacefully.Photo by Yan Krukau/Pexels
That sounded reasonable. So I tried it, a couple of times.
It went nothing like how those parents described. Not even close.
First of all, my baby did not "fuss." It was full-on crying, wailing and screaming with snot and drool involved. Secondly, there was no patting her to calm her down—she would only calm down if I picked her up. Third, the wailing when I left the room didn't ever subside, it only got worse and worse. I felt like I was torturing my baby and it was breaking my mama heart, so we gave it up.
I have no doubt that those parents were telling the truth about how sleep training worked with their child. It just absolutely did not work that way with mine.
That baby is now 24 and has slept in her own bed all night for over two decades. My other two kids had their own sleep personalities as babies—one of them super easy and the other more like my first. I didn't do anything different to make them that way—it's just how they were. It was hard sometimes. We co-slept as needed. It all worked out in the end.
There are a few things I know for sure after parenting three kids and talking with countless other parents:
1) Every baby, child and family is different and what works for one won't necessarily work for another. As long as no one is actually being abused or neglected, do what works for your kid and your family.
2) Anyone who offers definitive, one-size-fits-all advice on any part of parenting is flat-out wrong. One size most definitely does not fit all.
3) Sleep is important, but unless you've slept a night in their bed, don't judge a parent for how they choose to handle sleep with their baby. What's right for you may not be right for them.
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A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.