Today I present the interview that we have done with María Berrozpe, author of a recently published book entitled "Sweet Dreams", published by Alianza Editorial. I anticipate that it is not a book with tips for the baby to sleep better, but a tool for mothers and fathers to make autonomous decisions, but above all respectful of family values. Information is 'power' and it is what its reading offers us. It has been possible thanks to the analysis and study of the scientific and informative literature on childhood sleep.
María Berrozpe has a doctorate in biological sciences and has dedicated her professional career to research, which she combines with raising her three children. He lives in Zurich and is currently researching and studying everything that is related to the primal health and development of children. Our protagonist today is also the author of The Science of Infant Sleep (web of scientific dissemination) and the book "A new motherhood"; as well as a monitor for La Leche International League. You can learn more about it at her blog Reeducando a Mamá. Before leaving you with the interview, I would like to tell you that if there is something that seduces me about your new book, it is that offers a new image of children's sleep science, since it is presented as integrative and multidisciplinary.
If you read us, you are a mother or father, and if you are, you will ask yourself every day, or you will have asked yourself in the past (in the case of having large daughters and sons) 'what to do' if the baby has trouble falling asleep: Can I sleep with him? When do I pass it to your room? Is it good for me to nurse at night? To these questions, you may find answers that are consistent with your own values, others that do not help you, even a lot of professional advice that sometimes becomes 'training methods'. Many of the recommendations will make the little ones suffer, and you, and they are not a solution because you are not the one who makes decisions adapted to your way of raising. And now if:
Mothers Today: Is it true that we are witnessing what is described as an 'epidemic' of childhood insomnia? If I remember correctly, I have read sometime in The Science of Children's Sleep that only occurs in western societies, what are the causes?
Maria Berrozpe: In our society we put sleep conditions on our children that are not in keeping with their nature as secondarily altricial babies, mammals and primates. We want them to sleep alone away from us, while they are “programmed” to keep in touch with their mother, or another adult caregiver in their absence, 24 hours a day. Their survival has depended on it during our evolution. Babies still do not know that today they are practically safe alone in their crib or hammock. For them it is so dangerous and produces as much panic as when in ancient times they were exposed to the claws of a predator.
MH: Do you think mothers and fathers have lost confidence in our ability to parent and do well? What other factor could explain the number of professionals in the field of pediatrics who come giving us recommendations on where and how babies should sleep? Don't you think that excessive levels of interventionism have been reached?
MB: I cannot tell you very well if we have lost it or it has been taken from us. From the end of the XNUMXth century and the beginning of the XNUMXth a series of informative works reflect the enormous meddling of pediatricians and psychologists in parenting, which began to standardize a series of behaviors of purely cultural origin, in the name of medical science. Parents lost confidence and we left a responsibility that belonged to us in their hands.
MH: Isn't the family the one that should hold the highest authority in matters of parenting, child sleep included?
MB: I believe that it is about including all the actors who can help to solve a problem. Let me explain: obviously medicine is essential to solve pathological situations. If we have a child with a fever, the most sensible thing to do is to consult the doctor. Other sciences can help us explain the behavior of our children, for example, evolutionary biology, neurology or anthropology and having some knowledge of them can help us a lot in parenting. But finally we are the parents who have to make the decisions of how we want to breed and our values and knowledge should never be belittled by any scientific discipline, including medicine.
MH: Really, if you think coldly, relying on 'training methods' for our children to sleep is the strangest thing, but it is also that, as I have read in other interviews that have been done to you: pediatrics 'sleep' has despised knowledge that other disciplines could contribute. Do you want to tell us something especially relevant about what biology brings about children's 'sleep' needs?
MB: The most relevant thing is that we are secondarily altricial mammals so we are designed to be in constant contact with our mother to be fed frequently. But sleep pediatrics has based all of its research over the last century on the study of the baby who sleeps alone and is bottle-fed, as anthropology professor James McKenna points out.
In this way, he has set solitary sleep as a healthy model, standardizing it and ignoring that these conditions are aberrant for the human baby. That is why this researcher proposes the term Breastsleeping as a new concept on which to base research on children's sleep.
MH: When you say that our children find it difficult to adapt to the cultural demands we impose, what do you mean?
MB: We are trying to force them to sleep alone at an age when their brain is not yet ready to understand that there is no danger and that they are fine that way. Or we take away their nocturnal lactation and hope that they will consolidate their sleep throughout the night at ages when their sleep architecture is still evolving and it is natural that they suffer nocturnal awakenings in which they claim their caregiver and want to feed.
Oskar Jenni, a pediatrician at Zürich Children's Hospital, introduced the concept of “goodness of fit” in the context of childhood sleep precisely to refer to those culturally determined environmental conditions that respect the child's needs and adaptability. If the goodness of adjustment is not respected, we are facing a poverty of adjustment, which occurs when environmental demands exceed the child's ability to adapt. A situation that can lead to real pathologies. According to Jenni, clinical interventions should aim to respect goodness of fit, and not get the child to sleep alone at any cost.
MH: Do children need their parents at night? What happens in the brain of a child who is left alone at night, neglecting his crying? And what are the consequences it could have on its development?
MB: Babies need the regulatory role of their caregiver, preferably their mother, to develop a healthy and adaptive response to stress. A stressful situation suffered in abandonment, such as the darkness of your lonely room, can provoke a toxic response that has harmful consequences on your mental and physical health in the short and long term.
So far there are no studies conveniently evaluating the effects of stress produced by training techniques based on letting cry, and its defenders cling to that. But we could extrapolate results from other studies that show that the stress produced by unresponsive care (such as a depressed mother) is enough to cause significant damage. Other studies show that babies who are allowed to cry until they fall asleep are actually still stressed when they have stopped crying, causing a desynchronization between what they show and what they feel.
And on the other hand, it has also been seen that colliding babies have a healthier response to mildly stressful daily situations, such as a bath. All this leads us to believe that letting babies cry to “learn” to sleep can significantly influence the regulation of their response to stress, which will have a significant impact on their health.
MH: Is it true that co-sleeping is a common practice in other cultures? In addition to being a facilitator of breastfeeding, What other advantages does it have for babies and their mothers or fathers?
MB: In younger babies, co-sleeping facilitates the regulation of their temperature, heartbeat and even sleep architecture, which leads to a better metabolic adaptation to life outside the uterus.
As the baby grows, he is able to regulate his physiology on his own, but he will still be drawn to collide with his mother. This is absolutely natural behavior and can be a precious experience for everyone. It is a real shame that in our culture it has been, and still is by some sectors, so demonized, preventing so many children from enjoying it.
Mothers who collect respond better to cues from their babies, and are also more satisfied with their care. On the other hand, it has been shown that co-parenting parents have lower testosterone levels, which positively affects their parental behavior.
MH: I think it is about time that you tell us what we are going to find in the book, Why do you think we will like it?
MB: Because it will give you a complete, multidisciplinary and contextualized vision of childhood sleep. This book does not have magic recipes for children to sleep, but rather information that can be useful for you to find the best recipe for you and your children to sleep happily.
MH: It may not be your style to give 'custom' advice to our readers, but how do you make it easier for a baby or toddler to sleep happily and have a peaceful sleep? If any healthy child will end up sleeping 'well' at some point in their childhood, What would be the role of the adults who take care of it?
MB: The role of adults is to provide security. I believe that all human beings, children and adults, what we need the most to sleep really well is to feel safe.
And now that the interview is over, I can only thank Maria so much for introducing us to her book and, above all, for sharing such a respectful perspective on children's sleep needs. It's been a pleasure .