Blog Posts 1–5, based on the United States of America Department of the Army Field Manual: Holistic Healing and Fitness, describe what really matters for your child’s sleep. If sleep is an important enough topic for national defense than surely sleep should be considered a serious topic for parenting!
A paper by Professor Ian St James-Roberts compared two parenting styles in London, England:
1. Proximal care (infant demand care) is defined as parenting that involves holding infants throughout the day, frequent or unrestricted breastfeeding, rapid responses to cries, and cosleeping (bed-sharing or family bed). The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages bed-sharing because of its association with SIDS. Mothers chose Proximal Care before the birth of their baby. 29% of the mothers were employed full-time before maternity leave.
2. Conventional care in Western countries is defined as parenting that involves putting infants down often during the day, scheduled feedings, sometimes delaying responses to cries, and separate surfaces for sleeping. 57% of the mothers were employed full-time before maternity leave.
A study compared infants in these 2 groups at 10 days of age and at 5 and 12 weeks of age. All group differences were statistically significant except where * appears.
| Conventional Care | Proximal Care | |
| 10 days | ||
| Minutes infant held while awake | 509 | 989 |
| Minutes infant held while asleep | 152 | 571 |
| Number of feeds | 11 | 14 |
| Minutes without any contact | 832 | 377 |
| Minutes infant fuss/cry without any contact | 38 | 10 |
| Minutes fussing | 82 | 56 |
| Minutes crying | 32 | 15 |
| Minutes of unsoothable crying* | 6 | 3 |
| Infant colic (%) | 17 | 2 |
| Babies wholly breast fed (%) | 70 | 95 |
| Baby slept with parent entire night (%) | 18 | 73 |
Proximal care at 10 days: Holding more (awake and asleep), more feeds (especially breast feeding), closer contact (when infant awake and fuss/cry), and more bed sharing produced 26 minutes less fussing and 17 minutes less crying.
(To be continued)
