Snooze Control
The pacifier hasn’t done the trick. Ditto that story about Wynken, Blynken and Nod sailing off in a wooden shoe. It’s 3 o’clock in the morning, Mom and Dad are exhausted, and baby is wide awake and wailing--again.
What’s a parent to do? Turn on the vacuum cleaner? Take junior out for a drive? Buckle him into his car seat and set him on a humming washing machine?
Or, perhaps it’s time to invest in a motorized $400 crib mattress--er, “infant sleep enhancement system”--that moves from side to side and up and down as its hidden speaker emits low whooshing sounds like those baby heard in mother’s womb.
From “co-sleeping” (with baby in bed with them) to “Ferberizing”--a plan devised by Dr. Richard Ferber, head of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Center at Children’s Hospital, Boston--snooze-deprived parents are seeking answers.
This fact has not eluded those who make and sell baby gear.
Dr. Barbara Korsch, a specialist in behavioral pediatrics and professor of pediatrics at USC, dismisses the search for some magic device that will keep baby sleeping as “just another yuppie thing. Their babies should do everything better, including sleeping.”
Considering that the wail of a healthy newborn in the night can practically shatter glass, it isn’t surprising that parents who would have anxiety attacks if you took away their pagers and PCs are seeking high-tech solutions.
Gerry Beemiller, president of Infant Advantage of San Ramon, Calif., which makes the motorized Nature’s Cradle crib mattress and has just introduced a bassinet version, says, “If baby’s not irritable, Mom’s not irritable and Dad’s not irritable. Good babies get nurtured more and cooed at. With bad babies, you try to figure out, ‘How the hell can I get out of the house?’ ” (For the record, he was inspired partly by having a colicky first baby).
In a four-month clinical trial, Beemiller says, babies using Nature’s Cradle cried one-third as often during the night than the control babies, “and, when they did cry, they didn’t cry as loud.” Further, he says, “They slept through the night approximately two weeks earlier.
“What we’re providing is motion, sound and tactile sensation, much like the baby experiences in utero,” he explains. As the mattress moves in a smooth figure-eight motion, it soothes baby with soft heartbeats and sounds recorded during an actual pregnancy.
A control panel is used to gradually decrease the periods of time the mattress is in motion so as to wean the baby at about 4 months from all but the sounds.
A little less high-tech is Mommy Bear, a $30 cuddle toy from Dex Products of Benecia, Calif. “We sell lots of them,” says Terrie Wall, manager-buyer for Nationwide Baby Shops in Santa Monica. With its heartbeat and whooshing sounds, “it gives babies the illusion they’re back in the tummy. They feel like Mom’s right there.”
Ann Durgerian, co-owner of the Carousel baby shop in Pasadena, swears by the Baby-Go-to-Sleep audio-therapy tapes, the store’s top seller for parents seeking sleep.
“We don’t have anything automated,” she says. “You don’t need all that stuff. What did people do in the covered wagon days? People get so uptight about this stuff. They seem to want a quick fix. They don’t have the time they used to, they don’t have the patience they used to.”
Unlikely as it seems, the developer of the Baby-Go-to-Sleep tapes is onetime rock producer Terry Woodford (the Commodores, the Temptations).
“We’re in about a million homes” with the tapes, says Woodford, who’s president of Audio-Therapy Innovations of Colorado Springs, Colo. His company has given 130,000 to the military for child-abuse prevention, family advocacy and new parent support programs and will send tapes free, on request, to institutions caring for special needs children.
Numerous hospitals use the tapes and now, Woodford says, “We have corporations buying them to give to employees” with babies in hopes job performance will improve if they get a decent night’s sleep.
Baby-Go-to-Sleep tapes ($12.95 each) come in three versions, all with vocals and recorded human heartbeats in lieu of drums. In addition to nursery rhymes and lullabies, there’s the “Jesus Loves Me” tape, featuring inspirational numbers. “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Yankee Doodle” and the rest put baby to sleep, Woodford explains, because the tunes are by definition soporific--predictable, repetitive.
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The basic problem is that newborns don’t differentiate between night and day and they want to eat when they’re hungry. Typically, a baby won’t sleep eight hours straight until the age of 9 months. Then, along come teething, ear infections, separation anxiety. . . .
Ferber’s “progressive waiting” or “Ferberizing” technique, as explained in his “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems” (Fireside Books, 1986), is suggested for babies 5 months and older. Essentially, it advocates that the parent gradually increase the length of waiting time before responding to wails, starting at five minutes and working up to 45. Baby may then be soothed and patted--but not picked up.
“Co-sleeping” is frowned on by many pediatricians, but advocates say it’s convenient for breast-feeding, fosters bonding and may reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome because the baby’s breathing pattern is regulated by close proximity to the mother.
The minuses: Everyone may lose sleep; it’s not conducive to a good sex life; and there is the danger that the baby might smother in the covers or roll off the bed. And, critics add, it may be hard to wean the baby from that big bed.
As for gadgets and gimmicks, says Dr. Deborah Givan, who teaches pediatrics at Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis and directs the Children’s Sleep Disorder Center at the medical center’s Riley Hospital, “I think the human touch is all-important in childhood. I would be suspicious of something that would diminish that.”
Some of her basic suggestions for getting baby to sleep tight:
* Make sure there is no serious medical cause of the crying.
* Always put the baby to bed at the same time in the same room.
* Never, ever, use going to bed as punishment, “or you’re setting yourself up.”
USC’s Korsch despairs when she sees poor parents at County-USC Medical Center who want pricey sleep inducers. “There’s a great industry that feeds into mothers’ sense of inadequacy. They will go for anything.”
For starters, she says, “You don’t need a $400 rocking mattress. We do like to give them some comforting, cuddly object, probably some rubber toy. And we do think that mobiles are fun--quiet, soothing, colorful. We think soft music is fine. That’s probably as far as I would go.”
When Korsch talks about “gentle motion” to encourage sleep, she means an old-fashioned cradle or rocking chair with mother doing the rocking. And she doesn’t object to a pacifier.
As the baby nears 1 year, Korsch adds, a transitional object such as a teddy bear can help prevent separation anxiety, as can bedtime rituals such as reading or singing. “Sometimes babies will hum themselves to sleep.”
That teddy bear doesn’t have to whoosh or gurgle, she adds. If it’s a soothing sound that’s needed, she suggests a cheap ticking clock.
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They Say
‘If baby’s not irritable, Mom’s not irritable and Dad’s not irritable. . . . What [Nature’s Cradle provides] is motion, sound and tactile sensation, much like the baby experiences in utero.’
Gerry Beemiller
President, Infant Advantage
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‘We don’t have anything automated. . . . What did people do in the covered wagon days? . . . They seem to want a quick fix. They don’t have the time [or] patience they used to.’
Ann Durgerian
Co-owner, Carousel baby shop
***
‘We do like to give [infants] some comforting, cuddly object. . . . And we do think that mobiles are fun. . . . We think soft music is fine. That’s probably as far as I would go.’
Dr. Barbara Korsch
USC professor