Book Review:

Helping Baby Sleep

By Anni Gethin and Beth MacGregor

Reviewer: Erin Shaheen, Childbirth Educator. Erin is a Childbirth Educator and Parenting instructor with the Ottawa Childbirth Education Association and is a DONA trained Postpartum Doula. She is also the proud mother of 4 children aged 12, 9 and 7 year old twin boys.

Becoming a parent is a life changing event. Strangers and other parents continually remind us that we will never sleep the same again. Magazines and books remind us that babies sleep 16-18 hours in a day. Yet no amount of advice or reading can truly prepare a new parent for the amount of sleep deprivation that we endure and the conflict that we will encounter in learning what is normal in terms of newborn sleep patterns.

As a result, we turn to family and friends for advice. This advice is often conflicting and outdated, so we then turn to the experts-parenting books. With an overwhelming number of books specifically addressing sleep, how is a parent to know which is a good sleep book?

An excellent sleep book will first acknowledge normal newborn sleep patterns of the human newborn, since it is important to remember that we are mammals and we evolved as we have, with good reason. A book needs to acknowledge the close relationship between sleep and infant feeding because babies work hard at tripling their birth weight within the first 6 months of life, all within a stomach the size of a golf ball. Finally, to have the book's findings based in current research with footnotes sets a book apart from those of personal opinion.

Helping Baby Sleep by Anni Gethin and Beth Macgregor is currently my favourite sleep book on the market because it meets all of these requirements. How do the authors convince the reader that human newborns have special needs from the start? Well, to start at the beginning is the fact that humans have evolved to be the only upright walking mammal, thereby significantly changing the shape of our pelvis. In order to fit through the pelvis, our babies need to be birthed before they are ready to be independent in the world. Many other researchers (Marshall Klauss, Dr. Harvey Karp) also refer to this period as the fourth trimester and lasts between 3-18 months depending on the researcher.

This Fourth Trimester is a time when our babies are setting their circadian rhythm and spending most of their time in REM sleep. REM sleep is light sleep and is when the brain does most of its post birth growth. Light sleep as opposed to deep sleep is the brain food for newborns, and it is for similar reasons that Ottawa Public Health department recommends that newborns sleep on their backs, in their parent's room, on a safe sleep surface, for the first six months as a protective measure against SIDS.

Helping Baby Sleep looks at current recommendations regarding breastfeeding and the latest research on the damage of high levels of cortisol (a hormone and brain chemical) on the developing brain as a result of sleep training. The authors use an impressive amount of research in their book, yet package it up in an easy-to-read format. Finally, Gethin and Macgregor offer gentle parenting strategies for parents self care and practical tips to help promote safe sleep.