Yay! Another Sleep Rant

Just what the world needs, another sleep rant.

I came here to write about Mother’s Day and somewhere between the first and second paragraph I took a hard left turn. I’ll get back to Mother’s Day next week along with every other content creator in the US :)

As a society, specifically in the states, we spend the first half decade of a child’s life chasing the north star of:

1. independent sleep

2. sleeping through the night

3. bedtime between 7pm and 8pm

4. waking after parents have had a full hot cup of coffee

There are multiple industries built on this premise. And if you do not achieve all four by age five, society tells you the verdict is in:

Marriage – FAIL. Child’s independence – FAIL. Brain development – FAIL. Your own mental health – FAIL.

Your child’s sleep is a pass/fail exam and you are the one being graded.

The pressure placed on parents, and particularly on mothers, from the moment they get pregnant to abide by every rule is elephant-on-chest-level anxiety inducing. Is it a push for mothers to return to the workforce? American values? A focus on self? The very real connection between sleep and health?

Nah, it’s this:

The child sleep industry is a rapidly growing market, projected to reach over $10 billion globally by 2032. How-to guides containing conflicting information authored by self-designated experts. Cribs, sleep sacks, monitors, apps, pajamas, lights, sound machines, supplements, literal cages to put on top of cribs to keep them in. The products in this category span the gamut from harmless yet ineffective to dangerous and predatory, and there are some on both ends of that scale that cost more than my monthly grocery bill.

The sleep industry is robbing us not only of our hard earned money but of our sanity. According to the National Sleep Foundation, most parents would be willing to pay $100 or more for their children to get better sleep, and parents who think about their child’s sleep spend over two hours per day doing so.

Two hours a day. (It’s me, hi)

Now let me circle back, because you can take the girl out of corporate but you cannot take the corporate out of the girl.

First five years: nonstop pressure to get children to sleep independently.

Ages five to ten: any stragglers better have figured it out by now. Though interestingly, this is also the age range where siblings start to room share. Approximately 70% of US households with two or more children have siblings sharing bedrooms.

By eighteen, our (now adult) kids are heading to college or out into the job market. They are likely dating, a good chunk will cohabitate in their twenties. And in both cases, they are very probably sleeping next to another human being every night or at least on weekends.

So as parents, particularly first time parents, we are LOSING OUR MINDS over getting our children to sleep independently, some of us spending hours each day consumed by it, only for them to spend adolescence room sharing and the back half of their lives voluntarily sleeping next to other people?

We torture ourselves to hit four checkpoints of success in the baby and toddler years, only for our kids to boomerang directly back to the deeply human need to find comfort in close proximity to others when falling asleep?

I have been bedsharing with my husband for twelve years. When he travels for work, we both sleep like crap.

My son has been and continues to be a tough sleeper by US sleep standards.

I intentionally left sleep practices and philosophies out of this because that is not the point, and I have been on the parenting side of the internet long enough to know better than to step on that landmine. My only belief worth sharing: every family should do what works best for the humans sleeping under their own roof. If you are losing sleep over your child’s sleep, pick one or two people you actually trust on this topic and mute everything else. Let yourself tune into your baby and trust your gut. Following an outside influences advice about your own baby often can lead you to miss your own baby’s cues. Follow your intuition.

I have had two cups of coffee today and I am about to pour a third. I have spent three and a half years worrying about my son’s sleep and I am exhausted. I wrote this as much for myself as for you.

I will leave you with the best piece of sleep advice I have ever received:

“Do whatever you need to do to give the most people the most sleep.”