Help Your Baby to Sleep
Penney Hames
Thorsons/National Childbirth Trust Publishing
Thorsons is an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in collaboration with National Childbirth Trust Publishing 1998
© NCT Publishing 1998, 2002
Original photography: Anne Green-Armytage, © 2002 NCT Publishing Additional photography: Michael Bassett here and here.
Penney Hames asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780722536087
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2016 ISBN 9780007405008
Version: 2016-09-09
For Richard. Beany and Richard (Junior), with love
Contents
1 What do we Know About Sleep?
3 What does your Baby need for a Good Night’s Sleep?
9 Coping with Feelings, Gaining Support
About the National Childbirth Trust
Sleepless babies are all too common. One small paragraph in New Generation, the Journal of the National Childbirth Trust, which asked for parents’ experiences for this book elicited dozens of replies. Then, talking to an astonishing array of professionals and researchers who have devised, through their widely differing disciplines, effective approaches or remedies for the sleeplessness of babies led me on to dozens more women. And women who had heard about the book on the grapevine of my local National Childbirth Trust branch, also called. Find me a parent and I’ll show you someone with an opinion about babies’ sleep.
The problem with any subject worth its salt is that right-minded, sensitive people can believe any number of threateningly different things. I believe that an author ought to listen to all these different opinions, try to see the value in each, and while rejecting none, chart a clear course for each reader, irrespective of how that reader prefers to travel.
So much for the theory. I’m sure that my own persuasions are written large in between the lines of this book. Nevertheless I hope that Help Your Baby to Sleep has accomplished three things: first, to acknowledge that no one approach is right for everybody; second, to accept that complex emotional ties may make the supposedly simple act of leaving your baby to sleep heart-wrenchingly difficult, and that is not simply something to overcome, but an awareness that may suggest a different approach; and third, to express the ambivalence and complexity of a vast range of attitudes, through the words of parents.
I hope you find in it something that speaks to you.
Penney Hames