Although many people insist on trying to convince us otherwise, babies wake up often at night, quite often, to the point that many parents wonder why they do it, why they cry if everything is fine and if sometimes they don't even get to eat, they suck a little and keep sleeping.
Faced with this situation, some parents choose to try to teach babies not to wake up, through methods of extinction of behaviors (I ignore you and so you stop doing what you do, not receiving a positive response), and others choose not to do anything rather than coping with awakenings, waiting for them to gradually disappear.
A recent article, published in the magazine Evolution, Medicine and Public Health intends to answer the question "why", ensuring that babies wake up at night to prevent the mother from becoming pregnant again. But this is so reductionist that it seems to give us permission, to the parents, to let them cry, isn't it?
Mom, don't get pregnant
As we have explained on other occasions, exclusive breastfeeding, when the shots are more or less frequent, day and night, produces amenorrhea in the mother, lack of menstruation. It is something like a natural contraceptive mechanism in which the woman's body, knowing that there is a baby who needs her mother's care (because she frequently breastfeeds), avoids the possibility of a new pregnancy to ensure survival of the child.
It is something like if the child sucks day and night several times to avoid having a brother who puts him in danger. This is at least explained by the author of the mentioned article. Obviously, it is not conscious. In fact the baby who wakes at night crying asking for breast He doesn't even know that he exists, so it is impossible for him to know that in the future he could have another smaller brother who might require his mother's attention. He only does what he is prepared for: crying if necessary.
And both day and night, if you are hungry or if you have woken up, because evolution has established that you must wake up several times at night, cry or groan to get the food and comfort that allows you to eat and sleep again.
The side effect of all this, as I say, is the lack of menstruation and ensuring that the mother will be exclusively in his care.
But now we can decide when to have another baby or not
It is a method that works in many cases, but not in all. I know many women, and surely some will tell me, that despite breastfeeding frequently the rule returned a few months after the baby was born. That is, despite this, many women could have more children right away, and yet, thanks to the contraceptive methods, now we can choose when to have another baby or not.
That is, following the premise of the article I am talking about, in which the author explains that babies wake up just to ensure their survival, avoiding the arrival of a little brother, it would no longer be necessary to do so because babies no longer leave to come by the fact that the woman does not have the rule, but because now we can control fertility by other means.
This leaves us free to tell the baby "don't insist, don't worry, you're not going to have a brother now", and therefore free way to make use of methods that help extinguish that crying, either Ferber method, Estivill method, or whatever method you want to call, "I don't pay attention to you and so you stop requesting my presence".
The same author, in fact, comments that when babies drink artificial milk and when they are weaned, they tend to wake up less, as if by not breastfeeding they no longer had the option of controlling the mother's fertility and could already sleep longer.
But babies don't just wake up because of that
The problem, as I say, is that reducing the awakening of babies to a simple "so you don't have the rule, mom", is tremendously reductionist. James J. McKenna, of whom we have already spoken in Babies and more for being one of the great students of the sleep of babies, of night lactation and of the colecho, he wrote an answer in the same magazine making him see the author that same, that Babies wake up for many more things: sometimes to eat, and let's not forget that most babies need to eat day and night because they have a very small stomach and a huge calorie need (to live and grow), sometimes to make sure that their caregiver is close, sometimes as a result of some movement of the parents, who wake him up, sometimes to generally have a more superficial, less deep sleep, which prevents them from doing apnea that triggers sudden death, etc.
And anyway, if a child cries, you have to attend
So knowing that babies wake up for more things than avoiding the arrival of a brother, I would never, ever, let a child cry at night to get him to stop calling me. And I don't say with that that I enjoy the night awakenings of my children. I dream of the day we all sleep from the pull all night. But as I am aware that babies are like that, children are like that, and they don't wake up because they have a problem, because they are wrong or because they want to bother me, I can't do what I don't want them to do with me, which is to ignore them.
Come on, in the end parents have to give us absolutely equal what is the reason that our babies and children wake up at night (unless, of course, they wake up every half hour all night, night after night, that we would be talking about a disorder to assess), since our behavior must always be the same: attend them as soon as possible so that they fall asleep and have patience. Why? Well, out of respect, because babies are like that, because we are their caregivers and their well-being depends on what we do with them and why it doesn't hurt who they love. I think that no more reasons are needed.
