Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally

Babies and children have needs at night just as they do during the day; from hunger, loneliness, and fear, to feeling too hot or too cold. They rely on parents to soothe them and help them regulate their intense emotions. Sleep training techniques can have detrimental physiological and psychological effects. Safe co-sleeping has benefits to both babies and parents.

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Attachment Parenting International	New Book: Safe Infant Sleep By Dr. James McKenna
Is Sleep Training Medically Harmful? That’s Not the Point "Sleep training could be the safest thing in the world, but it’s still not how you treat a person. Especially a person you love, who is completely helpless without you, who didn’t ask for you to bring her into this world."	Healthy infant sleep, Part 4: The sticking point for parents If we follow evidence-based normal human development, early independence is a fallacy.
Healthy infant sleep, Part 3: Combining adult structure with infant sleep needs Light bulbs, alarm clocks, factories, and offices are new cultural inventions that require a whole new sleep-industrial complex to maintain. Taking it all into consideration, there is no question of adaptation.	Healthy infant sleep, Part 2: The dependence of healthy infant sleep patterns If we take a holistic view of the sleep question, we have to ask how successful and beneficial it is when we discover the "normal" situation of medicated sleep and the reach of adult sleep difficulties into so many lives.
Why do we make children sleep alone? "If we raised our children to share space with each other and their parents at night, they might grow up to fight a bit less, share a bit more, and care for others as much as they care for themselves."	La Leche League International Applauds American Academy of Pediatrics's Updated Infant Sleep Policy AAP’s revised policy statement, “SIDS and Other Sleep-Related Infant Deaths: Updated 2016 Recommendations for a Safe Infant Sleeping Environment,” is its latest update on safe infant sleep, reinforcing many earlier recommendations, adjusting other Read more
What is normal, healthy infant sleep? I am awake writing this during the biologically normative and healthy stages of first and second sleep. Research has revealed that right up until the advent of electric light, humans normally experienced 2 distinct segments of sleep.	Safe cosleeping benefits both babies and parents Sleep-training techniques can have detrimental physiological and psychological effects. Safe cosleeping has benefits to both babies and parents. View this meme on API's blog and share it from API's Facebook page.