Bringing Up Baby

The advantages and disadvantages to some of Dr Truby King's methods.

Advantages to scheduled feeds

• You have a baby that, in theory, should be sleeping and feeding at entirely predictable times, including at night
• You will also be able to drop the night feeds earlier if the baby is being given enough milk during the day
• Mothers who like a high level of organisation throughout the day love this type of routine. They're not necessarily feeding any less than a mother who's not imposing a strict schedule, but they will know exactly what time the feeds are happening and can plan their day around that
• This includes having a social life from early in your baby's life, as you can leave the baby with someone else between feeds and go out for dinner, etc
• This approach is also a godsend to women who have to go back to work when their baby is still very small because it essentially accelerates the process of having a baby you can easily leave with someone else and isn't waking you at night
• Advocates of the scheduled feed approach argue that babies are calmer if they are successfully put into a routine from a very early age.

Disadvantages to scheduled feeds

• This type of routine is much harder to pull off if the mother is breastfeeding as, for the routine to work, the baby must take an exact amount of milk to ensure it's able to sleep through till its next feed four hours later. Since you can't tell exactly how much milk a baby is taking from the breast (bottles have measurements on the side – breasts don't!), it's easy to give a baby too little and they'll then wake up and cry. What do you do then? Wait till the four hours is up while your baby screams its head off, or break the routine…
• Another problem vis-á-vis breastfeeding, according to opponents of the scheduled feed approach, is that the breast milk supply will be inhibited by regulating the time the baby should feed, particularly in the early days
• Effect on baby's digestion – opponents of scheduled feeding argue that newborn babies' digestive systems are too small to have enough milk pumped into them to see them through for four hours and that feeding according the baby's cues (also known as demand feeding) is more appropriate in the very early days
• Some babies are hungrier than others – the most basic objection to the scheduled feed idea is that some babies might just want to be fed more than every four hours or some may be hungrier in the morning than the evening, or whatever. Schedules are not necessarily damaging per se, but a Spock-fan would argue you need to tailor the schedule to the needs of the individual baby

Advantages to baby sleeping in own nursery

• The main reason historically is that this stops the dad being disturbed by the baby waking at night (assuming he's not the one getting up to the do the night feeds, which he certainly wouldn't have done back in the 50s). He's less likely to be woken if the baby is in another room – but of course that depends on the mother waking quickly enough to attend to the baby's cries before they disturb the father
• Truby King's argument, back in 1913, for having a baby in a separate room was that it was healthier if the baby was only breathing fresh air coming in through the window, as opposed to the recycled air breathed out by the parents
• Being fed at night in a nursery, not the parents' bedroom, reinforces the sense of order that the baby has to learn. Truby King didn't know this then but scientific studies have since shown that babies learn to associate certain activities with particular environments from a very young age (around six weeks)
• Claire Verity argues that babies will be aware of their parents' breathing and movement and that will stop them sleeping well. Her opponents argue the opposite though – that it's the sound of the mother's breathing that lulls the baby into a deeper sleep as it's a sound they've been used to in the womb and it comforts them

Disadvantages to baby sleeping in own nursery

• Babies do wake up at night, no matter what. So the argument against having the baby in a separate room from you at night is that instead of rolling over and picking the baby up from next to you, you'll have to get out of bed, go down a cold corridor and sit in the nursery to feed
• The baby has to cry that much louder or longer to be heard than if it makes a small sound right next to you. So you may have a more agitated baby by the time you reach it
• Anxious mothers who fear their baby may stop breathing in the night prefer to have their babies in with them for the first few months. If the baby is down the corridor, they may sleep less well because they're constantly listening out for sounds from the baby
• Cot deaths are statistically less common when babies sleep beside their parents' bed.

Advantages to putting baby in the garden

• Truby King's method was originally about trying to get sickly babies healthy, so fresh air was a vital ingredient for their daily routine (like for convalescents after the war)
• This practice was transported to Britain, despite the weather often not being as clement as that in New Zealand. The idea was that babies would sleep better if they had plenty of fresh air.

Disadvantages to putting baby in the garden

• There are no disadvantages per se to having your baby outside, providing it's wrapped up warm – the bigger issue is having to leave them there. If they sleep, there's no problem; if they cry, it can be distressing for the mother not to be allowed to pick them up.

Advantages to limiting contact with baby

• Truby King advocates argue that babies will get too used to being cuddled and fussed over. Not giving too much attention of this kind will foster independence.
• Babies can become over-stimulated by too much cuddling and become cranky.

Disadvantages to limiting contact with baby

• In order to get the routine in place, parents can't pick up their babies when they cry in between feeds. Mothers have an instinct to attend to their babies when they cry and it can be very distressing to have to resist picking them up. If the routine is successfully implemented, the baby will eventually settle into the sleep, feed, sleep, feed cycle every four hours, but getting there can be very painful for mothers
• Opponents of the method believe that babies' transition into the world from the warmth of the womb should be as gentle as possible – so that to cut that off entirely the minute they're born is a traumatic experience for the baby
• Many people instinctively believe babies need to be cuddled and comforted when they cry. Opponents of the Truby King method claim that the babies who stop crying when they're left have simply 'given up' and that that will have a damaging effect on the child emotionally.