"Does your baby have a sleep problem?" ... I never thought these 7 words would spark so much controversy.
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But before we do that, let's look at the Science.
I recall the wonderful Dr Jodi Mindell on a stage in Manchester with a Powerpoint slide towering above her - a slide which showed how those 7 words produce different results depending on which country the parents resided.
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Let's look inside the Clinic.
There was a line in Richard Ferber's book, which I'll loosely paraphrase - if a dad or health professional says the baby does not have a sleep problem, but the mother does, then that baby has a sleep problem. This concept helped me as a clinician. I've seen many situations where husbands needed to listen a bit more, and less people needed to infer that the fragmented sleep of a mum is a 'right of passage'.
If most people agree sleep is important, then shouldn't we also help mums sleep better?
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Let's look at what defines a 'Sleep Problem'.
Decades ago I assumed the key elements defining an infant sleep problem would be how long it takes for the baby to fall asleep, and/or how many times they wake during the night. It helps to apply scientific methods to uncover the #1 factor explaining why parents believe their baby has a sleep problem. And we wouldn't have known this if it wasn't for a combination of objective measurements, AI, and big data.
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For any scientific enquiries, please feel free to contact the driving force of this 'open access' study, the wonderful Dr Michal Kahn.
For any enquiries about the Nanit cameras and/or the research produced by them, please reach out to the wonderful Dr Natalie Barnett, PhD.
For any accumulated vitriol that requires a target to spit it out at, please aim it at Dr Michael Gradisar.
#sleep #parenting #technology #research #ai #health #education #spititout #slipknot
