memory. If the parent’s response to baby changes from day to day, even
hour to hour, there is no chance for the hunger/wake/sleep mechanism to
stabilize. Baby is confused, uncomfortable, perhaps insecure. This
absence of routine for baby typically breeds unhealthy sleep patterns. No
one seems to know what is expected. Least of all, baby.
Fact Three
It is not what goes in the mouth as much as when it goes in. Clearly there
is a distinction between the sleep behavior of the AP child and that of the
PDF child. Marisa has great difficulty establishing stable and
uninterrupted nighttime sleep. Sometimes she wakes as often as every
two hours on a recurring basis and she may do this routinely for two
years, according to some studies.^1 This pattern is not healthy for Marisa
or her mom. Fatigue soon sets in, and baby becomes cranky and difficult
to soothe. Fatigue is further reinforced. Marisa’s mom believes her
daughter’s inability to sleep continuously through the night is a result of
breast-feeding. She read somewhere that breast-fed babies are not capable
of sleeping through the night.
Failure to establish continuous nighttime sleep is not at all associated
with breast-or bottle-feeding. When the feeding occurs, not what the
feeding consists of, has much more to do with baby’s healthy sleep.
Mothers who demand-feed their babies with formula usually end up with
the same unfortunate results experienced by moms who breast-feed on
demand.
Chelsea and thousands of other breast-fed babies on PDF sleep
through the night just fine, without disruption to lactation. Our sleep
studies of 520 infants demonstrate that PDF breast-fed babies will sleep
through the night on average at the same rates and in many cases slightly
sooner than formula-fed babies (study details next page). This statistical
conclusion dismantles the old wives’ tale which attributed nighttime
sleep to a tummy full of formula. It also demonstrates that neither the
composition of breast milk or formula, nor the speed in which the two are
digested have any bearing on a child’s ability to establish healthy