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Authors: Pamela Druckerman
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of the babies Cohen sees are breast-fed. That doesn’t seem to make a difference.
One reason for pausing is that young babies make a lot of movements and noise while they’re sleeping. This is normal and fine. If parents rush in and pick the baby up every time he makes a peep, they’ll sometimes wake him up.
Another reason for pausing is that babies wake up between their sleep cycles, which last about two hours. It’s normal for them to cry a bit when they’re first learning to connect these cycles. If a parent automatically interprets this cry as a demand for food or a sign of distress and rushes in to soothe the baby, the baby will have a hard time learning to connect the cycles on his own. That is, he’ll need an adult to come in and soothe him back to sleep at the end of each cycle.
Newborns typically can’t connect sleep cycles on their own. But from about two or three months they usually can, if given a chance to learn how. And according to Cohen, connecting sleep cycles is like riding a bike: if a baby manages to fall back to sleep on his own even once, he’ll have an easier time doing it again the next time. (Adults wake up between their sleep cycles, too, but typically don’t remember this because they’ve learned to plunge right into the next one.)
Cohen says that sometimes babies do need to be fed or picked up. But unless we pause and observe them, we can’t be sure. “Of course, if [the baby’s] requests become more persistent, you’ll have to feed her,” Cohen writes. “I’m not saying let your baby wail.” What he’s saying is, just give your baby a chance to learn.
This idea isn’t entirely new to me. It sounds familiar from some of my American sleep books. But it’s usually mentioned among lots of other advice. I may have tried it once or twice with Bean but never with particular conviction. No one ever pointed it out to me as the one, crucial, most important thing to do and to stick with.
Cohen’s singular instruction could solve the mystery of why French parents claim they never let their babies cry for long periods. If parents do The Pause in a baby’s first two months, the baby can learn to fall back to sleep on his own. So his parents won’t need to resort to “crying it out” later on.
The Pause doesn’t have the brutal feeling of sleep training. It’s more like sleep teaching. But the window for it is pretty small. According to Cohen, it’s only until the baby is four months old. After that, bad sleep habits are formed.
Cohen says his sleep methods are an easy sell for the res Sl fht=ults-oriented parents in his Tribeca practice. But elsewhere, he says, parents often need more coaxing. They’re opposed to letting their babies cry even a little. Cohen says he eventually persuades almost all the parents of newborns in his practice to try his methods. “I try to explain the roots of things,” he says. That is, he teaches them about sleep.
When I get back
to Paris, I immediately ask French mothers whether they do The Pause. Every single one says that, yes, of course they do. They say this is so obvious they hadn’t thought to mention it. Most say they started doing The Pause when their babies were a few weeks old.
Alexandra, whose daughters slept through the night while they were still in the hospital, says that of course she didn’t rush over to them the second they cried. She sometimes waited five or ten minutes before picking them up. She wanted to see whether they needed to fall back to sleep between sleep cycles or whether something else was bothering them: hunger, a dirty diaper, or just anxiety.
Alexandra—who wears her curly blond hair in a ponytail—looks like a cross between an earth mother and a high school cheerleader. She’s extremely warm. She wasn’t ignoring her newborn babies. To the contrary, she was carefully
observing
them. She trusted that when they cried, they were telling her something. During The Pause, she watched and listened. (She
One reason for pausing is that young babies make a lot of movements and noise while they’re sleeping. This is normal and fine. If parents rush in and pick the baby up every time he makes a peep, they’ll sometimes wake him up.
Another reason for pausing is that babies wake up between their sleep cycles, which last about two hours. It’s normal for them to cry a bit when they’re first learning to connect these cycles. If a parent automatically interprets this cry as a demand for food or a sign of distress and rushes in to soothe the baby, the baby will have a hard time learning to connect the cycles on his own. That is, he’ll need an adult to come in and soothe him back to sleep at the end of each cycle.
Newborns typically can’t connect sleep cycles on their own. But from about two or three months they usually can, if given a chance to learn how. And according to Cohen, connecting sleep cycles is like riding a bike: if a baby manages to fall back to sleep on his own even once, he’ll have an easier time doing it again the next time. (Adults wake up between their sleep cycles, too, but typically don’t remember this because they’ve learned to plunge right into the next one.)
Cohen says that sometimes babies do need to be fed or picked up. But unless we pause and observe them, we can’t be sure. “Of course, if [the baby’s] requests become more persistent, you’ll have to feed her,” Cohen writes. “I’m not saying let your baby wail.” What he’s saying is, just give your baby a chance to learn.
This idea isn’t entirely new to me. It sounds familiar from some of my American sleep books. But it’s usually mentioned among lots of other advice. I may have tried it once or twice with Bean but never with particular conviction. No one ever pointed it out to me as the one, crucial, most important thing to do and to stick with.
Cohen’s singular instruction could solve the mystery of why French parents claim they never let their babies cry for long periods. If parents do The Pause in a baby’s first two months, the baby can learn to fall back to sleep on his own. So his parents won’t need to resort to “crying it out” later on.
The Pause doesn’t have the brutal feeling of sleep training. It’s more like sleep teaching. But the window for it is pretty small. According to Cohen, it’s only until the baby is four months old. After that, bad sleep habits are formed.
Cohen says his sleep methods are an easy sell for the res Sl fht=ults-oriented parents in his Tribeca practice. But elsewhere, he says, parents often need more coaxing. They’re opposed to letting their babies cry even a little. Cohen says he eventually persuades almost all the parents of newborns in his practice to try his methods. “I try to explain the roots of things,” he says. That is, he teaches them about sleep.
When I get back
to Paris, I immediately ask French mothers whether they do The Pause. Every single one says that, yes, of course they do. They say this is so obvious they hadn’t thought to mention it. Most say they started doing The Pause when their babies were a few weeks old.
Alexandra, whose daughters slept through the night while they were still in the hospital, says that of course she didn’t rush over to them the second they cried. She sometimes waited five or ten minutes before picking them up. She wanted to see whether they needed to fall back to sleep between sleep cycles or whether something else was bothering them: hunger, a dirty diaper, or just anxiety.
Alexandra—who wears her curly blond hair in a ponytail—looks like a cross between an earth mother and a high school cheerleader. She’s extremely warm. She wasn’t ignoring her newborn babies. To the contrary, she was carefully
observing
them. She trusted that when they cried, they were telling her something. During The Pause, she watched and listened. (She
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