Polly Moore - The Natural Baby Sleep Solution: Use Your Childs Internal Sleep Rhythms for Better Nights and Naps

THE NATURAL
BABY SLEEP
Solution

Use Your Childs Internal Sleep Rhythms for Better Nights and Naps

Polly Moore, Ph.D.

workman publishing new york

Dedicated to my children, Maddie and Max;

to my sisters and brothers, Alison and Emily and Rob and Pete; and in memory of my parents, Therese and Robert Moore

Acknowledgments

To Pam Nagata, coordinator of The Parent Connection, a parenting support group in San Diego County sponsored by Scripps Memorial Hospitals, thank you. Years ago, Pam encouraged me to speak to new parents about infant sleep. Working with these moms and dads has been extremely rewarding. It also helped me develop the material that ultimately formed the core of this book.

To all the moms and dads whove worked with me, especially Amy Harris, Robyn Firtel, David John, Sherry Schnell, and Mary Morrow, thank you for your time and attention, and for your insightful questions, your openness, and your willingness to let me know what worked and what didnt.

To Vivian Glyck, thank you for your pivotal encouragement and assistance, including introducing me to Inkwell Management. To Alexis Hurley, Kim Witherspoon, and everyone else at Inkwell, for all your hard work with this project, thank you.

To Kylie Foxx McDonald, Jennifer Griffin, Suzie Bolotin, and the wonderful crew at Workman Publishing, thank you for your guiding words, high standards, and ongoing faith in this book. Youve made it a stronger and more useful guide.

To Lynne Lamberg, author of some of my very favorite books about sleep, thank you for your early suggestions on my book proposal, and for your kind support and sage advice along the way.

To Leigh Ann Hirschman, I literally owe you more than words can say. For your clarity of thought, fluidity of style, and your passion to make this book better than I realized it could be, thank you. Every single thing you did made it better.

To my gracious bosses and wonderful coworkers at California Clinical Trials, who generously permitted me to work part time while I pursued my dream of writing this book, thank you, all of you.

To all the friends and family who have encouraged me in this project for the better part of the last decade, thank you, thank you, thank you. To those who read and commented on numerous drafts, including Emily Kellndorfer, Ron Szymusiak, Judi Profant Johnson, Gina Poe, Carl Stepnowsky, Sarah Hernandez, and Alison John, I am in your debt. Thank you.

To my beautiful amazing children, Max and Maddie, who were occasionally heard to grumble as they went off to bed, Why do I have to have a mom whos a sleep researcher? I may owe you two the greatest debt of all. Since the day each of you was born, Ive hoped to become worthy of the gift and privilege of being your mother. Youve taught me so much, youve inspired me, and I simply adore both of you. Thank you. Love, Mom.

Authors Note:Many parents have generously shared their experiences with the N.A.P.S. plan for this book. To protect their privacy and for the sake of clarity, some of the case studies in this book are composites of those parents stories. I have been careful to make sure each case study is a fair and faithful representation of the problems families encounter and the solutions they discover when managing their babies sleep.

About Polly Moore

Polly Moore received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, where she specialized in sleep research. She continued her research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center and is now Director of Clinical Development at Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. She is a hands-on expert in the subject of baby sleep and works with parenting support groups, including the nonprofit parenting mentoring organization Parent Quest, and a number of private doula groups in Southern California. She and her family live in San Diego, California.

Contents

Foreword

If youre an expectant parent or the parent of an infant, you know what it means to worry about your childs sleep. What if the baby doesnt sleep enough? What if he cries all the time? What do I do if the baby wont nap during the day, or if I cant get him to sleep at night? If any of these anxieties sound familiar, youre not alone. Many adults find babies sleep habits perplexing. Often parents dont know whether a childs fussing means he needs to be fed or changed, whether hes lonely or frightened, or worse, if hes sick or in pain. But an infants mysterious and difficult behaviors, such as irritability and crying, are usually less confounding than they seem.

In The Natural Baby Sleep Solution, Dr. Polly Moore provides a clear explanation for why infants often fusslack of adequate sleepand a unique and effective program that helps parents improve their babys sleep naturally. Dr. Moores plan, appropriately titled N.A.P.S., shows parents how to follow one of their babys natural body clocks (the Basic Rest and Activity Cycle, or BRAC) to facilitate naps and nighttime sleep and maximize a babys overall sleep time. Her use of the BRAC is a breakthrough: The BRAC is scientifically proven to govern human alertness cycles, and to my knowledge, Dr. Moore is the first to engineer a baby sleep program based on it. And from the glowing reviews of Moores many clients, its clear the N.A.P.S. plan really works. It works not only because its rooted in science, but also because its straightforward and easy-to-followa boon when youre an exhausted parent up at night with a very tired, very unhappy baby.

I first became acquainted with Dr. Moore some years ago at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center. The two of us were part of a group of clinicians and researchers who worked together on a variety of sleep research projects. Dr. Moores extensive experience gives her a unique scope of understanding about how and why the brain sleeps, from the level of the single brain cell to the level of clinic patients with sleep disorders. Her curiosity about the sleep process and her enthusiasm for improving sleep to benefit all patients is infectious, and this was fully apparent to me when I heard Dr. Moore give her talk for new parents. I was most impressed by the way she distilled complex academic research into concrete, accessible advice for parents and caregivers. She achieves the very same feat in this book.

Dr. Moore knows what it feels like to struggle with an infants sleep. She is not only a neuroscientist and a sleep researcher, shes also the mother of two young children. In fact, she first tested and fine-tuned the N.A.P.S. plan in her own home laboratory (the nursery), and found that her children slept better and more consistently once she helped them follow their own inner sleep rhythms.

Whether you co-sleep or want your child to sleep independently, The Natural Baby Sleep Solution and its N.A.P.S. plan will help both you and your baby sleep better. By putting your baby to bed when shes naturally primed for rest, youll give her the sleep she needs for cognitive development and emotional growth. And youll rest easier knowing that youre establishing sound sleep habits that will benefit your child through the toddler years, into adolescence, and beyond.

Farhad Shadan, M.D., Ph.D.

Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine

Scripps Clinic Sleep Center

La Jolla, California