What are the risks of neglecting a baby when they wake up at night? #ParentingNightTimeDuties #BabyCare #SleepDeprivation
Have you ever wondered what might happen if a parent fails to attend to a baby during nighttime awakenings? Let’s delve into the potential consequences and risks associated with neglecting a baby’s needs when they wake up in the middle of the night.
### Impact of Neglecting Baby at Night
Increased distress for the baby:
– Leaving a baby to cry can lead to heightened distress and anxiety for the child.
– Lack of comfort and reassurance may affect the baby’s emotional well-being.
Developmental challenges:
– Inadequate nighttime care can disrupt the baby’s sleep patterns, impacting their cognitive development.
– Consistent care during nighttime awakenings is crucial for a baby’s overall growth and development.
Health implications:
– Neglecting a baby’s needs at night can hinder their physical health and immune system.
– Proper care during nighttime awakenings is essential for maintaining the baby’s well-being.
### Importance of Responsiveness
Building trust and security:
– Attending to a baby’s needs promptly fosters a sense of security and trust in the parent-child relationship.
– Responsiveness during nighttime awakenings strengthens the bond between the baby and caregiver.
Promoting healthy sleep habits:
– Establishing a consistent nighttime routine and responding promptly to the baby’s needs can help in promoting healthy sleep habits.
– Adequate care during nighttime awakenings contributes to a peaceful and restful sleep environment for the baby.
In conclusion, it is essential for parents to prioritize attending to their baby’s needs during nighttime awakenings to ensure optimal emotional, physical, and developmental well-being. Neglecting a baby’s needs at night can have lasting effects on their overall health and happiness. Remember, responding promptly to your baby’s cries and ensuring proper care during nighttime awakenings is crucial for their growth and development. #ParentingTips #BabySleep #NighttimeCare
Pretty hard to sleep through a baby crying in the night. Crying is the baby’s survival mechanism and it is pretty effective at getting the child the attention it needs. Also for moms, crying can stimulate milk flow so often the mom of a new baby will want to get up to feed the baby
the baby would starve. they eat every 45-90 minutes.
Others have answered your question perfectly but I think it’s important to note that babies wake up in the middle of the night for longer than a few months.
Neglect.
If you don’t want to wake up multiple times a night don’t have babies. They deserve good parents. Once you have a baby it’s no longer about you.
Leaving a baby to cry when it’s hungry wet scared is cruel.
Have you ever seen Trainspotting
Uh, they starve. And they’ll start to get sores from dirty diapers. There are also psychological problems.
Babies aren’t waking you up just to screw with you. They need things throughout the night. They are smaller so their eating cycles are shorter.
They will probably cry in the middle of the night because:
(1) they are hungry
(2) they need a diaper change.
DO NOT be a bad parent and ignore this!
Oh you gone get up because if you ignore it, it gets shriller and meaner as they continue to scream. Also, if you continue to do it neighbors might call cops because of noise complaints. (Have a ton of nieces and nephews; I helped raise 2 when they were babies and it was brutal, but it was eye opening because that tiny life depends on you).
With newborns, your child will fail to thrive. Newborns can’t manage like that. Older babies can be sleep trained (which can be easy or hard, cruel or not, depending on the child and the poster).
The baby would starve. They have to eat every couple hours in the beginning.
The baby would get a very nasty rash, they need a new diaper every few hours or the urine and poo burns their skin. I’ve seen babies in the burn unit due to severe infected diaper rash that literally ate off their skin.
They would be at risk for developmental issues- that cry, response, thing is super important for the babies development. Babies in orphanages back in the day didn’t cry, ever, because they knew nobody was coming. And these kids grew up into people that struggled with bonding and relationships. Reactive Attachment Disorder is a thing.
Basically, you can’t just let the baby cry and go back to sleep. One- the sound is designed to make that impossible: we’re biologically wired to be annoyed/want to respond to that sound. If you *could* it would be very unsafe/damaging for the baby as described above
My mother did that. It’s most likely the reason I have mental health issues now.
And I don’t say parents because apparently my dad never got up on the night with his kids.
The “cry it out” method used to be very popular.
I mean to check the baby, whether they’re crying or not.
There are hormonal changes when we cry, moreso for babies.
You need to make a lot of sacrifices in order to have children, this is just one of them. Please, don’t have children until you are willing to make the necessary sacrifices. It is worth it, but only if you want to.
They usually end up in jail on child abuse charges when child has failure to thrive, malnutrition,and infections from diaper rash.
The baby will release cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone. The more you do not meet a child’s needs at that age and add undue stress, you are damaging them for life. Look this up.
A baby that is left to cry alone grows into an adult that never believes they’re cared for or safe, and will have serious difficulties with attachment.
They because emotionally damaged and chronically anxious and needs years of therapy. At least that’s how it went with me.
How old is the baby? Are we talking newborn or older? For the first few months, you need to be attentive as newborn require a lot more attention (food etc). As they get older (but still a baby), some parents may try to sleep train their kid. This part of it can involve letting their baby cry it out so they learn to self soothe
The baby will tire and eventually sleep I guess, but it will feel the effects. If it’s underfed, malnourishment issues.
It is possible a baby can be trained to grab the bottle and feed themselves after a certain age. But that poses risk and danger of choking etc.
Overall the lack of attention and affection will have an impact on the baby’s psyche. For example Whole Object Relations Theory explains one way inconsistent primary caregivers in the early ages affects long term identity and mental well being. Having stable (emotional support and) care allows for stable emotional development basically.
When our daughter was an infant there was no ignoring her when she woke up at night. Imagine sleeping soundly and someone slaps you in the face …
I have two responses!
1). The reason babies wake up in the middle of the night (at first) is because they need to eat. They have very small stomachs and need to eat every few hours. When our babies were really little, we would sometimes wake them up at night because it was time for them to eat / get a diaper change, even if they hadn’t started crying yet.
2). This is different from letting them cry when they’re supposed to be napping during the day! If you know that the baby is fed and has a clean diaper, it’s ok to let them cry for a little bit. You don’t want to let it go on for too long, but sometimes they cry because they’re basically bored. In that case, it’s ok to let them cry for a bit. Often, they’ll stop crying and go back to sleep on their own after a few minutes.
You destroy their trust on such a fundamental level that they can never trust another person again. The earliest years are incredibly important for development.
Basically the younger you traumatize a person, the more likely that it will affect them on the deepest levels. And have life long consequences.
Assuming they don’t just die.
They’ll bide their time, build up some ironclad resentment, then wait for the day you can’t feed yourself anymore and refuse to help you. The long game basically
You will create a damaged adult. Don’t be a piece of trash 🙂 People who don’t want to get up and deal with their children shouldn’t have children
That is called child abuse and you could potentially be reported to cps
If you’d do this as a parent, you need professional help. Hell, my last puppy needed to be toileted and cuddled every 3 hours initially… and I did so, happily and willingly.
I’d always check on the baby, because I’d be worried about SIDS. That is sudden infant death syndrome. They can smother, if lying on their stomach.
Lots of stupid and wrong answers here. Yes, in their first four months you just absolutely attend to all the babies needs when they cry at night. But starting around four months, when they develop the ability to engage in deeper sleep, start solids, and their weight curve starts to plateau, they can start to drop a night feeding. Which is to say it’s not METABOLICALLY necessary but the baby doesn’t know that. Or how to soothe themselves. So you sleep train which is essentially a form of graduated extinction (some call this cry it out, but it’s progressively longer periods between checking in on crying baby). Eventually they learn how to calm themselves down and fall asleep and then slowly drop their other two night feedings over their first year of life. Parents sleep better. Kids sleep better. Everyone is happier. Have two very happy kids age 2 and 0.5, the former who sleeps 8-7:30 and the latter who just dropped his first night feeding.
Infants are in a developmental stage Erickson called “trust vs. mistrust”. This means they’re going to develop one or the other. They develop a sense of trust with their caregivers when their cries are responded to and their needs are met. They know when something is wrong, a trusted caregiver will be there to help them through it. When no one comes to meet their needs or respond to their cries, they develop mistrust. They learn no one cares about their needs and they will not be responded to when they cry. This can lead to major social-emotional problems as they grow and could persist into adulthood.
This is aside from the obvious, starving or severe diaper rash, as many have already mentioned.
A reminder that comfort is a NEED. For a baby, especially. I think of the study where they isolated baby monkeys to see if they would choose a food source or a comfort source. All of the baby monkeys showed preference for the comfort source. It’s the same with us. Comfort is right up there with food and shelter when it comes to our needs.
If you are asking this to know if you could have kids and sleep through the night, don’t have kids.
The become moderators
They need to eat every 2 hours for the first couple of months. Their skin is also incredibly sensitive and will develop a diaper rash if they aren’t changed every time they go, if the rash is allowed to progress instead of treated, their skin will break down, making a large open wound.
This is why parental leave from work is so incredibly important. You ideally take the childcare duties in shifts.
If breastfeeding, mom will still have to wake to latch the baby every 2 hours, but the other parent can supervise so she can nod off, and take the baby for burping, soothing, changing, and putting back to sleep.
A newborn has to eat every couple of hours. The baby can die. We have seen it. I work in ER.
If you don’t take care them when they’re babies, they’ll resent you and you won’t have a relationship with them later.
They’ll probably disown you when you’re older and you’ll wonder why.
I was adopted at 2 months old after being in a foundling home since birth. My adoptive mom said I never cried. Yeah because I obviously learned no one comes.
Despite therapy I still struggle with attachment and abandonment issues.
my (biological) parents did this to my little sister.
by 6 months old she was eerily quiet, she’d learnt that crying didn’t get her needs met. she’d be in a fully diaper with horrific rashes and wouldn’t cry or make any noise at all. she didn’t gain any weight when she 6 – 18 months old bc i was the only one feeding her, and as a 6-7 year old i thought feeding her a couple spoonfuls of mush in the evening was enough. she never vocalised any complaints, and i was too young to think “hey maybe i should feed her before school”. she (and i) were also both covered in lice, although tbf i got used to it and it never bothered me, but like ?? she was a baby, and even thought i know why she didn’t cry, i just ?? it sucks. it sucked.
we got taken away from our parents when i was 7, and adopted together.
hell, my sister didn’t start talking until she was 3. one day she just started talking in full sentences. it was a little after we’d settled in with our adoptive family.
They’ll fail to thrive if you don’t feed them. They’ll get terrible diaper rash, open sores, if you let them lay in soiled diapers for hours and hours.
They may have attachment issues — as you’d basically be teaching them no one will help them.
My grandparents are super hardcore traditional boomers who promote the cry it out method. My dad has the worst anger issues I’ve ever seen and a severe lack of empathy. Could be a coincidence but I don’t know 🤷♀️
If you try and ignore it the crying gets even louder and worse and it continues indefinitely. Believe me, every parent has tried at least once.
>What happens if the parents just ignore this and decide to sleep and let the baby cry?
The baby learns nobody is coming to help them and they stop crying. You end up in a nursing home.
I just wanted to add that as a mother I found it really really hard not to react to my babies crying, even if I knew they were being perfectly well cared for by my husband who would change them and burp them after a feed so I could get back to sleep. It was almost a physical pain to hear those cries. Which is apparently not uncommon and hard wired into us so we are willing to protect our babies and calm them. I know some people swear by the cry it out method when babies are slightly older, and maybe they did get better nights sleep than we did, but I just couldn’t justify in my mind the idea of letting a tiny child be so upset and think that no one is coming. As an adult I’d hope that the people who love me most would come check on me if I was crying about something. My kids are still little but have 100% faith that they can come to me and my husband at any time for comfort.