British Medical Journal  

As a paediatrician—and presenter of the BBC’s Babies: Their Wonderful World, the largest study of early childhood development ever undertaken for television—you would think I would have a confident answer when people ask, ‘How do I get my baby to sleep?’ But the truth is, even we do not know. My brother, a General Practitioner (GP), once called me in a whispering panic from a hallway at 03:00, cradling his howling newborn: ‘What’s the trick again?’

Despite sleep being one of the most essential aspects of infant development—and one of the most agonising concerns for new parents—it remains scandalously under-researched and under-taught. In all my medical training, I received perhaps an hour on infant sleep. No specialist module. No gold-standard protocols. We are left to piece together advice from outdated behavioural theories, personal instinct and a little desperate Googling. Meanwhile, families are short-changed by a system that cannot answer their most urgent questions.

This is why Helen L. Ball’s How Babies Sleep: A Factful Guide to the First 365 Days and Nights feels so necessary. Ball, a professor of anthropology and director of the Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre, brings together evolutionary biology, cross-cultural research and feminist critique in a guide that is as compassionate as it is clinically rigorous. The result is a quiet revolution: a myth-busting, parent-respecting, evidence-soaked call to rethink everything we think we know about infant sleep. ...read more

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