ABSTRACT
In thinking about both sleeping and feeding problems we must think developmentally, as well as noticing the emotions that pass between parents and babies. New-born babies at first sleep much of the time and wake mainly for feeding. Bereavements, marital conflict, difficult births, and psychosomatic tendencies can all link with sleep problems. If the therapist’s attunement to the stuckness involved in the original problem can also encompass an idea that change is possible, then the parents’ own belief in the possibility of change between them and their baby may be liberated. The therapist may give parents and infants the courage to “dare to be different” and to see that individuation need not be the end of intimacy. Exploring the reasons for a baby’s sleep disturbance often leads the therapist to a human drama that is going on in the family, sometimes a re-enactment of patterns going back to the parents’ own experience in their childhood.
