If You Don't Sleep, You Won't Lose Weight

Your talking nonsense.

Done much travelling have you? Lived in any other cultures? Know anything about the nature of babies? Breastfeeding?

No. Didn't think so.

Lots of travel, yes, I've lived in other cultures, have two kids of my own and breastfed both of them over two years each. And I stand by my statement that most children are fully capable of self-soothing and sleeping through the night at 6 months.

And I think that your lack of sleep is making you a bit cranky. :flowerforyou:

You seem to be reading my posts as if I am irritated, I am not, but thank you for your concern.

Babies wake frequently through the night for at least the first year in a normal, breastfed relationship. Given that our western culture is the only one to offer powdered baby cows milk to infants, rather than breastmilk, its fair to deduce that most babies in the world are given breastmilk and will therefore wake 2-4 times each night for nourishment in those circumstances. I think it is around 85% of the world who share a family bed, so all family members in one bed. Therefore it is vital that the children are attended to at night, leaving them to cry in a room with the door shut (or 'self soothe' as you so nicely put it) is not relevant in circumstances where many families live in one room, or possibly two.

Getting enough sleep is important for many reasons, I don't see why everyone's getting crabby because they think their own personal experience overrides a correlation between sleep and weight loss. Nobody said it's guaranteed you'll never get diabetes if you sleep 8 hours a day.

Absolutely, i totally agree with this but the idea that very young babies can sleep solidly through the night is far more like the 'detached' style of parenting than a more attached one and therefore babies would have to be out of the room all together, a child when woken in the night in a family bed, would not be able to be left to cry it out, It would wake the whole family, so generally one or both parents would wake and deal with baby.

I sort of agree that a certain amount of sleep within a 24 hour period is necessary, but i think the amount is dependent on the person and i dont think they need to be uninterrupted or all at once.

I never claimed that very young babies can sleep solidly through the night. But, at 6 months, most babies do not physically require middle of the night feedings.

Even 'attached' my kids were by-and-large sleeping through at that age and, even when they weren't, the disruption to my sleep was minimal. My point was (and is) that sleep deprivation is not a biological inevitability that evolution 'approved' of.

nonsense. I barely get 5hrs of sleep each night, all interrupted with toddler ill or baby needing feeding or so on.

This is normal for many people for many years.

Generally speaking, evolution knows what its talking about and would not have created a situation that was so harmful for us.

If you think about it, it makes sense that your metabolism would slow down, to preserve the fat you need to produce milk during this time that nature dictates.

I agree, how does that correlate though?