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page 4..........HAVEN'T BEEN
SLEEPING WELL
by Robert Sullivan, Reporting by Anne Hollister
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A recent study of long-haul truckers who drove 4,000 miles
a week with dectrodes attached to their heads -"wired up like Martians,"
as a spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Department put it- proved that
drivers do fall asleep at the wheel. It is estimated that such drivers
may cause 1,500 road deaths a year.
The Transportation Department is drafting new rules for the maximum number
of hours a trucker can work in a given day. It's about time - the current
rules have been in place for 60 years. But enforcement of any new limits
will be a tougher deal.
"The logbooks that truckers keep should be best-sellers on the fiction
list," says Scott Campbell, whose Lab of Human Chronobiology at Cornell
University Medical College is conducting its own study of tired truckers.
"The Feds know it, and they continue the charade."
If truckers are an extreme example, it is nonetheless true that our lifestyle
is vigorously, even viciously, anti-sleep from cradle to grave. And within
each age-group, there is an issue. Like the one being waged over babies,
right in my own bedroom!
Her name is Caroline, and she's a really good baby - in fact, she's perfect
- but we still have debates over how to raise her. TIME FOR HER FEEDING.
Never wake a sleeping baby! THANK GOD FOR PACIFIERS. Plugsareplastt"c
Satans! NICE CRIB. You'd Ferberize? You fiend!
That was the biggie: Ferberization. Dr. Richard Ferber of the Center
for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children's Hospital in Boston is the
author of the 1985 book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, which has sold
a half million copies and brought its author (and me) a peck of trouble.
Ferber says you needn't worry too much about helping your newborn, who
is "getting used to being in this world and is changing all the time,"
rack up her 16 and a half hours of shut-eye daily.
But he adds that "at around three to four months, it's important
to increase your regularity so your baby will learn when to expect to
go to sleep." He emphasizes that children learn new sleep habits
quickly and that if you want your baby to fall back asleep by herself,
it's best to let that happen. Rocking a crying baby every time she wakes
only builds habits that eventually- must be broken. '
Ferber's theories have been stretched by critics (like Luci) to mean
not just tough love but neglect. An article in Time last year, which recommended
allowing babies to remain in their parental beds until they choose to
disengage, became a flash point in the fight over Ferber-ization. It stressed
the benefits of extra time spent with offspring and the encouragement
of natural breast-feeding and mother-child sleep patterns.
" Don't get me going on the Time article," says Ferber, who
hates the term Ferberization and is at pains to explain that he encourages
adaptability rather than rigor in his book. "The writer said my goal
in life was to deprive children of their mothers' milk. Total non-sense."
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