Dear Doctor,

It was 2 am when I sat in the nursery rocking chair, tears streaming down my face as my 14-week-old daughter finally drifted to sleep in my arms.

I wasn’t crying because she woke—again.

I wasn’t crying from exhaustion, though there was plenty of that.

I was crying because of what you said at our appointment yesterday.

“She should be sleeping through the night by now. Have you tried letting her cry it out? Just for 10 minutes at first, then 15. She needs to learn to self-soothe. You need to teach her how to sleep.”

If only you knew what those words did to me.

If only you knew how I walked out of your office questioning everything—my instincts, my choices, my worth as a mother.

If only you knew that I spent hours that night on my phone, frantically researching sleep training methods while my baby slept on my chest, my tears falling onto her downy head.

If only you knew the weight of your authority, how your white coat and credentials make your opinions feel like commandments to new mothers desperately seeking reassurance that they’re doing it right.

But here’s what I wish you knew

I wish you knew that the 4-month-old in your exam room who nurses to sleep isn’t developing “bad habits”—she’s experiencing one of the most natural, biological sleep aids evolution designed.

I wish you knew that when you casually suggest leaving an infant to “cry it out,” you’re advising a mother to ignore her baby’s only form of communication.

I wish you knew that your arbitrary milestones for “sleeping through the night” and night weaning aren’t based on biology or infant development—they’re cultural constructs that shift with each generation, each parenting book, each new theory.

I wish you knew that trying to scare me about cosleeping won’t work. I’ve done my research. I know about the Safe Sleep Seven. I know how to share sleep safely. My body knows how to cuddle curl—we’re designed to hold our babies close for a reason. For millennia, this is how mothers and babies have slept, and will continue to sleep. Our bodies are made for this proximity.

I wish you acknowledged that in your four-year medical degree and years of residency, you received virtually no training on normal infant sleep. That the few hours you did receive were likely influenced by formula companies, outdated research, and cultural biases rather than biological norms.

I wish you admitted that infant sleep advice is outside your scope of practice.

The science you weren’t taught

I wish you knew what I know now – that “men of science” – men like you – started this whole sleep training culture out of pure ignorance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, robbing countless mothers of their confidence and disrupting the natural mother-baby bond.

I wish you knew about Dr. Luther Emmett Holt, who in 1894 advised leaving babies to “cry it out” for up to three hours to “develop their lungs” – a ridiculous claim with no scientific basis. Or about Dr. John Watson, who warned against the “dangers of too much mother love,” actually telling parents: “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap.”

These men shaped our culture with their bizarre beliefs that independence mattered more than emotional security. Government pamphlets instructed mothers to stop holding babies if their “arms feel tired” because “the baby is never to inconvenience the adult” and that babies should “sit silently in the crib” to avoid being “a serious waste of time.”

I wish you knew that your advice today echoes these disturbing, unscientific views.

Meanwhile, our true experts now have names like Prof. Helen Ball, Prof. James McKenna, Dr. Darcia Narvaez, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D., and Greer Kirshenbaum, Ph.D. – researchers who’ve dedicated their careers to understanding infant sleep biology and the mother-baby connection.

Our influences and community include real mothers like those behind Raised Good and Cosleepy – women who do the work of researching, inspiring, and normalising because they see this as human rights activism to reverse the damage that’s been done. They give voice to babies and mothers with reason, common sense, and compassion.

Did your textbooks tell you that night waking in babies serves a protective function? That frequent arousals may help prevent SIDS? That night feeding is crucial for establishing milk supply and meeting needs not only for calories, but for connection and safety?

Did your professors explain that cortisol levels rise in babies left to cry, potentially creating stress responses that may affect brain development? Or that “self-soothing” is a misnomer—a developmental skill that comes with neurological maturity and coregulation with a connected caregiver, not from being left alone?

Did your training cover the anthropological research showing that in most cultures around the world, babies sleep with their mothers and nurse throughout the night for the first several years of life?

I know it wasn’t in your curriculum. Because if it had been, you couldn’t possibly suggest sleep training with such casual confidence.

The damage your words do

When you recommend sleep training to a vulnerable new mother, here’s what happens.

She begins to see her baby’s normal biological needs as a problem to be fixed.

She questions her instincts to respond, to comfort, to nurture.

She feels inadequate, like she’s failing at something other mothers can do.

She starts to resent nighttime parenting instead of accepting it as a season.

She stops sharing her struggles with you, afraid of your judgment or simplistic “solutions”.

The relationship between her and her baby—built on trust, responsiveness, and attunement—becomes strained by arbitrary expectations.

And when sleep training inevitably fails (as it usually does), or when she tries it but can’t bear to continue, she feels like a double failure—unable to have a “good sleeper” or to be “strong enough” to sleep train.

What I value about you

Let me pause here, because this letter isn’t about dismissing your expertise or importance.

When my child falls and needs stitches, your steady hands bring comfort to us both.

When little bones need mending after a playground mishap, I’m grateful for your expertise.

When my little one needs medication or a diagnosis for an illness, I trust your years of training and experience.

When my child’s heart needs listening to, their growth needs measuring, their development needs tracking—I value your medical knowledge deeply.

I know you became a doctor to heal, to help, to make a difference.

And you do, in so many crucial ways.

I don’t expect you to know everything—no one person can. The human body is infinitely complex, let alone the mysteries of infant development and the mother-baby relationship.

What I want you to know

I want you to know that while your influence is powerful—what’s more powerful is my baby’s influence, their needs, my intuition as their mother.

I want you to know that I am the decision maker, not you. You’re on my team, but I’m the coach. I call the shots.

I want you to know you are here to provide options, information, and informed consent—not to dictate how I parent my child at night…or during the day.

I want you to know that our relationship works best when you respect my authority as the expert on my own child, just as I respect your medical expertise.

What we really need from you

On the subject of infant sleep, what we need isn’t medical intervention. It’s understanding.

We don’t need you to solve our babies’ “sleep problems.”

We need you to recognise when a topic falls outside your expertise and simply say, “Infant sleep patterns are outside my scope of practice.”

We need you to stay in your lane—and if infant sleep wasn’t covered in your medical training (which we know it wasn’t), it’s not your lane.

We need you to stop pathologising normal infant sleep.

We need you to tell us that babies aren’t supposed to sleep through the night, that waking to nurse is biologically appropriate, that our nighttime responsiveness is exactly what our babies need.

We need you to say, “Yes, this stage is exhausting. How can we support you while honouring your baby’s needs?”

We need you to recognise that infant sleep isn’t a medical issue unless there are clear pathological signs—like iron deficiency or mouth breathing or food sensitivities—and even then, the solution is never to withhold comfort and connection.

We need you to acknowledge the limits of what was covered in your training, and if you choose to advise on sleep, take responsibility to educate yourself properly—not through outdated medical texts, but through anthropological research, infant neuroscience, and the expertise of cultures where sleep “problems” don’t exist. Or refer us to certified lactation consultants, infant sleep specialists, and postpartum doulas who specialise in the biology of infant sleep and the lived reality of new parenthood.

We need you to know that when you suggest sleep training to an exhausted mother who trusts you, your words carry the weight of your authority. And sometimes, those words can unintentionally push us away from the very instincts that make us good mothers.

If only you knew…

That three years later, that same baby who “should have been sleeping through the night” at 14 weeks now falls asleep holding my hand, chattering about dinosaurs and rocket ships.

That she transitions seamlessly between sleep cycles because she learned that sleep is safe, that someone will always respond if she needs them.

That the nights I spent nursing, rocking, and comforting weren’t creating “bad habits”—they were building a foundation of trust that now shapes how she approaches the world. Those nights also form some of the best memories I have as a mother—to think they could have been robbed.

That the doubt you planted has been replaced by unwavering conviction in my choices, in my instincts, in my power as a mother.

The tide is turning

Here’s what I want you to know now: Your approval is no longer something I seek.

The time of doctors dictating how mothers respond to their babies’ cries is coming to an end.

We’re reclaiming the wisdom that was stolen from us by the medicalisation of childbirth and infant sleep, and by the clock-watching formula schedules that nearly made breastfeeding extinct by the 1950s.

Mothers are connecting, sharing stories, and rebuilding the confidence that generations of medical overreach tried to dismantle.

We’re remembering what our great-grandmothers knew but were told to forget.

We’re trusting our bodies, our instincts, our babies.

I don’t write this letter for your approval. I write it for HER—the mother sitting in your office tomorrow, fighting back tears as you casually suggest she abandon her baby to cry.

I’m writing to whisper in her ear: “Trust your instincts above all else. When sleep training advice comes, stand firm in your truth. If they keep pushing after you’ve declined, RUN! Find another doctor. Your baby’s emotional well-being—as well as your own—is not negotiable.”

Because here’s the truth of it. YOU answer to US, not the other way around. We are the experts on our children. We are the ones who spend countless hours learning their cues, responding to their needs, building the foundations of their security.

Our babies don’t need to be “fixed.”

Our instincts don’t need to be overridden.

Our nighttime responsiveness doesn’t need to be pathologised or medicalised.

And while I value your medical expertise for broken bones and fevers, I no longer accept your authority over how I nurture my child’s heart, mind, and spirit.

The truth is this isn’t just about sleep…it never was. This is about power. Power we’re taking back.

This is about reclaiming what’s rightfully ours as mothers.

So the next time you prepare to tell a mother her baby should be sleeping through the night, remember this letter. She’s likely read it too. So, she may nod politely in your office, but she’ll go home, pick up her phone, and find her way to a community of mothers who will tell her the truth about infant sleep.

A community that will restore her confidence instead of undermining it.

A community that will lift her up instead of making her doubt herself.

A community that is growing stronger every day.

We are that community. And our voices are getting louder.

With strength and conviction,

A Mother Who Found Her Power