Sleep

Babywatching: Desmond Morris

A secure babyhood provides the basis for a successful adulthood. No baby can be loved too much. – Desmond Morris

When the kids were very young, they slept in the bed with us.

Thankfully we went along with the controlled crying bullshit, for a short time only, we then bumped into Desmond Morris, cannot remember how, and between our instinct and Desmond Morris that years of our and the kids’ lives.

Here is a short bio of Desmond (ai):

Desmond John Morris is an English zoologist, ethologist, and surrealist painter. He is known for his popular science books and television programs about human and animal behavior.

Morris was born in Purton, Wiltshire, England, in 1928. He studied Zoology at Oxford University and received his Ph.D. in 1954. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as a researcher and curator at the London Zoo, where he studied animal behavior and communication.

In the 1960s, Morris became well-known for his work on body language and nonverbal communication. His book "The Naked Ape" (1967) was a best-seller and helped to popularize the study of human behavior and evolution. He also wrote several other books on human and animal behavior, including "Manwatching" (1977) and "The Human Zoo" (1969).

In addition to his work as a zoologist and ethologist, Morris is also an accomplished artist. He has exhibited his surrealist paintings in galleries around the world and has published several books on art and the creative process.

Desmond Morris is now in his 90s and continues to write and paint. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern ethology and has had a significant impact on the study of human and animal behavior.

Obviously, I had no idea about any medical malfeasance in the late 90s. We were simply young parents trying to figure out what to do with these new beings in our lives.

The Morris book that turned it around for us, is a little-known gem called Babywatching.

The following is the Introduction to the book and the two short chapters on sleep. If it strikes a chord with you, I encourage you to buy the book, and share it with a young couple with young kids or would be parents.

It is written by a leader in the field of observing humans, unspoiled by modern politics or modern industrial medicine, that has wedged itself between the parents and their babies and convinced them that sleeping alone and crying in the dark, is the right way of putting them to sleep. It is yet another propagandised issue, with plenty of propagandiser’s benefiting and laughing all the way to the bank.

One of the reasons it is such a propagandised space is because blaming parents for their inability to put their babies to sleep properly has become the perfect cover for SIDS (vaccine injury).

SIDS

I recommend this Sleep stack be read in conjunction with the last 21 minutes of Vaxxed 2. This is all about the baseline; what does the baseline human look like?

With eternal thanks and gratitude to Desmond Morris.

---

Babywatching

Introduction

It is not exaggerating to say that the human infant is the most remarkable life-form ever to draw breath on this planet.

Small, vulnerable, and wordless though the baby may be, it is at the same time power-packed with astonishing potential. Programmed by a million years of evolution to transform its sophisticated parents into doting protectors, it radiates irresistible appeal. But how deeply do we understand its true nature?

How much do we really know about its behaviour and its reactions to the world around it? Have we, perhaps, sometimes been misled by old traditions - entrenched ideas that tell us more about the adults that support them than they do about the babies themselves?

It is time to set the record straight, time to tear away the veils of superstition, fashionable distortion, and adult-centred bias, and look again with an unprejudiced eye at the baby itself. This is not easy. They are such charmers that it is difficult to maintain an objective approach. One gurgling smile from a tiny face and even the hard-nosed scientist is undone. A special effort is needed to keep a clear head, but if this can be achieved some fascinating facts come to light, and a revealing new picture of the baby's world begins to emerge.

After studying human adults for many years, I have decided in Babywatching to focus my attention exclusively on the first twelve months of human life - the official period of babyhood, before walking and talking arrive on the scene. The subject may be familiar, but with an observer's eye I have tried to bring a new approach to bear on a number of the most intriguing and frequent queries:

Why, for instance, do human babies enter the world with such difficulty, when the young of other animals arrive so simply? And why do they cry so much more than the young of other species? How well can babies see, hear, smell and-taste? Close examination reveals that they are much more sensitive to the outside world than was once believed. How do they feed, sleep, dream, play and crawl? Why do they alone weep,' smile and laugh? Just how intelligent are they? Can babyhood be rushed, or must events proceed at their own fixed pace? Is it true that newborn babies can swim under water? And can sleeping mothers really distinguish the cries of their own babies from those of others? Most important of all, how much love and comfort do babies need from their mothers?

In the past, adults have sometimes wrongly looked upon the baby as a 'blank canvas' on which anything can be imposed, or as a little lump of insensitive flesh, barely reacting to the outside world except in a few very basic ways. One Victorian commentator summed up this condescending attitude with the remark: 'Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs.' In similar vein an insensitive priest defined a baby as 'A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.'

We now know better. In reality, the baby is highly responsive to its environment, right from the moment of its birth, and it is endowed with an immense capacity for stimulating its loving parents, and for monitoring and influencing their behaviour.

Contrary to certain opinions, babies are almost impossible to train. Throughout their entire babyhood they only respond badly to attempts to chastise them or to over-regulate their lives. Unless their parents have been indoctrinated with inappropriate regimes, they will escape this fate. And so, they should because a secure babyhood provides the basis for a successful adulthood. No baby can be loved too much.

Babywatching is a way of looking at infants so that we can see the world from their point of view instead of ours. The more we can think like a baby, the greater our chance of becoming good parents. This applies to fathers as well as mothers, and if the chapters that follow sometimes seem to ignore the father's role, this is only because in the past so much of our information has been gleaned from observations of maternal behaviour.

Babies not only bring intense joy, they are also our genetic immortality. If we rear them well it is they who will continue our genetic progress through time. Because of our spoken or unspoken awareness of this continuity, the arrival of a new baby is a profoundly rewarding experience, no matter how familiar the event may have become. As Charles Dickens once remarked: 'Every baby born in the world is a finer one than the last.'

This said, I must apologize for referring to the baby as 'it' throughout the book. Some authors use 'he' or 'she', but both methods exclude half the babies in the world. The English language is awkward in this respect. One author tried to solve the problem by using 's/he', which was so obtrusive on the page that it ended up being irritating. So I have settled for the rather impersonal 'it'. No insult to babies is intended, as I am sure the text that follows will confirm. After writing this book I have even more respect and admiration for that most extraordinary of all living things…the human baby.

How long do babies sleep?

When an overnight guest is asked if he slept well, the joke response is to say: 'I slept like a baby', which pleases the host, and then to add: 'I woke up screaming every ten minutes.'

Both statements are valid because babies do sleep far more than adults, hence 'sleeping like a baby' means sleeping a long time, but they also interrupt their sleeping far more frequently than adults. The newborn sleeps more than twice as much as an adult human being, but instead of one unbroken nightly session, it dozes in short bursts throughout both the night and the day. To be more precise, the average baby sleeps 16.6 hours out of every 24 during the first week after birth. Earlier reports put the figure much higher - at about 22 hours, but when careful studies were carried out it was found that this was exceptional rather than average. A detailed investigation of 75 newborn babies showed that there was considerable variation from child to child, from as little as 10.5 hours per 24 in some cases to as much as 23 in others, but with the 16.6 figure emerging as the typical sleep pattern.

By the time the baby is about a month old, its total sleeping time has shortened slightly to 14.8 hours. This continues to decline gradually, reaching an average of 13.9 hours at the age of six months. When babyhood ends at the age of one year, the infant is still enjoying a daily slumber of about 13 hours. (This only shrinks to 12 hours at five years, but is down to 9 hours at age thirteen, before being reduced to the adult average of 7.5 hours.)

The slow reduction in sleepiness is not spread out equally during the night and day. It is the daytime sleeping that shows the faster decline. At birth, babies sleep almost as much in the glare of daylight as they do in the dark night hours. Careful observations have revealed that by the third week of life the typical baby slumbers for 54 per cent of the daylight hours, compared with 71 per cent of the night-time hours. By the time the baby has reached its 26th week its daytime sleep has decreased to only 28 per cent while its night-time sleep has risen to 83 per cent.

So, in place of the many short bursts of sleep throughout the day and night, there is a gradually emerging pattern of prolonged night-time slumber combined with brief daytime naps. The ten hours of almost uninterrupted night-time sleep is a great relief to the by now exhausted parents. The baby is becoming slowly adjusted to the human pattern of activity. Even its daytime naps start to merge until there is just one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This is the usual state of affairs at the end of the first year and, as babyhood ends, the morning nap also vanishes.

To sum up, a three-week-old baby should sleep about 8.5 hours at night and 6.5 hours during daylight. This may be split up into as many as eighteen short bursts of snoozing during the 24-hour period. The six-month-old baby should sleep about 10 hours at night and 3.5 during the day, with the night-time sleep being more or less in one long slumber, and with the daytime sleeping still split up into short bursts, or naps. But there is no cause for undue concern should one particular baby not conform to this pattern, as there is much variation from individual to individual.

Where do babies sleep?

In modern times, the most popular sleeping regime for the baby is to isolate it in a nursery where it is left to lie in its cot. The nursery room is often beautifully decorated and tastefully furnished. The cot is snug and warm and soft. But is this really what the human baby wants? Is it natural for it to be left alone in this way? A little objective observation soon gives us the answer, although it may not be the one we want to hear.

The fact is that nurseries are more attractive to mothers than they are to babies. Any human baby would far rather be in its mother's arms in a drab hovel than alone in the most expensive designer-nursery. The proof of this lies in the frequency of the human distress-call that occurs in the two contexts. Crying and screaming are calls for help. They are not manipulative attempts on the part of 'evil infants' who are scheming and plotting to dominate their long-suffering parents, although such a suggestion has been put forward in all seriousness in the past. Of course, ludicrous comments of this kind would not have been provoked, had there not been something amiss. What was wrong was that nursery babies, unnaturally isolated from their parents, were screaming in protest. Parents either left them to cry until 'the baby's will was broken', or they kept rushing to the nursery to comfort them. If they had enough compassion to make the repeated dashes to the cot, they were faced with the task of calming down the distraught infant and getting it back to sleep. All was then quiet for a while, until the baby re-awoke and burst into tears of panic once more. From such a routine came exhaustion for both parents and baby, and a regime that ended up punishing everyone concerned. Little wonder that early experts began trying to help out with suggestions of a more severe approach to night-time crying. It is unfortunate that they did not stop to watch babies and learn from them, instead of proposing solutions based on inappropriate training and discipline.

Babies kept with their mothers night and day do not display these prolonged bouts of screaming and crying. In tribal societies infants nearly always sleep with their mothers. They remain in close body contact as much as possible and this dramatically reduces their distress calls. In this respect, today's remaining tribal societies are following the pattern that was undoubtedly present from mankind's earliest primeval times. In those remote, primitive days, it would have been far too dangerous to leave babies isolated. As a way of ensuring that this did not happen, the human infant evolved a piercing and intensely energetic panic signal and produced it the moment it felt itself being separated from its all-protective parental figure. Unable to cling to its mother like a monkey and unable to run to her like a fawn, the helpless human baby had only its voice to save it. Mothers responded naturally to this signal and all was well. At night, the babies slept next to them, immediately available for loving attention.

This contact system meant that night-feeds at the breast caused the minimum of disturbance. The mother's sleep might be interrupted, but in the simplest and calmest of ways. There was no anxious listening for noises from the nursery, no stumbling out of bed, no pacing up and down in the night to pacify the infant. She awoke in the morning rested and relaxed instead of frayed and exhausted.

If this system was so efficient, why was it abandoned? Several factors seem to have been at work. One was urbanization which, in earlier days, led to appallingly unhygienic conditions for the majority of city dwellers. In those unwashed days, adding a baby to the mess only increased the problem and this helped to promote the idea of keeping the sleeping baby away from its parents. Among industrial societies the baby has rarely been allowed to sleep with its parents, whereas a survey revealed that 71 out of 90 non-industrial societies engaged in 'co-sleeping' behaviour.

A second factor was the rise of incredibly strict, disciplinarian educational theories. These were primarily concerned with older children, but the general philosophy of 'spare the rod and spoil the child' was extended backwards into babyhood by some authorities. Babies were left alone to cry to 'make them strong and self-reliant'. Interestingly, in the rare cases where tribal cultures behaved in this way, their social condition was one of warfare and strife. The warring tribes deliberately treated their babies and children in this disciplinarian manner in order to make them into more aggressive adults. And it worked.

In addition to the ideas that babies isolated in nursery cots would be better protected from infection and would learn from an early age to become independent, there was a third factor: the fear of smothering the infant if it shared the parental bed. The suggestion that parents might roll on top of their babies and suffocate them is an extraordinary one, when one thinks of our species spending its first million years without the 'benefit' of separate nurseries. But there is a good reason why this idea came into being. Where the custom of tight swaddling, often on stiff cradle-boards, was extended into the hours of darkness, the tiny babies could hardly move a muscle. If such babies were put close to their parents for sleeping, there was a slight risk that suffocation could occur because the baby could do little to protect itself. But an unswaddled baby is a different matter, quick to squirm, wriggle and scream if in trouble. Activity of this kind would be quite enough to awaken any parent who was not heavily sedated by sleeping pills, drugs, or alcohol. In fact, healthy, normal parents are extremely sensitive to the close presence of their sleeping babies, even when they themselves are soundly slumbering. Their resting brains remain alert to any signals of infantile distress, and they quickly make any necessary adjustments of position.

So, to sum up, the baby that sleeps with its parents has the advantage that its physical condition will be more closely monitored. If it is too hot or too cold, or is suffering any form of physical discomfort, its parents will know of these problems more quickly than if it is in a cot in a separate nursery room. Co-sleeping is therefore healthier. The baby also has the enormous advantage of feeling more secure and more loved which, in later life, will make it more independent, not less. It will be able to explore the world from the safety of its origins, instead of fearing the world because of its 'broken will'. It will be outgoing, but less violent, creative rather than destructive.

Co-sleeping is probably important for the mother as well as the baby. It has been suggested that the well-known phenomenon of 'post-natal depression' is due almost entirely to the feeling of anticlimax the mother experiences after the baby in her womb has been distanced from her by social custom, first in the hospital and then in the nursery. It is claimed that mothers who are allowed to keep their babies near to them in the ward and then in the home bedroom do not suffer from post-natal depression because the continued presence of their newborn makes them feel fulfilled. Their hormonal condition demands that they should indulge in a great deal of cuddling and closeness and without it they feel deprived and 'worthless'. If co-sleeping can rid new mothers of their frequent feelings of depression, then that is an important additional reason for dispensing with the traditional nursery, at least during the earliest months of babyhood.

Against all of this it must be added that, if the super-closeness of sleeping with the baby causes the parents distress, this distress will communicate itself to the baby and will counteract the benefits of close-contact sleeping. If the baby becomes an 'intrusion' into the relationship between the mother and the father, then some sort of compromise has to be found, for the baby's sake as well as the parents'. For some couples the ideal compromise is to have the baby in a cot alongside their bed, rather than actually inside the bed. This gives the best of both worlds - mother/father intimacy and parent/baby intimacy. Simply reaching out a hand can lead to contact with the baby and a small movement can sweep it up into the mother's arms for comfort or feeding, without her having to leave the peace of the parental bed. The baby can be monitored minute by minute and yet, during its long periods of sleep, the parents can enjoy one another's intimate company in the way they did before the baby's arrival on the scene.

In many ways, this compromise is even closer to the primeval situation than the three-in-a-bed solution. The modern bed tends to throw individuals unusually close to one another, whereas the primeval sleeping arrangements, with individuals sleeping on some kind of bedding on the ground, would have been slightly less 'clustering' in effect. But the exact position of the baby in relation to its parents is less vital than the fact that it is within reach of them at night. So long as the baby sleeps near the parents it can benefit from the possibility of immediate contact at any moment, and that is what makes it feel secure - the knowledge that its protectors are right there if needed. It is this that the isolated nursery baby is denied and that causes it to 'exercise its lungs' in such a heart-rending fashion on so many exasperating nocturnal occasions.

For mothers who have expressed their shame, in the past, for having given in to the 'tyranny of their bawling babies', and scooped them up into their arms and carried them off to their beds, one can perhaps venture to suggest that the true shame should be for those who have instead given in to certain arrogant and misguided teachings and who have left their infants alone at night to cry themselves into a fitful, lonely and unnaturally isolated sleep.

---

Here is a full list of short chapters from the wonderful book.

Contents

Introduction

How do babies enter the world?

Why do babies cry when they are born?

Why is the newborn covered in grease?

How soon does the navel heal?

Why do babies yawn when they are born?

Why are some babies born hairy?

What are the baby's vital statistics?

Why does a baby have a soft spot on its head?

Why do the eyes of babies have large pupils?

How soon do the baby's teeth appear?

How strong are newborn babies?

How well can babies see?

How well can babies hear?

How well can babies smell?

How well can babies taste?

How do babies react to a loss of balance?

How well can babies control their temperatures?

Why do babies cry?

How well can a mother recognize the crying of her own baby?

What comforts a baby?

Why do babies weep?

What makes a baby smile?

What makes a baby laugh?

How do babies suck?

How often does a baby feed?

Which kind of milk is best for the baby?

How were babies weaned before there was babyfood?

Why do babies burp?

How do babies indicate that they are fully fed?

How long do babies sleep?

Where do babies sleep?

Do men and women react differently to the sight of a baby?

Why do some mothers have twins?

Why do babies cry in aeroplanes?

Why are babies circumcised?

Why are babies baptised?

Why are baby boys dressed in blue and baby girls in pink?

Why was the baby's arrival celebrated with a birthday cake?

Why was the stork said to bring babies?

When a baby is hurt, why do we 'kiss it to make it better'?

Why is a baby called a baby?

---

Here are some thoughts on other cultures that co-sleep (ai). In fact, most of the world does it. It’s the medicalised and hyper propagandised West that is the exception.

Co-sleeping, or sleeping in close proximity to or in the same bed as a parent or caregiver, is a common practice in many cultures around the world. In some cultures, co-sleeping is seen as a natural and necessary part of parenting, while in others it may be more stigmatized or discouraged. Here are some examples of cultures that traditionally encourage or practice co-sleeping:

1. African cultures: Many African cultures have a tradition of co-sleeping, with infants and young children often sleeping in the same bed as their parents or other caregivers. This practice may be influenced by a variety of factors, including the desire to keep infants close for breastfeeding and comforting, as well as the belief that co-sleeping promotes bonding and attachment.

2. Asian cultures: Co-sleeping is also common in many Asian cultures, with infants and young children often sleeping in the same room or bed as their parents. In some cases, co-sleeping may be motivated by practical considerations, such as the lack of space in small homes, or the desire to keep infants close for breastfeeding and caregiving.

3. Latin American cultures: Co-sleeping is also common in many Latin American cultures, where it may be motivated by a variety of factors, including the desire to keep infants close for breastfeeding and caregiving, as well as the belief that co-sleeping promotes bonding and attachment.

4. Indigenous cultures: Many indigenous cultures around the world have a tradition of co-sleeping, with infants and young children often sleeping in close proximity to or in the same bed as their parents or other caregivers. In these cultures, co-sleeping may be motivated by a variety of factors, including the belief that it promotes bonding and attachment, as well as the desire to keep infants close for caregiving and protection.

I asked the ai about the psychological and physical the benefits of babies sleeping with their parents, and through gritted teeth, it wrote this:

There is evidence to suggest that co-sleeping (sleeping in close proximity to or in the same bed as a parent or caregiver) may offer certain psychological and physical benefits for babies:

1. Improved sleep: Research suggests that co-sleeping may help babies to sleep more soundly, as they may feel more secure and comforted by the presence of a parent or caregiver. For example, a study published in the journal Pediatrics found that infants who co-slept with their mothers had longer periods of continuous sleep and spent more time in deep sleep than infants who slept in a separate room (1).

2. Enhanced bonding and attachment: Co-sleeping can provide opportunities for physical contact and intimacy between parents and their babies, which can help to strengthen the bond between them. A study published in the Journal of Family Psychology found that co-sleeping was associated with increased maternal sensitivity and attachment to infants (2).

3. Easier breastfeeding: Co-sleeping may make it easier for mothers to breastfeed their babies at night, as they can simply roll over and feed their baby without having to fully wake up. This can help to promote breastfeeding success and duration (3).

4. Improved regulation of body temperature and heart rate: Co-sleeping may help babies to regulate their body temperature and heart rate, as they can cuddle up to a parent or caregiver for warmth and comfort. A study published in the journal Sleep found that co-sleeping infants had a lower risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) compared to infants who slept in a separate room (4).

References:

1. Mosko, S., Richard, C., & McKenna, J. (1997). Infant-parent co-sleeping in an evolutionary perspective: Implications for understanding infant sleep development and the sudden infant death syndrome. Pediatrics, 100(2), 214-222.

2. Gettler, L. T., McKenna, J. J., McDade, T., & Agustin, S. S. (2011). Father-infant co-sleeping, parental report of sleep and daytime sleepiness. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(6), 892-900.

3. Ball, H. L., & Drewett, R. F. (2007). A systematic review of the epidemiology of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): a decade of progress. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 21(1), 76-90.

4. Mosko, S., Richard, C., & McKenna, J. (1997). Infant-parent co-sleeping in an evolutionary perspective: Implications for understanding infant sleep development and the sudden infant death syndrome. Pediatrics, 100(2), 214-222.

---

---

Thank you for reading this Substack.

Please consider a small paid subscription (donation). The money goes to a good cause.

I am always looking for good, personal GMC (pandemic and jab) or childhood vaccination stories. Shared stories are remembered and help others.

In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.

You can write to me privately: unbekoming@outlook.com

If you are Covid-jab injured, consider the FLCCC Post-Vaccine Treatment

If you want to understand and “see” what baseline human health looks like, watch this 21 minutes.

Here are three eBooks I have produced so far:

FREE eBook: A letter to my two adult kids - Vaccines and the free spike protein

FREE eBook: The Climate™

FREE eBook: What is a woman? - “We don’t know yet.”