Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

As Mark Twain said, there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics, the most prevalent being the latter.  To wit: when we went to the pediatrician for Wyatt’s checkup 2 months ago, she expressed surprise that he was not yet sleeping through the night. “80% of most children are at 4 months,” she mused. I wonder what that number of sound sleepers will have risen to next week, when we go in for his 6-month well-baby checkup and shots. Though Wy still isn’t sleeping through the night -- far from it! -- I don’t know (m)any 6-months-old who are. Message boards are full of jerks who claim their kids were sleeping through the night at 4 weeks, but all the flesh-and-blood parents I talk to guffaw when I ask how their infants are sleeping.


To keep us from looking more like something from “The Machinist,*” we bring Wyatt to bed with us. He sleeps more, we sleep more, everyone is less exhausted. While co-sleeping is considered by many to be the opposite of good parenting, it works for us. And again, I’m amazed the number of other parents who admit to this, when asked. The statistics on co-sleeping seem to indicate that few parents do it, but this is one case where practice and theory must diverge. After a while, you all just want to sleep, which is what we’re doing. 

But enough griping! Here's a blurry, drooly webcam picture of Wy, taken this morning. At 6 months old, he's rolling, wiggling, sitting up for 15 seconds (then falling like a bowling pin), eating solid foods, ripping out Mom's earrings and shrieking about it, and yelling because the cats are always near, but 1 inch beyond his reach. It's a good age.




* This is an excellent movie about a man who hasn’t slept for a year.