Did anyone read/follow Baby Wise? Other recs?

[ejpint]

Best friend is all about it - her baby was STTN at 6 weeks. I'm curious about it, but wanted to get some other opinions before dropping $10 on an e-book. She drops a lot of "just let her cry" comments in when she talks about her baby, so I'm wondering if this book advocates CIO? At 6 weeks?

I know it's early to be making parenting philosophy decisions, but I figured I may as well start educating myself now. Other book/website recs?

[karinothing]

I admit that I have not read it. It is however linked to Failure to Thrive and appears to be disasterous to breastfeeding. I think it is written by some Christian fundamentalist, so not really in line with my views of parenting. aapnews.aappublications.org/content/14/4/21.abstract

I have also heard that book has been changed some what since the failure to thrive issue.

[pierogigirl]

I have not read it. There has been a lot of criticism of the book. If you plan to bf, the strict schedule I believe it recommends could be detrimental to being successful.

[ijack]

please don't do baby wise. I could go on and on about it, but will spare you my soap box.
you don't need a parenting philosophy - just do what feels right

[nabum]

My neighbor used Babywise with her son. He STTN at 7 weeks, but also was diagnosed FTT and she had to quit BF in order to get enough calories in him/get his weight up.

[froggy76]

I didn't follow it or read it, and I've heard a lot of negative things about it. However, I did loosely follow the EASY routine, which I believe comes from Baby Wise. After the first few weeks, I started trying for a 2.5 or 3-hour cycle of eat, activity, sleep.

I also read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, which is the most terribly written book ever. However, it has a lot of great information about sleep. It's not so much a sleep training method as it is just an informational book that will help you understand how much sleep LO needs and when to tell that they're sleepy.

[ejpint]

Ah, thanks! I tried to do a little quick Amazon review search, and started to get the impression that this wasn't going to be in line with our thoughts on caring for a newborn.

I'm thinking we'll probably be the "just go with it" type parents at first. I mean, it's a newborn! But I'm a big fan of books - even if we chuck all the advice out the window, I feel better reading as much as I can in advance.

[Deleted]

I am very anti-Babywise, for the reasons mentioned above.

EASY is not from Babywise, its from the Baby Whisperer, which I did read. We followed this loosely, but its not a sleep training method.

Babies shouldn't be STTN through some "method" that early on. They shouldn't be sleep trained before 6mo, and honestly, I still think that is too young.

People love Ferber, which is a CIO method, but I never read it. However, I'd do that way before Babywise.

I am very Team "Follow your instincts"-- which for us, included co-sleeping until 18 months

[pugz]

yeah I am quickly subscribing to the "just do what your instincts tell you" philosophy FWIW we only had to get up once with G last night. She slept from 11-3:30, then 4:30-7:30. May just be a fluke though! We'll see what tonight brings.

[h]

Stay far away from Babywise! I like Happiest Baby on the Block as a reference for young infant care. Friends whose parenting I trust have liked the Baby Whisperer/EASY. I think either of those would be fine if you want to read something.

I agree with cosmos that any sleep training should wait until at least 6 months.

[Deleted]

Oh yes, we read Happiest Baby on the Block as well, that was helpful.

[pugz]

Happiest Baby is great! I have the book if you want it I can send it to you. I already gave my DVD away.

[egishere]

We are schedule freaks but basically followed the EASY routine. It worked well for us because we were strictly FF. I agree with Babywise or any other schedule not working great for BF when they are pretty young. CIO is a whole other debate. We didn't do it until around 7 months and even now don't do it very much since they share a room and I don't want all three awake. you can watch some stuff on YouTube about HBOTB-that was helpful for me, techniques to use to calm them down, etc.

[Deleted]

I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child which mildly freaked me out because I was all "MY BABY ISNT DOING THIS!" but as a pp mentioned, its geared for 4 months and up so once I realized that it made more sense.

I also read the Baby Whisperer and it had some good tips but also annoyed me (not a fan of being called "luv") but it was good in terms of listening to your baby, following their cues, etc. Between that and Sears' "Baby Book" I think we have reached a happy medium.

I don't think it's entirely normal for a 6 week old to STTN and that wasn't a goal of mine (although my guy has always slept 4 or 5 hours at a clip most nights since he came home from the hospital.)

[sewpinkgal]

We loved HBOTB for the first 4 months and then I picked up The Sleep Easy Solution book. It is a form of CIO, which I used at 4 months just to get him to fall asleep on his own. By the time I was ready to night wean at 6.5m, he had dropped to one feeding a night and then no feedings on his own. I actually took a class from one of the authors of the book and I liked that she advocated reading your child for sleep needs and to do what works for your baby - even if that didn't quite fit with their stated average sleep needs for children of various ages.

We also very loosely tried to follow the EASY method, though there were plenty of days that went right out the window.

I haven't read Babywise, but have heard that it was linked to Failure To Thrive early on, so that alone was a turn off for me.

[Deleted]

Yeah, take a pass on Babywise.

Books I enjoyed: Happiest Baby on the Block, Eat Sleep Poop, Breastfeeding Made Simple, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, Positive Discipline: The first 3 years

[whitemerlot]

We liked Happiest Baby on the Block. The DVD was on Netflix streaming at one point. I'm not sure if it still is, but that was really helpful, especially for my H who had no experience with babies.

[vanillacourage]

I have never been able to get this story out of my head. Poor baby.

www.ezzo.info/top-resources/voices-of-experience/85-voices-of-experience/160-the-qyq-familys-experience

To be fair, I've heard that they have revised some of their more stringent recommendations, but still. I'd avoid their teachings altogether.

[Deleted]

We followed EASY pretty much from week 3 on. It worked really well for us & ds was sttn by 7 weeks. However I never left him to cry as a newborn. Fuss for a minute while I grabbed a bottle sure, but not full on cry. We did full extinction for going to sleep training at 7.5 months. It was the right choice for us.

[barefootcontessa]

I know about Babywise generally but never read it. Two things I have found helpful in getting babies to sleep longer at night: expose them to early morning light so their body rhythms get more on a day-night pattern. Babies seem to have their days and nights mixed up. Second, try to feed them as much as you can during the day. I aim to feed every 2-3 hours during the day, with 10-15 minutes on each side.

There are differences between babies when it comes to sleep. I have done the same with each of mine and have had all different sleep patterns.

[Deleted]

That story about Katie was just heartwrenching. I could never imagine leaving my 3 month old to cry for 4 hours. Heck I couldn't leave my 9 month old to cry like that (when we sleep trained he only ever cried 30 minutes & that was ROUGH)

[Deleted]

I had a friend reccomend this too. I had no idea as I have not even cracked the book yet.

We co-slept for 2 years with DS. I fed on demand and never let him CIO. I think we will just go that route again with #2.

That story was heart breaking.

[h]

The story is indeed heartbreaking, but I am having a really hard time understanding why the parents continued to go down that path for almost two years when it was so clearly not working. I get that they were clueless first time parents and were apparently surrounded primarily with Babywise people, but I would think that parental instinct would still tell you that letting a baby cry what seems to have been more or less all night long and repeatedly hitting them with a rod is not the way to go. I just can't phathom how a loving parent could not question that sooner. Was it just brainwashing?

[Deleted]

I am not reading the story based on your comments

[oregonpachey]

I read that story and now I feel sick. We are sleep training Cal (7 months) and now am questioning myself.

Granted, he has only cried for a maximum of 5 minutes but still. Am I doing irreversible damage?

Please tell me I am not scarring him for life.

I am going to puke.

[vanillacourage]

Aug 9, 2012 13:41:31 GMT -5 oregonpachey said:

I read that story and now I feel sick. We are sleep training Cal (7 months) and now am questioning myself.

Granted, he has only cried for a maximum of 5 minutes but still. Am I doing irreversible damage?

Please tell me I am not scarring him for life.

I am going to puke.

You are not scarring your child for life. We did extinction CIO (only way it would click with DS1) at 1 year and the longest he fussed was 30 minutes., and I'm ok with that. TOTALLY different from a 3-month-old screaming all night long.

Sorry I posted that link if it's making the good mommies here second guess themselves.

[annieh2]

I read Babywise and we loosely followed it. It was the edition that is NOT linked to FTT and seemed to encourage scheduling with the caveat that you need to feed your baby if s/he is acting hungry. It says to feed your baby every 2-3 hours which seems to be the time frame most doctors recommend as well.

Also, I didn't feel like the edition I read advocated for letting a baby cry all the time. It did say that crying/fussing for short periods (like 5-10 minutes or less) was okay. I think this actually helped me to not jump up at every noise he made as a newborn. Therefore, he and I both learned that he was capable of soothing himself back to sleep and didn't always need me right away. That being said, this was definitely the portion that I didn't follow until he was a bit older. I just couldn't listen to him cry if it was more than a fuss.

I really liked that it got us onto the schedule of eating, having awake time, then sleeping during the day. We followed our son's cues and it wasn't long before he was sleeping longer stretches at night and by 2 months old sleeping through the night (which is only 5 hours).

I realize that it's not for everyone, but I really like being on some sort of a schedule and having routine, so it definitely fit with our lives. One other thing was that I spent the first weeks strictly following our son's cues and didn't really start trying to create a schedule until after that point. The schedule has always been loose, but it's nice to know an approximate time that things are going to happen.

I also really enjoyed reading HBOTB, and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby. I took bits from all the books and just trusted my instincts most of the time.

[annieh2]

I did not read that story either. Sounds like it is tragic and that is just awful.

[dcrunnergirl]

Aug 9, 2012 13:34:41 GMT -5 h said:

The story is indeed heartbreaking, but I am having a really hard time understanding why the parents continued to go down that path for almost two years when it was so clearly not working. I get that they were clueless first time parents and were apparently surrounded primarily with Babywise people, but I would think that parental instinct would still tell you that letting a baby cry what seems to have been more or less all night long and repeatedly hitting them with a rod is not the way to go. I just can't phathom how a loving parent could not question that sooner. Was it just brainwashing?

This. Those parents sound crazy. We were clueless first time parents who had never held babies before our own and who followed a schedule from day one, and we knew enough not to let our kids cry for hours on end (or for more than a few seconds early on). And, we know enough not to hit our kids at all, let alone continue whacking them. That's just stupid.

[h]

For those concerned about reading the story, here's a cleaned up synopsis:

First-time parents with no experience with babies and no family nearby decide to use Babywise. They are Christian and seem to be surrounded by friends who use it. They implement Babywise strictly from the get go. Their kid never seems to respond in the way that Ezzo says a baby should, basically crying for hours on end instead of "getting with the program." Rather than switching gears, they stick with it. They go to some sort of Ezzo discipline class at some point and implement physical discipline (and for a kid who is not even two). Again, when it does not yield the results that Ezzo says it will, they redouble their efforts instead of looking for an approach that works. Finally, when the kid is almost two, the mom realizes that Ezzo isn't working, gets the Dr. Sears Baby Book, and becomes an attachment parent. Things are now better with her daughter, and they have a second child that they raised AP from the beginning. The child does not have FTT and does not suffer any permanent injury (aside, obviously from any lasting psychological trauma resulting from how she was parented for the first two years of her life).