Hellobee Boards

I haven't read the whole thing, but I did a good skim of the book and refer to it when I need to. I found it helpful, but the book doesn't really give you a step by step training method. You basically have to piece together all the information and do what works for you.

We were having major sleep issues, but now at 3 months, it is so much better. I started implementing some sleep training starting at 9 weeks.

I loved the book. And I'm a nerd so I loved all the data and studies in the beginning. I found Ferber's book did a better job of actually laying out a sleep training method. I implemented the early bedtime and having LO sleep in her crib as much as possible (we avoid car and stroller naps as much as we can) after reading Weissbluth, and I think it's been great for her sleep.

Like others, I didn't find that the book gave concrete advice in terms of how to sleep train (he does mention Ferber and others but says to pick what feels right to you). But it made a compelling case for the importance of sleep which helped me realize how crucial sleep was to DS's health and development and that by being terrified of him ever crying I was harming all of us. That knowledge was really important to me during the hard parts of sleep training. The most helpful part of the book was seeing what was "normal" in terms of hours and sleep cycles, and when I should be looking to see nap consolidation. I've also found his advice on the natural timing of naps to be spot on, as well as the "sleep begets sleep" earlier bedtime.

I did skip all of the anecdotes about parents personal stories. They weren't helpful to me.

I did a review of it on my blog if you want to read it. I really liked it and kept it in mind with lo's sleep.

http://babymakingmerrygoround.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-healthy-sleep-habits-happy.html?m=0

@Meridian: I agree with you, so many charts and studies! I did like parts of it.

I found Ferber's book "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" much easier to read and I liked the comfort checks/controlled crying approach of sleep training when my daughter was about 5 months old. She's 15 months and we still use that book as a reference for naps and nighttime sleep.

I read a ton of sleep books and I wanted to like this one but like you, I found it poorly edited and pretty difficult to get through. Ferber's book was better written and I ended up getting more from that one. Many of the ideas are similar, although if you get into the details, they have pretty different ideas about certain things (like when a baby can reasonably go through the night without food, for example). But I think with some of that, you need to just see what you are comfortable with and take cues from your baby.

As for actual sleep training, we used Ferber's method, which is basically extinction with checks. I didn't trust everything he said though (we didn't use his method to drop night nursings, only to drop the random wakings due to sleep cycles). So we didn't use it in the way that many people do, which is to get their LOs to STTN. But we were happy with the results we got anyway.