a friend of mine has a 6 week old, and just sent me this blog post that she has used to begin sleep training her little girl. she started at 4 weeks, like the post recommends, and she says it's been wonderful for her. her baby is sleeping 6-7 hours at night now. it seems pretty easy and straight forward. what do y'all think? anyone on a schedule like this -- does it work for you?
http://delightfulmomstuff.blogspot.com/2012/02/newborn-sleeping-through-night.html
squash / 13764 posts
My LO isn't here yet, but there's been a ton of criticism around Babywise...it's been associate with failure to thrive, deyhydration, etc. I can see how the ideas underlying it are reasonable (to set a schedule in order to help baby get his days and nights set), but I think the assertion that the parent decides when the baby needs to be fed is a bit much. If your baby is hungry, he's hungry! so in my (non parent!) opinion, I think it's important to take it with a really really big grain of salt.
Also, I did not realize that the original founder developed it based on Christian principles (from wikipedia: The book justified the act of leaving a baby to cry alone by comparing that choice to the crucifixion of Jesus: "Praise God that the Father did not intervene when His Son cried out on the cross.")....
blogger / pineapple / 12381 posts
AAP strongly recommends that people do not use Babywise. Young babies absolutely cry when they need something and should be attended to.
GOLD / wonderful coffee bean / 18478 posts
I pretty much did all of these things but I have heard the same criticism about "Babywise" mentioned above. If my baby seemed hungry, then I fed her. I could never get her on a 4 hour schedule. She was always hungry before then so I just fed her. It was still fine and she slept 11-12 hours straight at night from an early age.
pineapple / 12526 posts
I think Babywise has decent thoughts in regards to sleep training, but the feeding schedule is ridiculous.
That being said, my daughter naturally started sleeping 6-7 hours through the night at 2 weeks old. Shes 6 months old now and sleeps 14 hours through the night, waking up once to eat.
honeydew / 7444 posts
I find that parent-directed schedules don't work for all babies. I tried to do EASY (Baby Whisperer) with my LO in the beginning which helped get into a routine (and establish good sleep hygiene) but it was really difficult to stretch it out to every 3 hours. It definitely doesn't hurt to try it out, though i'm a proponent of feeding on demand.
honeydew / 7444 posts
@Andrea: I find it so hard to get them on those schedules. After a while i gave up and LO finally started to establish her own eat-play-sleep pattern. Of course, i wasn't as lucky to get an 11-12 hour sleeper!
cantaloupe / 6164 posts
good to know! thanks everyone. i know that learning and perfecting breastfeeding and balancing milk production with hunger is hard enough for a first time mom, so i'm not sure this type of schedule would even be feasible for me. i found it really interesting though, since it seemed to work for all three of her children.
GOLD / wonderful coffee bean / 18478 posts
@caffeinated: I think the schedules are useful to use as guidelines. I know that I had NO clue what to do and looking at sample schedules helped me a lot. But at you said, babies eventually establish their own schedules anyway and it's best to take their lead!
papaya / 10560 posts
I have a few friends who have sworn by babywise...but it isn't really for me...too rigid. But, I LOVE the Moms on Call. It is a lot more flexible. Basically, feed at 6a, 9a, 12p, 3p, 6p, and tank them up at a 9pm feeding. It's 445 here and I just fed LO at 430 after he woke up because he was hungry, but of course I'll feed him again at 6p. Eventually you spread the times out more and drop feedings as they get older, but I haven't gotten that far as LO is only 3 weeks old.
In between feedings you encourage 15-30 minutes of active time for babies 2-8 weeks old, and then a 2.5 hour nap. And, it's completely ok if you don't follow the schedule to a t, but this is just what they suggest.
It is run by two pediatric nurses who each have a set of twins between them and other children as well. I did the online seminar for infants and found a lot of the information to be helpful and it cost about the same as I would have spent on a baby care book.
cantaloupe / 6164 posts
@lydg: that sounds a lot like what the blogger was saying she does. what are the major differences between moms on call and babywise?
grapefruit / 4056 posts
I have tried to stretch Sawyer out to 3 hours between feedings, but he has always needed to feed every 2 1/2 hours. Not all babies can go 3-4 hours between feeds. FWIW, I had overproduction issues, and he grows quite well, he just needs to eat a lot!
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
i read babywise and some of the ideas were good, but overall it was too extreme for me. i do like the basic premise of having them develop a "routine" (not necessarily by looking at the clock, but giving them the pattern of wake/eat/play). i'm not sure how breastfeeding mom's are able to maintain/establish their supply with a rigid newborn schedule...
i don't think i was able to stretch my DD to a 3-hour schedule until she was about 3-months old, even though we sleep trained earlier than that. i think the phrase "sleeping through the night" can be misleading sometimes bc to a lot of people they think it means sleeping til morning (i wish!!), but STTN is different depending on an infants' age. for example, an infant less than 3-months old would be considered STTN if they can sleep in stretches of 3-4 hours at night. i have a post coming up about this!
grapefruit / 4800 posts
I fed my LO on demand but I cluster fed her right before I went to bed and she'd sleep a good 6-8 hours even at a couple weeks old. But I developed mastitis, I'm not sure if it was because I wasn't waking up to feed her enough but I think it was.
pomegranate / 3388 posts
Parts of this seem similar to things that I did with my baby -- and she was a pretty good nighttime sleeper even early on. However, I think some of this is too strict for a little newborn. My "rules" were to feed baby *at least* every 3 hours during the day, even if that meant waking her. However, if she was crying and acting hungry earlier than 3 hours, I had no problem feeding her earlier. I tried not to associate eating with sleep -- even though baby would naturally try to fall asleep during meals. The way I did that was to follow EASY from The Baby Whisperer. Basically, I would change baby's diaper right after a meal so that she would wake up after eating, rather than conking out. At night, once I got over issues of trying to establish my milk supply, I would let baby sleep for as long as she could at night. When she woke in the night I would feed her, change a diaper, and put her right back down to bed as best I could. I tried to keep the lights low and I wouldn't really engage her or rile her up during nighttime feedings b/c I wanted her to know that night was for quiet and sleeping.
This worked well for us, but I'm not sure how much was just my daughter's temperament. She slept through the night much earlier that a lot of other babies we know...
pomegranate / 3890 posts
baby wise can be very dangerous. what worked for *us* was just following our lo's cues and he ahs set his own schedule, which has worked great.
nectarine / 2163 posts
I've never heard of babywise, but I'm not sure I agree with that.
I let my son sleep when he wants and eat when he wants, and has been sleeping 5 - 6 hours at night since he was 3 weeks. (although he is only 6 weeks now, so we'll see how long it lasts...)
That being said, I do agree with what she said about the baby sleeping longer than normal in someone's arms instead of bed. If my son is asleep in bed, at the moment he'll wake up about every 4 hours during the day, or 2 hours in the evening to eat. So during the day I watch the clock if he's asleep on someone and have them put him down at around 4 (or 2) hours and wait for him to wake himself up to feed because I know if I leave him asleep on someone he wont wake up until he's absolutely screaming starving
eggplant / 11287 posts
A mommmy friend of mine swore by baby wise and recommended it to me. I tried it, and it wasn't until after I became a mom that I realized it totally wasn't for me and didn't fit in with the way I want to parent my LO.
sometimes LO isn't ready for a nap when baby wise says she should be. Sometimes she is hungry after 2 hours. Sometimes she comfort nurses. Sometimes she sleeps til 7 am, sometimes she sleeps til 9am.
Not until after I read baby wise and actually had my baby for a couple weeks did I realize it is absolutely not for me and my family.
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
I purchased Moms on Call for older babies ( I want to say over 3 months?), and basically what it is involves putting your child in their room for the night, shutting the door and going back in 12 hours later. I was stunned when I realized what I shelled $30 for.
coconut / 8299 posts
I had my son on a pretty good schedule, similar to the Baby Whisperer one (EASY). But this time around with my daughter, I'm just going with the flow. She kinda set her own schedule so thats nice. The only thing I"m controlling is the routine. Schedule-wise, I'm letting her lead the way.
@looch: Huh? That's ridiculous!
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
@banana: yeah, I was pretty surprised. I read about it on a blog and thought, ok, I can try it and see what happens. I was stunned silent when I got the presentation. My subscription ran out, but it wasn't much more than that for older babies.
coconut / 8299 posts
@looch: So it's basically some sort of major CIO technique? Sounds horrible! That's unfortunate cause I was actually interested in checking them out!
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
@banana: yeah, I wish I still had the materials. I'd try to find something else, honestly.
pear / 1946 posts
@looch - wow good to know. I was just on the verge of buying it myself due to some blog posts I read. Definitely doesn't seem worth the money now!
pomegranate / 3383 posts
@looch: I totally agree! I was disappointed with the $30 I had spent too! While momsoncall does have some good info about schedules...it went against any previous research I had done and my mommy instincts.
I agree with pp about what they've said about babywise...you can't control when your baby wants to eat and how long they want to sleep. Babies aren't programmed to all operate in the same way!
pomelo / 5178 posts
I think different methods work for different babies/families, but this particular approach would not work for me or my kids. We're much more comfortable with child-led schedules, and both of my kids put themselves on eating/sleeping schedules from an early age.
I will say that newborns are very noisy sleepers, and we do practice delayed responding from an early age. But the amount of time is directly tied to their individual needs. For example, with DD, I think we only waited like 2 minutes at night before responding to her; if she was crying, she was up and needed us. DS, on the hand, makes a lot of noise in his sleep, so we'll wait up to 10 minutes before getting him, to make sure he's really awake. 15-20 minutes as a standard seems like a really long time for a 4 week old to me, but maybe that's just because my babies needed me long before that.
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