has been rather a haze of multiple middle-of-the-night feedings and blurry days as a result of the lack of sleep during the nights. A couple of days ago, I finally broke down and cracked a book on help with getting babies to sleep. It's called Baby Wise, and I've seen quite a few FB friends talk about it. So I purchased it as a gift for my bff J-Money, who'll be a mommy in six months or so. Well, since we don't live in the same city, I've yet to give it to her, so I "borrowed" it and began to browse. Simultaneously, I asked my FB friends if anyone had a copy of a different book - Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child - that I could borrow. I was able to acquire a copy from a friend at MOPS, so hope shimmered on the horizon.
After closely scanning Baby Wise, I figured out that even though the book says the principles can be applied to children as old as eighteen months, it's still written to parents of newborns, which means there's a quantity of information I had to sift through before figuring out I needed to ignore it.
It was rather annoying, really, to have books written in the way these are - with so much to *read.* They delve into ideology, theories of nursing and co-sleeping, etc. But all this sleep-deprived mom wanted was a list of things to try. And then I wanted to check them off, one-by-one, until something worked.
However, both books have helped. I haven't looked too closely at Healthy Baby, Happy Child, but I read enough of Baby Wise to convince my husband and myself that the time had come to let our littlest love "cry it out." We've done this successfully for two nights now. Last night was much harder as far as getting him to go to sleep, but he woke once during the night instead of four times. And, man, does sleep make a difference in this mommy's temperament.
I think I'd recommend both of these books to any of you who may be stuck in a sleep-deprived rut. I'm so glad I've got them.
3 comments:
I'm glad to see another friend who approves of Babywise. I'm wanting to try it out with Grace...but it's hard with the many nay-sayers (who I really don't think have actually read teh book) who seem to think you're some awful mommy for not wanting to soothe the baby to sleep by holding her every time... I don't think I'll try the cry-it-out naptimes except during the day right now though...
I cannot say enough about Babywise. It came highly recommended to us from friends who were on their second baby to use the program. Both Rachel K and I did it with our first and I have to say that for us and everyone I personally know who has used the principles, it works. Camille slept through the night, 9p to 7a, at seven weeks, and has never turned back. She LOVES sleep and her crib and actually asks to go to bed. I maybe lucky, we will see how #2 does, but the whole thing brought me sanity. Sorry for the plug, but I am so passionate about sleep :)
We used the Babywise approach too (sort of... I didn't really love the book's style, and I never stuck too closely with the eat-play-sleep scheduling) along with my mother-in-law's advice on keeping our newborns awake from suppertime until our bedtime. It took less than a week with both girls to get them sleeping happily through the night. Of course, I did not sleep happily through the night when they were learning to fall back asleep on their own. I kind of felt like I was torturing them. But we've had so few sleep struggles over the years as a result, and a well-rested family is a much happier family... so props to you!
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