On Becoming Babywise

Many of you may know this book, On Becoming Babywise, I actually discovered it at the pediatricians' office at Landen's last visit. I was browsing it and thought, I wish I had more time to read this. Thanks to Amazon's used books, I purchased the book for a penny plus shipping and handling. I spent most of Friday reading the book.

As many of my friends and fellow parents know, it's not always easy being a parent. Especially with all the parenting books and philosophies out there. And essentially with babies there are 2 philosophies, the "on-demand" parenting style and the "scheduler" parenting style. On-demand parents respond to every cry, feed the child as he requests and basically "respond" to the baby. Schedulers, tend to follow a rigid schedule, and they feed every three hours, put the baby down for 2 hours and ignore the cries unless the cry is abnormal (a hurt cry or he's sick).

To summarize this book, they advocate a "routine" that is flexible. They don't mean schedule by the clock, but do the same thing, feed, wake time, nap and then repeat all day. You would adjust the feed times based on the age of the baby. So, Landen would feed 6 times during the day. They brag they can get 97% of 16 week old babies to sleep through the night with this routine. Crazy, uh? They also suggest not giving a "sleep prop" (nursing, rocking, story reading, etc) to your infant and that they should learn to settle himself down just by crying. They advocate that this is important to developing good sleeping habits for the rest of your child's life. They also say it can reduce SIDS, ADHD and sleep disorders. They also say that doing this will make the disposition of your child better. It's all very convincing.

So, It got me thinking about Landen's schedule. He is pretty close, to their idea of a perfect routine. He wakes up at about 7:30, is awake until about 10 when he eats again, then he usually takes a nap from 11 -12 and then eats again and then is awake until about 2 when he eats and goes down for a nap until about 4 or 5, when he gets up and eats. He usually stays up until 8 when he eats and then goes to bed. He usually sleeps until around 3/4 when he gets up to eat. And he's a pain to put to bed because he fights it. And he fights his naps, and he gets ornery when he does.

So, while our routine doesn't follow their advice, we like it. It works for us. Our doctor always wanted Landen to have at least 7 feedings a day until he's 4 months. But the whole sleeping on their own thing sounded good and though they warned that starting when they are older results in much more crying, we figured he usually does anyway and thought we might try. I don't mind getting up once to feed him either. But, we really need to work on the going to bed part and taking a nap.

This is what we discovered. It works for bedtime, not so much for naps. Before bed he cries for about 3-5 minutes and then is out. Naptime, well, let's say Mom gives in after about 30 minutes of crying. I think Naptime is harder for him because it's still light in the bedroom and he wants to be up. I also decided that we're not committing to this parenting style. I like rocking my little boy to sleep. I like cuddling with him so he'll go down for nap and I really don't mind getting up once to feed in the middle of the night.

I've decided it's best to love them, teach them the gospel and do what you think is best.