Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
by Marc Weissbluth
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Book Reviews of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
Book Review: Invaluable Information for Parents
Summary: 4 Stars
As a first-time parent, I had very little understanding of healthy sleep in babies. I read this book cover to cover when I was pregnant with my son and now refer back to it frequently when questions arise. My son falls into Dr. Weissbluth's "common fussy" category; not a colicky baby, but not easy, either. For those who have read Dr. William and Martha Sears' "The Baby Book", my son also fits their "high need baby" description. I have found Dr. Weissbluth's description of sleep needs at different ages to be spot-on.
The most helpful information from this book for me involves the two-hour window of wakefulness for infants, i.e., that babies typically cannot tolerate more than two hours of wakefulness without becoming overtired. My son's window is usually shorter than that (about one and a half hours). He occasionally exceeds two hours of wakefulness and, just as the book predicts, becomes overtired. I have developed a very protective attitude toward my child's sleep needs, as I have seen first-hand the effects of overtiredness. It is often difficult for others to understand, as his need for quiet, motionless sleep naturally limits his portability at this age. The majority of people that I have talked to about his sleep are surprised that he naps so frequently and seem unaware that keeping a baby up late at night can be detrimental. It is sometimes a challenge to structure the day so that he gets the sleep that he needs, but it is worth it knowing that he will benefit from being well rested. I have taken to heart many of Dr. Weissbluth's strategies for preventing sleep problems and feel that I have had a much smoother time with my baby, given his temperament, than I might have otherwise had if I had not been armed with this knowledge. At three months of age, he naps about six times a day for thirty to forty-five minutes and sleeps from 8:30 p.m. until 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. Furthermore, we have been able to move him from a bedside co-sleeper to his crib full-time with no problem.
I find Dr. Weissbluth's manner of discussing different approaches to sleep problems, such as night waking, to be helpful. He presents a range of options for dealing with night waking and why a particular method might be right for you and your child (for example, exhausted parents with a colicky baby may want to try a particular approach because it corrects the problem quickly.) He communicates information in an objective manner, unlike the discussion of sleep in the Sears' "The Baby Book", which promotes the family bed concept as the cure-all. As with all information, you, as a parent, have to test out different approaches to find what is right for your family.
Like other reviewers, I find the organization of the book to be a weak point. When referring back to it, I sometimes have a difficult time locating the passage that I want.
One other complaint that I have is Dr. Weissbluth's discussion of night waking due to growing pains. He seems to regard this phenomenon as a ploy on the part of the child to gain parental attention. However, I had terrible growing pains as a child that often woke me up. My parents never hesitated to provide physical and emotional support during these episodes and I can't imagine doing anything less for my child.
Overall, the book provides invaluable, research-based information that supports parents interested in promoting healthy sleep in children, from infancy to adolescence. I have recommended it to other parents and will continue to do so.
Book Review: Great techniques for getting your baby to sleep - but not an easy route!
Summary: 4 Stars
Whoever said "nothing worthwhile is easy" certainly hit the mark when it comes to getting your baby to sleep properly. My wife and I bought a shed load of sleep books to try and solve the problem. We aren't fans of letting our lad cry it out, so we first of all got the book "the no cry sleep solution". Absolutely useless. I hate to say it but her techniques didn't work at all, her views are judgemental, and anything interesting in her book came from this one (she quotes this book in her book quite a bit). To top it off, throughout the book she says how bad it is to let you baby cry - but then at the back of the book in the section "if all else fails" she says you should decide on how long you can let your baby cry.
Anyhow, just trying to say that we tried everything. We then started on this book. We knew that it was really a manual on how to let your baby cry it out effectively and quickly. Sure, he has some suggestions for other methods, but the main thing here is letting your baby cry.
We had a difficult 5 months - he would wake up every couple of hours, and take a long time to get back to sleep. I would bounce him, my wife would nurse him, whatever would work. In the end I reached a limit. We knew that he wasn't sick, and most likely not hungry. After reading the chapter on our lad (he is 11months), we decided to give this a go.
The first couple of nights were tough. Really tough. Especially for my wife. First time it took an hour for him to get to sleep, he woke up 3 times through the night, and cried for about 30 minutes each time. The second night was far better, these times were cut in half, and he woke less. Third night he slept through the night!!! The forth night was really bad - he had got an ear infection, so we stopped letting him cry.
After that was cleared up we revisted the techniques a few months later (it took a long time to heal). We decided to modify his techniques a bit to fit with what were more comfortable doing -
As soon as he would wake up and cry, I would go in and rub his head and stomach, then leave and shut the door. The funny thing is that it made him mad when I left, but often within seconds he would stop being mad, and just fall asleep. Mark recommends not going in straight away, but it worked for us.
After the first night again he was much better. Second night he only woke once, but took him a while to get back to sleep.
Around 4:30am is tough. He had slept for a while, so wasn't crazy tired. He would nod off, then wake up and so on until about 5:30.
After a week, he is now sleeping through the night.
The change in our lad has been unbelievable. He is a much happier kid through the day, eats better, naps better (we didn't expect that), and of course sleeps better.
We didn't want to let him cry it out, but in the end found no other way to sort his sleep problem. He is a far happier boy for it, and that is the main thing. It was only one really bad night at the start, we were honestly amazed at how quickly he learnt to sleep.
I really hightly recommend this book. The only reason I haven't given it 5 stars is because the book is bloody long. It has a wealth of great info in it, but at the end of the day I wanted this book to be a quick read so I could find out how to help my baby sleep better.
Book Review: Essential Info on Baby and Child Sleep
Summary: 4 Stars
At 3 1/2 months, our son's sleep habits were a mess. He was a promising night sleeper, but erratic. Daytime naps were all but nonexistent, since we were told not to let him "cry it out" and every time we put him down to sleep he...well, cried. The result was a baby with what we assumed was a naturally fussy disposition. Then a friend recommended this book and we UNDERSTOOD. The reason our son fussed most of the time was because he wasn't getting enough sleep. Once we learned how to recognize signs of drowsiness, put our baby down for a nap, and soothe him to sleep, our little guy was so much happier. Yes, there was (still is) some crying involved in this process. And yes, some sources insist you're a horrible parent and your child will have abandonment issues if you let him "cry it out." But I look at it this way: either he cries for 5-10 minutes before falling asleep and then awakens refreshed or I avoid putting him down for fear he might scream, he gets cranky because he isn't getting the sleep he needs, and then he ends up crying much, much more than 5-10 minutes (and then he *really* won't go to sleep). I now feel very little angst listening to my son protest for a bit when I put him down to nap. A few observations:
*Skip "Part I: How Children Sleep" and go directly to "Part II: How Parents Can Help Their Children Establish Healthy Sleep Habits." So much of Part I is redundant, disorganized, and filled with statistics from scientific studies. The first 191 pages could be condensed into the following sentence: Babies and children need sleep, but don't always know how to get there; so it's up to you as a responsible parent to teach them good sleep habits. "Drowsy Signs" and "Soothing to Sleep" on pages 63-69 (paperback) are helpful, as is "Bedtime Routines" on page 75, but the rest of the first section is largely a waste of time.
*"Part II: How Parents Can Help Their Children Establish Healthy Sleep Habits" is absolutely invaluable in its breakdown of what's reasonable to expect from each age group, from newborn to adolescence. It also contains a lot of information from the first section, but much better organized.
*Weissbluth's language can at times be really alarmist and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Example: "A missed nap is sleep lost forever." Talk about fatalistic. Get the gist, then don't take the wording personally.
*The earlier in your child's development you institute the sleep methods in this book, the easier it'll be to get your kid to respond. In other words, if you start letting your kid fall asleep unassisted at, say, 10 months (versus 4 months), you're in for more crying. That isn't to say you simply shouldn't try Weissbluth's methods if you have an older baby or child. Rather, just be aware that initially it's going to be harder for you than if you'd tried a similar approach earlier on.
*Weissbluth may endorse what's essentially the "cry it out" method, but he isn't against co-sleeping or using breast-feeding to soothe a baby to sleep. He's firm, but not cruel.
*Don't beat yourself up if your child doesn't conform completely to Weissbluth's ideal sleep schedule. Every child is different. And at the very least, this book will give you an idea of how sleep works at different ages. What you do with that information is up to you.
Book Review: Finally, some evidence-based advice.
Summary: 4 Stars
As a happy but sometimes sleep-deprived breastfeeding mother of a typical 7 month old, I have read a wide variety of books on parenting and sleep.
Books that promote strict feeding/sleeping routines, such as BabyWise & Baby Whisperer, provide potentially damaging advice to the mother hoping to successfully breastfeed. The assertion that you must follow some kind of eat-activity-sleep schedule is insensitive to the needs of our babies and can be detrimental to the nursing relationship.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have turned to the No Cry Sleep Solution looking for some instruction on sleep training that preserved the breastfeeding relationship, but was again disappointed with her complicated and sensational advice which amounted to not much more than teaching my baby to fall asleep without nursing.
I guess I want the best of both worlds - I want to nurse my baby to sleep, which I believe is a perfectly natural and enjoyable way to soothe and reconnect with my baby, but then I want to be able to put him down afterwards and allow him to take a good nap or sleep well at night. If he wakes up hungry and wants to nurse a couple of times at night, I consider that perfectly normal (as does Weissbluth!) and am more than happy to oblige, but what I want to avoid is him waking every 2 hours at night wanting to nurse back to sleep!
Weissbluth offers a refreshingly simple, if not necessarily "easy," solution. While he describes multiple different sleep strategies for infants, classified according to their age, the advice I find most helpful is the research-based information about baby's biological rhythms and sleep needs that dictate when they are most apt to take a nap or go to sleep at night, and how much sleep they should get overall.
Moreover, his advice that you can and should soothe your child to sleep by nursing if you desire, but then you should put them down whether they are still awake, asleep, or somewhere in-between, and allow them to fall asleep on their own once put down, is just what this tired nursing mama needed to hear. Yes, there MAY be some crying if your baby is over-tired or if your baby has never been given the opportunity to fall asleep on his own, and this is extremely heart-wrenching for any mother to endure, but this is not the GOAL of this plan, simply a by-product of ALLOWING your baby to learn to fall asleep on his own.
If you truly believe that as a parent your job is to prevent your child from ever crying or otherwise experience any type of frustration in life, then this book is probably not for you. However, if you realize that any sleep-training program may cause some frustration in your child during the learning phase, and if you would like to get some fact-based information on infant/child sleep along with many useful tools to help your little one get the sleep they need, then I would highly recommend this book!
I believe that teaching our children how to sleep well, and making sacrifices in our own lives in order to allow this, is as important as making sure our babies get the best nutrition, and plenty of love! This book is an excellent resource for parents who feel the same way.
Book Review: Ignor negative reviews
Summary: 5 Stars
I am writing this review to encourage people to ignor the negative reviews, read the book and decide for yourself. I agree that the book could have been better written however, it was still a life saver for me. Many of the negative reviewers have children who have no sleep problems whatsoever and view this method as nothing more than child abuse. It is not child abuse if you actually follow the adice in this book and do not do anything you are not comfortable with. Dr. W. says this time and gain. If you find something is traumatic for either you or your baby wait to try again or try something else.
In my case, my child slept well until about 4 months of age, only waking about 2 times per night. By 7 months of age she was waking about once an hour. She slept in my bed and I nursed her everytime she awoke. Sometimes she would not go back to sleep and would stay up for about and hour and a half. I was literally shaking from sleep deprivation. I knew I had to try something else.
I had always prefered to have my baby sleep either in my bed or in a crib next to me and firmly resisted having it any other way. I am an experienced parent. This is my 4th child and the only one who has had a problem sleeping thru the night, although my third did not nap well and I see now that had I followed Dr. W's. advice, I think I could have prevented this problem as well.
I began by moving my baby out of my room. I took the time to become aware of her sleepy signals. The book THE 90-MINUTE BABY SLEEP PROGRAM by Polly Moore helped alot here. I put my baby to bed at the correct time. She cried for over 30 minutes the first time. I peeked in on her thu a crack in the door several times. She fell asleep and only woke up a couple of times that night. The next two or three weeks were full of ups and downs, partly because I had to learn how to sleep again myself and because my baby had to learn to go back to sleep herself. I let myself go her no more than two times per night to nurse but did peek in on her thru the crack in the door. By week four my baby was sleeping great. She naps wonderfully, loves her bed, goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:30 (compared to 11:00), gets up around 7:30 and is happy and loving during the day.
There is no reason for this to be a traumatizing experience for a child. Learn your child's sleepy signals, know what her cries mean and help her learn to sleep. It is not easy to ignor a crying crying child. Impossible really. I did not ignor my child but rather recognized that her cries where not actually distress but mostly anger and confusion. Now that she understands that her crib is for sleeping, we have no problem at all.
If you are satisfied with your child's sleep habits, you don't need this book, but you also don't need to leave a bad review either. Read the book with an open mind and decide for yourself. I am very glad I read this book, poor written or not.