Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
by Marc Weissbluth
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Book Reviews of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
Book Review: GREAT Book on Sleep! IT WORKS!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
This book sometimes gets a bad rap for being too harsh in its methods. Not every parent agrees with the extinction method (also known as letting your baby "cry it out"). Letting your baby cry is hard, that's for sure, but IT WORKS. My sister got me this book when I was pregnant with my daughter, who was born in 2005. She is now 3 and a champion sleeper, thanks our adherence to the recommendations and methods in this book. My son, who is 8 months old, was a great sleeper from the day he was born, but developed the habit of getting up every 2 hours to nurse at night after his 6 month growth spurt. After two months of exhaustion (and one cranky, overtired baby), I finally got around to reading Dr. Weissbluth's chapter on Months Five to Twelve, especially the section on correcting sleep problems. Although I've read the whole book many times in the past 3 1/2 years, it was still helpful to review Dr. Weissbluth's ideas.
I realized that I was reinforcing my son's bad habit by getting up to feed him every time he made a sound at night. The first night of the extinction method, my son cried for TWO AND A HALF HOURS (from midnight to 2:30am). It was agonizing not to get up to comfort him. [This is the part where you need your spouse to be committed to this 100% because when you are ready to get up and go to your baby, you need your significant other to grab your hand and reassure you and remind you why you're doing this in the first place (or even to physically restrain you).]
The second night, my son slept for 10 hours straight (and so did I, without even getting up once to make sure he was okay, if that tells you how tired I was). IT WAS AMAZING.
It might take more than one night (Dr. Weissbluth says that the average is about 3 days/nights to reset the sleep schedule), but trust me, it really works. You have to steel yourself for a few difficult nights, but it's really worth it in the long run.
This book has been my bible whenever we encounter a sleep problem!
Book Review: Not an abuse book, just put your kid to bed early
Summary: 3 Stars
Oh people are so funny! In hindsight, the one star reviews for this book are comical. I fully support someone's decision to not like this book. But do people really think this is a pro-cry-it-out book? Well, that is the impression I got from the reviews. Even though the author states SEVERAL times that the "cry it out" method will not work for some babies and in big bold letters he writes "Crying it out is not sleep training." He seems to love the family bed and demand feeding parenting style as a way to calm fussiness. So why on Earth do people think he is promoting child abuse and neglect? Anyway, I'll try not to over analyze those mother's insecurities or their apparent lack of literacy.
Here is my review . . . the book is overwhelming. There is really no need to publish over 503 pages on child sleep habits. I appreciate the research he must have done (the reference section is huge) and I do think he has some good ideas, but really dude, sum it up to 200 pages or no one is going to read the whole thing. In his defense, the chapters are easy to skip over if you know they don't apply (age divides and other clues that this may not be your baby) and he does highlight in big boxes his key points. Or at least I think they are his key points or why else would he highlight them?
One thing he says OVER and OVER and OVER that I think is spot on. EARLIER BEDTIME!!! My son has been through two stages of good sleep and then bad sleep. His first bad sleep stage seemed to be solved when I tightened up our feed/play/sleep routine (Thank you Babywise). This second stage of sudden night wakefulness seems to be solving itself as I moved his bedtime up a full hour, and sometimes even more. Sure, I hate that I'm a prisoner to my house around 6:30 every night. And it stinks that Dad only gets an hour and a half each day with him, but if he's going to sleep 11 straight hours as a result of a 7pm bedtime, I'll do it!
Book Review: Nuggets of Good Info, but Poorly Written and Organized
Summary: 3 Stars
This is the 6th baby sleeping book that I've added to my collection, but I'm noticing a very common and frustrating theme and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child falls into the same trap. Busy parents do not have the time to read a nearly 500 page bible with nuggets of good advice randomly placed among summaries of scientific study after scientific study providing justification for the advice.
The nuggets of good advice are there, but it is frustrating to find and incredibly poorly organized. For example, the chapters of what to expect for sleep for each month is good, but tactical steps on how to sleep trained are referenced in other chapters. When one references the other chapter, you find references to other chapters and segments each requiring significant scanning and reading through endless quotes of scientific studies. It becomes a circular reference nightmare to find the information you looking for quickly and easily.
If you are a tired and exhausted parent looking for a very tactical book written at an executive summary level so one could immediately apply the techniques to resolve issues, this book is not your answer.
If you have a lot of time on your hands to read nearly 500 pages, enjoy reading statistical data pulled from scientific surveys to support a sleep training technique or occurrence of sleep issues, and have the persistence to learn to wade through the poor organization to extract the random bits of tactical steps to resolve issues, this book is for you.
A good target market for this book would be first time pregnant moms who have a lot of time on their hands before the baby is born. They could use this book to develop a sleep strategy to apply after the baby is born.
A poor target market for this book would be busy parents 3+ months after the baby is born and dealing with sleep issues. They need tactical solutions, not pages of scientific study.
Book Review: Worked For Us
Summary: 4 Stars
So I read a lot of Amazon reviews on controversial books. Reviews regarding books on politics, religion, philosophy, evolution, and music (particularly anything that tries to call itself punk) all have their share of condescension and bad blood, but I have never encountered the venom and vitriol as I have when reading reviews of baby books. I read parts of or skimmed most of the popular ones on a range of positions on the attachment-schedule continuum and each seemed to have strengths. So, while I really don't believe any method is perfect for all children, I can report that Weissbluth knows my little girl better than I do when it comes to sleep.
We did not have to try very hard to get on this schedule after the first couple months. The key insight for me was that the earlier you put your infant to bed the better (and later) they will sleep. Our daughter was regularly sleeping for twelve hours each night by 3 months. It seemed like each time we ran into problems we went to this text to read on the life stage and usually fond that it was a problem that Weissbluth had anticipated and offered advice for. I am sure this will not be the case for all kids. I am only offering you anecdotal evidence. But if your child is anything like ours, I highly recommend this book.
Another benefit of this book is that it actually includes graphs and statistics. I was completely flummoxed that a `science' as important as raising your child would be passed on to us the masses in such a completely unsubstantiated way. I can not believe that there are not many other parents out there that require empirical warrant for the positions they take on this subject. So while Weissbluth did not even come close to providing the kind of data I was looking for, he at least included some, which puts him in a class of his own.
Book Review: Baby Sleep Solutions Backed By Research
Summary: 4 Stars
This books has some wonderful principles to help babies develop good sleep habits so that eventually they learn how to sleep through the night. Unfortunately, Dr. Weisbluth spends too much time going in circles when presenting his information that it can come across a little confusing. As other reviewers mentioned, he could have shortened his book with a nice how to guide, then put the stories at the end. He has many references to real studies that presents a compelling case for the importance of helping babies sleep a lot. For those sleep deprived parents that would like to know his principles without reading 400+ pages, I'll try to summarize the most important points.
1. Put your baby to sleep in a proper sleep environment (i.e. their own bed, darkness, away from hustle and bustle).
2. Put your baby to sleep when you notice their sleepy signs (i.e. glazed eyes, not interested anymore in activity, looking away) before they get overtired (i.e. yawning, fussing, irritable).
3. Don't let a baby stay awake more than 2 hours at a time.
4. A baby's bedtime should be between 6 and 7:30PM. After that point, treat night time wakings differently (extra boring and not stimulating) than day time wakings.
5. Around 4 months, you can expect a morning nap, early afternoon nap, and an early evening short catnap. Help the baby expect those naps, too.
6. True colic is not the result of gas, but of an immature biological clock. You are not a bad parent if you have a colicky baby. The crying will begin to subside at 6 weeks of age.
I hope this helps those who read the book not lose track, as sometimes his information gets too analytical as he tries to apply research findings to different types of babies that he calls normal fussy versus colicky.