Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
by Marc Weissbluth
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Book Reviews of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
Book Review: A must-read for every parent
Summary: 5 Stars
Buy this book if your expecting a baby or if you have a newborn. If you have an older baby, buy this book as well. It's better to start early, but starting late is better than not at all.Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child instructs parents how to help their childen learn to sleep. As important, it explains why healthy sleep habits, from the very beginning, are so crucial to a child's wellbeing. Babies and children who never learn to fall asleep unassisted (i.e., requiring rocking, holding, or co-sleeping) can develop sleep problems that will last their entire lives. Chronic sleep deprivation can take many forms and parents usually don't recognize the behavior as deprivation. A crying newborn may be tired, a child thought to have ADHD may be chronicly sleep deprived, etc. This book also instructs parents on how to develop healthy nap schedules and daily rountines. It's overall message is that parents need to respect their child's need for sleep.
Granted, you must first decide whether you will follow a "cry it out" method or not. This approach is entirely opposite that of Dr. Sears' belief of attachment parenting, so I don't understand why Amazon offers both together. For instance, Dr. Sears believes that parents should co-sleep with their children until the children ask for a bed of their own! Certainly this doesn't create independence.
I began following Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child very closely when my son was six weeks old. We started working slowly on his naps and lengthening his nighttime sleeping. I followed all of the suggestions -- an infant up to four months old can't handle being awake for more than two hours, focus on motion-less sleep, put down to sleep sleepy but awake after minutes of soothing, etc.
When he was just under four months old, my son began sleeping from 8 pm until 6:30 or 7 am, with three defined daytime naps. This is entirely thanks to this book. We let him "cry it out", knowing that it is in his best interest to develop the ability to sooth himself and fall asleep unassisted. Of course it's difficult to hear your baby cry, but this book will thoroughly explain why it's so important. And it works! My son cried for four hours, on and off, the first night, and about 15 minutes the second night.
I recommend following this book as early as possible, even before your baby is born, to learn the importance of healthy sleep habits. The later you being, the longer it will take. A friend of ours used this method at 8 months, when her baby was still having 12, 4, and 8 am feedings. Another friend didn't let her baby cry it out until 14 months. I can't even imagine doing the nighttime feedings and rocking to sleep for over a year!
So start early, pass the book on to friends, and best of luck!
Book Review: Great guidance about sleep patterns, lacking in love
Summary: 3 Stars
Dr. Weissbluth is very motivational and really explains how sleep is important to your baby, which encouraged me to make our 9 month old's sleep a number one priority in our household.Dr. Weissbluth's timetable for babies over 4 months was really helpful to us when we structured our baby's activities, naps, and bedtime. Dr. Weissbluth's has some good suggestions as to when to start baby's nap and bedtime wind down time and when to arose baby from sleep in order to help establish a good sleeping pattern.
Unfortunately, Dr. Weissbluth advocates an extreme form of the cry-it-out method, even though he claims he doesn't (which I found to be very contradicting). A variety of testimonials from parents appear in the book proclaiming that their baby fell asleep after 10 minutes of crying, or 20 minutes, or 45 minutes. The author even goes as far to imply that if your baby cries for longer than an hour that you haven't followed his program exactly, which isn't true. I followed his program exactly for one day and my baby cried for one hour at both her morning and afternoon nap time without falling asleep at all! The experience was not beneficial to her mood, my mood, or our baby-mommy relationship. I really am from the mindset that crying and screaming is a form of communication for a baby and shouldn't be ignored. I went against my instincts to follow his program because I was desperate, but found that letting my baby cry for so long was not only traumatic for both of us, it just didn't work.
I feel that Dr. Weissbluth's method was much too rigid and extreme for my parenting style. However, I do feel that much of the information and tips in his book about timing and sleep routines are helpful when you are trying to set up a nap and bedtime sleep routine. I took the information about sleep patterns and schedules from Dr. Weissbluth's HEALTHY SLEEP HABITS, HAPPY CHILD and combined it with Ferber's ideas about sleep associations in SOLVE YOUR CHILD'S SLEEP PROBLEMS. I then used the easy to read and follow THE NO CRY SLEEP METHOD by Elizabeth Pantly to tailor a sleep training program that was right for both me and my baby.
I'm happy to say that in just two days I weaned my baby from our family bed and got her to sleep through the night with only two brief night wakenings needing my attention (which is a great start for now...I'm not complaining at all). I was able to have my baby associate sleep with a "lovey" doll and blanket, not just with nursing, with only minimal crying. And when I say minimal I mean less than 2 minutes. I highly suggest that you read Elizabeth's Pantly's NO CRY SLEEP METHOD in addition to Dr. Weissbluth's book HEALTHY SLEEP HABITS, HAPPY CHILD before you subject yourself and your child to the trauma of hours of crying.
Book Review: This Is My Baby Bible
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, this is my first book review ever. I feel compelled to do it. This book was simply amazing and has done more for my baby and our family than I can tell you. No we didn't have a colicky baby. We had a normal baby who had ok sleeping habits but this book made her the best sleeper ever. I started reading this book at someone else's suggestion who swore by it for her 4 kids years ago. At first I was skeptical. The name of the book sounded so silly and old-fashioned compared to some of the newer and hipper sounding book titles, and the cover just reinforced that. However, after reading the first chapter I could tell what a great book this was. I loved that everything just made so much common sense - how crucial sleep is not only for babies but for longer term development of them as children. That food is as important to their well being as sleep and vice versa. That it's up to the parents to make sure the babies nap just like we wouldn't let them skip meals because they were too into playing or distracted.
I started reading it when my baby was about 8 weeks, and wish I had day one. I referred to the book over and over, reading and re-reading chapters and stories of parents. Basically, my baby was sleeping through the night fairly consistently (and I mean really through the night, not the 5 hour b.s. they tell you is sleeping through...like 11-12 hours!) from about 5 months on. She's almost a year now, and still goes to bed between 6:30-7ish and sleeps till 6-6:30. She naps twice a day for between an hour to two hours. She doesn't cry, at most will fuss for a minute or so. She loves her crib, she has no problem getting herself to sleep, although sometimes she sings or babbles to herself for up to an hour before going silent. I honestly attribute much of this to the book. While I do think we lucked out and got a good sleeper and easy baby, I can't tell you what things would have been like had I not gone through this book and 1) did some basic sleep training for naps and at night time, 2) really clocked her sleeping schedule to see patterns, 3) watched the clock for <2hrs awake and tired signs when she was really young before naps were based on clocks, 4) realized that bedtime before 7 makes for a magically well-rested, happy baby AND mommy and daddy! All too often people use the excuse that "ph, you just lucked out with a good sleeper", and to that I say back that there's no way to know, because I did follow this book and now have a good sleeper. Who knows if I hadn't if she'd be waking a few times each night, or I'd be running into her room 3 times before she finally fell asleep. All I know is it worked. I have given this to 2 friends already as gifts and recommend it to every new friend who becomes pregnant!
Book Review: Teaches Cruel and Selfish Parenting Techniques
Summary: 1 Stars
I have a six-month old that I want to help sleep better, and I read this book because it came highly recommended from the users of many parenting forums. WHY it came so highly recommended I have no idea. It promotes what I consider very cruel techniques to "train" a child to have more "healthy" sleep habits, but basically just teaches the parents to ignore the child and let them exhaust themselves into sleep by crying themselves for as long as it takes to "self-calm". The techniques taught would be great for parents who just want to put their baby into a crib at night and ignore them in favor of getting their own sleep.
Dr. Weissbluth promotes putting your child to sleep between 6pm and 8pm, preferably 6pm or even earlier if at all possible, and tells working parents that they shouldn't worry about the lack of contact with their child 5 days of the week in favor of good quality minutes in the very early morning (before work) and on weekends. This schedule (I'm going off the 4-7 month range since that's what I concentrated on) includes two night time wakings around midnight and 4am for feeding, and then waking the child (violating the good doctor's rule #1 "Never wake a sleeping child" prominently placed in bold and boxes throughout the early chapters) around 7am. Essentially, the baby is NOT sleeping thru the night but just taking extended naps around the clock. Dr. Weissbluth then explains how the baby should have at least two (or three) 2 hour naps during the day. So basically your baby should be in the crib (sleeping or screaming their head off UNTIL they sleep/crash) 17-19 hours a day. Yeah, that does make parenting easier doesn't it?
Granted, there are some very good nuggets of info in here like the importance of naps during the day, and learning the "time for a nap" cues for avoiding a cranky over-tired child, but as many other reviewers have already stated, these nuggets are all but buried amid endless pages of statistics and minutiae from research that belongs in an appendix not in the actual text.
Also, this book feels like it could be about 200 pages smaller if you remove the phrase "this works for 80% of children who are not fussy colicky but may not work for the 20% who are fussy/colicky" from the text. I'm being facetious on the page count, but this phrase is used repeatedly, sometimes multiple times on the same page.
I think there has to be a happy meeting place between a book like this where we get "ignore the child and let them cry themselves into exhaustion" vs. other books that say "let the child co-sleep with you until they're 18". In any event, go somewhere else: this book is tedious, repetitive, and downright cruel.
Book Review: A must-have for any parent
Summary: 5 Stars
Dr. Weissbluth offers firm yet compassionate advice to the tired and/or frustrated parents of children, from newborn to toddler. If you are trying to get sleep at night, trying to regulate naps, trying to teach your child how to fall asleep on his or her own, or are wondering how much sleep your child should be getting and how often, this book will teach you.
The introduction tells the overexhausted parent which sections to read first, knowing that if you can't see straight you can't digest the whole book. Weissbluth continually reassures parents who might feel reluctant or doubtful that they are doing the right thing. Furthermore, he offers alternate methods for teaching your child to sleep and explains how to transition from one to the other; if you're willing to let him/her cry, it explains how; if you'd rather limit the crying you tolerate, it explains how. The book also explains how to watch your child and time it so that you can put your child down to sleep with no tears at all (for you and the baby). The book details the typical sleep schedule based on age group while acknowledging that every child is different. To that end, he teaches his reader how to tell where their child fits in. As your child gets older, Weissbluth also explains how you should expect their sleep schedule to change.
My son was around 2 or 3 months old and he was starting to become quite fussy during the day because we were having difficulty getting him to stay asleep; he kept waking himself up after 15 minutes for naps and was still eating every 2 or 3 hours at night. This book explained how long babies should be awake between naps, how to teach them to take naps (which will impact how well they sleep at night), and then, how to teach them to fall asleep on their own. We followed his advice and after one week he was sleeping in his crib; the most amazing part was that we could put him down awake but drowsy and he would fall asleep on his own. Within days he started sleeping through the night. We accomplished this without having to listen to him "cry it out." Although there are some times now when he does cry when we put him down, that's to be expected from time to time. After a few minutes, though, he's out. He now expects to take naps and go to sleep at night, and he is the happiest, most easy-going child when he is awake--a direct result of being well-rested.
If you want to educate yourself, not simply follow rules given out by someone else, professional or otherwise, buy this book. You will continually return to it as your child grows. I look at it almost every week, whereas "What to Expect" and others have fallen to the bottom of the reference pile.