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Title: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
ISBN: 0449004023
Author:
Marc Weissbluth
Publicate Date: 2003-04-12
Publish: 2003-04-12
List Price: $16.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $9.01
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.64
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.88
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Finally, some evidence-based advice.
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.
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2: Overall very helpful information, poor organization
I bought this book while I was pregnant because I knew too many parents of babies over 9 months who were still getting up several times a night. I was afraid of the same fate and wanted to have some information on sleep. After reading a lot of reviews I got the impression that the people who dislike this book are fans of "attachment parenting" and no-cry methods. I decided to buy the book for its information on sleep, not for any parenting philosophies.
My daughter is now 9 weeks old (and according to the book is at the 6 week stage based on being 3 weeks early) and sleeps for 6-7 hours at night. I have used the information in the book to ensure that we get her sleeping when she needs it, and in 9 weeks she has never cried about going to sleep. I have found that the information in the book very valuable. Several things that I would never have know without reading this include the fact that babies cannot tolerate more than 2 hours of being awake, recognizing signs of tiredness which are not obvious, and that the overtired state will seem like a baby is not tired at all. The author gives many different options and suggestion for sleep problems, soothing etc, so I never felt like he was pushing a parenting philosophy. The book reassured me that my family is not doomed to constant night waking for the next few years.
Now the major thing that I really disliked about the book was that it is completely and utterly disorganized. It is very difficult to find information that you want, and there are many times when there is a heading, but the following paragraph has nothing to do with the heading. It is hard to search for information, so I had to resort to folding pages and highlighting (I hate to mark up my books). This was pretty annoying, but overall I felt that the information in it was worth hunting through the book. I still refer to it once in a while, especially since I have not yet read much about the age groups past 4 months.
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3: Lots of good advice and lots of guilt
I both loved and hated this book. I loved it because it's full of practical tips, many directed at specific problems your child may be having with sleep. I hated it because it combines useful pieces of information with a healthy dose of the "follow this book or you will damage your child" school of thought. Because the good parts of the book are so useful, it's harder to recognize the hyperbole for what it is. I recommend this book, but read it with a critical frame of mind.
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4: Miracle!!! Dr Weissbluth works MIRACLES !!!!!
I cannot say enough good things about the author of this book who enabled my daughter to sleep -- and thanks to her now phenomenal sleep, she has developed beautifully and is so, so happy!!!! Dr. Weissbluth is a genius and a God-send. Definitely buy this book. And a sleep consultation with him will change your child and your life!!!!!! 312-642-0521. I am so grateful to this author -- and I hope all families put this brilliant pediatrician's solutions into practice so that you can all thrive.
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5: We all feel better!
We started reading this when our daughter was 6 months. It has been very helpful. Now I know what to expect out of her sleeping schedule. I know how much she needs to sleep for her age, when to put her down for naps, and I have confidence when I have to leave her upset about being put down that I'm doing what's best for her. I now know how very important sleep is for a baby and feel better about the sacrifice it takes on my part. It's so much easier now that I'm not constantly questioning whether she's really tired or not. I can read the signs and the clock and I'm confident!
Note: It's pretty redundant when you read it cover to cover - I think you could easily skip around to the chapters you feel apply to your child.
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