Every parent or parent to be - a MUST read book...

[BellyBelly]

Glad you love it, I do too. Couldn't not tell anyone about it! It's an absolute bible and a godsend.

[Ginger]

thanks so much for putting me onto it. gonna photocopy some pages and send them to my mil!!! LOL
hopefully that shuts her up

[TreeTops]

I bought a copy a couple of weeks ago for myself, and one for my pg SIL. I'll give it a read at some stage in the coming months (no urgency at the mo!).

[CrystalBoo]

Help! I read the book and found it all made perfect sense. DD is 7m and has never slept through (6.30 - 6ish with at least two or three BF in between) She has always fallen asleep feeding, and when she didn't, leaving her to grizzle and going in for comfort every two minutes was the most I could bring myself to do self-settling wise. Since reading the book, I don't even do that as I worry about even the smallest amount of crying and what her stress levels are. Now she is waking every 2-3 hours at night and sleeping only 30-40 mins in two or three day naps! I feel like I've made sleeping harder for her rather than helping her become more secure! She won't even allow patting or rocking to sleep anymore - she must be picked up and put on the breast before the crying will stop.
I still believe in the book's ideas but I'm at my wit's end with the whole sleeping thing. I guess what I'm asking is, is ALL crying bad? Should I go back to letting her cry a little and comfort her in the cot - even if that means she's stressed for a bit? Argh! Sorry, it's a bit of a ramble but I thought maybe someone would have ideas for babies as the book talks mostly about older children.

[BellyBelly]

Hey Sacha,

Pinky McKay read your post and wanted to tell you this:

Babies Cry- that is how they communicate. All crying isn't bad so please dont beat up on yourself that you are creating harmful stress WHENEVER your baby cries. As long as you respond to cries and are there to support your baby to manage her frustrations/ soothe her most of the time, she will develop trust and be just fine.

At this age she will cry because she has learnt that you will help her- this isnt bad but a sign of her trust. Also, please dont beat up on yourself that you have done anything wrong to increase her 'demands'. Try and see what else is happening - ie teething/ separation anxiety ( going to sleep is temporarily leaving you so she will cling at this age regardless of how you have previously settled her - go with it for now and it will pass naturally)/ new mobility skills - that could be waking her - try to see her crying/ waking as an expression of a need, not a 'bad habit' that you have created.

Relax, you are doinga fabulous job -trust yourself - you know YOUR baby best - you will know the difference between a wind down grizzle and a red alert and you DO know how to respond appropriately for YOUR baby. I think that what Margot Sunderland is referring to is deliberately leaving babies to cry and not responding, rather than stopping ALL crying - in fact even when we cuddle and hold, some babies simply need to release pent up stress by crying - as long as we arent stressing them by leaving them alone to cry it out, I understand we arent creating extra stress.

Perhaps it would help to read 100 Ways to Calm the Crying or Sleeping Like a Baby?

Pinky

[CrystalBoo]

Thanks heaps for your reassurance. We had a stretch of 5 hours last night, so I'm hoping it is passing, as you say. I will look into both those books as well - you can never have too much info! (or can you?! Just call me ditherer..)

[Bloom]

I've borrowed this book from the library and I've given it a brief "first read". Very interesting book with a lot of ideas that reasonate with what I would like to do with any my (future) children (only just started TTC).

I think it's great about how it balances out the need to be emotionally available to comfort and support your child with the need to take time out to refresh and renew your own resources. However, I wonder how easy this is to do in reality...

I'm going to read the book again and take a more careful note about the "science" side of things and look up some of the research it quotes. There is such a thing as a good scientific study vs a poorly designed and unreliable one, so I want to be sure that it's the good kind! (not that I'm saying it's not, just that I'm going to check it out).

[BellyBelly]

The thing I love about the science of the book, as a mother who loves gentle parenting, is that it's really easy and instinctive - as well as being able to teach me a few tricks that my kids have responsed really well to. It's all gentle but backed by science and I love that it gives you tools in a world where mothers are so isolated and unsure about how to parent most of the time. Bring back the village!!!