Tizzie Hall

Hi

Who has read her book, and does she give routines in them, or are you best to buy from her website. thanks

I haven't got the book yet, but do intend on getting it. I bought the routines off the net yesterday and have started today with it. So far so good. It makes a lot of sense too. I know a couple of girls in my buddies group have this book and say it's great.

Moving this to General Baby & Toddler Discussion

Here's an older thread. Just to clarify, she is not a lactation consultant, parent, midwife, MCHN, psychologist or anything like that.

I had no idea who she was, I actually thought she was someone like Pinky McKay, with loads of experience etc. Kelly thanks for including the link to that old thread. Makes me actually think twice about buying and reading her stuff.

I don't like her because despite her assertions that she is against controlled crying, I believe what she teaches is exactly that. Also she claims to an expert on babies, but has never actually had any of her own.

There have been lots of blow ups online across other busy parenting forums, one in particular which has banned discussion of TH. The blow ups have been due to alleged 'spies'/friends/workers online promoting her on forums and also causing trouble where people point out negatives, so this thread will be watched very carefully, especially for new members signing up and posting for the first few times. A forum is a place for people to post their opinions and experiences, both good and bad.

I was given Save our Sleep when preg and thought it sounded really good in theory then when I had Ashleigh I realized that she is her own individual baby. Even now I look out of interest at a routine for Ash's age and there is just no way she would fit into it. If you chart for a few days times your son feeds and sleeps you'll prolly find a pattern that he already has a routine of his own.

Don't like her at all. How can someone who has never had kids give advice.

Ditto from me & with all that blow up earlier I dont like her cronies either!

I looked at the TH routines and adapted them to fit our live (I found the "secrets of the baby whisperer" to be alot more helpful). I just downloaded the TH routines from the internet rather than buy the whole book.

"how can someone who has never had kids give advice" yeah I sort of agree but when you think about it, alot of educated people are capable of giving good advice without actually experiancing the problem. I am a qualified drug and alcohol counsellor but have never had a problem with it myself. Child psychologists often give very worthy advice but alot do not have children. I don't know what qualifications TH 'states' she has, but some of her ideas make perfect sense, even if we don't particularly like her theories or ways of doing things.

I had no idea who this woman even was (ok so its obvious I don't read many parenting books)... just read the old thread, whatever happened about being sued?

I have read her book over and over again and tried to do what she said over and over again and the more i tried, the more frustrated I got when it did not work. I think she puts unrealistic expectations on little babies. Newborns cant possibly be trained, and if kids don't want to sleep 3 hours straight they wont. Mine never did. I found it more rewarding to go with what my nurse said at all my daughters monthly checkups. Books make you feel too guilty.

I used her lay down approach about 2 years ago on my then 10 month old daughter and it saved me. I looked at the routines and my DD was already very close to doing what it was so didn't go into it much more. I will say that the advice really helped me at the time though.

With my son I roughly follow the routines, but adapt it to what I feel is right and it works. I think that is the way with everything really - use it as a guide not a Bible.

I didn't realise all the things said about her. Her advice helped me, kids or no kids. Just goes to show that we need to be informed consumers not just trusting sheep - but then how do you make that informed decision?

I've had several attempts at trying Tizzie Hall routines, and for so many reasons I've had to abandon them each time. When I first started, I ignored her settling advice and used gentle self-settling methods to get Bonnie to nap, and to nap longer than 40 mins at a time.

Now, Bonnie naps like a champion - self settles and sleeps for 1.5 - 2 hours at a time throughout the day. But this development had nothing to do with SOS routines, one day she just figured out how to nap by herself.

You would think that having a "proper" napper would make these routines easy on us, but there are other issues rather than the crying to sleep issue.
1. If Bonnie woke early from her morning nap, the routines say to keep your child awake until the next nap time (sometimes this could be over 3 hours!). I could never do it, I found it impossible to ignore Bonnie rubbing her eyes and looking miserable because she wanted to sleep. She was tired, it was my job to respect that and let her sleep!
2. I was supposed to wake Bonnie at 7 in the morning to start our day. But as a sleep deprived mum, I'm going to catch as many zzzs as I can - so if Bonnie wants to sleep in until 8.30am, I'm right there with her. There is no way I'm going to force myself to get up and lose even more sleep.
3. Intellectually, I just can't believe that some magical concoction of x amount of daytime times at precise times and x amount of feeds at scheduled times = a full nights sleep. We're "roughly" following a similar routine that's emerged naturally - 2 hours up, 2 hours down, 4 hourly feeds etc, and Bonnie's nighttime sleep is still all over the shop. I find it hard to believe that if I make the hours EXACT that this will make a difference.
4. These routines make your life revolve around and fixate on your baby's sleep. There is so much more to being a mum. I also found it impossible to have any social life on these routines, and personally for me - hanging out with other mums is just as valuable to me as a good night's sleep.

That being said, I AM curious about whether they work for other people. Like I said, I've never been able to stick to them for more than 3 days in a row so I'll never be able to say for sure if they work.

Ok, so in the same vein as this - has anyone heard of the "Time to Sleep" DVD?

I bought it online. I've adapted some of the things a little but Daniel actually sleeps in his bed. I'd sit on the couch holding him for hours on end just so he would get sleep. Nowadays I'm free to do other things while he sleeps - like come here!!

The lady on the video (who I think is a midwife from Melbourne) doesn't rabbit on about strict feeding and stuff - just how to get your baby to sleep. (Even if she did, I would ignore it.)

I feed Daniel when he is hungry. If I didn't, I'd have a migraine all of the time and my DH would have a DW going to the funny farm.

I've really stuck to the routine (as well as creating my own signifying time to go to bed) and Daniel is asleep in 2 minutes. I hear him sometimes wake up at night but he just goes back to sleep.

My SiL tried them a couple of months ago as she felt her DS 'should' be self settling. He then embarked upon about 6 weeks of waking 4-6 times a night and SiL got very stressed during the day if things got out of whack a bit. It seemed to put a lot of pressure on her to do the 'right' thing.

Thats the thing blackbird, I think alot of these strict routines for feeding & sleep can cause a lot of mum added stress. As if there is not enough mother's guilt given to us everyday, suddenly we are at fault if our child hasn't self settled because we aren't following the routine strictly.

The other thing I have issues with is that I don't follow routines strictly for myself, I mean I generally go to bed at a certain time, but not all the time. I generally eat around the same time but not all the time. I keep to a rhythm at our house & Matilda knows the order of things (because she likes order). So we wake up and have a cuddle then make brekky and eat together. We then potter for around an hour or so and move on to whatever is happening next for the day. So getting ready to go out or whatever.... I think if we had some strict routine, our lives would be so much more stressful.

Exactly, the pressure to keep a time schedule is massive and completely silly. This is why I could never keep the routines for more than 3 days at a time, I'd be out for coffee with a friend and suddenly get all flustered because I needed to be home in time for the 1pm nap.

A general schedule works really well for us , ie. a mid-morning, mid-afternoon and early-evening nap - the times are dependent on a combination of where I'm at and where Bonnie is at for the day. It's a much more relaxing way to approach the day that way, and if it means that I'm missing out on a full-night's sleep because I'm not a slave to the clock (although I doubt that this is the case) then I am more than happy for that to be the case.

The other complaint about these books that promise sleeping through the night is the assumption that babies are waking at night for tangible reasons - eg. hungry or cold. Last night I had insomnia, I just couldn't sleep - I wasn't hungry or cold, I just had lots of things on my mind, and I've had 30 odd years of practise sleeping. Why then should we assume that babies are any different?

We're the same - a rhythm rather than a routine. And as Clarrie said, it depends on where Angus/other things are at. Yesterday he woke to feed at 6 and was then wide awake and up for the day. This morning he fed at 5.15 but then went straight back to sleep until 7.45. I sometimes feel a little 'bad' when people ask what time his sleeps are when trying to organise something. I have to say, it all depends, who knows etc but I know in my heart this is right for us. All the same, I'm so so so glad to have you girls re-affirming this for me.:)