Product reviews

As a clueless Mum this book really helped me. It gave structure to our day and I could leave ds with DH for a day while I was at work so he had the day mapped out. It meant my DH still went to the gym with creche & watched a bit of football while Ds had a nap. Happy DH, happy Mummy happy DS!

He's 4 yrs now and we aren't ridged but still have routines that make life easy for Ds.

Tracy Hogg has almost goddess-like status in our household! Three days after we came home from hospital with a new baby and no clue what we were supposed to be doing ("He's crying...do we change his nappy? feed him? play with him? wind him? put him to sleep? Help!!") my dh picked up the Baby Whisperer, bought just a week earlier, and figured it all out. Its a large book, designed to cover the first couple of years, and sometimes the information you need isn't quite where you would expect it (she splits things between eating and sleeping, for example) but the advice is extremely down-to-earth and allows for both parental sanity and a happy baby. Her approach is very solution-oriented: 'there's a problem, here's a couple of possible solutions', which may not suit everybody, but we liked the way she kept the baby at the centre of her focus but allowed the adults to be 'in charge'.

Both my dc's have been brought up on her EASY 'routine', which allows for flexibility and individuality but gives some shape to the day: both bf brilliantly, both slept through the nigt (11-7) by 10 weeks without any need for cc or anything like that and both have been relaxed, happy babies. It may not be down to the Baby Whisperer but we certainly think it is!!

We tried this when my son was born and really tried hard for the first 6 weeks, wrote down times of everything etc etc, and then hit a problem - my son wouldn't go to sleep in his cot and I was spending the whole of the recommended sleep time trying to persuade him to sleep, and then didn't knwo what to do when the three hour 'EASY' routine was due to start again as he hadn't been to sleep. The shush pat didn't work for us. I threw the book out and started carrying him around in a sling, he started sleeping and I stopped stressing about not conforming to a routine. Now he's 8 months old, still hates sleeping in his cot but I've just decided not to worry about it.

This book is OK if read alongside other baby books. I think the advice is far too simplified sometimes and I did get the feeling that if things didn't work, it was your fault! Some of the advice is great though and I'm glad I read it. Just trust your own instincts first!

What a fab book, really worked for me and my little one