To be baffled by Gina Ford...

[Writerwannabe83]

My neighbour just leant me her copy of "The Contented Little Baby" book and after scanning various chapters all I can think is WTAF???

I really, really want to laugh at her shit but I'm too Gob Smacked!!

I'm just glad there was no internet when mine were babies - I would have been an underachieving basket case if there was.

I hadn't heard of Gina Ford or attachment parenting or any such stuff when I had mine (only 2002, so not that long ago). All I had was advice from mum and health visitor.

I had a bottle fed baby on a 4 hour feeding routine by a few weeks old. Weaned at 3.5 months and sleeping through from 8 to 8 by about 6 weeks iirc - off all bottles by 6 months and no sleep regression or dramas since. (I am a person who likes to be in control and organised).

My way worked so well for me I did it again with my next baby, exactly the same with the same outcome.

My friend bf and had no routine, did what would now be called a 'baby led' wean and the baby was still night feeding until well over a year iirc, she was totally into 'following her baby's cues on everything. (I always thought she was a bit of a hippy and never understood her way of doing things).

Her way worked well for her so she did it with her next baby.

12 years later all of our children are doing just fine. They're sleeping and eating fine, with pretty typical behaviour and school achievement, they are all happy and well adjusted.

My point is this:
when your child is older, nobody can tell if you co-slept, cried it out, breastfed, bottle fed, baby led weaned or weaned traditionally, used a sling or a buggy etc etc etc, and more importantly nobody cares. How you feed or organise a baby's day makes no difference in the grand scheme of things.

Imo, the best way to do things is to cherry pick the bits that work for you and ignore the bits that don't - slavishly sticking to a "style" of parenting is a recipe for mental health disaster imo. One size does NOT fit all when it comes to parenting, but it's so easy to get caught up in it all and feel a failure.

Well retro if you come out early on saying that it didn't work for people because they didn't try hard enough then you'll get plenty of people taking a defensive stance.

Had you said well it worked for me after some perseverance but not everybody might get the same level of success for a variety of reasons perhaps you would have got a more moderate argument. You set the tone for what ensued and pitted pro and anti GF against each other.

I think everyone should do what they want to with their own child (provided it causes no harm, obviously).

Personally I've never used GF. I had a thumb through one CLB at the library, thought 'WT actual F?' and put it back on the shelf. Our children have always just fallen into their own routines but they are loose and subject to change, no child's life needs to be so regimented IMO. We've never had any problems with them settling. DC1 slept through from 6wks, DC2 slept through from day one, and DC3 has been sleeping through since 9wks. By 'sleeping through' I mean a feed some time between 6-8pm (depending on when its wanted), then I offer a feed when I go to bed some time between 10pm and midnight (which is sometimes taken and sometime not), then sleep until any time between 6am and 8am. DC1 & 2 are 4yo and 2yo, they go to bed at 7pm (2yo) and 7:30pm (4yo) and both sleep until roughly 7am.

GF does baffle me a bit though. I remember a mum at baby group bursting into tears because her baby was crying hungry "but he can't have a feed for another forty five minutes!" and a friend of mine dashing home from the shops (literally running along the street) because she didn't realise the time and "it's nearly nap time and he has to be in his cot!" - meanwhile I pushed DD around the park in her buggy while she napped then when she woke up I went for a nice coffee and slice of cake.

Here here, Scarlett. Christ, even at 2 I don't think I can see any difference between the routine babies, the co-sleeping babies, the formula babies...

scarlet, that is so true.

I once asked DM if she ever felt the pressure mothers today feel. Her answer? "No, we were far too busy actually raising you all to worry about whether we were doing it right" :o

Bollocks Baking I joined quite late,said quotes were waaaay down the thread as was the "she is a nutter" one.

I read something on Mumsnet once, years ago.

Babies thrive on routine. Just not exactly the same one for every baby.

Good piece of advice, that.

Tracey Hogg was my go-to baby guru.

Oddthomas, I have never understood the overly routine thing that you described tbh. My sister was quite rigid with getting up time, nap time etc - I was more fluid with that in that they would be 'due a nap around 2' sort of thing.

I certainly never woke a sleeping child, that is madness!

It worked for me and DS. I was close to sticking my head in the oven trying to wing it, turned out we just needed a routine.

All that matters is the parents and baby find what suits them and muddle through. Doesn't matter if that's a routine or taking every day as it comes.

Gah - the routines do not always work if you stick to them. Honestly.... I tried really really hard. For years. I'm a professional, have a reasonable IQ, am used to hard work and have have a fair smattering of common sense. Routines can be very helpful and work for a lot of babies. If people say that they 'always' work for babies (absent illness etc) then that is bound to attract fairly strong criticism. 'Often' or 'mostly' would be far more plausible - people might disagree but that would be a subject of reasonable debate. Saying they 'work' absolutely if you follow them correctly just because they worked for you and a few children you know is not sensible and, actually, quite ignorant and judgmental.

A loose routine, based on GF, worked brilliantly for my DC2, for example, but the routine to the letter did not work for DC1. Had perfect blackout curtains and blinds, followed the strict weaning plan etc. But I'm not going to extrapolate from my two children to say how many babies it does work for as I have no idea.

Both children are happy and thriving at school now, by the way. No underlying health issues to explain why it didn't work for DC1.

I wondered when parenting changed so much.

I have no real opinion on GF herself, but I do think that any books that insist on a certain method will suit all babies are peddling crap. Some babies are desperate for a routine and fall easily into it - like my ds. Some kids hate routine and are happiest doing their own thing - like my dd1. Some kids are generally easy going and will thrive doing either - like my dd2. Babies are different, parents parent differently, no book could possibly cover all of this. It's part of the messy business of getting used to your newborn, you learn what makes them happy and mesh that in with what makes you happy. If you are lucky that happens quickly but it can sometimes be a real nightmare.
If you are a parent who likes routines and you have a baby who likes routine it may work. If you or your baby are not that way inclined then burn it and find something else, don't buy into the marketing rubbish that says all babies and parents need to parent a certain way and if you Just Try Hard Enough you will force it to work.

Can I just say that now my kids are older, I love my bedtime routine??

"Teeth brushed? Good, giz a kiss and nick off to bed."

ICanSeeTheSun "I wondered when parenting changed so much."

when we all moved 200miles away from our parents and started believing the "experts" and thought we knew better than our mums.

also when females started being a SAHM by choice so had to be as determined in that as they had been in their jobs

bragmatic i always made sure my routine was short and simple, hated the idea of
bath, massages, book, feed, teeth having to be done EVERY night before bed.
ours is the same as yours (now he is 7)
teeth, kiss, lights out (lights on again once i leave the room and beano read :))
for the 3 year old
teeth, story, kiss, lights out.

Oddthomas, GF does say to feed your baby if it's hungry, rather than making it wait so not sure why the woman at your baby group was in such a flap...

I've got a 22 month old DD who point blank refused to do anything other than her own thing. No amount of coaxing would persuade her otherwise. If I put her in her cot to self settle she would have lay there not sleeping for as long as I'd cared to sit there. I ended up feeding to sleep because she never slept otherwise. DS is four months and is a totally different baby. He's self settled from birth (I was shocked) and I've done nothing differently with him.

Well my DS is 2 and I still cuddle him to sleep every night. Loads of people told me to leave him to cry otherwise he'd never learn to self settle when he woke in the night but I just couldn't do it. By 3 months, he was sleeping 12 hours and the only time I get disturbed even now is if he's poorly or if he's having a growth spurt and is hungry in the night. And I enjoy my evening cuddle before he goes to bed, I'm at work all day and it's a really lovely way to wind down for both of us. I've never read any of the books by GF or anyone else if I'm honest, just did what was best for us. We do like routine, but it's one we devised that was best for all of us and is also felxible. Each to their own, but anything that makes you feel like a failure because your baby isn't adhering to the "rules" isn't good for anyone IMO.

I've read a smattering of baby books across the spectrum and, being a very routine led person, I'm intending to try to follow GF method initially if only because 8 hours sleep does sound rather lovely. However if it doesn't work I've got a number of other methods that I'm going to try and will try (through the post-birth hormones) not to feel too guilty about giving up on routines.

What annoys me about all the baby books I've read though is that they all contradict each other and the all claim to be the only way to raise contented babies and there is no bloody scientific research to back it up at all in most cases.

But then I guess there's not much money in selling a "How to muddle through the first year of child rearing - ideas that might work but probably won't" book.

Her routine worked really really well for me and my babies were happy because they had lots and lots of sleep!

I lkiked the GF book because i liked the precision, i didn't follow it to the letter, but i found all the other baby books so wishy washy, so "your baby should be walking by 18 years old". I liked the facts that it gave you so 1.5 hours awake, then 1.75 hours asleep. As I honestly had no idea at all what babies did, i was honestly expecting babies to sleep for about 22 hours a day, wake up to eat and then sleep again.

The thing that seems to keep coming up again and again as a criticism of GF, is that people felt they were failures when trying her routines.
This in itself does not make the book or the methods wrong. No book will suit everyone or make everyone feel good. Parenthood itself is one of those things where we are prone to feeling guilty. We should recognise that and not blame it on the book.
Some people have a half hearted go at GF. They don't really like it and think it is too prescriptive, but they vaguely have a go at bits of it fora few days. When they find it has not instantly worked, they decide it must be rubbish. Most people here have said that GF suits those who are happy with a prescriptive routine. For those who really don't want that, it isn't going to work. Additionally, in my experience, it does not work at once. I mentioned upthread that I really struggled with it for about 2 months. I was quite miserable. However, things then clicked and the benefits of having a good sleeper since then have far outweighed those few short weeks of struggling with it. In order to work, it needs quite a while and Im not sure everyone is willing to do that.

Getting enough sleep was very important to me. I am a mess when sleep deprived. I was a better mother once I had a decent number of hours in a row again. If you can survive on bursts of 2 hours and are not bothered, then that is fine, especially if you are happy to have that into the long term.

Finally, I have known quite a few friends who have employed a sleep nanny in desperation and spends thousands. From what I hear, they all employ a variation of the GF routines. Depending on age, it is all about teaching the child to self settle and ensuring they have eaten enough in order to not need to feed in the night. The fact they all use some version of GF and people keep paying suggests some degree of success.

I will say it again, GF is not the only way. People can do what they want. In my mind the key is to teach a baby to self settle and to ensure that once they area ble to eat their necessary calories for a 24 hour period during daytime hours, they do so in daylight hours. Where people have long term sleeping problems (and I don't mean babies under 6 months here) one or both of these issues often is the root of the problem. Gina is just one way to deal with these issues, but there are others. not addressing the root issues is the cause of problems.

That's a good point, chocolatewombat. I can completely sympathise with women who find trying and, in their eyes, 'failing' with a routine very distressing and I understand why it happens, especially in those first shell-shocked few months.

But it isn't actually the fault of Gina Ford. It's not really anyone's fault, unless you want to look at the wider context of how parenting has changed in the past few decades and become something that people can feel they have 'failed' at because there is a 'right' and a 'wrong' way to do it.

There are plenty of different routine-style parenting books out there. I don't see quite the same level of vitriol aimed at Jo Frost or Tracey Hogg for putting forward routines as well.

You can't mention her on here but meh..... my children both slept through from 12 weeks and have done ever since regardless of teeth or illness or anything .. im glad she wrote that book!!