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!!

Can't say I had a problem with her twins version, I just selected what worked for us and ignored what didn't. No problems with either DT.

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.

Which would have driven me slowly mad. I hate a schedule. Horse for courses

DS1 unfortunately resisted efforts to get him sleeping through - despite being in a great routine, good naps, self-settling and no feeds between 7pm-7am by 9 months, he still didn't sleep through til 2.5 years

the Science, do you mean that he woke in the night until he was 2 and self settled himself, or did you have to go in?
I think we all wake through the night and just roll over and go back to sleep...effectively self settling.

I love Scarletts post!!

As I've said I really really tried with the GF routines - not for a few days, not for a few weeks but for 3 months! I think people get very vitriolic about GF not because it's routine based (routines are incredibly helpful for most babies I would think) but because of the very proscriptive and detached manner of it. The idea of waking up your newborn, the idea that they MUST always sleep in their crib, the idea that you must never make eye contact with your baby as he/she goes to sleep - this is the part that grates with people. It is also the part that contributed to my PND. I already did not have a close bond with DS, GF made that worse because I really thought no eye contact was a good thing

As I've said before I tried the routines - worked great until 2 months then DS wanted a different routine. If I had carried on with GF for a baby who just wanted to catnap during the day I would have ended up in hospital. In fact I did persist for yet another month and we were both miserable. Once I let all of the guilt inducing stuff from GF go and let DS sleep in his carseat, stroller and sleep every 2 hours just for 30 minutes things got a whole lot better.

So to whoever said you have to persist to get the routines to work, I say Meh!

I would also say anyone suffering from PND should stay away from GF just because of the potentially dangerous advice she gives.

He'd wake for a cuddle, or a drink of water, or just to check we were still there and everything was ok I suppose!

The problem with all baby book is that babies haven't read them.

Very true, usual. But they also haven't read Three in a Bed, the Attachment Parenting Guide, The Diaper Free Baby or Beyond the Sling...

Sorry, pet hate of mine. Of course a baby hasn't read a book, but all the things like co-sleeping, baby-wearing, baby-led weaning etc tend to have come from books too...

I think we should just accept that different approaches suit different people. Those who don't like GF bing so prescriptive, should simply say they don't want a prescriptive routine, rather than it is wrong. Those who like it should simply say the prescriptive nature suits them, but may not suit all people.

I should think all people hope their children will sleep though the night at some point, self settle and not need food in the night indefinitely. Some people want to be active in bringing this closer and others are happy to just wait until it happens. Unfortunately, some people have found themselves waiting so long, they are no longer happy.

I agree that different approaches work for different babies/parents.

But I do think that some babies are just dreadful sleepers, no matter what the parents do. So the idea that bad sleepers are a result of waiting "too long" before addressing sleep issues is not always correct.

The Isis sleep project at Durham University has some useful info about sleep training and whether it is effective long term, as well as info about normal sleep patterns for babies.

Attachment parenting is just being responsive to your child and their needs, if your baby needs a firm routine then responding to that is part of the theory.

GF basically tries to crowbar all babies into the samew box.

I'm currently doing some food shopping. I've come across this scene. I think maybe a mumsnetter has been in

I should think all people hope their children will sleep though the night at some point, self settle and not need food in the night indefinitely. Some people want to be active in bringing this closer and others are happy to just wait until it happens.

Yes and some are on their knees with sleep deprivation, willing to do anything to make it happen, but have babies who cannot be manipulated and therefore have no choice but to wait. Those are the parents who find the GF evangelism hard to swallow.

To be honest I think it's the evangelism that's the real problem. So long as GF is presented as 'the answer' there is a problem, because as with the majority of books by 'gurus' as opposed to researchers it's all based on anecdote and opinion. So of course whatever approach is being presented is not going to work for many families.

This is just as true for attachment parenting gurus as routine gurus. My ds would have hated it if I'd had strapped him to me all day. He wanted to do his own thing and he only settled on his own all swaddled up. dd on the other hand would have thought it perfect (but I would have hated it!). Different children with different needs. We used a baby whisperer type approach to controlled crying with ds and it worked in a couple of days. We tried it with dd and it was a disaster, there was no way she was going to sleep on her own when she was small, just no way.

Before we had dd although we didn't tell anyone else what to do we did rather think that if only they had been more disciplined they too would have had a sleeping baby, then we realised it was the luck of the draw (and if we'd have had dd first there would have been no second baby to compare to!).

I didn't get as far as reading that I shouldn't make eye contact.

A friend bought me the CLB book and I got as far her saying that all her 300 babies etc and I thought - but you haven't given birth to 300 babies, so how many of these "I've had 300" ( or whatever the actual wording is) are you the mother of? After that and being instructed exactly what to eat for breakfast I stopped reading.

Forgot to say, my part BF part FF, when the BFing failed partly due to her reflux, DD2 slept through the night from 12 weeks, her twin sister took considerably longer to sleep through despite being able to retain and digest a whole feed. Therefore lasting longer between feeds.

They have both continued to sleep well consistently, other than when ill of course.