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!!

Dippy, I agree that it suits some parents and not others. That is the key thing. I think it can be good for any child, but not for any parent.
Some people like to be told what to do and to have a step by step manual for reassurance.
Others dislike being to,d what to do and want to be flexible. When they look at their tiny baby, they cannot bear to hear crying for more than a moment, or to leave baby alone.
We can all do what we like in the end. The routines do seem to establish quicker sleeping though the night for most and if you want that and are happy with a rigid routine, then it can be truly marvellous.
If you aren't bothered about sleeping through, or want to do your own thing, then fine.

Perhaps we should simply say 'Gina suited me and might suit you or not' or 'Gina didn't suit me, but might suit you or not'

My children obviously didn't sleep through when they were tiny and never did I expect them to. But they did sleep 10 hours reliably by the time they were 9/10 months and I am grateful that I never had to post on Mumsnet in desperation when they were over 12 or 24 months old and had never once had an uninterrupted nights sleep. I see threads like this at least daily on here and I feel for those suffering but in the vast majority of cases parents really do not have to be sleep deprived beyond night weaning age (imvho) unless of course they genuinely don't mind it and feel that this is part of parenthood.

I think it can be good for any child, but not for any parent.

I don't think it's just about the parents. There are plenty of people for whom a strict routine has worked well with one DC and not with another. Babies are different too and lots won't or can't fit around GF type routines. I had that one first whereas DD2 was really laid back and developed a routine very easily.

I think it's more a case of "GF may suit some parents if it suits their babies too".

"why have you reported it? The people of MN have spoken, we think shes peddling rubbish"

That it totally wrong TripeCity.

First of all, there is no such thing as "the people of mn".

Secondly, many many thousands of Mumsnetters are Gina Ford fans who have used her methods happily over the years.

I should report yourself and get your own post removed.

I found GF very helpful, with my first I didn't really know what I was doing and muddled through but it took until 9 months to get a full nights sleep. I got the book for my second and found it a useful guide. I can't remember the details now but I BF and managed to fit in with an older child.

Yup I'm one.

GF saved my sanity(3 under 15 months)is a miracle worker as far as I'm concerned.

Pre Gina 3 x cranky,miserable,exhausted babies and mummy.3 days in 3x happy,contented babies and mummy.

Have loads of friends who love her too.

I even took her book into hospital when I had my third.

Had to add, DS is now 4 and it's become apparent that he is a big fan of routines in general.

After about 4 months old he would only even sleep in his cot (in a dark room) or the car. And up until about 6 months ago he would go into meltdown if he was up any longer than about 20 minutes after his usual meltdown.

I used to have people whose children slept happily anywhere suggesting I just bring him out to dinner with me and XH and that 'he'll just go to sleep in his car seat'. Errr, no. He won't.

Agree people should take these routines with a huge pinch of salt though and read lots of different books if you want ideas. Babies are random etc

I think it can be the best book in the world for certain types of baby and parent but can be a total nightmare for others. I was given it and (having non-routine baby and being fairly go-with-the-flow myself), I cannot possible see how I could have succeeded (esp with breastfeeding) using her regime. I also wouldn't have coped personally with it - luckily I had the confidence/other info to (mostly) think "this isn't for me". If you didn't have that, it could make you feel like the worst parent ever if that level of routine/discipline (for yourself, not necc baby) didn't work for you.

My friend would have loved to have taken her dgs out in his pram. The boys mother would not allow it as he was raised the GF way and she didn't want him falling asleep in the pram and therefore messing up his routine.
I think that is incredibly sad.

Another Gina Ford lover here. I was in such a mess when I got the book, having had another chaotic day where I yet again failed to intuit what my baby was telling me when she was yelling so loudly. I really had no clue, not having been brought up around babies whatsoever and having no friends with one. I loved GF because I liked the idea of providing things before my dd needed them- why wait for her to show sleep signs (which I always missed)- after a couple of hours babies are tired? Why wait for them to be hungry- feed little amounts regularly.

I didn't feel hemmed in by the routine, I loved it. Both my dd1 and dd2 were really happy on it and I got them napping together for a year or two allowing me to nap in the daytime.

In answer to why does it matter if babies sleep through the night I am in awe of people for whom this doesn't matter but I felt awful- and like Lucy had bad migraines, as well as bumping the car when sleep deprived. I didn't rush into getting them to sleep through the night, I waited longer than Gina suggested, at 6-8 months, but it was better for all of us not to be incoherent with sleep deprivation. One slept through naturally, the other took 2 days.

I also potty trained according to Gina, two/three days both times. I love Gina, probably because I don't get it, and am not earth-mothery and find it difficult to just follow my instinct, so I appreciated being told what to do. I can see others would find that unnecessary or infuriating though.

Bollocks I took mine out daily.I'm sure she recommended fresh air.

Yes the potty training book was amaaaazing.

All of my 3 including twins- job done in a week!

ChocolateWombat, for those parents of older children who still wake 3 to 4 times in the night, there are bigger issues at play there than a lack of routine when the children were babies.

Just because I didn't/don't follow a prescriptive routine from a textbook doesn't mean that I had no pattern or control over my days with my baby. I have never had to resort to night motorway driving to get my ds to sleep! As my ds grew older we gradually settled into a pattern which included a regular bed time and the same pattern of activities occurring before bed. Eventually my ds developed the ability to self settle - I don't believe it to be something that can be forced on a baby before they are ready. Or rather, you can force it, but I am not comfortable with the process and potential side effects this may have.

Not having a GF style minute by minute routine doesn't automatically equal no pattern for the day at all. Those people you've described with no kind of sleep routine (or pattern, or organisation, or however you describe it) are not in that position because they rejected a GF style manual, it's because they are having their own struggles with parenting for a myriad of reasons none of us will know. Maybe following a GF style routine might have helped them, or maybe it would have made their situation worse - who can tell.

I used bits of advice from Gina Ford (especially that babies are tired and need to nap again 2 hours after they wake up for the day - who knew that?) - and once I'd got that sorted out, so that baby had a half hour nap in the cot while I had a shower, the rest of the day seemed infinitely brighter and easier to cope with.

I definitely exclusively breastfed and took my babies out in their prams for hours at a time. I was never slimmer!

The thing is, I was desperate for ds to sleep thu the night, and although a BF, I did 3/4 hour feeds from pretty early on, as a) getting a full feed seemed to help him sleep better, and b) I was a LP so couldn't be attached to baby 24/7. I had to shop and cook etc from day 3 of getting home from the hospital.
And I don't have a problem with routines; in the end I worked out our own; encouraged naps after lunch, fed closer together in the evening, dropped night feeds at 4 months etc. So hardly a full on woo mummy.
The problem with GF, was that is so damn prescriptive. If you decide you baby should nap at x time, doesn't mean they will. It's too rigid, and anything that rigid is a recipe for unnecessary stress imo.

"Alas she was premature, and gf doesn't recommend her methods on babies under around 7lbiirc"

I didn't know that and it surprises me!
Ds was in SCBU and the nurses had him on a very GF style routine. Feeding, nappy and back to sleep on a strict 4 hour cycle. I guess its the most convenient way to care for babies in an institutional setting. It didn't seem like a bad system to be honest- if you feed a set quantity at a set time I guess it is quite predictable when they sleep and for how long.
I considered keeping him to the routine they'd got him used to but I don't think the strict scheduling works so well with breastfeeding so we ended up doing our own thing and eventually a different routine sort of evolved.

I read lots of baby books when I was pregnant, I worked in a teaching hospital with a library at the time, and there were quite a range. I'd also recently completed my masters in public health so was pretty skeptical about pretty much all of them as the general level of evidence behind most of the 'this is how it is/you/your baby should behave' is quite dire. I also read a really interesting book about how advice has changed over the years. By the time I had ds I felt fairly informed.

I might as well not have bothered though as he let me know very early on how he liked things to be, and then when dd arrived she let us know just as quickly how she didn't like things to be! As they were pretty much polar opposites I conclude that trying to push any style of parenting on a child that doesn't want to do things like that is a recipe for disaster. ds would have been fine with GF I suspect as he slipped into a standard 4 hour routine while we were still in hospital, dd on the other hand would really have liked an AP approach as she was a velcro baby. Trying GF on her would have been a total nightmare!

I gave it a go and ended up throwing the book out of the bedroom window. It seemed wrong I so many ways, realising that helped me to be confident in myself, listen to my daughter and fit into her pattern rather than setting up a battle ground! Slings, breastfeeding, co-sleeping worked wonders with both my babies who have turned into fine young women, but each to him own.

I'm another who can say the GF probably contributed in a major way to my severe PND after DS was born. Everybody I knew swore by the book and I got a copy as a present - worse present ever BTW BIL!!!!

We are living overseas and had no other family support and I have never been around babies. I also had the MW tell me the second night in hospital that she had never seen a newborn that could fight sleep like my DS. All this added up to me being convinced I had to get DS into a routine and I have to say that GF worked beautifuuly for the first 2 months but even then I managed to spoil my parents trip by being obsessed that DS had to sleep, eat at a certain time and we literally didn't leave the house. After 3 months D became a catnapper and I stressed out so much - I felt like I was failing as a mother. Because I was following GF I never learnt to read my own baby's signals and became very detached from him. I was so resentful that he was not following MY routine.

If I could go back in time I would have thrown that bloody book in the bin and got on with BFing DS and letting him sleep on me while I watched boxsets and ate chocolate. Nothing can bring that time back again and it makes me incredibly sad.

All this waffle leads me to point out to chocolatewombat et al that, while many and maybe most, babies will respond well to GF for me, personally, that woman spoilt the precious time I had to bond with my baby and set my bonding back months

For those who are interested. I found the GF weaning book to be brilliant. Nothing to do with sleep etc so definitely worth considering, even for the doubters.

GF disapproves of 4 hour feed routines, she blames that for breastfeeding failing. Her books are about establishing a 3 hour feeding routine.

Mintyy yy to the "especially that babies are tired and need to nap again 2 hours after they wake up for the day - who knew that?" - I used to think baby DS seemed tired and think "but he can't be, he's only just woken up!" but after reading the book looked at the clock and realised it was spot on 2 hours after waking and yes he did need a sleep.

I never managed to feed either of mine when they weren't hungry, especially ds. He always seemed to know what he wanted (and wanted it now!). So things like waking him up for a dream feed etc were quite futile. We tried putting dd down when we thought she needed to go to sleep but she just cried, and cried, and cried. So we stopped trying that approach! ds you could put down and he'd bellow for a minute or two, then find his thumb and be asleep almost immediately.

Babies come with their own preferences fro the get go in my experience, my two are teens now and in a lot of ways they've not really changed that much.

I think she is brilliant. I will also at the risk of having my head chopped off say that in my experience a lot of people who slag her off haven't actually read the book but have jumped on the bandwagon, and people who have read the book and say she is ridiculous haven't actually tried the routines.

My friend claimed her daughter wasn't tired from 7am -7pm at three weeks old and when we went to stay every time she was obviously tired like eye rubbing and yawning then started crying they fed her even if she had only finished a bottle half an hour before.

I suggested what GF said about the two hours and she dismissed it saying the same negative things as everyone here has but she could have saved herself a LOT of sleep and stress if she had been a little more open minded to someone who had a lot of experience with babies

I love her.

I can't see what the fuss is about, I have read some of her books, like some of her ideas, don't like others, she can't force you to take her advice, so if you don't like it read something else
She did manage to convince me I could toilet train my toddler in 1 week. 6 months later we're still at it....

I suggested what GF said about the two hours and she dismissed it saying the same negative things as everyone here has but she could have saved herself a LOT of sleep and stress if she had been a little more open minded to someone who had a lot of experience with babies

So, after being around their baby for a few hours, you knew her better than they did and felt safe to assume that they hadn't tried getting her to sleep more because they wouldn't use the GF method.

That demonstrates beautifully exactly why people feel so strongly about it. Parents are capable of trying to get babies to settle without having been told how to by a prescriptive book and they soon get to know what works and what doesn't for their child.

You have no idea whether the GF routine would have worked for that baby because you didn't try it with that baby. It worked for yours which is great but babies are individuals and they don't all willingly conform to GF's rules.