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!!

Gina got me out of sinking into PND.

I think the "half a feed" thing and similar is why people get upset/annoyed by them, though. That kind of advice, unless you're lucky to have a baby who would naturally follow that pattern or a bomb proof milk supply anyway, is likely to scupper breastfeeding because it simply does not follow how breast milk production actually works.

The weaning book looked terrifying to me! "3 teaspoons of pear on day 5" that kind of thing. Hovering over them in case they collapse from anaphylactic shock. What's wrong with just giving them whatever you eat? Mash it with a fork, put it through a blender or just give it whole.

And YY to people who have babies with no sleep issues smugly attributing it to the book. No, you were just lucky. No sleep issues with DS, other than the usual toddler "But I don't want to go to bed. I need a glass of water. I need a wee. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii'm nooooooooooooooooooooot tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired." I co slept and breastfed on demand until he was quite old. I could attribute it to that - maybe it did help! But really I was probably just lucky.

Clearly, GF routines feel instinctively wrong to some people. That's fine and its clearly not for them. It also clearly works for lots of people too, particularly those who don't feel they know what to do intuitively or for whom sleeping through early is a priority.
Personally, I don't see parents' attitudes towards routine as reflecti g their general organisation in life. I know lots of highly organised people, who, when it came to their babies, wanted to be baby led.
I also think GF works well for those who want to take the lead themselves. Some of it is certainly about control,mwhich is important for many women and not wrong. Other people can cope better with not being in control into the medium term. However, I have seen that when this lack of control extends over more than a year, women can become extremely tried and worn down and babies can be very crabby.

I don't think people need to do the routines from Day One, but this is no bad thing if they want to. The thing I think matters is the realisation that at some point a baby needs to learn to settle himself back to sleep and also to be given the chance to take their daily calorific intake in daytime hours, so they don't need to feed in the night beyond about 6 months.

Quite simply, promoting sleep patterns that don't allow a baby to self settle and feeding in the night beyond the point where babies need to eat every couple of hours is likely to lengthen the time that they don't sleep through and can establish longer term problems. Gina Ford is just one way to address these issues, but there are others.....and as far as Im concerned, it's the recognising of these issues as the root of many sleeping problems, that is the key. Addressing them before 6 months seems a good idea.

Bertie sorry I wasn't lucky,I had non identical very different twins with different sleep patterns always kept in the same room.Then another very different child a year later. Gina worked for all of us each time incredibly quickly and turned as all around from being a tired,miserable and cranky family to I be actually enjoying family life.

The woman deserves a medal as far as I'm concerned.

Gina Ford books are useful for cat litter trays.

I also think GF works well for those who want to take the lead themselves.

GF can work well for some parents who want to take the lead themselves.

I have seen that when this lack of control extends over more than a year, women can become extremely tried and worn down and babies can be very crabby.

It is also very likely that the mother is struggling for other reasons which wouldn't have been solved by putting the baby in a rigid routine and those 'worn down' mothers with 'crabby' babies have tried it (because you do try everything) and feel even worse because they failed and are being judged for having done so.

Routine may be the answer for some unsettled babies but it certainly is not the solution for all and, when you're on your knees from sleep deprivation and have tried every trick in the book and more, someone sitting back and smugly announcing that you should just try a strict routine, is at best unhelpful.

I once had a bottle fed 3 month old overnight who's parents were following SWMNBN to the LETTER. I have never been more upset then when I had to set an alarm to get up, make a bottle, wake a deeply sleeping baby, take him into a bright room to get him awake enough to take his whole bottle, not make eye contact and then replace him in bed.

It went against every single nurturing instinct in my body I cried to my DP when I went back home because I felt so so wrong disturbing and then forcing a baby to eat who clearly was exhausted and wanted to be asleep. I then wasn't allowed to make eye contact when I was settling him and he was distressed. I HATED it.

Still. He's a routined child who sleeps so apparently SWMNBN is the bloody queen and his DM keeps trying to convince me to read the book I would rather put pins in my eyes than read that shite

Sorry MNHQ.

I found that unless your baby does everything normally, gf just causes stress, trying to get them to conform.

throw in reflux and undiagnosed autism, the system falls down.

Who's gina ford?

she's someone who writes childcare books for robot babies.

Never read her (too scheduled for me) but I'm sure there are some babies/mothers she suits.

Retropear, so if you weren't lucky, to what do you attribute the fact that GF worked for your family when it didn't work for some others who tried it but failed? Did they just not try hard enough? Are you just a better person than them? Or is it possible that you were, a bit, lucky?

Because Debbie all babies are different. Some babies thrive on an imposed routine others do better finding their own rhythm. Same for mothers. Neither is better.

Robot babies Nice. Those of us who had baby's that liked routines just had wee little robots, then?

Some babies like routine, some babies don't. How does this always end up becoming a critical debate about how some parents look after their baby? How about - are you happy with what you are doing? Yes? Brilliant, good for you, carry on. No, you're not happy? Here are some suggestions for alternative ways of doing things, maybe something will help.

Trying to follow GF put me in a mother&baby unit with severe PND. It was, in the end, the "2 hour" thing - my dd1 didn't want to sleep after 2 hours, she was a big baby who could go longer between feeds and simply didn't want to sleep then. Dh was pretty sure something was up and popped home to find me weeping on the bedroom floor and dd1 crying in her cot. It was the well-considered opinion of my psychiatrist that trying to follow the routine which suited neither me or dd1 had made my illness so severe.

I learned to follow dd1 (and later ds and dd2)'s own signs and got into a great loose routine of our own making.

When dd1 was 3, we had friends visit with their 4 month old ds. GF to the last jot. Aghast that we had no blackout blinds, no set in stone mealtimes/bedtimes (although our cue for bath time was the "Archers" theme tune!), couldn't grasp that we weren't stressed if bedtime was 5 mins late or lunch half an hour early because we were gasp going out! I knew then I'd made the right decision for our family.

LittleBearPad, yes, that was what has already been said repeatedly on this thread -- that if you try GF and it works for you, it's because you are lucky enough to have a baby who takes to her routine. That's certainly what I would assume.

But Retropear says that luck has nothing to do with it, because she had three different children and it worked for all of them. So I'm interested to know what, in her opinion, does make the difference, given that there are clearly plenty of parents who've tried it without success, and that she doesn't think that "luck" comes into it at all.

Thurlow, sorry for causing offence, I'm glad it worked for some people.

but the distress that trying and failing to stick to a rigid routine causes is unnecessary.

I've had friends who have used the GF method and it's suited their lifestyle and parenting style. I never used it, haven't even seen a copy of the book as it's not really my cup of tea but i'm sure as hell not going to criticise other parents for doing it this way.

Getting enough quality sleep in the early years so you can function as a normal human being is the goal of most parents, how you get there whether using GF methods or not is incidental

Sorry ffs, haven't had enough coffee yet this morning!

Despite having had a 'routine' baby myself I can clearly see that GF is insanely prescriptive and too rigid and I can understand why is causes so many new mums to get distressed.

The difficulty is that it is hard to get advice away from books, I think. MN is amazing but generally so for slightly more specific problems. The majority of advice I see on here before the baby is born is along the lines of 'go with your instincts' and 'do what the baby wants to do' etc which, if you have no instincts because you've never done more than hold a friend's baby for five minutes, is unhelpful.

That's why I always really dislike it when people say things like "your baby hasn't read the book". Of course the baby hasn't read Gina Ford. But it also hasn't read something like Three In A Bed, and trying to co-sleep with a baby that doesn't want to could make you just as tired and distressed - yet the latter is seen as more natural and as if it somehow hasn't been espoused by a book at some point. Plenty of babies will fall into their own routine without a book, that is just as natural as babies that like co-sleeping and being held all the time.

Completely knocking any book or parenting style just strikes me as self-defeating (unless its that bizarre man in the US who advocates beating your kids, obviously...) Why not educate new mums or mums to be who feel they want some guidance and support on the many different types of parenting style and all the different books available and help them to find that one that seems to suit them and their baby?

Totally non-scientific and perhaps b***s, but in my experience children who have been trained to sleep well as infants (and so are "easy" for the parents in that respect) can often be quite "difficult" in other ways - e.g. whiny, tantrummy, grumpy, wild. I don't know if there is a connection.

I would say my two have been averagely OK sleepers. My eldest was sleeping through by around two years, my second is 2.5 now and generally speaking sleeps quite well with probably one rotten night per week. It is true that five years (cumulatively) of disturbed sleep is hard on you and your partner, GF is right about that. DH and I are shattered (and while both mine woke in the night it certainly wasn't/isn't five times a night like some people have to deal with).

On the other hand, while my two of course had their challenging times and ages, they were and are not particularly difficult in areas other than sleeping. They don't hit or bite or shove other children. They rarely grabbed other children's toys at toddler groups etc (though they did occasionally). They don't have 30 minute screaming tantrums. They have both been quite "safe" children even as small toddlers - no extensive baby proofing needed or visits to A&E or running out into the road. I have often been able to reason with them both from the age of about 2.5 and head off a confrontation. They are broadly speaking quite obedient and will say sorry. They eat quite well, considering their ages.

As I say it could be b***s, but I like to think all the above is the payoff for being responsive to them for five years at night!

Of course if you are getting so little sleep that you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown then clearly something has to be done. But I think if you can manage to not force sleep training on them, then that's the best option in the first instance.

(My nearly five year old sleeps like a dream now.)

I hope no one misunderstands me, I'm not critical of parents who get along well with the gf way, far from it. I know we all do our best and have to find a way that copes for us.

I am critical of the gf method though. it's too rigid, too stressful and doesn't account for differing needs. also some of the passages in the book are cringing sexist.

So Debbie what do you attribute no routine not working for many?Mums are control freaks,didn't try hard enough?

Seems to be the message from the Gina haters.

Fine if Gina isn't for you don't do it but ripping her and mums who have found her books to be extremely helpful to shreds smacks of it's my way or the highway,I know best.You don't.Many babies and their families thrive on Gina routines.

Thurlow, 100% agree about getting good advice apart from books. I didn't find mn until my oldest was 18 months, so wish I'd found you all sooner!

What nobody ever mentions is that sometimes doing nightfeeds longer than say 6 months can actually bring the mother more sleep. Or is that just me? DD was able to self settle and if she woke at night and I didn't feed her, I'd put her back into her cot and she would go back to sleep but then wake an hour later and I'd have to get up again. If I fed her, on the other hand, it took 5 mins and she'd sleep through until morning, usually to some delicious time like after 8am.

So, when I hear people saying that 12 hours unbroken sleep was not the holy grail for them, I wonder do they mean this kind of a thing? Sleep was absolutely the holy grail for me, I was raving, bitter and resentful without it (and if I didn't get it was because I was trying to not do night feeds). Doing one or two quick night feeds meant that I got way more sleep. I stopped after a year and got a little less sleep after that but it was still OK.

green, I'd have been happy with 4 hours sleep! I had a special needs baby, not sure if this is the reason why, but I was doing night feeds well into 9 months.

those early months are just so hard for any mum, I think.