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!!

DS 3.5
Dd 1.2

enjoying I actually had a breakdown and that was from a week of consistently trying to follow the CLBB. That was the opinion of my consultant psychiatrist!

I'm now at the other end of sleep issues - try getting my 14 and 12 year olds up for school!

OK, let's take a concrete example. Look at this thread.

Mother there is not a GF hater (she's done GF quite happily with her first two children). GF worked for her for the first few months, so presumably she cracked the "follow it rigidly in the first few days and then it clicks into place" thing. But she's having trouble getting her baby to stick to GF at 4 months old.

Now, IMO her baby does want to follow a routine, just not the GF routine for his age. I think that's largely down to luck and the individual baby. You think (I think, from what you've said) that it's because she's doing it wrongly.

We followed certain aspects, and everything worked fine. Kids are still in routines now, gave them a start in terms of "discipline" - being in bed at certain times, meal times etc.
Each to their own though........

I didn't say no exceptions but sorry not buying the luck and it only working for babies who like routine and control freak parents theory either.

As I said I did it with very different twins(1 who is the exact opposite in character to "likes a routine" at 10) and it worked for both.

Ditto with the many friends I know who it worked for.

So I think we can drop the character assassination of GF and parents who have found it very useful.

I didn't say no exceptions but sorry not buying the luck and it only working for babies who like routine and control freak parents theory either.

So there are exceptions to the rule, i.e. there are babies it doesn't work for, but those exceptions aren't down to luck

My cousin was just as evangelical as you, retro. I was told on several occasions that it would work for me if I just did it properly which I clearly couldn't be doing.

Funnily enough, when their DD2 came along and GF didn't work, it was never mentioned again.

If it had worked for their DD2 they would have continued to be convinced that it works for all babies until their DD3 came along and proved them wrong.

Your sample of 3 sibling babies is nowhere near demonstrating that it works for all babies.

Neither is a few MN anti GF posts and the only control freaks or routine loving babies can make it work argument demonstrating that it isn't extremely beneficial for many,many babies and their families.

Neither is the babies set their own routine and thrive bollocks you see on threads like this demonstrating that that is the case for all babies.

What is this, wake baby at 7am, malarky? I have three children, all have woken up at 5am and on their first nap by 7am. I am failing before the day starts apparently.

I don't see people arguing that strict routines are not beneficial for many parents and babies. They clearly are.

Some babies thrive in them. Some babies fall into their own natural routines and some resist all attempts to call order on their sleep patterns no matter what.

Your assertion was that if you stick to it for a few days it will click into place. It will do that for some and not for others and implying that people haven't tried if they have a baby for whom it doesn't work isn't fair or reasonable.

Really have you read the thread?

"Burn it"

"Crack pot"

"Utter tosh"............

I gave up after the first 5 or 6 posts.

Why take such as entrenched position retro

You have based your view on the small cohort of your 3 children, who while having different personalities will still be being raised in the same environment, taking their cues from their siblings around them because that's how children learn.

Fine if GF worked for your family but don't patronise people for whom it didn't show success. There are lots of underlying biological processes that regulate sleep and sleeping patterns. Perhaps in some babies it takes a while for these to kick in properly, just like some children don't become dry at night till 7-8 because of lack of regulation of key hormones

Does the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right" ring any bells?

Some people (although not most even among the not-enormous-fans-of-GF, I think) do inaccurately claim that only control freaks can make GF work. That's not a good justification for claiming that absolutely anyone can make GF work.

And saying "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." and then almost immediately proceeding to tell women who have tried really hard to get the routines to work, in one case to the point of inducing an actual mental breakdown, that it works for all babies so if they didn't get it to work it's because they didn't try hard enough, is a bit much.

GF wasn't for me; for starters I was too tired when DD was a few weeks old to concentrate on reading Chapter One!

But then I was gobsmacked when my cousin woke her sleeping baby son, undressed him and lay him on the cold kitchen floor to wake up so he could stick to his GF routine...no WAY would I ever have done something like that, it's bloody cruel.

Erm sorry but I think you'll find the entrenched position and patronising alongside insults ( "suckers too damned stupid" ) are to be found in the anti GF camp, but that's ok.

Why are people not allowed to say that they think the book is utter tosh, or that they would burn it because they dislike it so much? It would obviously be more helpful if they said why they felt that way, but it's a valid opinion nonetheless.

(I would concede that calling her a crackpot is unnecessary, as clearly that's a personal attack.)

Hardly anyone on this thread is saying that routines never work for any baby, and that anyone who tries a routine is a control freak. Many people have pointed out (reasonably) that routines don't work for all babies, and trying to force a GF style routine onto those babies can be a recipe for disaster. It is really unfair to say that those people that have tried a GF style routine and it hasn't worked have just not done it right or tried hard enough!

Oh and then we get the passive aggressive "against my natural instincts as a mother".

I like a routine but I can't leave my babies to cry themselves to sleep so Gina isn't for me.

Well, you've basically flat-out told Goldmandra that she's a liar. She says that she stuck with the routine for some time and it just never clicked with her babies; you say that if she had done that then it would have worked.

That's not even passive aggressive, it's just aggressive aggressive.

No I didn't flat out call her liar.

My babies also needed to sleep a lot more than GF allows. I couldn't have dealt with the misery of keeping small babies awake longer than they wanted to, let alone refusing to feed them.

I agree with you retro and I will re-iterate that I love Gina ford. the routines do work if you stick to them In principle but obviously there are days when you can't stick to them to the letter, e.g. If you have an immunisation appointment.

And if it's making you miserable to do it then don't so it but it doesn't mean they don't work.

(Runs away and hides in case everyone shouts)

And also, I do think that it's REALLY obvious when a kid is tired rather than hungry and if you miss their cues then you end up not only overfedding but making them miss sleep.

I don't know everything but I do know what a baby looks like when it's tired

Apologies for the sausages finger mistyping up above

I remember when DS1 was a baby, I picked up GF's book - and put it down again in horror. He was a baby who needed an element of routine (subsequently diagnosed with ASD and still very rigid at 10!) but I found the baby whisperer advice of finding that routine together far more useful. For example, he tended to be quite wide awake until about 10pm, but then slept through until about 8-9am, by the time he was 6 months old. That was bloody brilliant from our point of view. We got to go shopping in the evenings when it was quiet without any squawking.

I wouldn't touch her 10 minutes every 4 hours breastfeeding advice with a bargepole, though. DS1 wasn't a very efficient feeder and he'd have ended up FTT.

When DS2 came along, he had to fit around DS1, to some extent. Demand feeding worked best for us. Little and often, or else he'd end up throwing it all up again. He hadn't read any of the books :o