for thinking my friend is BU to enforce strict routine on 3 week old?

[SandysMam]

I have a friend who has a 3 week old DS. She is insistent that her DS follow a well known authors strict routine aimed at contentment and is getting frustrated that he won't play ball and sometimes cries and wakes her up at night!! He's 3 weeks old FFS, AIBU that she boils my piss and I feel sorry for her DS??

'Its selfish, lazy parenting' bamboo.
I didn't gf myself, but from what I understand of it, it's the complete opposite of that. You give up your own social life etc for months to result in a happy, contented baby who sleeps well. Not selfish at all.

I would say not to the extent that gf followers do.
For example if a friend asked me out to lunch when I had a new born, I would say yes. A gf follower might say no, cos nap time, or feeding time etc etc

It's not selfish. I hate so much that so often people trying to get their babies to learn to be content sleeping alone are called this.
Just because it benefits the adult too doesn't mean it doesn't benefit the child primarily.
I let my child learn to sleep at a very young age and he's always slept through illness, teething etc. That benefits him first I can handle being tired I'm an adult, I don't expect him to be able to and I made sure he didn't have to know what long term broken sleep feels like.

Dixie - my own experience of gf followers (massive research - I know 2 people) they sacrificed a lot to do gf. Missed days out often, missed lunches because dc slept 12-2 etc.
anyway, this is off track of the op, I was only responding to the poster who said gf was selfish, lazy parenting.

I've done GF from 4 months and we still went lots of places, day trips etc. wasn't really limited at all. Feeding can obviously be done out and about, and being able to go to sleep in a buggy is a vital skill.

Like a lot of techniques, you use common sense too. It's a loose timetable/routine, not gospel.

The thoughts about babies in NICU being on regular feeds eg 2 or 3 hourly and seeming to be "contented"... I'm not sure I agree. My DS was ill, and was therefore much more subdued and lethargic than a normal newborn would be. He wasn't content, he was fighting off an infection and recovering from a traumatic birth. When we got him home I was disconcerted by how he was accustomed to being left in a cot/Moses basket and he wasn't really demanding to be fed either. I found that to be really not how I thought it should be, and made a concerted effort to hold him pretty much all the time. It took a few days to reconnect with him and longer to sort feeding out, in a proper baby demand-led way.

At the end of the day whether you agree with the books methodologies or not (which you are perfectly entitled to) its actually damn all to do with you what she does.

Just because YOU dont think the methodology works/is right/whatever I think it says more about the fact you ran to mumsnet to make a thread mocking the poor girl. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she needs a hand or some extra support from a friend?

I have a 5 week old baby and my wife and I have began this week using gina fords method. We arent totally restricted and still have a life, we arent letting him cry out... If anything hes sleeping more and feedingmore now and in a more structured routine that suits him. The reason for us to take this step was because my wife was close to stopping breast feeding because the constant night demands/lack of structured sleep.

1 week in of using this we have a happy baby who is feeding and sleeping well regularly with no force keeping him up, a happier mother which in turn has enabled her to continue breastfeeding.

Ultimately YABU and very judgy - your entitled to your opinion but just because it doesnt work for you doesnt mean you have the right to judge anyone else who does adopt it.

being able to go to sleep in a buggy is a vital skill.

I'm not sure I'd call it a "skill".

Sleep preferences aren't that affected by parental convenience IME

My eldest stopped sleeping in the pram at about 8 weeks. You might get a nap, but only if you kept walking. He would wake the instant you stopped moving.

I missed all the lunches because I gave up on going due to it being minus fun wheeling or carrying a crying baby around while other people ate food.

Second time I got a brilliant pram sleeper. Oh, it was fantastic - a baby that slept, or when he did wake up would coo adorably and let other people hold him.

Getting a baby like this for your first (when you don't have a toddler to deal with) is wonderful piece of luck.

One of the bizarrest bits of the anti-routine, "baby-led" dogma is that during daylight hours you are supposed to drag your baby around all over the place, regardless of how much it upsets them.

I mean, either babies are trainable, or they're not.

I don't believe they are, so I've always tried to work around the babies I've had, as I've got to know them. Obviously my own tendency to like routine, my own upbringing by a hippy mother in a family of co-sleepers and "extended" bfers, affected my approach, but I worked around the baby.

If you think babies can be forced into accepting noisy, bright places to sleep so you can keep up your social life, go for it. But don't then tell me that forcing them to accept a quiet, dark room to sleep in at night is cruel and selfish.

dadtobe - think you need a namechange :)

I remember when, a few days after coming home from hospital, DH and I decided to structure the day so it had nighttime and daytime and mealtimes.

Sure, the baby didn't stick to it, but before that we kept forgetting to eat and were barely sleeping. We felt like we were going mad.

Just simple things like knowing in advance when we were going to eat and go to bed made such a difference. We could make plans several hours in advance!

And that was the start of putting the baby into a routine, because he now lived in a house where approximately the same things happened at the same time most days.

Haha bathtime well spotted! I only joined here on behalf of my wife when we had an induction scheduled for some reassurance, i dont even know how to change my name so think its time i maybe handed the account over to my wife!!

Your post is right. We came home and tried on demand feeding for the first weeks, which was fine and the baby put on weight. But he was having many many small feeds and sleeping on the boob/in between and it was getting to a stage where it wasnt practical for my wife to have DS latched to her 24 hours a day, including mealtimes and overnight. Since we have started this method we have had dinner together uninterupted for the past 3 nights in a row, DS seems very happy and "content" and has fitted in wuite easily to the "routine". In fact I think is exactly what he needed to try and improve his feeding.

The upshot of it all is that we have a happy baby and mum!

Bathtime yep. I'm very baby led and my baby likes a trip out late morning but a quiet sleep/feed at home about 2pm. Bar big occasions (when I can usually find an armchair to replicate home) I wpuld be rolling home 2pm ish nor because I routine but because she likes what she likes.

I find some so called flexible parents as rigid as the most rigid routine parents.
Oh and nothing drives me up the wall more than people who deliberately confuse CC and CIO. I don't personally feel comfortable with either method. But screaming about the harsher method to make the other mum pressurised into stopping makes we "attachment" types look ill informed/Internet bandwagon bullies. When most of us aren't.

Anyway my baby couldn't do GF. She sleeps 1 hour max (more like 40 min) several times in the day, and all through the night with feeding (oh yes, she trained my boobs to feel full early on, and will suckle in semi sleep then plonk right out 3 times a night).

Nothing doing ti change it. But it's no biggy. She's healthy and bar the 2pm cuddle will pram/sling nap.

Bathtime please appreciate that some of us talk as child carers, who are more limited about the control we have over the day's routine- as well as also looking after an older child who needs to be taken out and about.

Being able to sleep in the buggy is indeed a vital skill to be learnt as a baby and make it more likely they can sleep out and about as a toddler and a small child.

Being able to be at home for every time the baby might need to sleep might be most suitable for a small baby but I doubt very much that it'll suit most families, and it won't help the baby to learn to sleep in noisy and busy environments.

And for the record, it's not nothing to do with a social life, to say so is quite insulting tbh.

Pahahaha! Good luck with that! I mean that in the nicest possible way and as the mum of a 9 day old squish who does things her way or no way. I think YANBU in finding it wrong but I believe in babies getting into their own routine and going with the flow. I think YABU if you said anything though, everyone parents differently.

Of course I'm only coming on here for a little moan and would never dream of being anything but supportive in RL. Isn't that what an anonymous forum is for?? Even I can see that anyone being anything but kind to a new mother is DBU so keep calm and carry on either letting your baby cry it out til tits o clock or get back to knitting your own sling out of armpit hair, I couldn't really care less anymore!! Night all!

Oh no Kittymum03, that last post was totally not aimed at you personally, just got bored of my own thread so was a post for all! Got in from the pub and wanted to finish it off once and for all! Not personal and sorry if u felt like that