To wonder if Sarah Ockwell Smith actually has any useful advice in her books?

[Spicycurry]

I am sure she is a lovely lady and very good parent.

But I read her sleep book and it pretty much just told me to put up with it until my child slept better.

Ordered her toddler book and it seems to be much of the same.

it is helpful of course to understand where my child is coming from if you like but I am not sure it’s particularly useful to read when at the end of your tether!

or will I be flamed by her fans?

@mavismorpoth , what @Topgub is saying is that she doesn’t feel comfortable with it, and I never did either. That’s following your instincts is it not - or are instincts only to be followed when it relates to co sleeping and the like?

Co sleeping never worked for me. I hated having to stay in one position, hated being kicked/ shoved / head butted (the bluey episode that charmed so many lately I found personally really harrowing - too many bad memories!) and to be honest found it smothering. I need some adult time without ds on me.

@mavismorpoth

Not far off it.

And no. I'm not in a global minority.

Unless you think the majority of people, globally, sleep in centrally heatedboxes on big soft mattresses

@Spicycurry

I'm not only not comfortable with it, ithink it's downright dangerous and should never be advocated.

My instict was to protect them, not put them at unnecessary risk.

Yes I hated co sleeping. I never relaxed or slept properly and woke up with sore hips.

I think all this proves nothing except that babies and their parents are all totally different If one thing worked for all babies then there's be no problems!

We cosleep, it works great for us and we all get sleep. But it doesn't work for others. So there's space for lots of different approaches.

Was it Jay gordon??
We did that. It wasn't especially gentle for us, but it did work. (Didn't stop the night waking though...)

Very happy for those for whom cosleeping works well.

But it isn't the answer for all babies.

DS1 couldn't care less about sleeping in his own bed, what he wanted was milk to transition between sleep cycles. Every. Single. Sleep cycle. Cosleeping only meant we got less good sleep when he was asleep, it did nothing for his wake-ups

DS2 would like to cosleep but is incapable of doing it without bending the rules of time and space and taking up the entire king size bed, rotating regularly and singing in his sleep. Cosleeping did not get us more sleep there either.

Cosleeping isn’t the answer for all babies

sleep training isn’t the answer for all babies

shocker

I like her and gravitate to gentle parenting. I have read the whole brain child, siblings with rivaly and phillipa Perry though too. I think she is very human and the first to say she doesn't get it right 100% of the time.

My first child was a bloody nightmare with sleep and I tried sleep training and that made me feel worse as it didn't work. Co sleeping did help and she is a great sleeper now. Looking back the best think I could have done is accept it would be hard and co sleep rather than rage against it.

Every child and family are different though - pick and choose what works for you

Yes, that's him. Same here that it stopped the night feeds but it was a lot longer until she would sleep a full night (possibly a year)

Not long now and she'll be entering the grumpy teenage stage (giving it a good practice at the moment though) and then I'll never be able to get her out of bed.

I never mastered lying down and feeding, just couldn't do it. I think my boobs point in the wrong direction or something.

My in laws bought Sarah Ockwell Smith books for me as an insult "present" when DS was a few months old.

I used them to prop up the head end of the cot when he had a cold.

This! So much. I read her first book just before the end of my maternity leave and it made me feel so guilty about going back to work. I eventually chucked the book in the bin, but still - so unhelpful!

I like to think of SarahOS as Serena Joy in the Handmaid's Tale

I can just about do it but the latch isn't ideal lying down for me and also even when lying down, I can't sleep through a feed so I always preferred to sit up

I used to follow her but stopped after her rant about reflux being over diagnosed.