The baby books are driving me insane!!! Tell me they are rubbish - the Baby Whisperer, Gina Ford etc

[emmyloo2]

Hi all,

I have a gorgeous, happy 8 1/2 week old baby who is thriving. He is sleeping well at night (8pm until 5.30am) and then a short nap until 7.15am consistently. I then feed him and put him down for a nap at around 9ish either in his pram and walk him or in his cot. However, after that his routine is hit and miss. He struggles to sleep longer than 40 minutes during the day, but sometimes I get 2 hours out of him. I also take him for a walk every evening around 5.30pm and he naps until his bedtime routine starts at 7pm. It's just the days which are killing me because I find it hard to plan anything because he doesn't settle at specific times. It's a very rough routine.

I guess the main thing that is bothering me though is all these books people keep telling me "saved their lived", particularly the Baby Whisperer book. I have read it and Gina Ford and I just can't seem to implement the routines because my life is not that structured. I like to get out and about a bit with the baby and I go to the gym most mornings for some me-time. So I find specific routines impossible to follow. I am all for routine, but I find these structured approaches overwhelming. I also find they make me feel inadequate as if I am not working hard enough at getting my baby to "self-settle" and therefore later on I am going to pay for it with a baby who won't sleep.

I want to ignore the books and keep muddling along, but then I will speak to someone who says the approach worked for them. I don't understand how anyone can implement such a strict approach though and actually leave the house?

Can anyone advise? Should I stop reading the books and keep doing what I am doing. My Mum says I am overthinking things and I should throw away the books.

Thanks!

Found baby whisperer made good prop to lift cot up when dd had a cold and it helped to raise it

I gave up on baby books when my DS1 was about the age yours is. I decided to follow my instincts, which made me a whole less fretful (mind you, I did have an excellent HV for any questions)

However, like mathanxiety I liked the Dr Sears books as they are very gentle and did continue with them for a while.

I really feel that I spoilt the first few weeks of DS's life, when it should have been about cosying up and bonding, by stressing over what a book said I should be doing. I was so much happier when I threw it away and have never looked back.

That's really sad MamaVoo. At least it was weeks, not months or years and he's not going to be any the wiser. I'm sure the bonding happened anyway and it just spoilt your enjoyment rather.

Oh wow, I feel so much better having read these posts! I have not opened any books since although I do like the sound of "How not to be a perfect mother". What makes me angry is the amount of money I wasted on these books. These writers are getting very wealthy (in my opinion) on making new mothers feel even more anxious than they already do.

I am roughly following the EASY approach although I usually do sleep, activity, bit of eating, bit more playing, then some eating and then sleeping.

It is really hit and miss during the day as to whether he sleeps for more than 40 minutes but as my Mum said yesterday "as long as he is getting some sleep, I am sure he is fine".

And yes to the poster who asked whether my Mum was looking after my baby to allow me to get to the gym - I have a wonderful mother and MIL and two aunties who are helping me out while my husband is away. I am lucky and I just want to enjoy this time as much as possible, without feeling anxious.

Thanks everybody!

MamVoo - I agree. When I was trying to follow the books, it really spoilt my time with my baby because I was constantly worried about timing and keeping to specific times instead of enjoying him.

Write helpful comments in the margins like 'oh no it bloody doesn't' and 'but what if the baby just cries, eh, eh??' throughout the books before donating to the charity shop.

Annotated editions get more money, right?

I had a totally anti-routine baby - no regular naps ever until a year old, but very placid, zonked out when he felt like it anywhere, and OK he woke twice in the night, I fed, he fell asleep again and we'd both be asleep again in 10 minutes. Or I could have spent a stressful hour trying to get a hungry baby to sleep. Why would anyone do that?

[I was in tears at 3 weeks desperate for anything, hence the books, but they just made me feel inadequate. Going out for cakes was a much better use of money!]

Notcitrus - totally agree with the annotations. In fact a few times when I was trying to get my baby to "self settle" as he was waking up before he was "meant to", I would mutter to myself, "and now what the hell am I meant to do bloody baby whisperer" as my little boy was crying hysterically in his cot. In the end I would give up, feed him some more and play with him. But I wish I had the bloody Baby Whisperer there so I could say to her - come on, weave your magic! Hah!

That's a great idea, nocitrus! and I agree with you, emmyloo. Unless people offering advice - whether it's the BW, the health visitor or random old ladies in the street - are willing to be there at 3am dealing with a screaminf baby, I take their advice with a huge pinch of salt!

You sound like you're doing brilliantly - good luck and enjoy your baby.

My Mother-in-law always swore by the fact that "all babies need routine". She herself never had lunch on the table before 11.59 or after 12.02. She couldn't ever come to the park with us with the kids in the afternoon because at 3.30 coffee and cakes had to be on the table and before that it was afternoon sleep time. She found it very difficult to visit us because - well - the routine was different. In fact, sadly, she hardly ever saw her grandchildren because of shopping (10.00 - 11.00), cooking (11.00 - 12.00), afternoon sleep (1.00-3.00), preparing coffee and cakes (3.00 - 3.30) ... I could go on.
And now dh is the same... he is convinced all kids need a scalectrix ... I'll opt for the scalectrix any day! :O

Emmyloo2 I had a small meltdown this weekend partly brought on by soaring anxiety levels that I am not 'doing it right' as we don't have a proper routine at 11 weeks. It was compounded by ds getting overtired and then refusing food and screaming, all of which was of course my fault and I'm a terrible mum.

I have a happy, healthy baby who is sociable or can play alone. He generally sleeps at night from about 8-10 til 5-7. And yet I beat myself up all the time because I feel inadequate because he will only sleep on me in the day at random times and because we don't bath him at the same time every single day. It is ingrained into me, from reading too much on the internet, that I am doing it wrong by not insisting on routine, yet logically we are doing brilliantly.

GAH!!!

BTW a friend told me about a sleep book that had "saved her life". I bought it and as it started from birth I freaked out completely, couldn't do it, felt inadequate. Only later she told me that she dipped into it at 7 months!

Baby books are brilliant firelighters.

missdt - you sound just like me! Bloody friends telling me that books saved their lives. I think they forget about whether the book actually worked or whether it was coincidence because they are now past the awful stage.

It's all about self confidence and self belief. Our bathtime is different every night but it's always sometime between 7pm and 8pm. Today for example we didn't wake up until 8.15, instead of 7.15 so our day was a little different and he had a later bedtime than normal. Yesterday afternoon I decided I wanted to go to a yoga class, so again the afternoon was different again. I have decided this flexibility is really important for me because I want to maintain other things in my life like coffee with friends, yoga etc without being tied to a rigid routine.

My SIL keeps telling me just to have confidence in what I am doing and have self belief and she has 5 kids so I figure she knows what she is talking about.

they are most bunkem, because they cannot take account of the two biggest variables ie your personality, and that of your baby.

the only one I would give shelf space to is babies by Christopher Green, as he lists a range of approaches and invites you to choose the one that suits. Bit like MN.

Think OP has just written that message to be smug!
If he is sleeping that long at night as an 8 week old , you should be able to deal with anything during the day. Those books are for people who have REAL problems and don't know what to try next...end of the tether, desperation,sleep deprived type people. Some babies fit neatly into a Gina routine and so that book is a Godsend for them, some babies are delightful whispered babies and for them they will swear by that book - and many will fight against being organised by their desperate mothers and so the books will need to be burnt. OP in the grand scheme of things it is my opinion that you should be thankful that you don't need matchsticks to keep your eyes open!

Notcitrus - I did that in a diet book once and sent it to Oxfam and my friend bought it and called me to tell me about it! Comments went along the lines of 'follow this diet and you will smell like manure for a week and be extremely grumpy'; 'warning cod science alert' etc.

I agree with everyone, bin the books.
I want to dispel some myths for you. Don't believe that books made it better.

I did follow one of the books, not religiously but in a vague sort of way. It worked for me - I don't being flamed.

BUT;

• unlike you, my baby didn't sleep through at 8.5 weeks
• it did not stop her crying, for the first 3 months she was really miserable (and I now beat myself up about it being my fault with the routine, although realistically she could have just been a sensitive one)

so don't let anyone tell you the books are better or will achieve more. it seems to me that whether or not you follow the books depends on who you are as a person - it worked for me because I felt wholly out of control with a baby and it felt like I was doing something vaguely consistent

Before I get flamed - my baby is now very happy and contented ...

I don't agree, Containher - I had a lot of end of my tether periods with 5 DCs, each one of whom was a completely different little individual, and one (DC4) who took little naps of 20 mins max during the day and screeched the rest of the time until she learned to talk (her first word was NO!, emphatic and loud, followed by MINE!).

OTOH, her immediate older sister's (DC3) first words were 'I love you' - same genetic material but completely different babies. It was the mantra 'this too will pass' (Dr Sears) that kept me sane for the first two years of DC4's life when I lived on coffee and too many calories. All she wanted was to be carried around (I tried every other strategy) and that is what I did. GF would have said tsk tsk. But she is lovely now, at 12.

I would be thankful that your baby is sleeping at 8 weeks; the trick is to take it one day at a time. Everything can change, and rapidly, but I would hesitate to panic even if it all goes tits up, or to take drastic measures advocated in books, because there's no way of knowing whether the method from the book is causing any change for the better or if it's the baby adjusting all by himself. And if you are sleep deprived, nothing is more guaranteed to drive you out of your mind than the clock watching that so many methods demand. Methods breed nervousness and feelings of inadequacy and failure.

I feel very lucky that my DD was born just early enough that I missed the prescriptive books - so I had sensible Penelope Leach, who started off with something along the lines of 'there isn't one right way of doing things that suits everyone' and Libby Purves who gave sane advice and made me laugh at the same time, which has to be a good thing.

Anyway, Emmyloo, sounds like you have things pretty much sorted - and I'll tell you something else, when the clocks change or if you want to go on holiday you'll breeze through whereas those on a book-imposed timetable will be thrown into chaos.

Our bathtime is different every night but it's always sometime between 7pm and 8pm.
Thats a routine, just a sensibly flexible one!

Tis all snake oil.

Haven't read the replies, but I'm with your Mum.

Ditch the books. I wish I had. Caused me loads of woory and I lost the ability to use my intuition.

Yes, I think the human race managed to evolve without daily baths - *How are they ever going to develop an immune system if you're washing them all the time?

*what you say to anyone who criticizes your slightly grubby child

I will try to give a slightly different opinion here. During the first 3 months of my DS's life I also went with the flow, breast-fed on demand and had DS falling asleep on the breast or in the pram. At 6 weeks he was sleeping from 9 or 10pm to 5am.
From 3 months onwards his sleep had become much more erratic, I felt he was on the boob most of the time and I had no idea how to get him to nap during the day apart from in the pram. I was waiting for him to magically work out his own pattern like you hear and read about so often, but he hadn't. He was cranky through lack of daytime sleep and nighttime sleep had also gone awry.
I then started implementing a variation of Gina Ford's feeding and sleeping schedules, using the Babywhisperer ideas on putting my baby to sleep.
What I am trying to say is - there is no need to stick to a book if you're happy with how things are going. But if things are not going so well there are always ideas and suggestions that you can take from a book. You do not have to follow them to the letter and you do not have to feel inadequate if you decide not to follow them.