Alison Scott-Wright - have you used her sleep method?

[Mishee]

Met Alison at The Baby Show and wondered if anyone had tried her sleeping plan? If so, how did it go?

this is from Alison's article that is linked to lower down this thread

"After about 2 weeks of having just the one feed at night, I started to ?water-down? the milk by adding less scoops of formula. This one feed then continued until the 9th week. At this stage, the boys were 5weeks old, corrected age, and were usually waking around 4am for their feed, but then not really wanting their feed at 7am."

she is clearly saying she watered down the feeds of PREMATURE babies.

5 weeks is a newborn still!!

www.eparenting.co.uk/pandb/triplets_sleep_through_the_night_at_nine_weeks.shtml

am fairly sure that prem triplets would be of a fairly low birthweight and would benefit from being fed correctly made up feeds.

agree Lulu - they need all the nutrition they can get and feeding a lot more frequently IMO

in fact, all babies need optimum amounts of nutrition ...

yes, quite

anyone advocating what is essentially a restricted diet for a baby should have their methods strongly challenged

a baby has a tiny stomach, at birth it is abotu the size of a malteser, or is it a walnut.. anyway ! it is tiny, it needs filling frequenlty, not every 2 or 3 or 4 hours but whenver the baby is hungry. some days that might be every 3 hours, some days every hour

i

Sorry rubyslippers and lulumama did not mean anyone in particular being rude just generaly.
My brain does run faster than my fingers I am afraid. My apologies. I wont judge as every baby and there make up are different and I treat them accordingly. What i meant was that "newborn being day one" So what you saying is that if babies are getting there quota of feed at 5 weeks or more over a 24 hr period by day and you dont give them a full strenghth feed by night you under nourishing them. How does that work out? And they are gaining weight as well, where does the bad method and cruelty come into it?
Not to say you wrong just want your view and am interested in all views. Thank you

No Lulu you were not impolite to me, worded that totally wrong. I apologise to you. Just saw someone call another an idiot and told them to go away and read wrong. sooo! sorry!

it is a bad method because one size doesn't fit all! It is a rare 9 week old who genuinely doesn't need to feed at night - most babies do.

would you only feed yourself half your dinner because your partner/carer whatever thought you didn't need it? of course you wouldn't ... i feed more than 4 hourly and i am 34 years old.

a baby NEEDS to be fed the correct amount of formula to water or it can cause serious illness otherwise - it even says it on the tin

a baby should not have their food intake reduced because they should be sleeping through the night at 9 weeks or whatever arbitrary age someone has come up with

I don't beleive in a set quota of feeds for a baby, i believe in feeding responsively/ on demand

i formula fed both my children, but i have learnt an awful lot about breastfeeding due to my doula work and volunteering

A baby should never, ever , ever be given watered down formula, simply on the grounds that they have had enough for one day, according to a chart / book / guru

formula , unless it is made up correctly, will not provide the right noursihment, vitamins and minerals for a baby

the first year of a baby's life, milk should be the main source of nourishment, with solids being introduced some tiem around 26 weeks, some babies ready sooner, some later

babies have frequent growth spurts, limiting the amount of correctly made up milk they have from early on, will not satisfy them and help the baby grow as it should, and will certainly not help them through growth spurts

the amount of milk a baby needs can can hour to hour, day by day, so to decide that at 5 weeks they should not be as hungry as they were the previous week is a bad idea

as adults, we have days where we are ravenous, and days we can go until 2pm without wanting to eat. the difference is, we can go to the fridge and get snack or meal, a baby is relying on its caregivers to respond to that hunger, when it occurs

trying to satisfy that hunger with watered down milk is, IMO , cruel

babies gain weight at different speeds but can lose weight v v quickly. just because they have gained 8oz one week, does not mean they need one less feed a day the next

wrt to breastfeeding, any breastfeeding mother who cuts down the night feeds in particuaklr in the early weeks, is going to struggle to maintain her supply

ditto with feeding to a 3 or 4 hourly schedule

feeding a baby is very very big deal , and our emotions are very much tied in to nourishing our babies, hence people such as myself and ruby and others feeling upset at the thought of newborn prem babies not being nourished as they should b e

it is very sad that our society is so geared towards the concept of a good baby who sleeps through by a set date, and many gurus are growing rich off this concept

hailsbaby, i am really glad that you came back to this and we can have good debate! that is the very heart of MN, a good old scrap debate

i honestly think ruby nailed it, once size does not fit all

and tbh , i reckon both of my children would have fitted very much into one of these drop the feeds/sleeping thorugh by x weeks , but that would have been pure luck

i had two babies who slept thorugh very early

i have friends who've tried various routiuens, whose babies don't sleep thorugh until 12 months or so

it is sometimes more luck than judgement that these routines work

but if they do work, brilliant !!

hailsbabas, I think people (and I include myself there!) are spotting the contradiction between seeing each baby as an individual with a different make-up and different needs (which you say you accept) and the idea that there should be a 'quota' of nourishment they need in 24 hours.

This is uncomfortably prescriptive, and does not fit with anything else we know about infant development - just as we accept that babies don't all sit up (for instance) the day they are aged 7 months, and that there will be a range of a few months wherein perfectly normal healthy babies will sit up, with 7 months being about average.

Babies who are breastfed - the physiological way to feed - take highly variable amounts of breastmilk, different from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, baby to baby. They don't have a 'quota' and nor should ff babies.

The risk is not so much of chronic under-nourishment - you're clear that the baby's weight would be monitored - but that in the short or medium term, the baby would be unhappily unsatisfied, or indeed he would not grow at the rate he was 'designed' to grow at. In addition, babies get a good deal of comfort and connection from having their hunger responded to - it feels good to them when a loving carer ensures this happens. Watered-down feeds just won't do it.

The only safe, the only truly responsive, the only truly individualised care, is to respond to the baby in a way that puts his needs over and above a 'method' or a book or an expert - and above any pre-conceived ideas about what a baby of X days old or Y weeks old 'ought' to be doing.

What do you think?

Thanks gals for your imput most informative.
In my opinium this routine only takes place when baby is showing signs of being ready to sleep through and yes every baba is different. I had a baby once who got all her nourishment from mum during the day and had loads of milk and slept through at 2 weeks, she was over 7lbs and never looked back and another baby who got hardly any milk at all and needed topping up.My own son slept Through at 4 weeks where as my other screamed at until 5 months old...where was Alison then??? or you Girls for that matter....that was 30 years ago
Respect your views ta!!

Well.....I have just looked at Alison's website and she is pretty clear about routines starting on day one: "Whatever routine you put in place from day one, your baby will quickly come to rely on". She talks about 'eradicating' night feeds by the age of 8 weeks.

None of this sounds very flexible or individualised to me....as sleeping through by 8 weeks is not physiological (for most babies), it's obviously something parents have to work on ('the earlier the better' according to Alison).

Just also to say babies are my passion and I absolutly love them would never allow a baby to be left miserable and unsatisfied And to be fair cant see Alison doing that as I have worked with her and she really does share my passion. But I hear and respect what you all say and take it on board thank you

Tiktok routine does start at day one does not mean baby will adapt straight away. Some books say to start a routine at 3 or 6 months.
I think that you should start as you mean to go on, does not mean that baby is going to fit into your routine from day one, its all a learning curve and babies will behave differently as they do. I just feel why suddenly do demand and then suddenly 3 months down the line change to a routine.
People lifestyles vary and what suits some parents don't others. Some mums have all the time in the world to be on a demand system, but some don't and have to go back to work, so different situations warrant different approaches. And one cant always have the attitude that if you want to have babies you should not go to work because in an ideal world that is not always possible. But I agree that you have to approach what ever route you take that baba does not suffer in any way or be deprived in any way.

most babies would suffer,IMO, especially a premature baby if they were offered water only at 5 weeks old

i am going back to work with my cue fed, EBF baby - no routines here except the one that meets her needs which seem to change from day to day

her caregiver will know to be as flexible with her as i am

hailsbabas - I think to start as you mean to go on is fine, as long as you mean 'start accepting this new little person into your life, responding to her needs without imposing unrealistic expectations of sleeping, feeding, behaviours on her, and without being guided by the clock or the calendar' - not sure if this is what you mean

I don't think 'demand' is a good word - makes it sound like the baby is imposing on you and being insistent! Responding to your baby flexibly and acceptingly does not mean you need 'all the time in the world' - honestly! - or that you can't go back to work.

I am a breastfeeding counsellor. I hear from distressed, exhausted mothers whose babies are often still very young - just days old in some cases. They worry because their baby is not waking/feeding/sleeping predictably, or feeding for long enough, or because they wake in the night. They have put themselves under enormous pressure to get a routine going - there's a thread on mumsnet today where a mum of a baby aged 3.5 weeks has been told by 'everyone' that her baby should have found a routine by now, and the mum feels she is doing something wrong.

A structure to the day can help some people feel organised, of course, and many babies can be nudged into one that suits everyone. But the idea of imposing some sort of routine from the very start as a 'good thing' is not helpful, IMO.

Tiktok I hear you and respect that you must be very good at what you do. And it also saddens me that some mums are made to feel guilty or failed in anyway regarding taking care of there baby. The carer who makes there mum feel that way has not done there job very well. I do mean start as you mean to go on in a way that meets the babies needs and to ease them gently into a routine.
Lets face it we all function better when our day is basicaly structed and planned out so you can cope with the demands ( and i mean that in a gentle way) of a new little person in your lives. Nothing is predicted but this does not mean that a gentle routine cant be put in place that does suit the babies needs and fits in with the rest of the household as well.
What I am trying to say in my opiniun after helping my mums with a routine I have not seen any discomfort from either mum or baby and if there is then something is not right...

surely any method that advocates something that can't be carried out by breast feeding mothers has got to be wrong? how can you water down milk if you are breast feeding (from the breast and not the bottle). It's not right is it?

Agree with MissWooWoo. Breastmilk can't be watered down so why should anyone think formula should be watered down. I think most of these routine-based books use formula-feeding as a "norm" and I don't see how they could work for a bfing mother.

Also, that article on the triplets bothers me. Ds3 was prem was in SCBU for a couple of weeks. Any babies in that unit who were ff were advised to use a formula which IIRC was higher in calories than "normal" formula to ensure they gained enough weight. I did some of my own research on this after coming home as tbh I was a bit about the practice. However studies did seem to show that prem infants on this type of formula did better wrt later development than infants on "normal" formula. Based on this I would say that a prem baby should never have watered down formula.

what were your silent reflux symtoms? what did Alison recommend?
My baby just won't sleep in her cot even when she is exhausted and controlled crying doesn't seem to be working either. Please help...

In my own experience the best advice I ever received was simply to respond to your babies needs with love and patience whenever they need you. Babies are not manipulative. They don't want to ruin your nights sleep. There will be a reason that they wake and I believe its our job to try to determine what that reason is. I don't understand the leave them cry nonsense...what if they have a dirty nappy etc...what are we trying to teach them? And, how can one woman claim to understand the sleep pattern of every child, all of whom will have been born in a thousand different circumstances? I have one child who woke 2-3hrly, and one child who slept through from 12 weeks and who could nap in a force nine gale. The watering down of formula feed is in my opinion dangerous and I cannot believe that any health professional would advocate this. Try ringing the Helplines listed on formula feed packaging to see what they say!

What is the obsession about getting such young babies to sleep through the night ?! I expected to be getting up numerous times in the night to feed my babies, especially in the early weeks. Sleep deprivation is hideous, but on a more positive note, it is a lovely time to bond with your baby and watch them fall peacefully to sleep.

I agree that we should listen to our instincts and enjoy being parents - warts and all !!