I picked up this book today, just to check I was remembering things right, and wasn't doing it a disservice.
I think the view that Tracy Hogg offers a sensible middle way between 'On Demand' and 'Schedule' (which is exactly how she describes it), is more of a triumph of marketing than anything else. It's such a seductive idea - all the benefits to us of a routine without the feeling we're being coercive. When you actually scrutinise how it's all supposed to work, then as moonfacemama says, there's a real confusion about whether you are keeping to a routine, or whether the babies are doing it themselves.
Maybe there are different editions, btw, so I'll try and include page numbers where I can. On page 45, she says: " With EASY, there is no rigidity - we listen to Baby and respond to his specific needs - but we keep his day in logical order. WE, not baby, set the stage." It seems to me that EASY works when it's a happy coincidence - when Baby's specific needs fortunately happen in a logical order.
(I agree btw with the posters who say that she encourages listening to your baby, stopping and paying attention to their cues, etc,and this is a positive thing [there's a chart on page 86, lists different states like 'Overtired', 'Hunger', 'Too Cold' etc, and the behaviour your baby can be expected to exhibit]. However, her categorisation sort of promises more than it delivers, IMO - babies can be more than one thing at a time, and what looks enticingly like a 'key' to understanding your baby will get frustrating if your baby isn't displaying text book cues. And more on this later, because this whole 'listen to your baby' is undermined by her insistence on a routine.)
However, it's on the subject of BF she's really confusing. IMO, the book is basically written for FF babies, with advice on BF-ing slotted in in a fairly token way.
She advocates using her EASY routine from birth, and her timetable for a newborn, from 0-3 months, is on page 42 - "Eating. 25-40 minutes on breast or bottle; a normal baby weighing 2.75kg (6lb) or more, can go 2 and a half to 3 hours to the next feed."
Well, my healthy BF DS was NO WAY going 2 and a half to 3 hours between feeds! Was he not normal, then??
Turns out it's all very well talking about responding to Baby's cues, but on page 100, we get this gem: - "... no matter what feeding regimen a mum chooses, I am NEVER an advocate of on-demand feeding. Besides ending up with a demanding baby, what often happens is that parents, not yet attuned to the different sounds their baby makes, always thinks that crying equals hunger. That's why we have a lot of overfed infants - a problem that is often mistake as 'colic'. In contrast, if you keep your baby on an EASY routine, you feed every 2 and a half to 3 hours on the breast, or every 3 to 4 hours on formula, and you know that the cries in between are for other reasons."
I think that's such contradictory nonsense. You listen to your baby's cues, except when they tell you something you don't want to hear. Codswallop.
Then in the actual chapter on feeding, we get (page 108) - 'Don't watch the clock. Breastfeeding is never about time or quantity...Breastfed babies usually eat a bit more frequently because breast milk gets digested more easily than formula. So if you have a 2 or 3 month old infant nursing for 40 minutes, within 3 hours his system has digested the whole amount.'
There's also a side bar guide on this page, where it estimates that at 4-8 weeks old, a baby will take up to 40 minutes to eat 2-5 oz.
So while we have all the permissive BF-ing language of 'don't watch the clock/BF babies feed more frequently' etc, what we are actually being given is a model whereby Baby feeds for 40 minutes, and then has 2 and a half to 3 hours until the next feed. Tracy Hogg is having her cake and eating it here.
And a small thing, but on p.185, when she talks about 'dreamfeeding', it's 'nurse or bottle feed her in her sleep.' Which is fine. But then her big Tip is "Have Dad take over the dream feed. Most men are usually home at that time and most love doing it.' That's the Dads-With-Breasts then, is it?
The most bizarre BF bit though is the sidebar on page 96, called 'Feeding Fashions'.
It begins by telling us that 'Today, breastfeeding is all the rage.' It then goes on to note that during the postwar decades, only a 3rd of women nursed their babies, and 'currently, around 60 percent of mums breastfeed - although fewer than half of them are still nursing 6 months later. Who knows?' she says. (and I have no idea what that 'who knows?' means there).
She ends this odd rambling paragraph with this sentence - "In fact, a 1999 article in the Journal of Nutrition suggests "that it may ultimately be possible to design formulas better able to meet the needs of individual infants than the milk available from the mother's breast."
And there she leaves it. And so shall I. I much more anti this book on a second reading, and I think it would have had a disastrous effect on my efforts to BF in the early days. And I think for all of the language of caring and responding to baby etc, what she's actually advocating is a routine which ignores a baby's needs if they happen not to fit in with that routine. Very unpleasant.