ive been reading the 'contented little baby book' by gina ford and is it me but.........

[jayjaybaby]

hi im considering breast feeding and the woman seems to know whats she's on about but im confused about a few things
does she mean establish her routines whilst in the hospital
will i not succeed if i dont have an electric expressor
when she says tart with five minutes at each breast to start with does she mean literally just feed for ten minutes
any advice from you who have tried and suceeded or failed with method i'd love to hear from you as ireally want to everything i can to breast feed
thanks

Happy to be friends :) cfg, but those points don't represent the polarity of the discussion, sorry.

In particular, I don't know how you can ensure that mothers who are made unhappy by the book can take it in the 'spirit' in which it was written . If it isn't meant to be taken literally, then the publishers need to put an erratum slip in every copy, and that isn't gonna happen :)

I will shut up now though as I think this is going nowhere.

You're right - she clearly hasn't done 300 babies from 0-12 months. But she clearly has clocked up more time than anyone else I know and at all different stages from 0-24 months or so. And she has often done it while dealing with siblings etc too, from what I gather. I don't see why you think 6 weeks of full-time 24/7 care is somehow therefore not realistic. Believe me, after just 4 weeks of caring for ds, I felt like I had been immersed in that hell forever. I do think it's long enough to see whether things are going well for that baby, and of course she gets plenty of feedback from parents like me who continue applying her principles after she has gone. I don't see how you can possibly argue that she is in any way lacking experience of caring for babies full-time.

I can't really be bothered going into the bfing stuff. I think the basics of what she says - going for full feeds, distinguishing between feeding and sucking for pleasure, expressing to keep up supply if (like me) you don't want to have your baby attached to you 24 hours a day etc etc are pretty good. I'm perfectly happy to concede that you know more about bfing than she does. But she doesn't put herself out there as a bfing expert, and you of course focus only on that aspect of the book, when that is only one piece of quite a complex jigsaw puzzle that she is explaining. And as I said, she has 100% success rate with me and all my friends, although I needed additional help coping with oversupply etc. I am also happy to concede that she seems far more comfortable than I would guess you and many others would be about mixed feeding. She doesn't have a 'breastfeed at all costs' kind of approach (I know you have your limits too, but I suspect they're further out than hers are), and doesn't really address what to do if bfing is causing you problems. If you think this is a weakness, so be it. I just think she's addressing other issues. And having 'successfully' breastfed for my babies' sake, but loathed the experience (funnily enough, my dislike of it got stronger over time) I can't get my knickers in a knot about the thought of mixed feeding. But I do 100% think that bfing is really important and will happily concede that her book does not adequately deal with all bfing problems. It's not a bfing book.

You are quite unnecessarily pejorative when you suggest that with all her experience, she can only advise on laundry and decorative schemes. Careful, Tiktok - you purport to be merely factual and scientific in your criticisms, but you come across at times as having an agenda.

my best judgement tells me to stay out but i never do listen to that so my lentil weaving bit.

i do worry that children / babies are so often seen as a problem to solve, an irksome invonvinience to be trained into fitting the parents lives. this may be seen as harsh but i think less expectations of perfection and more getting to know the child and meeting their needs.
i do believe in establishing patterns soft routines as a way of provinding predictability for babies, i think its esp. useful but i can not reconcile myself with the idea of timed feeds and controlled crying at all.

Agree, sfxmum. Let the baby be your guide to a routine. Don't expect immediate results or for things to stay the same - I think this is the best advice I could have been given as a first time mum.

Reading the book cover-to-cover and then referring back, I never got the impression that GF's routines were flexible at all. If anything I remember her tsk-tsking some hapless parent about letting a schedule slip by 20 mins. And her case studies ... seemed to be pitting baby against parent against GF. No matter what the experts say, whether or not their knowledge comes from hands-on experience as a maternity nurse, a parent, a researcher, a pediatrician etc etc, they can never know YOUR BABY like you can. So anyone who couches their method as the definitive one should be treated with extreme caution. No one can possibly know the ins-and-outs of YOUR BABY. Mums should give themselves more credit.

'Let the baby be your guide to a routine... I think this is the best advice I could have been given as a first time mum.'

See, I won't bore you with our particular story but that was my assumption too, and it was the WORST possible guideline about how to meet my ds's needs. Some babies, such as mine, NEED a routine set for them because they are totally incapable of setting their own. Hell, most babies can't even latch onto a boob properly without lots of advice for the mother, and lots of guidance by the mother for the baby... I think it's very unrealistic to expect that most babies are able to establish their own routine happily without sometimes very firm guidance and wisdom from the mother.

'Reading the book cover-to-cover and then referring back, I never got the impression that GF's routines were flexible at all.' You haven't read it carefully enough. If you do, there are plenty of passages where she talks about allowing extra sleep, moving onto the 'next' routine at a different time etc, depending on the baby.

' they can never know YOUR BABY like you can...' Au contraire! When I was trying to meet my ds's needs by following a 'soft', flexible routine based on what he seemed to need (according to my loving inexperience) I ended up with a discontented, constantly unsettled, clingy, sad and chronically sleep-deprived baby. Bizarrely, GF seemed to know his needs better than I did - because her routines transformed him within about 48 hours into a child that was sleeping better, playing more happily, more easily settled - one that was suddenly happy when held and not constantly whingeing and crying whether held or not. Sometimes mothers don't know best. How can we? It's not like the placenta is a magic motherhood knowledge pill.

fair enough, bloss. I am glad GF worked for your baby. I was a first time mum too - I guess I was much better at reading my own baby (not within 48 hours but over the months, with patience and practice) than I was turning the pages of her book trying to figure how when GF's routines could be flexible and when I should be sticking to the red letter of her law. I am not sure what "firm guidance and wisdom" I could have imparted to my fussy baby, beyond letting her cry whilst waiting for b-feeds. I just trusted that dd knew her needs much better than I and she was very vocal about them not being met.

The last thing I needed was another "expert" to advise me my dd's "needs" ... but that's just me.

Parenting skills do not pass via the blood, but neither is it a science.

i think it depends on the interpretation of soft routines, but i do think baby wants and needs are very much the same to start with.
also i think sucking for comfort in the early months is a need, i never though of breastfeeding as purely feeding the baby anyway.
we started routines at 8wks but only to do with bedtime really as in bath feed bed. it has worked well for us and i do accept dd is a very calm baby anyway

did GF ever BF her kids until at least 6 months?

If not, then she has no right passing on info on routines when she has no experience of a particular method of feeding.

Highlander, would you take the same view of Chloe Fisher, the world reknowned bfing expert in Oxford, co-author of 'Bestfeeding' and various other things? She has no children. Is she allowed to practise her profession?

Bloss, I see what you mean but I'm not in argument... that was the point of doing the ABM training. it's not necessarily the individual problem you had, but just accepting the notion that it's not all wine and roses, and that peoples experiences vary.

The ABM course lasts years so that you do get the technical knowledge, I just think going into it with a realistic attitude to BF helps. And just for the record, I loahted it with ds1 and loved it with ds3. So i don't think there is a one expereince / attitude for anyone... it's all related to so much other stuff.

I'm glad you had a great Lactation Consultant. But there are very few of these about, and the sort of training people need to be a decent lactation consultant I suspect is huge- like any profession. I do think generally experience is a good thing. Other agencies recruit on a similar basis- homeStart for example will only have Organisers with parenting experience. But being a parent doesn't mean you'll have encountered all the situation you'll come across (or I did anyway, that was my last job), just that you know that it's a challenege, and you understand (or at least hopefully) some of the aspects of exhaustion / love / frustration / whatever that are implicit in any parenting relationship. The training thena llows you to put that into more technical application.

I'm not excplaining myself well today [bush]- sorry, revising all orning, brain ache. What I mean is, there are I am sure good people out there with no experience. And bad people out there with experience. but imo the best ones are likely to be experienced with good raining. The lady who enabled me to bf any of mine at all was a lady called cerys, used to a leading light of the ABM (maybe still is) and now works for Unicef on the breastfeeding scheme. her enthusiasm about what bf COULD be like was hugely motivational, becasue I know she had done it herself, so there must be more to it than the yuck attitude I got from family etc.

Oh and as Is aid before, you have to find the method that works for you and that doesn't exclude GF at all, it's perfect for Mums and Babies who fit the method. But had I tried it with ds1- it would have failed. He has since birth suffered a sleep disorder related to AS which we couldn't possibly have known about at that age, he'd never have fit her schedules (more is the pity), and I know myself well enough to know I would have ended up blaming myself. There is no schedule / plan / book that fits all newborns, because newborns grow into very different people. However, GF would have probably worked a treat for DS3 who loves a schedule. So I am not entirely dismissing it- just saying there is more than one way to skin a cat / soya bean (depending on dietary requirements )

Thanks, Peachyclair, for clarifying. Nice to know we actually agree! But now that you've made it clear that you don't think personal experience is essential, I guess I can't really see what the objection to someone like GF is really. She has plenty of intimate experience of it, just not with her own biological baby.

blueshoes - it's not a science, you're quite right! But you say 'I am not sure what "firm guidance and wisdom" I could have imparted to my fussy baby, beyond letting her cry whilst waiting for b-feeds.'

This is the thing I'm talking about! I could use exactly those words about my own ds. Looking at him, he was being fed on demand, he was being put down to sleep in a quiet place every couple of hours, I was holding and cuddling him virtually 24/7, he was being kept clean and warm... I had absolutely no idea what else I could do for him. So I too said at the time 'I don't know what else I can do - this is just the way he is.' But at the same time, I just didn't think it was good for a baby to sleep as little as he did, to be as constantly whingey and grumpy and unsettled as he was - he just seemed miserable. It would never in a MILLION years have occurred to me to wake him up at a set time every morning, to start winding him down for the next nap 30-40 mins (instead of 10-15 mins) beforehand, to put in blackout blinds and fasten him in bed TIGHTLY with a sheet, to WAKE HIM UP(???!!) after a certain length of nap... All those things were totally unexpected to me, but she was spot on. They were transformative.

I certainly can't speak for your baby, but without a book like hers, I would have said that there was nothing to be done, that I was providing all his needs, and that I could only conclude that that was the kind of baby he was. But her totally counter-intuitive advice in fact met his needs much better than my more 'flexible' approach. Like you, I started off trusting that my baby knew his needs better than I - and it turned out that he had absolutely no idea, but some mad genius I'd never met knew exactly what he needed. :) I honestly would never EVER have believed her routines could work except that I tried them myself...

Yeah, I take your point about babies being different - and especially with something like AS in the mix, which you can't know at the time. But then there was NOTHING to indicate that my baby liked routine before I imposed it on him. Left to his own devices, there was no pattern at all - he was not working towards one in any way. But when one was put upon him - complete with set naptimes, waking him up after set sleeps, allowing full feeds sometimes but restricted feeds at others, restricting types of activites before bed etc etc... he just blossomed. I really hate it when people say, 'of course it works with some babies that naturally fall into routines anyway', because I know so many people like myself who found it worked and used it precisely because their baby had no routine at all!

Oh, and sfxmum, about your earlier point 'also i think sucking for comfort in the early months is a need' - I would agree with you. But the point is to understand that some of the sucking is about feeding and some of it is about just sucking. Ds hated sucking so it wasn't an issue, but for dd she was quite sucky. Luckily, I was on the lookout for it, and satisfied that need with a dummy, which kept her perfectly happy. And it meant that I didn't have her attached to me for hours every day. If it had meant that, I would have given up bfing quite early I think, as I'm just not that type of person. Fortunately, GF had me looking out for it, and particularly with her routines giving me confidence about when to expect the next feed, I found it easy to distinguish between sucking and feeding, so both dd and I were kept perfectly happy... (And ironically, I had the courage to use a dummy because GF recommended it and had a plan for getting them off again when they're older, whereas before I read her advice I was nervous that once it was introduced there'd be no getting rid of it.)

Reading your posts Bloss, it sounds like she who must not be discussed worked for you. I actually went for routine right from the start with both of mine (without ever having heard of her) because I had the idea that routine is good. (Still have that idea tbh.) Still bf on demand though, because bf was more important to me than a routine, although I tried to stick to one as much as I could.

But I think the main objection to the book is the assertion that it works for every child, everywhere. That's what gets backs up I think. (And the strict instructions about what you should have for breakfast, as well as the baby.) Plus of course the plain wrongness of the bf advice and the likelihood that it wouldn't help bf for most mothers, it would undermine it. As you say, it's not a bf book, but somewhere, that should be pointed out and GF should say: if establishing breastfeeding is more of a priority to you than anything else, then these routines may not be the best thing to follow in the first few weeks. Just that caveat alone would make the book instantly more respected, imo.

Let me dip my toes into this murky water...

Without GF and her routines, I would never have managed to breastfeed dd1 beyond the first 3 weeks or so, let alone for 18 months as I eventually went on to do. Breastfeeding was a complete nightmare to start with thanks to severe thrush and a GP who denied that such a condition even existed (thank heavens for the breastfeeding clinic and the NCt counsellors). It was only by knowing that once a feed was out of the way, I wouldn't need to do it agian until 10 am (or whatever) that I managed to persevere. When I was purely demand feeding (as I did to start with), I lived in constant dread of the next feed and never knew when it might come.
Contrary to popular opinion, I never had to resort to controlled crying ar anything with dd1 - the routines worked like a dream. DD1 truly was a contented little baby who hardly ever cried and spent most of her waking time smiling.
I didn't follow the routines with dd2 mainly because I found them a bit too restrictive for me. IMHO, the book is very much more about adapting your life to fit in with baby, rather than the other way round. Luckily, dd2 is a much more adaptable baby than dd1 and doesn't seem to mind so much if she misses a nap or has it a bit early or late.

I think GF is supportive of breastfeeding and she does stress the importance of getting professional advice if you have any roblems with breastfeeding. BTW, she advocates feeding 3-hourly, not 4-hourly in the early days (to correct a misconception). Certainly, there is nothing in her book to suggest there is naything wrong with bfing an older baby. (Tracy Hogg, OTOH, says that bfing a baby older than 12 months is done for the mother's benefit, not the baby's. And she gives out much misleading information about bfing - probably more so than GF. Yet I raraly see any criticisms of her methods on these boards).
TCLB is a book. If you don't like it, ignore it. No-one is forcing anyone to go along with it, if they don't feel it is right for them or for their baby.

lol, bloss. Who would have thought that a GF baby exists. We can agree that our babies are different. Although I wouldn't say that my dd was a contented baby even under my flexible regime (I know now that it is just her temperament), at least she was not hysterically crying for a feed/cuddle as she would under GF's routine. BTW dd was not always consolable (in fact, frequently not) but that's some babies. She was also a terrible sleeper who NEVER fell asleep from awake in a cot, vehemently rejected bottles and dummies. If GF worked for me in 48 hours, I would not be this sceptical. But as it is, my baby was the anti-GF.

I agree with Caligula. My main objection is the categorical way she insists that her strict routines will work with all babies. And that if they did not, it is the parents' fault. The way in which her legal team behaves is evidence that she does not brook any negative discussion of her views. Hmmmmmmmm

Who would have thought a GF baby not only existed, but did so in such a convincing non-routine disguise! :o