Baby Whisperer - a load of bunkum?

[Kaymer]

For the last four nights we have been suffering trying to implement the baby whisperer routine to bedtime for our six week old - bath, songs etc, followed by cot. Everytime she cries we pick her up, calm her and put her down again. Nights one and two it took two hours. Night three it took 45 minutes. Night four now and we are still trying to get her to sleep after 1.5 hours.
Has anyone had success with this routine? Am starting to despair. My husband is getting annoyed at me too, which is NOT HELPING!!!! (He hasn't read the book, needless to say).
I don't want to quit if it's actually going to work. But will it?!!!

oh good grief no it's rubbish imo.

what works for most people is feed the baby to sleep. then slowly but surely, you'll find you can put them in the cot drowsy but not fast asleep, then eventually less drowsy, before finally wide awake.

i remember someone on here said they don't have an EASY baby, they have an AH-YES baby..Awake & Happy, thus giving You time to get stuff done while they watch on, then they'd Eat, then be ready to Sleep. i love that

i agree with ruddynorah - working on getting less and less drowsy and he's getting pretty good - definite improvement and no tears at bedtime. its like he is actually learning how to go to sleep .

I've not tried the BW bedtime routine, but my tuppence worth is that each baby has their own way of falling asleep, so may well not follow what the BW book says.

I tried to do a bedtime routine with DS (12 weeks) but had to abandon it because he simply couldn't handle being awake for longer than it took to feed at bedtime. Now I just take him into the darkened bedroom, where he feeds himself to sleep. And he won't even do that unless he has had a nap just before he wakes up for the bedtime feed. (This is a child who will never feed to sleep during the day - they all have their own little ways! )

AH YES, sounds excellent to me! Thank you all! was going slightly mad there. Shall abandon and go back to doing whatever feels right at the time. Evidently I have this residual pre-parenting desire to have a predictable routine . Not helped by her having a lot of stomach pains at the moment which wakes her every time she's about to drop off.
Back to the drawing board. Bye bye Tracy Hogg.
However, I did find the bit of the book useful that describes the different body language to watch out for to see whether she is tired / hungry / in pain. Shall take that and leave the rest! Thank goodness.

Agree - I also had this when dd was a newborn and it made me feel like I was the crappest mother ever.

Bin.

I do think it's good to have a routine, bath, book, song whatever, but not until they're older.

It worked fantastically on DS2. But then another well known book on baby routine worked fantastically on DS1, but didn't work at all on DS2 (hence the Baby Whisperer book was bought).

By the time I had my third I didn't have time to read any of the books, and I think DD turned out all the better for it

made me feel rubbish too til baby got too old for me to need to consult. silly book.

i bet the bath and songs are too over stimulating for her at 6 weeks old

swaddling is good

at 6 weeks DD used to cluster feed until she passed out

I agree with ruby. 6 weeks is far too young so routines will be too much. Just boob to sleep.
If, when they hit 6 months, things aren't quite on track then think about using the techniques. As I am for DS (but even then they might not work for you!)

My DS3 is 8 weeks and we do the bath,massage pyjamas thing at 7pm. But then he comes downstairs cluster feeds all evening then comes to bed with us.
rThe bath routine suits us as it fits in with older DC bedtime routine so he gets story and quiet time with them.
DS3 has just started showing signs of settling at 9pm rather 11pm so we are trying to put him down then and get an 1 hour of adult time . It is really hit and miss still tho.

Not saying this will work for you but just reassurance they find their own routine and keeping the bath part might make you feel like at least an hour of your evening is predictable.

DD is 5 months and it's a dream for her, we do feed, bath, lullaby then bed and I can just put her in the cot and she falls asleep. Naps in the day are lullaby then in the cot and it works just as well. Am sure it will all fall over with teething so not counting

However, it was a LOT of work for us to get from screaming the house down for hours to that, and I'm not even sure it was just DD finally settling into a routine for herself rather than the magic of the baby whisperer. We only started doing it at 12 weeks as well which may have made a difference.

If you did want to stick to the routine, at 6 weeks old, she says you're not meant to do pick up/put down, they're not old enough to get it and it just over-stimulates them. She recommends shush-patting but I never figured out how to pat her on the back when she's in the cot and DD prefered gentle hair stroking anyway so that's what we did.

Hi - I read BW book before DS was born, and tried to implement it. I am still trying and he is 14 weeks. Part of me (a big part) wishes I hadn't read it, because I keep trying and he still isn't going through the night, or having day time naps, even though he's a big baby.

Parts of it were helpful, though you need the BW solves all your problems too as it explains things which her first book missed - like new born baby - only activity time is to change their nappy, and no activity time at night (at any age)

Anyway I'm still getting upset because I have persisted all this time, and instead of getting better DS is actually regressing - worse at night now than when he was new born!!

I do wish a bit that I hadn't read any book, then there would be no feeling of 'he's supposed to do this, or that' and I might be able to go with the flow a bit more.

Saying that though, the one thing that has worked from very early on is the bedtime routine. He has been having a regular routine since week 2, 9 times out of 10 settles without a fuss between 19:30 and 20:00, then DH and I have the evening to ourselves.

I think 6 weeks was about when ds would sleep a bit in early evening so I could cook (or reheat, usually) and sometimes even eat before next feed, and then I could watch telly in the evening with baby on lap.

Ds was a baby who would be awake, then just crash out when he wanted to. So I just carted him around with me and if he fell asleep put blanket over him. By about 8 months he would be visibly sleepy round 7pm so tried plonking in cot and he fell asleep - only after a year did I start on proper 'routine'!

My DD is nearly 5 months and I recall bedtimes being fed to sleep at first (around 6 or 8 weeks) & having to go up and down the stairs every 10 mins or so to resettle. Then gradually it would be every 20 mins or every half hour. We could tell she was tired though, just needed a cuddle!

Eventually we realised she had gone maybe an hour or 45 mins between settling. This continued until we only settled once or twice between 7pm and 10:30pm. (Around 3.5 to 4 months).

Now she goes down fully awake and puts herself to sleep very happily. But it took a long time and improved very gradually, just something they need to learn to do for themselves I think?

That was the most important part of any 'routine' for me as she's our 3rd and I just needed a point in the day when I could sit down (even for just 20 minutes) and feel like my 'shift was over' if you know what I mean! It's a bit trial and error but you sound like you're staying very calm and collected about the whole thing!

It's really hard when you're going through it but now I look back and wonder where the time went!

Ah it's nice to know I'm not going completely mad - DS2 is 17 days old and I'm revisiting BW as he won't settle for ages at certain times of day..as I type, husband is kneeling on floor shushing grizzly baby who we've been trying to get to sleep in his crib for 1.5 hours without success.... but BW not making much sense to me at the mo - I tried the shush-pat thing last night but it took over an hour, and not sure how I'm supposed to do that at other times of day when I've got my toddler round my legs! Also, does shush-pat work when your baby has wind? Seems like a lot of time wasted! But just want a bit of an evening back at some point soon....is that too much to ask? Arrrgghhhh....

I used BW routine very successfully.
DD slept through 10 uninterrupted hours a night, every night, from 10 weeks.
Shush-pat took about a week to work - from over an hour to get her to sleep each time to the stage where she would happily settle down by herself as soon as she was put down.
Are you doing pupd? I think at 6 weeks your dd may be a bit too small for that. Try shush/pat... it takes ages at first but was definitely worth persevering with, ime.
HTH.

Ds1 fell naturally into a wake-to-feed routine. Dd I encouraged to do so as well. Both became good sleepers and easy to put down. Ds2 OTOH slipped into a feed-to-sleep routine at a couple of months old...a complete disaster. 18m of sleeplessness, waking every 45mins at its worst, before I managed to teach him to sleep through.

Baby Whisperer has, like any parenting guide, good stuff and not so good stuff. No decent parenting guide fits all parents or children.

But 6w is still fairly early to fit into a routine - again, some babies do fit into a routine by that age (eg ds1) and some don't (eg dd and ds2).

Give it a rest, go on doing what has worked for you so far, and try again in a month or so. By which time you may find that she has slipped into a routine that works for you.

Claireski, I tried shush patting on DS from about 2/3 weeks old with no success at all. But at about 13 weeks it suddenly started helping (although I have to pick him up & start it in my arms before continuing it in his cot). It takes some babies a while before they like it.

And using some sort of white noise (I use the baby monitor tuned to static) is far less effort than doing your own shushing!

i have to agree that for young babies it is crap quite frankly. i remember tearing my hair out trying to shush pat my then 4 week old to sleep at the designated nap times.

from about 8-9 weeks she fell into her own 2 hourly easy routine and is now on about a 3 hourly one and likes a bath and feed before bed.

no chance of her sleeping through tho!!

all babies are different and quite often are different one day to the next so what works on monday is completely rejected by friday. a bit of gentle perseverence is required and endless patience particularly when they hit a growth spurt and everything goes up the swanny!

Kaymer - put the book down and pick it up again when she is three months old. Good luck!

Yes I have that book - yes its a load of crap! DS is 8 months now, once he woke from a nap after 45 mins, his eyes sprung open and laughed in my face at all my shushing, and patting never helped! I just went with whatever he wanted and now he naps twice per day for 1+ hours at a time (I put down when he seems tired) and often sleeps through the night. Incidentally he ALWAYS needed a feed in the night until he was weaned, and there was no way I was not going to feed a clearly hungry baby. They are only babies for such a short time, don't stress yourself out wondering why they don't do what Ms Hogg says they should. They just do it when they are ready!