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BabyWise was written by a religious radical (not a doctor) but was later revamped by the publisher by removing all the references to the bible. It is a "spare the rod spoil the child" philosophy which has been attributed to the death of two infants, and is denounced by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Check out the biographies of the author and co-authors. No doctors or child psychologists among them.
There is a very small amount of good information in that book, but I found most of it to be rubbish, unfounded advice by a man with no children and no experience with children or childcare. Infants cannot "manipulate" parents with crying. When an infant cries it is because they have a physical need. Toddlers are a different story, but the book makes no distinction.
I don't think attachment parenting is the solution for every parent, but even reading the words "Baby Wise" makes me bristle.
Attachment parenting requires a lot of dedication and pretty much eradicates your personal space. If it's something you're interested in, it's worth a try, but if not maybe just stick with what your pediatrician recommends.
@MightySapphire: Interesting! The only thing I really gleaned from the book was the whole Sleep/wake/feeding schedule, where you put the baby to sleep, and then have scheduled "wake time" before feeding, and then back to bed. Seems like a good way to start a sleeping schedule. All that I have heard of it is that it really helps with children sleeping through the night!!
@MightySapphire: I am glad you shared that info with me.
I just read this:
"The book's other author is Gary Ezzo, a pastor with no medical background. Ezzo's company, Growing Families International (GFI), markets the book as "ideally written" for "obstetricians, pediatricians, or health-care providers to distribute to their patients." (GFI promotes the same program under the title "Preparation for Parenting," a virtual duplicate with added religious material).
Though "Babywise" does say, "With PDF, a mother feeds her baby when the baby is hungry," it also instructs parents to do otherwise. In a question-and-answer section, parents of a 2-week-old baby, who did not get a full feeding at the last scheduled time and wants to eat again, are instructed that babies learn quickly from the laws of natural consequences. "If your daughter doesn't eat at one feeding, then make her wait until the next one."
"One such book, On Becoming Babywise, has raised concern among pediatricians because it outlines an infant feeding program that has been associated with failure to thrive (FTT), poor weight gain, dehydration, breast milk supply failure, and involuntary early weaning. A Forsyth Medical Hospital Review Committee, in Winston-Salem N.C., has listed 11 areas in which the program is inadequately supported by conventional medical practice.The Child Abuse Prevention Council of Orange County, Calif., stated its concern after physicians called them with reports of dehydration, slow growth and development, and FTT associated with the program. And on Feb. 8, AAP District IV passed a resolution asking the Academy to investigate "Babywise," determine the extent of its effects on infant health and alert its members, other organizations and parents of its findings."
@MissDareDevil: I used the sleep/wake/eat/wake time/sleep with DS from babywise but made a schedule that worked for us.
I would suggest not leaning to much on it though b/c like MightySapphire said he is NOT a doctor and hospitals do not react very nicely about hearing about "BabyWise"... my midwife has known parents that had cps called on them b/c of it.
@amnystik: the only reason i only heard of it is becaue my friend recommended me to read it because her MIDWIFE told her to use it... weird!
I'm not familiar with baby wise, but very familiar with the Attachment Parenting book by Dr. Sears. I have to say it was one of the first parenting books where I agreed with mostly everything.
I agree with MightSapphire that the "cry it out method" is a joke, babies cry because they have a need that needs to be met, and you as a parent are wired to fulfill that need, I have heard from countless mothers that hearing their baby cry breaks their heart, esp when they try that stupid cry it out method. It's not the way babies were designed in my mind!
I really like the idea of baby wearing, though moreso for convenience. I know from much experience as a nanny that babies sleep better while being held and do cry less, I could do many chores or take walks with baby in sling/carrier, so I never felt restricted.
Breastfeeding is an obvious AP choice but I know circumstances are SO different for everyone that I won't say anything on this.
Like I said above, if there is ANY parenting philosophy that irks me to no end, it's that babies cry to manipulate parents, to annoy them or to be annoying and that is simply not true. Perhaps as a three year old, yes, but not as a child under 1 yrs old.
:-) Glad you did some research for yourself! A lot of people get very defensive if they liked the book and won't look into it.
Creating a schedule is great for babies, they thrive on routine! But punishing an infant by witholding food...that's just asinine. There was a bunch of other stuff like that in there that implied that babies can understand more than "I feel hungry" which isn't really true. I think that the book mostly misses the mark with how a baby thinks. Infants get impulses which make them wake, cry, or sleep. They act mostly on impulses. Therefore they can't understand why mommy put them in their crib if they are crying. They are crying because they are tired, hungry, or uncomfortable. If you fix whatever it is, they will stop. But just putting them in their crib to CIO isn't going to "teach them to stop manipulating you." Older babies/toddlers have much higher cognitive funtions, and will learn from past experiences.
Sorry to get off on a bit of a tangent. I think each mom develops her own style and what works for her. We co-bedded (after researching the safe way to do so), and we did use a sling/carrier most of the time. We did not let the baby cry all night, and I mostly BF on-demand. All of that because I was willing, and because it worked for our family. I think as you go along you will see what works best for yours. Some families sleep much better if the baby is in a separate room. Some don't use carriers. Some formula feed. Whatever keeps the baby HEALTHY and HAPPY and works for you and daddy is all that matters.
@miss-spunkin: i have not heard/read that babies cry to manipulate their parents. i HAVE HEARD that sometimes baby cry just to cry, because they don't know how to do anything else; that it doesnt necessarily mean they are tired or hungry or in pain.
breastfeeding is definitely in my plan, but not much baby wearing or co-sleeping.
@MissDareDevil: I'm a big believer in co-sleeping, but have relatives who prefer putting the baby in their own room nearby (after the initial first weeks, b/c it's just exhausting to walk to another room while you're healing).
The biggest mistake I made was not moving one of my sons to his own room when he outgrew the co-sleeper. I think I've moved into attachment parenting territory... lol. I didn't plan on him being with me 24/7 and it is exhausting, especially compared to his siblings (who did learn to soothe themselves to sleep in their own rooms as infants).
I don't let my kids cry it out, ever. (I really dislike the idea) I think the most important thing we can do is respond to those early cries, regardless of the source. Routines and reassurance go a long way towards calmer, secure babies, I think. I save crying it out for when they're old enough to learn the concept of time-out.
(I know you didn't ask for the info, but thought it might be interesting)
We started to leave the baby in the crib when we knew that she had learned enough that she was only crying to get picked up and back out. That was at maybe 10 months old. We would put her down for a nap and she would cry but be sleeping within 5 minutes. I don't think CIO is bad, just used at far too young an age. I think I've become one of those hippy moms, LOL.
@MissDareDevil: You said you plan to BF as of now, is there anything else you think you are interested in? You said that hearing about your cousin's friends really turned you off on attachment parenting, what are they doing that you weren't up for? Just trying to figure out what advice to give you, maybe point you in a direction of sorts.
@MightySapphire:i would love some advice and perspective. i am open to hearing anything! i plan on breastfeeding for at least a year, but also pumping a lot because i plan on going back to work.
my cousin was just telling me about how all of her friends are crazy obsessed with attachment parenting, and one of her friends called her crying because she "missed one of her baby's poops," which she thought meant she did not truly know her baby (i am assuming she was practicing EC). she also said that they all co sleep, even with multiple childen. this is something DH and i decided not to do immediately off the bat. she said her friends are exhausted because they literally never put their baby down, and the babies have developed "sleep disorders" because every single time they cry they are picked up. i do not know how much of this is valid, but it was enough to put a bad taste in my mouth!
We co-slept but DD went in the crib at 6 months. We do EC, but we don't obsess with it. We cloth diaper because DD is allergic to disposables. We used slings, but we took time to put DD on the floor to play too. I think that there is an extreme side to everything, and there are varying degrees to which you can dedicate yourselves as parents. You can mix and match styles. I think that someone crying because they missed a poo is VERY extreme. Reminds me of a mother who kept her son's foreskin. It's just too much.
Attachment parenting is not the same as obsessing over your children. Attachment parenting means choosing to sling or carry instead of putting your baby in a stroller. It means answering cries at night. It doesn't mean becoming so attached to your kids that you can't spend a night without them or being afraid to let people babysit. That's just crazy. I think that in the 80s parents were encouraged to separate themselves from their babies and now parents are being pushed to be there every moment. There is a healthy medium. It just takes a little trial and error to find it for yourself.
For example, my DH leered when I brought home a giant workout ball and told him that it was for bouncing with the baby. But lo and behold, I come home and there he is with the baby in the sling bouncing on the ball while playing video games to soothe her to sleep. :-)
@MightySapphire: awwwww, i love that story about your DH and the ball. That is just SO cute! I think I would melt if I came home and my hubby was doing that!
Do you think that AP is doable even when both parents work? I plan on working 3-4 days a week (6 hour shifts) after baby is born, so he/she will be in the care of someone else about 20ish hours a week.
@MightySapphire: I agree with most everything you have mentioned. I am pregnant now, and have been given both books by friends, but feel like we will be more "in the middle" type parents. I don't want my child relying on me for every.single.thing, but I also certainly don't want their needs to go unmet. Maybe I'll just start praying for a super easy baby. :)
I agree with the mix and match approach. If you start out with a plan and then adjust to what fits your family, you'll create the right environment. There just isn't a one-size-fits-all approach.
I think I misrepresented my parenting when I said I don't let them cry it out... ever. When they're infants, I didn't. But as they get older, like MightySapphire said, I'm comfortable with it.
I'm not sure if it's b/c my youngest might be the last baby, but I've babied him more than my other children, and he is having sleep issues at 2yrs. If we have another child, I will go back to the routines I had with the other two. I'm tuned-in to his cues, potty-training went well, and he's very calm (how much is genetic is open for debate). But I can tell you that not having a break (which is what AP sounds like) has big drawbacks. I'm not sure, honestly, if it's made us more in-tune than I was with his siblings. (I don't practice baby-wearing, so just my .02 from my various parenting experiences)
For AP if you work... would your caregiver take over wearing the baby? I don't know much about it...
I think people who get caught up in their parenting style are no worse than people who are caught up in their image-because a lot of it is based on image. If I'm "crunchy" then I have to do attachment parenting, or whatever. I'm sooo not crunchy but I BF, babywear... Some things work, some things don't. I hate that there are now lables for how we raise our kids.
I'm all for a mix and match approach too. I didn't read either baby wise or attachment parenting book. I like hearing ideas but didn't want to put dogma above what works for us. I was kinda turned off to the AP label after reading some weird stuff on mothering.com and watching a friend struggle with trying to be super AP, but I think both of those things are people trying to give themselves over to a philosophy than treating themsevles and their child as individuals.
We baby wear sometimes, but she goes in a stroller for runs, has lots of floor/exersaucer/bouncer/swing time too. She sleeps in our room but not in our bed (OK in the morning sometimes she sleeps in bed next to me). Our schedule was more like wake nurse play nurse sleep but it varied soemtimes she didn't want to nurse when she woke up and sometiems she would fall asleep without nursing. I don't mind baby fussing sometimes as she gets older but screaming seems to lead to a fussy baby and a fussy mommy with leaking milk at this age (4-1/2 months) so not really for us. But as she gets older things may change too. We're flexible and try to work with baby not against her.
but I think both of those things are people trying to give themselves over to a philosophy than treating themsevles and their child as individuals.
@troubled: you said what I wanted to say except better!
I'm right there with you hoping and praying for an easy baby!
I read all of the books: Babywise, Attachment Parenting, Baby Whisperer, Happiest Baby on the Block, and Supernanny. We then did whatever worked.
Personally there are some good things to take from all of the philosophies. For Attachment Parenting you don't have to do it all. The biggest issue I usually see with Attachment Parents is the part where they don't get to last chapter. They let thier children run all over them always. Attachment parenting still ends up with discipline and schedules. It is just that the child leads the schedule. After our baby was a high needs baby (read never ever every slept and screamed not cried for 12 hours a day). The only people that touched on that was Dr. Sears.
We like the Baby Whisperer because it is a good middle ground philosophy. It is a parent directed routine if EASY - Eat, Activity, Sleep, You. There is assisted CIO which means you are there while they cry you never leave them.
Happiest Baby on the Block works especially if your baby is high needs.
We ultimately held our baby constently when he was little and just screamed. Now, you has a hard time not being held which is not always a good thing. He has very bad associations with sleep but he spent months being in pain. Sleep wasn't always a good thing. He is almost on a schedule and things are working much better. I always said I would never cosleep but when they wake up at midnight and you have to work at 6 the next morning you bring them in and sleep. You do what you have to do. Just realize that some things will create habits that may or may not be what you want later.
@MissDareDevil: I think AP is totally doable for working parents. It's not an all or nothing thing. You can do some babywearing while you are home or running errands and you can co-sleep or whatever, and certainly then go to work. I work full time and I think our parenting style is still referred to as AP.
Is there an age when baby-wearing stops? Obviously, there has to be... lol... but what is recommended? I'm starting to think I lean more towards that parenting style without having known much about it. For those who practice it, how does continuing co-sleeping affect your child's ability to self-soothe? My 2 yr old is waking-up every night and won't go back to sleep w/o a cup of milk. So I'm up with him and then brushing his teeth... I feel like I'm in the newborn stage again.
To be honest, I think sometimes we parents give ourselves a little too much credit for the way our children turn out. :) What I mean by that, there is a natural balance of nuture AND nature that influences a child's eventual temperment, personality, and behavior. We parents often think that we've done a good job or chosen the proper parenting technique only if our children are smart, coordinated, fun, well-behaved, evenly tempered, etc... The fact is that your child is being influenced by biology, too, and sometimes parenting can't compensate for nature's design. I think this is where parents mess up; putting too much pressure on ourselves to force ourselves or our children into a certain parenting model completely ignores biology in the equation, and I think, it often creates frustrated, unhappy families, rather than happy, content parents and children.
I used to consider myself more AP, but now I feel like I fall into a no man's land in terms of parenting. We co-slept and babywear, but I didn't breastfeed. We never used any sleep training, but I have no issues with calling EC "infant toilet training" because that's what it is, to me. We use positive discipline, but we've had to alter those techniques to our child's individual personality. Overall, we just try to recognize our daughter's unique capabilities and traits and parent for the long-term, instead of the short-term. Sometimes, this attitude matches up exactly with AP, sometimes it doesn't, but it's the style that works best for us and our family.
@Mrs. Spring: totally agree with everything you said. Like i mentioned ealier, i am definitely not all about trying to parent exactly from a book and then taking credit for being an awesome mom with a perfect kid.
I am hoping to pull advice, theories and techniques from a broad range of books. I just hope i have enough resources at hand when our child is born and is crying his or her face off to know what to do!
@MissDareDevil: To add to your reading list, then, I really liked the Happiest Baby on the Block book (it gives you techniques on how to calm crying babies, especially when they are crying for seemingly no reason), and Positive Disipline for 0-3 Years Old (which is kind of an AP style book but a little more about encouraging healthy independence from a young age).
ETA: You'll figure out what to do when your baby is crying. :) Remember, parents have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years. You'll probably feel a little lost or not confident at the beginning, but as you get to know your baby, you'll figure out what works and what doesn't.
If you want to know what your baby's cries mean from 0-3 months, check out http://www.dunstanbaby.com/. Crying at that age is a reflex, and so certain impulses will result in the same reflexive crying in ALL babies, not matter what culture, race, or language. An example is "neh" which means hungry. And once you see it you'll be like OMG, I know what that means! I felt like super mom after going through the five cries and knowing exactly what my DD needed.
@jjmomma: We have an Ergo carrier that will work until the baby is 2 years. The Baby Bjorn carrier only worked until 12 months and was uncomfortable most of the time. Slings can vary, some slings can last longer than others. Slings with stretch going in both directions of the fabric last less time than those with stretch in only one direction. Slings with no stretch in the fabric last longer than either of the above. I think it's a good idea to let your baby walk on their own once they are able, but if I need to run a bunch of errands I don't have time to let her walk, so I use the carrier. I also found that carriers were just more convenient for me than strollers while shopping and the baby tolerates baby wearing better than sitting in a cart or stroller.
Wow, this is all getting me very excited! I think baby wearing would be fun (but i am also a walker, so i will be a stroller mom too)!
Since our parents don't live nearby, I needed to learn a lot on my own as a first time mother. I liked learning from Baby Wise as well as a variety of sources that gave me tools/ideas to equip me for my unique baby before delivery. I felt BW gave me a clear sense of how to watch baby, then make the best decision with wisdom, adapting to baby. Though I definitely don't do things by the book, I do enjoy having a routine schedule determined by studying baby's patterns. I breast feed because we can. I EC/infant potty train because baby likes it and gets it. I read baby's cues to make decisions based on what I see is working. I stroller or wear baby depends on what kind of mood she is in.
And yes, parenting decisions look a lot different then what we expected. For example, Hubby has often bounced baby on ball to sleep while surfing the web. We sometimes turn on videos when she's around. I would have gone with crib-sleeping if she would sleep more at night but she sleeps better with us so we are co-sleepers. I'm pretty sure Cry It Out works with older babies, but I didn't realize I would have such a hard time with it (maybe even more than the baby).
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I have been reading here and there about "attachment parenting" but still don't really know much about it. I was talking to a cousin who said SEVERAL of her friends are practicing it, and it made me realize that it was definitely not the style for me.
I started talking about Baby Wise (book) and how my hubby and I plan to use some of the concepts described in the book (mainly the sleepign schedule). It seems like great, straight forward, practical advice. She said that Baby Wise was the complete opposite of attachment parenting and was a bit "detached."
What are your stances on both of these styles? Do you think Baby Wise is truly the "opposite" of attachment parenting? I really don't know much about either. Any styles/techniques/concepts you plan on using?
I don't plan on parenting entirely by a book, but it is just great to glean a little bit from lots of different theories.
Love to hear what you think!