From the Inside Flap
Over the 30 years and 5 million copies sold of Babywise, we have seen a common misunderstanding between the over-used phrase "cry it out" and the simple & carefully monitored allowance of "some crying" when applying a loving routine and flexible schedule that are the proper and proven sleep training methods of Babywise. Hundreds of medical professionals not only endorse the successful methods of Babywise, but also employ these wonderful methods with their own clients. Here are some more clarifying comments by 16 of the worlds leading experts on pediatric sleep when it comes to the proven methods of a flexible routine, loving schedule, and where the allowance of "some crying" can be appropriate in helping your infant to self-soothe:"The most important aspect of getting a baby to sleep through the night is to have your baby learn to soothe herself to sleep. Babies need to be able to put themselves to sleep without your intervention. The reason is that all babies, as well as all adults, wake during the night. This is normal. What is problematic is not the nighttime wakings but the inability to return to sleep. Your baby needs to learn to soothe herself to sleep so that when she wakes for a moment in the middle of the night, she can immediately put herself back to sleep.""Sleep is a natural process and we all know how to sleep. However, good sleeping habits need to be developed. Bad sleeping habits, especially when trying to fall asleep, are what become problematic for many babies and toddlers.""Start establishing a sleep schedule. This schedule should include a set bedtime, a set wake time, and set nap times. (either following the clock or using the two-hour rule). A consistent feeding schedule will also help set a more general daily routine.""The more practice that your baby gets putting himself to sleep, the quicker the process works.""During the night, when you hear your baby begin to stir, walk, don't run to him. You will be surprised how often he'll fall back to sleep on his own. Remember, all babies naturally wake up throughout the night. Your baby may simply be stirring, ready to return right back to sleep. By going to him too quickly, you may actually be waking him up.""Every night your baby should be going to bed at about the same time.""Babies and children love routines and relish schedules. They like to know what is going to happen next. They are also better behaved when things follow a known pattern. Routines provide your child with a sense of security, and they enable your child to have a sense of control in a world governed by adult demands. Routines also give a framework in which to learn new skills.""All babies and adults wake throughout the night, anywhere from two to six times. There doesn't have to be any particular reason other than going from one sleep stage to another."Jodi A. Mindell, Ph.D. - Associate Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and also Professor of Psychology at Saint Joseph's University."A lot of parents nowadays cringe at the word routine, but by routine I don't mean a rigid, minute by minute regimen. I mean a commonsense framework with time mapped out for eating, napping, sleeping, playing, and wake time-- a framework that you can adapt as you grow more adept at reading your baby's signals and cues.""If you aren't consistent, you aren't just making it harder for yourself. You are making it harder for your child.""Setting limits does not mean that we don't give our children some choices or autonomy. It means giving age-appropriate choices within healthy boundaries."Kim West, LCSW-C; she has helped thousands of tired parents gently and effectively teach their babies how to sleep. She has appeared on Dr. Phil, the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America."Every day I get phone calls from parents who are anxious, confused, overwhelmed, and, most of all, sleep-deprived. They bombard me with questions and beg me for solutions because the quality of their family life is suffering. No matter what the specific problem, I always suggest the same remedy: a structured routine.""Crying is your baby's language. This moment of hesitation is not to suggest that you should let your baby cry. Rather, listen to what he's saying to you.""Stand back and wait a heartbeat; you don't have to swoop down and pick up your baby the moment she cries. Take three deep breaths to center yourself and improve your own perception. It will also help you clear your mind of other people's voices and advice, which often make it hard for you to be objective.""You need to foster your baby'e self-soothing skills."Tracy Hogg was a British nurse. Her experiences as a nurse at St. Catherine's Hospital for the Mentally Handicapped and other hospitals led to a long career as a child care expert."And while it is normal for a child (or an adult) to wake briefly a few times during the night, these arousals should last only a few seconds or minutes and the child should go back to sleep easily on his own.""...if you are in the habit of rocking your child to sleep (or rubbing his back, or any similar custom) for twenty to thirty minutes each night, and you need to repeat the ritual once or twice in the middle of the night to get him back to sleep, you may actually be interfering with his sleep and delaying his ability to sleep through the night.""... it is very important for some children to be put down awake so that they can learn to settle themselves and fall asleep alone both at bedtime and after nighttime wakings.""Consistent schedules are especially important in treating sleep disorders."Richard Ferber, M.D. Director, Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders, Children's Hospital- Boston AND Associate Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School"Everyone should have a sleep routine- adults included.""There are a variety of ways to approach sleep training, and it really depends on what you as the caregiver are comfortable doing. No matter what anyone tells you, there is no "right"way to sleep train your child. Since every parenting style and every child is different, the key is picking the solution that you can stick to. The two most important aspects to picking a solution are: determining how comfortable you are with crying and how quickly you want the problem solved.""Caregiver guilt is a common reason why sleep training fails. If a child is crying, the natural response would be to console him or her. But remember, sleep training is not for you. Although you will benefit as well, the main reason to sleep train is for the health and well-being of your child. Not being able to self-soothe and go to sleep independently can be a burden for the child.""I DON'T WANT MY CHILD TO HATE ME-- This is a fear for many parents. We worry that our child will feel abandoned and therefore become distant from us. You can rest assured that studies show this is not true. In fact, the exact opposite may be true: an infant's level of security can actually be better after going through sleep training, not worse. And remember, children don't start forming long-term memories until around the age of three, so they will not remember anything from this process.""Sleep training calls for a level of authority and rigidity that may feel uncomfortable. However, you care capable of making it through this process. Persistence is the key. If your persistence can outlast that of your child, you will successfully sleep train your child.""Consistency is critical to success. Once you start sleep training, don't turn back. The process can take several days to weeks. Don't give up on sleep training after just a few nights. The most effective and proven sleep training solutions do involve some crying. But remember that it is for the health and well-being of your child."Sugar Kansagra, M.D. Director, Duke Pediatric Neurology Sleep Medicine Program
From the Back Cover
"Sleep training is harder on parents then kids."
"Most kids are good sleepers, an the ones who are not can usually be made into good sleepers with training."
"Many parents worry that letting their kids cry it out will cause some type of irreversible damage to their psyche and the parent-child bond, but there won't be any long term damage."
Lewis J Kass, M.D., FAAP Yale-trained Board Certified Pediatric Pulmonoligist and Specialist in Sleep Medicine and Sleep Disorders
"I personally believe that the majority of babies thrive and are happier in a routine."
"I would typically arrive at a home a few days after the birth and live with the family 24/7 for periods of 3-5 days, or sometimes several weeks to six months."
"The aim of the routine is not to push your baby through the night without a feeding but to ensure that structuring his eating and sleeping during the day will keep his nighttime waking at a minimum."
"If the baby is fed every time he cries, mothers tend not to look for other reasons as to why the baby may be crying-- overstimulation or over tiredness, for example."
"Of course, all babies must be fed if they are genuinely hungry; no baby should have to cry to be fed or should be kept on a strict timetable if he is genuinely hungry. But in my experience, and if research on sleeping problems is anything to go by, a huge number of demand-fed babies do not automatically fall into a healthy sleeping pattern months down the line."
Gina Ford, Child Care Expert in Great Britain, helped 300 babies in home as a Maternity Nurse
"The process of falling asleep is learned."
Dr. Christian Guilleminault & Dr. William C. Dement, Founding Editor of the world's leading journal of sleep research.
"The truth is that some parents swing back and forth between firmness and permissiveness so often, they cannot make any cure stick."
"Sleep problems not only disrupt a child's nights, they disrupt his days, too, by making him less mentally alert, more inattentive, unable to concentrate, and easily distracted."
Marc Weissbluth, M.D. - 43 year Pediatrician; Founded Sleep Disorders Center at Childrens' Memorial Hospital in Chicago and is Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Northwestern University School of Medicine.
"Every day I get phone calls from parents who are anxious, confused, overwhelmed, and, most of all, sleep-deprived. They bombard me with questions and beg me for solutions because the quality of their family life is suffering. No matter what the specific problem, I always suggest the same remedy: a structured routine."
"Stand back and wait a heartbeat; you don't have to swoop down and pick up your baby the moment she cries. Take three deep breaths to center yourself and improve your own perception. It will also help you clear your mind of other people's voices and advice, which often make it hard for you to be objective."
"Crying is your baby's language. This moment of hesitation is not to suggest that you should let your baby cry. Rather, listen to what he's saying to you."
"You need to foster your baby'e self-soothing skills."
"Babies come into the world as a blank state, and they depend on you to teach them routine."
Nina Vaid Raoji, RN; MSN, APN
"The core of any baby sleep training method is routine."
"Myth: Letting a child cry at night leads to resentment and psychological damage. Truth: This myth is rooted in visceral emotion and has absolutely no medical or scientific basis. Granted, no parent likes to hear his or her child cry. Even understanding that crying is a newborn's only mode of communication, it understandably can still be very tough to hear. But the reality is that crying in and of itself does no harm to baby. Understanding why exactly your baby may be crying-- and having a levelheaded response to it- is far more productive than going to great lengths to avoid it altogether."
"The longer a baby goes between feedings, the longer she'll be able to sleep."
"We want to train your baby to be an efficient feeder-- allowing for a comfortable amount of time between feedings-- and not to be a grazer. Grazers have a much harder time when we try to get them to sleep through the night."
Drs. Lewis Jassey & Jonathan Jassey, who have treated over 15,000 patients in their 35 years as active Pediatricians in private practice in Long Island, New York.
"Four Foundations of Baby Sleep Success:
1. A baby must adapt to the existing family; the existing family does not adapt to a baby.
2. You must feel empowered as a parent.
3. Sleeping is a learned skill that you need to teach your baby.
4. Sleep training requires commitment and hard work on the part of the parents."
"Six Benefits of Baby Sleep Success:
1. There is little crying involved.
2. You will have happier, more cooperative children.
3. You will be using proactive parenting.
4. You will have a predictable schedule.
5. You will be able to deal with more than one child effectively.
6. You can follow this plan on your own."
"Babies need to eat every three hours because steady weight gain is very important in the first few weeks of life. You will need to wake up your baby to feed him if he is sleeping past the three-hour mark. In addition, you do not want your baby to get int the habit of sleeping for long stretches of five to six hours during the day. You want these stretches to occur at night."
"It is also important not to feed your baby more frequently than every two and a half hours during the first six weeks, unless there is a medical reason and your pediatrician advises you follow a more frequent feeding schedule. Your baby's digestive system needs time to process the food."
Suzy Giordano, "The Baby Coach" Suzy is the mother of 5 children and has been implementing her baby sleep methods with thousands of Washington D.C. families as a baby sleep consultant for the last 25 years. She has been in Parents Magazine and on ABC News; while the Washington Post calls her the 'underground legend'.
"How do you establish a baby's routine that is predictable, yet 'flexible,' enough to meet a baby's growing and changing feed-wake-sleep needs? Part of the answer comes from understanding the meaning of flexibility. The root word, 'flexible,' means 'the ability to bend or be pliable'."
" 'Just listen to your baby's cues' is good advice. You know what to listen and look for. As a baby nearing the end of a sleep cycle, he will often make little suckle sounds and may even bring his hand towards his mouth and begin sucking. Then the parents may hear a slight whimpering, which can grow into a full cry. Those are all cues that it is time to eat, but there is no need to wait until the baby is in a full cry before feeding him, especially if the other signs are present. The hunger cues should always trump the time on the clock."
"What if your baby is hungry sooner than 2 1/2 hours? Even when Mom has been working to make sure her baby is receiving full feedings, additional feeding times are sometimes necessary. This usually occurs during a growth spurt."
"When attempting to establish a feed-wake-sleep plan, parents must determine the first feeding of the day and try to stay as consistent as they can. Without a consistent first-morning feeding, a mother can and will be feeding every 3 hours, but each day has a different rhythm. That will work against stabilizing the baby's hunger metabolism and will eventually affect the length of baby's nap time."
"Enslavement to the clock is almost as great an evil as a mother who is in bondage to thoughtless emotions. Another side to the problem of infrequency (on feeding) is that some demand-fed babies demand too little food."
Gary Ezzo, M.A. & pediatrician Robert Bucknam, M.D. (authors On Becoming Babywise)
About the Author
Robert Bucknam, M.D., F.A.A.P. is the founder and director of Cornerstone Pediatrics in Louisville, Colorado where he resides with his wife, Gayle, and their four sons. He has served thousands of parents in Colorado for the last 28 years as their pediatrician. With a targeted interest in preterm and high-risk newborns, Dr. Bucknam's opinions are highly respected within the pediatric community.
