Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely in theory but doesn't have a solution for every baby, 4 Sep 2008
As a parent I've always been firmly in the Sears camp rather than the Gina camp, and this book seems to be considered as a sacred text by practically everyone I know with similar parenting styles. My 9 month old has been a poor sleeper from the start and so naturally I got hold of a copy. I do love the style of the book and it is indeed initially very reassuring. Unfortunately, it does seem very much geared to fixing specific sleep problems that relate to babies that are unable to fall asleep by themselves and hence need to be nursed or rocked again every time they wake. Unfortunately this doesn't apply to my baby, who wakes frequently despite being perfectly able to put himself to sleep quickly and easily initially. It also doesn't cover 'tension releasing' crying vs 'tension increasing' crying. After much agony I have discovered that my baby actually NEEDS to have a short cry in order to fall asleep. Now I understand that he actually needs to be put down awake to cry, he will be asleep in a few minutes, whereas previously with all of my 'loving' nursing, rocking and singing he would still be sobbing in exhaustion and hour later. If I'm honest I think I might have found this out sooner if I hadn't been brainwashed by all the attachment parenting books that letting your child cry practically was akin to abuse.
So, if you have a baby with the 'right' kind of problem, this might be the book for you. But as always, you need to remember that no one has written a book about YOUR baby yet.
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59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended, 9 Oct 2003
This book deserves to be a huge bestseller, much moreso than some of those other 'baby manuals' written by 'experts'.Elizabeth Pantley writes with compassion and authority without ever seeming overbearing or autocratic.As the mother of four children, two of whom slept well, and two of whom didn't, she is infinitely qualified, in my view, to advise and support other parents. If, like me, you are reaching the end of your tether with a baby or toddler who just doesn't seem to understand that daytime is for feeding and nighttime is for sleeping I strongly urge you to read this book. The most important aspect of this book is that it is written with the utmost respect for parents who desperately need some sleep,but who cannot bear the idea of making their baby 'cry it out'.If you feel there has to be another way, a gentler way to ease your baby and yourself to a more restful night, you have found it. Equally, the author, as far as I can judge, has succeeded in speaking to each parent individually by carefully considering as many different styles of parenting as there are parents. So whether you breastfeed or bottlefeed, co-sleep, cot sleep or nursery sleep, Elizabeth Pantley has useful, workable, supportive solutions to severe sleep-deprivation. There is even a really encouraging section for parents like me, whose baby doesn't immediately start to sleep through. I found this really helpful, because it gave me the necessary encouragement to carry on trying the different suggestions and find one that suited us. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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69 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, the answer to my prayers., 6 Mar 2006
I have a 6 year old son, that had a lot of sleep problems for his first 2 years. I have a 5 month old son, that had hardly slept more than 1 hour at a time since birth. In other ways, they're perfect children that I love totally : ) I have had the advice of health service counsellers (that mostly advocated that they should cry it out... well, that did NOT work and it made me go nutty to listen to the poor wee things cry). I have a lot of experience in finding ways to help them sleep, and have been re-inventing the wheel a thousand times (because lots of what I do has been done by parents for thousands of years, it just doesn't seem that anybody bothers to put it down in writing). I have been reading many books about babies´ sleep, and mostly they made me more insecure, because they said either: 1. Cry it out (and I couldn't do it). 2. Endure it and love your baby (and I desperately needed a tiny bit of sleep). They were also often so big that a sleep deprived parent had no way of reading through them. But, there came a book, with such a good amount of good advice, some things that I'd done with success, other things I hadn't done, other things I'd done but as it takes a few days to see the result I'd given up before seeing the good result. Now I've got the courage to do the right thing, and already my younger baby is sleeping MUCH better. I wholeheartedly, lovingly, desperately, truly reccommend this book. I wish I'd had it 2 weeks before my first baby was born, but at least I'm glad it will help me and my second baby now, and a big number of loving, sleep deprived parents out there : ) What a great gift this book is : )
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