Babywise – Yes, please!

First, let me say a huge thank you to Leslie for hearing about Babywise and using it on Anna and making me a believer!  I love my sleep – always have – and I was worried about having a baby and getting sleep.  I should not have worried.  Because of Babywise, sleep is not a problem for us!

Secondly, I know there are a TON of different parenting philosophies out there.  I also know that there are some people that are very dedicated to their beliefs.  I, for one, am dedicated to my belief in Babywise.  Here’s why:

The premise behind Babywise is that it teaches your baby to like to sleep using an Eat - Play - Sleep routine. During the first few weeks you do exactly what you and the baby want. You hold and snuggle them and feed them when they want to be fed. After that, you start trying to get them to a 3 hour schedule. So if you feed them at 6am, then you would feed them and then they'd be up for another hour or so until 7am, and then they'd sleep until 9am when they would need to eat again.

Some people don't believe in waking a sleeping baby to eat, but when they are little, if you wake them and get them on that routine then their body and metabolism adjust and soon they are like clockwork. They will begin waking up almost to the minute of when they should be eating and rubbing their eyes right when they should be going to sleep.

Babywise also emphasizes the fact that even though you are following a schedule - you are the parent. If it is 2:30 and your baby is 'supposed' to eat at 3 and he is crying his hungry cry, you make the call as the parent to go ahead and feed him. If it is 5:15 and your baby is 'supposed' to be up and playing until 6, but she is rubbing her eyes, you make the call to go ahead and put her down and adjust the rest of the day accordingly. So the clock is the guiding force in most situations, but you are still the parent and you make the ultimate call.

They also talk about the importance of babies learning how to sooth themselves to go to sleep. Some parents teach their babies to sleep by rocking them, driving them around, walking them around, etc. Once that gets the baby to sleep the baby then begins to rely on that method to go to bed. That also means that the parents have committed themself to driving, walking, rocking, etc. every time the baby needs to sleep - which is very often! After the baby has reached a stage in their development where they can cognitively handle soothing themselves, you let them cry it out. This is not an easy thing to do. Your instinct tells you to go get that baby, but your mind tells you that this is going to be so good for you and for them in the long run. It took Caroline about a week. The first few naps when she 'cried it out', she cried for about 30 minutes and then she was out. Then for a few days, she would fuss for a bit and then be out. There have been a few days since then when she just didn't nap like she was supposed to. She would hit that 45 minute to an hour 'intruder' where she was switching sleep cycles. She would cry and it would be so tempting to go and get her, but if I did, she didn't get near the sleep she needed. So we would let her cry it out to get back to sleep. You learn the cry that she reaches that she was not going to be able to come back from. When that happens, you go get her and just get through the day the best you can and hope for a better day tomorrow. After just a couple of weeks she learned how to get herself back to sleep after that 'intruder' and we don't hear her anymore. Now, at 5 months, you lay her in her crib with her bobo and her paci and you shut the door. Sometimes she is in there talking and just looking for 10 minutes before she sleeps and sometimes she goes right to sleep. Either way, she doesn't need us to get to sleep. She does that totally on her own. Then when she wakes up you hear her talking and she usually wakes up with a big smile on her face. Those naps listening to her cry were tough, but I would do that over and over again to have a sleeper like we have now.

Another thing I love about Babywise is the fact that the first chapter talks about the importance of the husband/wife relationship to the health and happiness of the baby. It introduces the need for constant sleep so that Mom and Dad have time to work on their relationship. It also talks about the need for the baby to become part of the already established family, instead of the current family beginning to completely revolve around the baby.

Because we use Babywise, we have a little girl that has slept through the night (6+ hours) since 6 weeks and who now takes 3 very painless 2 - 3 hour naps a day and sleeps 11 hours at night.

If you are going to be a new parent, or even if you have a little one that doesn’t sleep well, try this out.  You don’t have to start from day 1 for this to work.  I have a friend who did not use Babywise on her first baby.  He NEVER slept well and still to this day is not a good sleeper.  Then I convinced her to try Babywise on the second one and her second is SUCH a good sleeper and so laid back and content all the time because she is fully rested. 

Thank you, Babywise!