Babywise

As much as I've blogged about bedtime over the last year and a half, I can't believe I've never talked about Babywise. I searched the blog to see if I had, and it said "no results found for Babywise". How can that be? Babywise is the method that we used to teach Miles how to sleep through the night. I am a firm believer and preach it to anyone that will listen. So I'm still surprised that I've never blogged about it.

Reading the book started out as a selfish quest. I do not function well with little to no sleep. In fact, my gynecologist even told me that I needed to find ways to cope with less sleep before the baby arrived. I was a little sleep deprived towards the end of pregnancy. Me without sleep equals a lot of crying and irritability, and trust me, I, nor Darrin, need more of that. I had heard about Babywise and decided to read it.

The principles in the book made so much sense to me. Basically it's just feeding and sleeping according to a routine/schedule that is directed by the parent, not the child. Babies have to be taught how to fall asleep on their own and also how to get themselves back to sleep if they wake up in the night. It does require some "crying it out" but when you stick to your guns, they cry less and less.

When we lay Miles down for a nap or bedtime now, there is no crying 9 out of 10 times. When he does cry, he cries for less than 2-3 minutes. Usually he's very happy to be in his crib. Sometimes he even waves bye bye to us. He's been sleeping through the night since he was 9 weeks old, with a few derailments that were caused by either sickness or our inconsistency (examples here and here and here). He sleeps 11-12 hours every night, and takes 3-4 hour naps on the weekend.

This is how bedtime looks now. He drinks some milk in his chair....

Or on the couch...

Then we tell him it's time for bed. We usually tell him it's time to go see his friends, Buzz & Woody & the other million stuffed animals in his crib. He happily walks to his room...



...and goes to sleep. Sometimes I want to hold him beside his crib for a while as I say a prayer for him....he usually leans towards his crib, wanting to lay down, making it impossible to hug him. Since it means he's happy to go to bed, I'll take it.

As I said, it started out as a selfish quest, but it became more about Miles. I believe that a consistent routine, including plenty of sleep, produces healthy, happy babies. It doesn't mean you have to be rigid. We have to adapt a lot as he grows, but when you have a plan to work from everything seems to go more smoothly.

The actual title of the book is "On Becoming Babywise" by Ezzo & Bucknam. You can buy it for as low as $2.50 and trust me when I say that it's worth far more than that.