Gina Ford, The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers
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Gina Ford, The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers
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User Reviews
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Found The Gina Ford, The Complete Sleep Guide For
Found the Gina Ford, The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers book FANTASTIC. I was demand feeding for the 1st 3 months and was all over the place. My little girl would wake 3 times during the night and shuffle from 2am till 5:30. I implemented her schedule and the 1st night she slept right through from 11pm-7am. And within another 2 months I had her sleeping from 7-7,8am. Trusting my instincts left me scratching my head. 9 months down the track and my daughter still sleeps through !! I'm now considering having another child now that I'm getting enough sleep. Thanks to Gina Ford.
In the Contented baby book she covers all the issues such as colic and reflux and the effects they have. She states that you should always listen to your baby. My daughter has never been so happy as when I had a constant routine for her.
Cannot recommend this book enough.
Mandy
1st time mum
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At First, I Thought The Book Was Too Strict For Ou
At first, I thought the book was too strict for our 2 week old but I thought I'd try it as our baby had started to cry for long stretches and wouldn't settle. We tried leaving our baby to cry for the recommended periods of time, but she still wouldn't settle. She would cry her little heart out and her little chin would be quivering for minutes after we had picked her up. I felt like a failure as a mother - my child obviously wouldn't settle because I had not followed the routines properly and I had spoilt her early on. She had obviously made the wrong associations with sleep. 3 weeks later, our baby has been diagnosed with colic & we are on our 3rd type of medication to get it sorted. This is not, as Gina Ford says, because she was being demand fed. She was being bottle-fed, with special bottles and being burped frequently during feeds, and after. We have also discovered that our baby has reflux. She needs to be upright to help her digest her food and pass wind, which can take hours. Cuddles keep her warm and help her to relax, making it easier to pass wind. Gina Ford does not seem to allow for any of this in her routines or encourage mothers to listen carefully to their babies needs. You can easily become engrossed in the routines and enforcing them, such that you think you are engaged in a battle of wills between you and your baby. I believe that my trying to follow this book has actually made my baby's colic and reflux worse, rather than better. It has also eaten away at my self-esteem and confidence as a mother. My advice: it's your baby, do what feels right.
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The Complete Sleep Guide For Contented Babies And
The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers:
While I agree that it is useful to get babies into a routine as a method of avoiding sleep problems to put a two week old baby on this military style roster is plain cruel to mother and baby. My daughter Eva is my third child and rather than just following my instincts which have given me two older children who are well adjusted and who slept through the night by six months, I foolishly read this book and began to doubt all my maternal values and thought I had failed because my baby had been bathed after 6.15 and I had smiled at my little girl while she fed (big no-nos). I feel I have wasted a precious week of my baby's life worrying about routines and refusing lunches with friends because it could not fit into this inflexible routine when I should have been enjoying my little girl.
I would never recommend this to any new mother while they have very young babies- my advice would be to enjoy your baby as this time is so precious.
I think Gina Ford is a saviour in a world which is full of differing opinions. I too thought that the book was a little military in its form, but after following GIna's guidelines, i realised that being firm with your baby - whilst still loving them unconditonally was doing them a big favour. Your baby knows you love him or her through the security you provide just by being mum and needs desperately some help in falling asleep on their own. I think if you use Gina's book as a reference manual instead of a bible then it can be a girls best friend. I am anything but military in my role as mum and chastise myself for being too soft sometimes so can understand people being slightly offended by this book. But the proof is in the pudding and i have to say, my little boy has slept thru the night from 11 weeks until he was 3 years old and i put it down to Gina's book as i had no idea about sleep routines till i read it. Also, if i may add, recently we travelled overseas and fell into some bad habits. We stayed in 12 different beds whilst away and this unsettled our son. I ended up putting a rod up my own back by letting him sleep with me in the end. The consequence is now 2.5 months of night wakings, apparent hysteria when i leave the room and its all because i fell into bad habit. I don't blame myself as it was all i could do at the time, BUT i am now back to Gina for my life support system and back up and guidance. Its not easy leaving him and staying up for 2 hours in the night wrapped in a sleeping bag on the sofa whilst i wait to repeatedly take him back to his own room, but slowly it is working and the time spent listening to his cries and putting him back to his own bed in the night is lessening. I know i am not being cruel but doing him a favour in the long run. And guess what? he is already a much happier wee boy because of it. i say thank you to Gina - and my mother in law wishes you had been around in her day when they had NO written advice to turn to.
This review is very misleading, Ginas routines allow my husband and I more freedom than we could have imagined to enjoy our very contented little boy. Gina Ford never advocates that smiling during a feed is wrong. what she does suggest however is when feeding your baby in the middle of the night that you keep the lights dim and keep interaction with the baby to a minimum (just soothing cuddles) so they are not confused when you put themback down in their cot and are able to settle themselves off to sleep. Whilst routines do not work for some mothers it is wrong to suggest that this book advises on cruel policies of any kind, it does quite the opposite.
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