Amazon.com: Customer reviews: On Becoming Babywise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep - 2019 Edition

Top positive review

Breastfeeding friendly, dont believe the FTT hype

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2019

I am so glad we bought this book! We don't necessarily follow every word strictly, but adopting its guidelines and principles allowed us to go from feedings every 45 mins - 1.5 hrs to typically a consistant every 3 hr feeding with our daughter. She was 4wks when we started the eat-wake-sleep concept and that has given us some much needed consistency and predictability. Life is a lot less stressful when you at least have some predictability with a newborns needs and she adopted the pattern so quickly! She genuinely seems happier now and I'm more confident she is getting the right amount of nutrition because her hunger cues on right on time with the planned feedings, not erratic like before. We are a little "behind" on the nightly wake up schedule that the book discusses, but I feel like for now she still needs the extra feeding and we are happy with our schedule and number of wake ups for now.

I was nervous this book wouldn't apply to breastfeeding babies but that is far from the truth. Give it a shot!

57 people found this helpful

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Banana

Don't bother if you are a single parent

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2019

I'm a single mother to a newborn, and this book goes on and on about how important it is for a baby to have happily married parents, and how it'll screw their relationships up for life if they don't have that. I don't think that has to be true. Single mothers do a great job all the time, and parents who are no longer together can successfully co parent. I'm finding it very painful and depressing to read a book that says my child will be forever damaged because I'm no longer married to her father. They are perpetuating a horrible message...the authors should get with the times and realize that not every baby has two parents, or two married parents, and we can still provide a stable and loving home.

208 people found this helpful

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Banana

Don't bother if you are a single parent

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

208 people found this helpful

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Laurie Ruit

Babies don’t need micromanaged.

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is a product in which I’d have to employ the “good for you, not for me” mentality.
A person I work with recommended this book to me. Much of the book is about basic parenting, which is fine, but probably is only helpful if your baby is under a few weeks old and you are a first time parent.
It’s not my style of parenting. My daughter is 4 months old and she still eats every 3 hours (medically necessary), even at night (and I work full time). I’ve adjusted. She is not a burden in my life as the book will make it seem. I know these baby snuggles and the way she sweetly holds my hand is limited and I will soak up every minute of it.
I feel like the techniques suggested can easily become neglectful learned helplessness all under the rouse of “self-soothing,” especially at a very young age.
The over-obsession with scheduling is unreasonable unless you’re a stay-at-home parent totally dedicated to it and rarely do anything to shake it up on the weekend. Not to mention how limiting nursing time to this degree can have detrimental effects to supply.
This book is constructed to give new parents anxiety and that they should worry about every variant in the baby’s schedule. The book compared the baby waking up early from a second nap to the anxiety you should feel if you’re on a radio show about to go live and your mics don’t work. This is not a situation that warrants anxiety. Relax. Enjoy parenthood. Don’t micromanage your baby. Enjoy their smiles and their drool all over everything from scootching around the living room.

Also, it should be mentioned that the studies used have extremely small sample sizes that would not be accepted under a medical discipline.

124 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Stressful and Not Necessary

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book came highly recommended to me. Unfortunately it’s filled with inconsistencies so the schedules from week to week do not line up. It’s also quite stressful to follow the schedules to a T. After 2 weeks of doing our best to follow schedules and merge night feedings, we decided to donate the book and let our baby take the lead. She developed a schedule that meets her needs and gained hours of sleep rapidly on her own, resulting in sleeping 13 hours a night by 13 weeks old. It wasn’t a straight “1 more week for each week of life” train, but she got there when it was right for her.

I believe these sleep books prey on first time parents and their fear of never sleeping again. I wish I could tell my pregnant self to chill out, ignore books and recommendations, and rest assured that my baby will get on the right schedule on her own.

21 people found this helpful

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Brittany Hard

Trash

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is complete garbage. I was recommended this book by a friend and was excited to read it. I gave it a far chance, at 170 pages in, I threw it in the recycling bin. The first chapter has strong religious undertones, which is not a bad thing but really wish their description of “marriage” and a thriving home life wasn’t so ... traditional and one dimensional. I should have stopped there but continued to read on to give the book a far shot. I couldn’t imagine putting my myself, my husband and especially my child through their recommend schedule. This book doesn’t take into account anything over than feeding time and sleeping. There is no time for cuddling, bathing, educational time to name a few. If you are a stay at home robot ( see how I didn’t use parent) this book is for you. If you are human keep looking for other material.

8 people found this helpful

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Taylor

Some helpful tips, but not what I was hoping for

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

I’m a first time mom so bought this in hopes of providing guiding principles on how to start sleep training our baby. Though this book did have lots of tips for bringing home a new baby in general, at the end of the book I still feel lost on where to start to sleep train our baby. They provide a “sample schedule” That is so vague that it Is completely unhelpful. They just keep saying that feeding every 2.5-3 hours Is key, but our baby is already doing that and still isn’t sleeping more than 3-4 hour stretches. He wakes up wide awake for 3 hours in the middle of every night, and no where did I find any solutions for that. Was hoping for more practical step by step advice to battle real situations, but a lot of the book seems to be if you have some ideal world baby that magically falls into this schedule (that is never Actually given) and boom it sleeps through the night by magic! I kept waiting and waiting for the chapter of “how to get started”, and “How to build a schedule” and “what about if x happens”, but it never came. There is a chapter on managing your babies day, but again too vague to actually use as a guide and left with more questions than answers. There are some tips that I am going to implement now after reading though, so I don’t think reading was completely a waste, I just didn’t get out of it what I was hoping to. I’m sure it probably depends on what your issues with your baby actually are how helpful this book can be.

5 people found this helpful

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chie

Just because it worked for someone else doesnt mean it will work for you

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2019

Verified Purchase

Bought it on recommendation from a friend, did not work for me and my family at all.

13 people found this helpful

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BookLover

Good in theory, too one-size-fits-all in practice

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2020

Verified Purchase

I have worked with students with autism and special needs for over a decade, and so I have a lot of familiarity with behavior therapy and behavioral approaches. That being the case, when I was pregnant, this book was very appealing to me, as it uses a similar framework. Basically, the idea being that you need to "teach" your child how to sleep by modifying your responses to them.

Once baby arrived, however, I quickly realized that newborns are really not amenable to behaviorism in the same way that older children are. Examples:

- My son was born a chronic 'grazer'. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, but his caretakers in daycare - who have worked with dozens if not hundreds of babies, and feed them on a schedule - cannot get him to take a bottle in one sitting either. I mean - if he's not gonna take the bottle, he's not gonna take it, and there's not a lot I can do about it. I can't force him to eat. So the 'full feedings' went out the window.

- He started to get a flat head from sleeping in his back in a crib all night and for naps during the day. Because we had to keep his head up as much as possible, that meant having him sleep in a carrier or while being held. So "always put baby in the crib" was out too (a note - he had very mild torticollis and physical therapy helped, so if you are going to work on making your baby a champion sleeper, keep an eye out for *any issues that could contribute to a flat head, torticollis probably topping that list.)

- I found I didn't have the stomach to let him cry in his crib until he learned to put himself to sleep, so I would soothe him to sleep - but to my surprise, this didn't seem to make any difference in his ability to get back to sleep after waking up at night. Unless he's hungry, if he wakes up, he coos for a couple of minutes, then drifts back off. After that it occurred to me that the idea that babies need to be 'taught' to put themselves back to sleep is really just that - an idea, a hypothesis. There are many things that babies do, when they are ready, that we don't actually teach them, and getting themselves back to sleep might be one of them. Again, this is counterintuitive to the part of me that has relied on behavioral techniques for a long time - but it's also true that babies have been developing for eons without any specific teaching. They eventually lose their tongue thrust and are able to eat solid food on their own, for example, because this is what nature designs them to do, not because we specifically teach them these skills.

- My son was on his own schedule and did not adhere to the 'eat wake sleep' cycle as described. As a newborn he tended to be up for 3-5 hours in the morning and then take a marathon nap in the afternoon. Again - if that's what he was gonna do, what was I going to do about it? There was no way to 'make' him sleep on my schedule, it just wan't gonna happen. I could put him in the crib for quiet time but I couldn't make him fall asleep.

All that said, my son does sleep well during the night now. I'm not sure how much of that is just his temperament, but I think some suggestions in the book were helpful - establishing a bedtime routine, doing a dream feed before bed, and just being doggedly consistent about putting baby back in the crib over and over again at night, especially during those early days. In hindsight, I think this book was overall to "one size fits all" for us, however. A book with tips for every type of eater / sleeper etc. might have been more helpful.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kyrie Dunbar

Don’t buy-No sleep help!

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

Terrible book, don’t waste your precious time or money! Felt like I was reading a college textbook. There’s only one chapter on sleep schedules but no where tells you how to actually help your baby sleep. The rest is a guide of what to do when you bring baby home (we’ve already been home 3 months so it doesn’t apply). The “What to Expect” books are waaaaay better and super easy to read. This book seemed dated and bias toward “normal” families. Would have been offensive to me if I were a single parent or a same-sex couple. It promotes a happy man and wife relationship, which is such an old school way of thinking.
I found lots of good info online instead!

5 people found this helpful

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Corbin

Not helpful for us

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

To save you the time: try to get your kid on a sleep schedule, but don't be so committed to a schedule that you make it hard on yourself or your kid.

Seriously, that's the entire book.

Also, a bunch of stories that I didn't have time for because no one in my house was sleeping.

Some kids are good at sleeping, and some aren't. Best of luck to you and your kid.

5 people found this helpful

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Jessica

Didn’t work for sleep, good for self soothing

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2019

Verified Purchase

We tried to follow this method strictly and plain and simple it did not work for sleeping as described. Our three month old still wakes two times per night and per the book he should be waking zero times since one month ago. What I would say is the main strength of the book is teaching your baby to self soothe. I can put him down for a nap or for the night and simply walk away without multiple iterations of rocking, breast-feeding, etc. and that is worth a lot. It saves parents a lot of time and frustration. In short, full feedings, put baby to bed drowsy but awake and try to follow eat play sleep when possible.

5 people found this helpful

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