Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby by Tracy Hogg, Melinda Blau Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby
Book Review: Another Success Story...
Summary: 4 Stars
This book was SO helpful! I read it cover to cover and reread several sections whenever I had questions about sleep training, breast feeding, temperment tips, etc. I read this along with Suzy Giordan's 12 Hours Sleep in 12 Weeks and found both books together to be very helpful. I felt that Suzy's book helped tell you when to start sleep training and how to lengthen time between feedings best. Tracy's book really helps you zone in to the signs and symptoms of fatigue so that you can really get your baby off to bed before all hell breaks loose.
What so many parents don't understand is that the baby WANTS you to help them figure it out. They don't understand that they are getting tired and that rest fixes it.
Our now 6 month old has been sleeping through the night since 5 months old. She sleeps in her crib in her own room. We can put her down when she is sleepy but awake, turn on her music player, give her her binkie and bunny and leave the room. She settles down without fuss. She naps well, too.
We are much better parents now that we are all getting our rest.
I highly recommend this book in addition to Suzy Giordano's 12 Hours Sleep By 12 Weeks Old.
Book Review: Not Ideal for Newborns
Summary: 3 Stars
Reading this book in the months before my son's birth gave me what I later realized was a false sense of security. Hogg's EASY system sounds so practical and logical: feed child (Eat), do an Activity with your baby, put the kid to bed while s/he's sleepy but not yet asleep (Sleep), get in some You time while the baby slumbers. By structuring your day around a series of EASY episodes you can then learn to differentiate hunger cries (which your baby should only make when s/he awakes) from other types of cries. The end result is a well-rested baby (and parent), clear communication between parent and child, and a moderately flexible routine that gives baby a sense of security. To someone completely new to parenting, this sounds absolutely foolproof and makes perfect sense.
The day after I brought my son home from the hospital I realized how useless this system was for a newborn. A baby up to 6-8 weeks is basically a stomach that needs sleep (a stomach, it turns out, that doesn't always work well and results in a lot of gas, crying, and sleeplessness). You want your new baby to feed frequently (especially if breastfeeding). There are very few "activities" a 1 week old is capable of (Hogg acknowledges this in "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems"). And it really is natural (and even desirable) for a baby in the first few weeks of life to fall asleep directly after nursing. So much for EASY.
In addition, many new parents quickly learn (as I did) that some newborns will only fall asleep if they're basically on top of a warm body. For Hogg, the only thing worse than a mother who nurses her child to sleep is a parent who co-sleeps with her baby. I'll agree that neither may be desirable with, say, a three-year-old, but with a newborn both may be (temporarily) inevitable. A three-week-old is flat-out incapable of manipulating a parent or communicating anything beyond his or her needs. Trying to impose Hogg's system on a newborn is a fruitless exercise in self-torture. Perhaps the EASY method works for older babies, but children under 6-8 weeks will not benefit from Hogg's system.
Book Review: Excellent Book for 1st Time Mommy!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are a first time mom, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK! It unlocked so many baby secrets for me, and made being a parent easier. I have given this book to all my girlfriends at their showers. Book Review: Yawn
Summary: 2 Stars
Rather boring. She says alot of what is common sense to most moms and there are no "secrets" to what mother nature gave us. I would not recommend it to friends or family. The one positive - its a really cheap book!Book Review: Good in theory, hard to implement
Summary: 3 Stars
I read this book back-to-back with Babywise, and both books recommend the same EASY approach. The basics are worth following, but I found some of the specifics in the Baby Whisperer laughably hard to implement. Specifically, there are not enough hours in the day to do everything she says to do.
First, she recommends the mother nap from 2-5 every afternoon. If a breastfed baby eats every 2 1/2 to 3 hours, how is that possible? If a feeding takes 30-40 minutes, then active time takes another 30-45 minutes, and it takes 20 minutes to calm the baby for her nap (all her time estimates), the mother is simply not left with a three-hour block of time at any point in the day.
Second, her evening schedule leaves virtually no time for a parent to prepare and eat dinner (or any other activity, for that matter). She advocates two evening feedings, two hours apart, along with a daily bath and massage routine, which takes another 60 minutes (30 minutes for each activity), and then a "dream feed" when the baby is asleep before the parents retire for the night. Following the time estimates she gives, don't expect to eat until after 9 pm, and good luck trying to squeeze anything else into your evening.
If I had a dedicated maid, chef, and baby nurse, I could easily following the EASY plan. Without such a staff, however, I'm having to pick and choose what works with my six-week-old. Overall, I'm glad I read the book, but I could have done without the anxiety caused by trying to follow the full approach.