Customer Reviews

The Baby Sleep Solution: A Proven Program to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Twelve Hours aNight

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Don't worry so much about pumping and measuring. This can work if you're breastfeeding. Trust your baby to tell you when they're full and when they're hungry. The important part is that you start to stretch out the time between feeding to give your child enough time to get hungry and eat a full meal.

My daughter never slept. No naps. Tough nights. She was a miserable infant. I read many sleep books with minimal success...until this one. I started right at 3 months and within 10 days my baby was sleeping 12 hours. Her days were better, her nights were silent and now at a 1 1/2 years she is the best sleeper I've ever seen. My second baby just turned 3 months yesterday and slept 12 hours last night without a peep. This book is brilliant. Two things: 1) you have to have the discipline to follow through, or don't bother. 2) I don't recommend doing this with breastfeeding. I tried, and it didn't work at all. As soon as I switched to formula, it worked like a charm.

We started putting the theories in this book into practice when my son was twelve weeks old. It actually made things worse for us. Here's how: We began scheduling out my son's daytime feedings and pushing him to every four hours as the book suggests. Now he no longer goes to sleep when needed because he's hungry and uncomfortable. When feeding time comes he nurses just long enough to get comfortable (not full) and he totally crashses. He then sleeps for about an hour, wakes up and realizes he's hungry and is miserable. We put him off until time to eat and again he takes in just enough to get comfortable and again crashes. This continues all night and all day.

Before we started following the book my son was up two to three times per night and was a very happy, easy going baby who was able to put himself to sleep when laid down drowsy, yet awake. Now he's up four to five times per night and is in a perpetual overtired, cranky state, and is totally dependent on me and nursing to go to sleep. I'm going back to feeding on demand so we can again put him to bed while drowsy, but awake and he can learn again to put himself to sleep without depending on me.

The author's theories seem sound when you read this book, but when put into practice for us they've caused total chaos and unrest. Not recommended.

P.S. - My son is now 4 months and 3 weeks old and is sleeping from 7 pm until 7 a.m. every night, without forcing his feedings to every four hours as this book suggests is a necessity. This has come about by letting him feed on demand (about every three hours) and watching for his sleep signals to lay him down when he's awake, yet drowsy. He's learned to put himself to sleep and now when he wakes up at night he just "talks" himself back to sleep within just a few minutes - no tears, and no stress. This was a much better option for us and I honestly feel this book did nothing but delay his ability to sleep through the night.

It basically boils down to this.
1. Get your child up to feedings every 4 hours.
2. Establish a schedule, which often means keeping the child awake when they want to sleep during the day. (We have found allowing cat naps works fine so the child isn't completely miserable). The key here is to keep the child up as much as possible in the 3-4 hours preceeding bedtime.
3. Establish a bedtime routine. The child needs to know that it's time to sleep. Turn the lights down very low, etc. During the day, open the blinds, etc. to let the child know it's day time.
4. Let the child "cry it out" a while before tending to them. This is a little tough, but you get used to it pretty fast. The child needs to learn how to soothe themself and that requires some time to cry it out. If the child starts whaling at a high pitch, then you should comfort them. If you allow them to cry it out for a while, you will see improvement over a relatively short time. Otherwise, you're in for a lot of long nights trying to soothe your baby who just won't stop crying.

Obviously, one method won't work for everyone, but you have to start someplace, and this book seems to offer some good basic strategies. We have had a good deal of success in the first two weeks. Our baby girl doesn't sleep 12 hours, but we really don't want that anyway. She sleeps from roughly 10 PM to 6 AM and then only requires minor attention (not necessarily food, but sometimes) to make it until 9 AM. All in all, it's a significant improvement from before when she would wake up every 4 hours and need to be fed. She eats more consistantly and consumes more food now.

Some of the complaints seem just plain ignorant. "My doctor says it's unsafe." Well, OK, but they say that about anything and everything, so you need to decide for yourself. It's your child, not your doctor's. Show me an area of child rearing in which doctor's unanimously agree - you can't. What I mean by all of this is that you should try an approach before you pan it. There's nothing that says you have to follow the directions to a tee.

Other complaints seem to be related to breast-feeding mothers. My wife only breastfed for a short time so I can't comment too much except to say that you it is my understanding that you are supposed to breastfeed every 4 hours (or pump) to maintain a healthy milk supply, so I don't know how this book can really help you since you'll need to be up every 4 hours anyway.

In conclusion, there are many ways to "sleep train" your child, and they seem to vary pretty widely. My advice is to pick one and try it for 2 weeks or so and see if anything improves. If not, try another one, but try not to confuse your child with radical shifts.

The book is filled with lots of common sense advice and seemed to me like an easy plan to follow. It breaks down to giving your baby 4 feedings a day and night weaning. The main problem I had with the book is that it says to make sure your baby drinks 6 oz every 4 hours. I'm breastfeeding. I stretched my baby's feedings to every four hours and started to try an eliminate night feedings. The big problem came when my supply started dwindling because of this. There was no way to know how much my baby was drinking, and obviously not enough to keep my supply up with only four feedings a day. I went back to feeing on demand, and still working on night eliminating night feedings. My four month old now wakes only once at night. I'm okay with this. The book really isn't for someone who is breastfeeding. I'm sure if you are formula feeding the book works like a charm. Formula fed babies sleep through the night earlier than breastfed babies do... oh well.

The list is endless for help with sleep and babies. Congratulations, you've found the only book you will ever need. We received the book when our infant was 6 months old and waking up 4-6 times a night and feeding twice a night. In 5 days after reading the book he has slept 10 hours straight each and every night. He is now 16 months and still sleeps soundly at night. What a gift this author has given us!

An update to this review: we have followed the program (our own adapted not quite as strict version) for 4 weeks now, and our 12 week baby (exclusively breast fed) now sleeps 10-11 hours at night and another 3-4 during the day, is eating ~32 ounces every 24 hours, and is thriving and smiling most of the time!

A major concept of the book is feed less often during the day so they eat more at each feeding and can last longer at night. I started "the schedule" when my baby was 8 weeks. Within a few days she went from eating randomly every 2-3 hours to eating only 4 times a day and once a night. This alone has brought me (and my baby!) much more comfort and ease during the day. It wasn't easy "stretching" her to these scheduled feeding times at first, but now it barely dazes her. Because I exclusively breast feed, I started pumping and feeding for some of her meals (particularly the 1 in the middle of the night) so I could see how much she was actually getting - this basically makes twice the work, but is worth it I think, especially if you have a husband willing to help with the bottle sometimes!

In the last few days we have been able to eliminate her nightly feed as well so she now eats about 8-9 ounces at each of the 4 daytime feedings and nothing during the night and she is gaining weight like crazy - I am pretty sure she's not starving!

As far as the nightime goes, at almost 11 weeks, she is now able to sleep 8 hours at a time. Sometimes we will have to help her get back to sleep if she wakes up once or twice in the middle, but she seems to be getting better and better at just staying asleep those 8 hours. So now we are trying to figure out how to make her sleep more than the 8 hours at night... it doesn't seem like 12 hours is ever going to happen, at least not for our baby - 12 hours in the crib at night is also unrealistic for us because our baby takes a long time to eat (over an hour if nursing), especially now that she eats at least 8 ounces at a time - thus, we will never have the baby in the crib for 12 hours (she eats her first meal at 7:30am and her last at 7:30pm, but isn't finished with it and ready for bed until at least 9PM)

But compared to how it was before, I am not complaining about 8 hours a night!!

During the day, I can usually get her to sleep during the morning and afternoon nap, however, it is very difficult to get her to sleep in her crib. After 30+ minutes of trying, I typically move her to her bouncer chair or stroller and let her nap there. This goes against the book recommendations, but in my opinion daytime sleep wherever is better than none at all!

My only complaints about this book is that it is lacking a more in depth answer section on what to do when...

For example, what do you do when your baby only seems to need 11 hours of sleep every 24 hours, instead of the 15 total hours this book suggests? Is there a way to get your baby to sleep more or do some babies just need much less sleep?

What do you do when you can not soothe the baby even for a minute in the crib during nap time, after trying at least 20 minutes?

If the baby "oversleeps" during her afternoon nap, and she didn't get much sleep during her morning nap, should you really wake her up??

What do you do when your baby takes over an hour to nurse (versus doing it under 30 minutes like the book recommends)?

In summary, I don't believe (at least not yet) the book's promise that EVERY baby can be quietly in the crib for 12 hours a night and 3 hours a day, BUT, (although it was very tough that first week) I do now have 8 hours a night by 11 weeks, and hoping for a little bit more by 12 weeks, not to mention a schedule I can plan around!

In my opinion, the concepts and scheduling ideas offered in this book make sense and are certainly worth reading!

I have no problem with this book in theory, but breastfeeding mothers should take note. If you go 12 hours without feeding or pumping, your prolactin levels will drop and you send a signal to your body to make less milk. If you are one of the lucky ones who produces copious milk, do not worry. But I produce JUST enough milk so when I went 12 hours, I saw an immediate decline in my milk supply. Lots of feeding and pumping has not gotten it back to where it was, even though I started feeding my baby at night again after only a few days. He started to lose weight after having gained beautifully for the first three months. I think this book is fantastic for formula-fed babies, but not so great if you are breastfeeding.

I gave this book an honest chance and I still recommend it as a "must read" for new parents but it did not work 100% for my daughter. We started at 9 weeks and it worked really well for establishing a daytime schedule. I loved that because she was still eating every 2-3 hours and naps were all over the place. However, the day before the book came in the mail, she slept 7 hour through the night. I still stuck with it to help establish a night time routine, which has helped us go from 7-8 hours to 10-11 hours at night and one happy baby. However, we do not stick to the plan 100%. our little one likes to take 10-20 naps after her last nap of the day and it helps her last to bedtime. Also after her last nap she will sometimes eat 2-3 times. After her last nap, we feed her whenever she gets hungry. But I don't think we would have gotten to the great place we are today if not for this book. We went from waking once a night at 9 weeks and not routine to a great day and night routine and 10 hours at night.
p.s. This is the same book as 12 hours of sleep by 12 weeks- it is just renamed.

This book was a very quick read and had some good ideas (so I thought). So, I started to use some of the ideas and my daughter's sleeping habits got worse and worse. The day I finally went back to feeding every 3 hours, she slept through the night the very next night. Huh.