Customer Reviews

On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep

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I would like to respond to the reviewers that suggest those of us who disliked babywise didn't read it, or didn't apply its principles properly. I read, re-read and highlighted the book after a friend of mine recommended it. And for a solid month I faithfully attempted to place my newborn on the babywise schedule, but it just did not work for my son. For example, my son often awoke earlier from his nap than the schedule would allow. Sometimes he would wake crying, sometimes happy. If he was crying, I would allow him to cry because the book suggests if your baby awakes crying he did not get enough sleep. But, he never fell back asleep. So then I would feed him only to find he was starving. But how was I to know he was hungry...babwise never once discusses reading your baby's cues, only "mom, not baby, decides when nap begins, and mom, not baby, decides when nap ends." If he woke happy, then I really was in a bind. He would play awake in his crib (even if I didn't go to him) so now he was having activity before eating (a babywise no-no). But if I fed him, he would be fed before 2 ½ hours (another babywise no-no). I tried putting him to bed for naps earlier, because the book states that if your child awakes early he probably was overtired and needed less activity, but my son would still awake after 45-60 minutes. I was constantly stressed out.

After one month on babywise, my son was still not back to his birth weight. I quit using the system and my son started rapidly gaining weight. We both became happier. I can't say I disagree with the overall concepts of the book...promoting full feedings instead of snacking, frequent daytime feedings to help baby distinguish day from night, teaching a baby to fall asleep on his/her own, and the importance of sleep to both a baby and his/her parents. I just disagree with the presentation. Babywise assumes all babies fit into its schedule, and in truth, they just don't.

This is obviously a very controversial book. I do not think you have to have an MD/PhD after your name to know something about raising a baby, but the fact that the author has absolutely no medical/childcare background concerns me, especially when the concepts are so radically different from what most pediatricians/child psychologists recommend. Just because something works (i.e. gets you baby to sleep through the night), doesn't make it the best thing for your child.

As a side note, I never co-slept or wore my baby in a sling all day long (though I feel if this works for you and your baby then great...this just isn't my style of parenting). I definitely feel babies need parental guidance, but I think parents must take their baby's temperaments into account. Once I started reading other books, I learned how to better read my babies cues, and I no longer had to fight him to sleep, eat or stay awake. I used a combination of several other books (No Cry Sleep Solution, Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide and Baby Whisperer) and am happy to report I have a 9 month old who sleeps 11 hours per night and takes 2 good naps a day...oh and has been sleeping 10 hrs/night since 3 months of age. He is an absolute joy and everywhere I take him people comment on how happy and content he is...in church, restaurants and shopping. It can be done without babywise!

I am a first-time mom of a now 6 month old baby, and I have read SEVERAL books including the No-Cry Sleep Solution, Baby Wise, The Happiest Baby on the Block, a wonderful little book called N.A.P.S., and parts of Ferber's book. Baby Wise was recommended to me by 3 very good friends. I read the book before my child was born and was ready to put him on a schedule at 3 weeks of age. That was my first mistake. I have come to realize over the past few months that it's easy to say that every baby is different, but the truth of the matter is that no one program could possibly work for every child. If it could, then there wouldn't be so many books and theories out there.

Baby Wise did not work for me. And yet without it, my son slept through the night at 2 months of age. I think I'm just lucky. I don't believe it's necessarily because of anything special that my husband and I did. I do think it might have had something to do with The Happiest Baby on the Block because that book led us to swaddle our baby which lengthened his nighttime sleep and naps dramatically. And yet we dropped swaddling at night at 2 months of age.

Here's my main issue with Baby Wise. It states ideas like "Mom, not baby, decides when the nap begins and when the nap ends." There's also a similar statement about Mom deciding how much comes out of the bottle, not the baby. At the time I didn't think much of it. Now when I think about those statements, it makes it sound like a power struggle between a parent and a baby. An infant does not have an agenda. He or she is not trying to manipulate the parents. That comes later. :-)

I was talking to a friend whose baby is due in 2 months. I told her that what I had truly learned in the past 6 months is that no one technique works for every baby and that what works for my baby one day may not work for him the next. I also told her that it is easier for me to adapt to my son than for him to adapt to me. And that part is tough because he doesn't nap well. And I've left him to cry, thinking I would try that idea that Mom decides when the nap ends. Whatever. I don't want my son sleeping from exhaustion due to screaming his head off for an hour or more. That's not Baby Kind.

The irony here is that I am very much a control freak. And this book is too controlling for me. It's too much, and I think it expects too much out of an innocent, helpless baby who has no agenda or the ability to manipulate. And guess what? He's a really happy baby, laughing and talking and still sleeping 11 hours at night. I hope every night that it lasts, but I imagine that one night soon, he might wake up. And I'll go to him because I'll know he needs me.

All of this said, I only have the one child. A routine and schedule is more than likely more necessary if you have more than one child. So I can see why friends recommended it. But to expect this rigid routine from a baby whose nervous system is still maturing is just expecting too much. Let your baby be a baby, and enjoy him or her through every stage, no matter how trying.

Bottom line...this book expects too much of a baby. There is a lesser-known book called N.A.P.S. that got me through a trying period of short naps, and like I said earlier, The Happiest Baby on the Block got me through the early weeks due to the swaddling. I also really love the theory that Karp promotes of the 1st 3 months of life basically being the 4th trimester. I think that's what he calls it anyway.

So you see, 2 books helped me along the way,and I'm sure I'll read more as the need arises. Just be realistic if you buy this book and expect your baby to be a baby, not a miniature adult.

I think some of the people who don't like this book have missed the point! The authors take pains to say that Parent Directed Feeding (PDF) should ONLY be used as a guideline.... they say that if your baby is hungry, feed them. They don't advocate that babies are left to "cry it out" although they do say there is no harm letting them cry for 10/15 minutes to see if they will re-settle (I lasted about 5 minutes!)
I devoured this book as a first time Mum, with no idea of how to start scheduling my little one. I used their method of Eat-Activity-Sleep as a guideline and it totally transformed my life. However, I didn't stress if we missed the odd nap or fed a little earlier or later. If you use this method as a framework to base your own instinct on, then you can get fabulous results. Our girl still wakes once in the night, but she's only 4 months old and that's fine by me! She is a totally happy little soul and I'm convinved that much of that has to do with the confidence that this book gave me!

I read this book when my son was about 3 weeks old, and I was smitten by the easy prose and compelling evidence - a study done that put PDF (parent-directed feeding) against AP (attachment parenting). Our breastfeeding relationship was not developing well and I was a complete mess. The book seemed to offer so much common sense advice, and I certainly didn't want my child to be a needy, rambunctious brat. It seemed like if I went with AP instead of PDF, that's exactly what would happen.

In the ensuing weeks, I tried over and over again to put my son on the "flexible routine" put forth in Babywise. But I quickly realized that it would never work for us, and was just adding unneeded stress onto my life. I put it on the shelf and forgot about it until I came across some information on the internet about the history of Babywise. After reading through scores of testimonials involving malnourished babies, I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't push my son into the schedule. Listening to him cry for hours simply didn't work for me.

Through further research, I learned that I have a high-needs baby who needs (and loudly asks for) constant connection. It was hard for me to put aside all of the advice that I learned from Babywise - the use of props, nursing to sleep, feeding on cue, but I no longer felt guilty about responding to my child. Now at 4 months, my son is such a joy for me. I love coming home after work and nursing until he falls asleep. I love babbling and laughing with him as he takes breaks from nursing. And I love feeling 100% assured that by paying attention to my own instincts, I am doing the absolute best I can by my baby.

I could never, in good conscious, recommend this book to anyone because of the guilt I felt when I wasn't with the program, and because of the "all or nothing" attitude that is pervasive throughout the pages. Every child is different, and I'm sure that some thrive on this program, but mine did not and I'm glad I quit before it was too late.

If you are looking for a book filled with the latest scientific research on children and sleep, go and read Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell, PhD, associate director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. That book is based on science and explains why training your child to have good sleep habits (i.e., training your child to fall asleep on his own without your intervention) is important for their future as children and adults. Her book also lays out a method for sleep-training. Basically, once your baby reaches 12 lb., she has you put them to bed awake every night at the same time until they have learned to fall asleep on their own. (Obviously this is not the totality of the system. I'm summing up.) It works great. But it's really, really difficult on mother and child, and only a minority of people are willing to really go through with it because it means a week or two of nightly crying. Ugh.

So then there is On Becoming Baby Wise. The book isn't written by a scientist. And it isn't perfect in that the layout is not as direct as it could be, while meanwhile there are a lot of editorial asides you may or may not agree with. HOWEVER, Ezzo* has basically devised (stumbled upon?) an approach that is very similar to Mindell's except a lot gentler on mother and child. Instead of waiting until the baby is physically capable of sleeping through the night (when he's reached about 12 lb.), he has you start setting the stage for good sleep right away by getting them used to a flexible schedule** of feedings and naps and by putting them down for their naps while they are still awake. Since newborns are so sleepy all the time, and especially after feedings, Ezzo's big contribution was the discovery that if you fed the baby, then interacted with the baby for a while, then put the baby to nap instead of the more natural tendency to nurse the baby to sleep for naps, it becomes actually possible to put a newborn to nap awake. Then, of course, since newborns will fall asleep quickly and easily (i.e. 5-20 minutes of crying max) even if they are put down awake (as opposed to the 3 or 4 month old you are trying to sleep train with Mindell's method who will cry for an hour), they learn really quickly the habit of falling asleep by themselves. By the time they are 12 lb., they are already sleeping through the night without any brutal sleep training. And voila! Ezzo has discovered (stumbled upon?) a better way of doing what the sleep scientists recommend.

We used Mindell's method for our first three children. Then we used the Baby Wise method for our next three children. (Yes, we have six.) All six of them have slept twelve hours every night starting by about 4 months of age. All of them have continued to go to bed early, happily, and in their own beds. They all wake up happily 12 hours later, usually singing. We get told constantly that are kids are so content and well-behaved. Honestly, the only thing we are doing as parents differently than other people is training them to sleep. Both methods work, but Baby Wise is easier, so I continue to give it as a gift to new mothers.

*I don't know anything about Ezzo except that he's controversial as a person. Maybe I wouldn't like him if I met him. I'd like to point out, though, that the how well his method works has nothing to do with how nice of a personality he has. Saying otherwise is a classic ad hominem attack. Like saying you don't believe in Einstein's theory of relativity because Einstein was unfaithful to his wife.

** For those who are against scheduling all together, I get it. I think that since attachment parenting/anti-scheduling is such a class marker (i.e. all upper class/respectable women cary their baby in a Moby wrap and feed on demand) and so strongly pushed by the la leche league-trained lactation consultant at the hospital, it can be hard to go against the grain and adopt a schedule. I would urge people to consider two things:

1) most (all?) NICU's will immediately put 4 lb. babies on a rigid (down to the minute) 3-hour feeding schedule. Ask your lactation consultant/well-meaning friend why it will hurt your 8 lb. newborn to be on a 3-hour feeding schedule but not a 4 lb. preemie.

2) If you take your baby to bed with you there is a good chance he will never leave. I know so many women who are chronically sleep-deprived because they have their five-year-old and their two-year old still in bed with them. At least one man told my husband, "My wife wants another baby, but the other two kids are in our bed half the night. I'm never going to agree to have another one." Yikes.

I do not say this about many baby books, but this is one I would advice new mothers to steer clear of. This man does not have a medical degree, and the advice in his books is dangerous.

Letting a small baby cry himself/herself to sleep doesn't feel right, does it? I know of several mothers who have sat outside their baby's room crying, while the baby cries alone in the dark. Why do the mothers cry? Because something innate inside a mother urges her to respond to her baby's cries.

Sure, you can easily get a baby to sleep for 7-8 or even 12 hours a night. You can even teach a baby to never cry, simply by never responding to his or her signals. In many orphanages around the world, the babies are eerily quiet. There is little or no crying. Why is that? Because these babies have learned that their cries will not be heard, and have entered "survival mode," conserving energy by passively falling asleep or lying there quietly just waiting for someone to come and help.

Is that what you want for your child? How important is that good nights sleep to you? What is the cost of that sleep? Our babies are small for such a tiny part of our lives. Their basic challenge for the first two years (according to Erik Erikson and other developmental psychologists) is to learn to trust. Trust that mommy will come when he/she needs her.

Also, a thought about breastfeeding. I breastfed my son exclusively (with no solids) until 6 months of age. (This is the current recommendation of the WHO and the medical field as a whole.) I would never have had enough milk for him if it hadn't been for occasional cluster feedings. During times when my milk supply increased, it was necessary to sometimes feed him every hour or two for a few days, before the milk supply increased enough to go back to his usual 3-4 hours between feedings. And breastfeeding a 6-month old (without solids) with no night feedings? Forget it! Those feedings are necessary to keep the milk supply up. I know of several women who have had to introduce solids because their baby started sleeping through the night and their milk supply decreased.

My advice--enjoy your baby. Go with what your heart tells you. Your baby is tiny for such a short time...he won't keep waking up for years and years. Make the most of the time with your baby while he/she is little.

There's already been a lot of feedback written about this book, so I will try to keep this brief. It was given to me by 2 different families who have wonderful, well-adjusted children, so I read it and very much took it to heart. I enthusastically recommended it to people even before I delivered because it sounded so wonderfully ideal for baby and parents.

Unfortunately, after much time exercising the advice with my daughter my circumstances forced me to face that it wasn't working for us. In fact, I believe that applying these principles greatly contributed to my difficulties nursing and my daughter's failure to thrive. (She lost weight the first 6 weeks and it took a few months to regain to her birth weight. Interestingly enough, the author even attributes his method to resolving this same issue in a demand-fed failure-to-thrive infant in one of the chapters! That's why I had a hard time just giving up his methods.)

(I think the author relies on his/his wife's experience too heavily and attempts to apply this to all mothers. The fact of the matter is, all women are different with regard to lactation and all babies are different in their skill/efficiency in stimulating lactation. I'm glad they did not have these issues. It's emotionally taxing and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.)

It took several months for me to completely abandon most if not all of the advice here and for our feeding and sleeping to find a healthy pattern for us. My daughter didn't sleep "through the night" for a very long time, but my priority had to become to feed her and see her grow. In fact very early on (10 months) I discovered that she awoke at night because she had to relieve herself. Understanding this made potty training incredibly efficient and we achieved some success with it very early. Now at age 2 she will wake some nights to use the bathroom and get back into bed. I don't mind the brief interruption to sleep. She's never had problems wetting the bed. I wonder if I had been so focused on uninterrupted sleep if I'd have noticed this pattern and been able to take advantage of it to teach her what that "sensation" is.

Ultimately I will admit that after fighting an uphill battle trying to apply the counsel here I reluctantly fell into a style more like that of the "demand-feeding, attachment parent" that the author criticizes continually throughout the book. I'm proud of that fact now. To become what I resisted for the good of my daughter and my family just shows me how empowering motherhood is and that my priorities can be right on the mark.

My daughter is as intelligent and well adjusted as the children I hoped/tried to model when I eagerly awaited the opportunity to apply the advice in this book. I guess there are several ways to be a good parent and this book is not necessarily a "silver bullet" for all readers. I'm glad it worked for them, but I respectfully disagree that this is the one and only way to be "Baby Wise".

I'm pregnant again and due in 3 weeks. This time I'm doing things very differently. Just for starters...I threw this book away.

This book was given to me by a trusted friend when I was pregnant with my first child a number of years ago. Because I respected my friend's opinion, and because I liked some of what the book had to say about "parent centered" families, I thought I'd give it a try. After my daughter was born, it quickly became obvious that she had not read the book. Her sleep-wake cycles bore no resemblance whatsoever to what the book said to expect, and she had *zero* interest in sitting in her bouncy seat for 20 minutes looking out the window. I pored in vain through the pages, trying to find some section that would tell my what to do with my "abnormal" baby. After a few weeks of anguish and frustration, and (thank God) only one night of trying to follow the "crying it out" advice in the book, it dawned on me that the book was worthless, at least for *my* baby, and I gave up on trying to implement its strategies. I am so thankful that I gave it up as early as I did, before any real damage was done.
Even friends and family I know who swore by the book for their first child...somehow by #2 or #3 they seem to have given it up completely. I think it sometimes just takes some perspective and experience in parenting to realize that babies are precious and temporary gifts to be cared for and treasured, not to be denied and ignored as this book recommends.

I read this book cover to cover, and I used it with my middle child. It works. People have been saying it's too regimented; they had to make thier children cry it out. They had to leave baby alone when awake from a nap. Come on, people. It's a book. Adjust it to yours and your baby's needs. The basic idea, full feedings (not snacking), good naps, baby falling asleep by himself, etc. is good stuff. Build a schedule off your baby. Its not like a recipe; you don't have to follow it exactly. My middle child, and now my 5 month old, are great sleepers thanks to the ideas in Baby Wise.

Is Ezzo who he says he is? An inquiry by CT into Ezzo's background surfaces many new questions about his training, his conduct, and his professional interactions. Parents trust Ezzo to be professional and authoritative on parenting, yet many are not aware that he has no professional background in child development, medicine, or breastfeeding support.

Ezzo, GFI, and his publisher have attributed to him three different academic degrees that he does not have. Ezzo stated in writing that he had an associate's degree in business from Mohawk Community College in Utica, New York, even specifying a major and a grade-point average. He never graduated from that school, officials say.

GFI and Ezzo's publisher, Multnomah, have both said he earned a master's degree in Christian education, but he holds no such degree. The master of arts in ministry that he does have gives significant credit for life experience and is designed for noncollege graduates.

Two California churches have issued statements saying that Gary Ezzo, president of Growing Families International (GFI), is unfit for Christian ministry. Both of the churches have interacted closely with Ezzo.

Ezzo and his wife, Ann Marie, developed the popular yet highly controversial infant-feeding program outlined in Preparation for Parenting. They also developed the bestseller On Becoming Babywise and several church-marketed programs for parents, including Growing Kids God's Way.

Living Hope Evangelical Fellowship of Granada Hills, California, officially "excommunicated" Ezzo on April 30. Ezzo and his wife had already stopped attending the church.

The elders of Living Hope issued a statement saying they believe Ezzo is "biblically disqualified from all public ministry" because of a lack of truthfulness, Christian character, and accountability.

Two other congregations have taken similar punitive measures against Ezzo in the past 20 years.

Living Hope is the congregation to which Ezzo said he was accountable when Sun Valley's Grace Community Church, pastored by author John MacArthur, severed its support for Ezzo and GFI.

Grace Community is where Ezzo served as a staff member and first developed his parenting programs. Grace disavowed all association with GFI in October 1997, publicly rebuking him due to divisiveness.

Grace Community also rejects GFI curriculum. "[Ezzo] failed to draw a clear line between what is biblical and what is his preference," Phil Johnson, an elder at Grace Community, told the Southern California Christian Times in September. "The whole thing is fraught with danger. It obscures what is biblical."

MacArthur issued a second statement on July 25, saying he believes Ezzo is disqualified "from Christian leadership or public ministry in any context" and that character issues Grace brought to Ezzo's attention years ago remain unresolved. More than 15 years ago, His Vantage Point Church in Laconia, New Hampshire, asked Ezzo to step down as pastor-teacher in part because of his divisive conduct.

Churches are not the only ones severing ties to Ezzo and GFI. The accounting firm of Hamilton, Boynton, and Speakman terminated its relationship with GFI in February. The firm has issued no corporate comment. But Chris Hamilton, a partner at the firm, says Ezzo misled him personally regarding the firm's investigation of whether GFI funds were misappropriated.