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|  | Author: Marc Weissbluth
Publisher: Ballantine Books
List Price: $16.00
Buy Used: $1.61
as of 11/25/2009 00:37 CST details
You Save: $14.39 (90%)
New (48) Used (251) from $1.61
Seller: Blue_Cloud_Books
Rating:  1250 reviews
Sales Rank: 652
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Pages: 345
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0449004023
Dewey Decimal Number: 618.928498
EAN: 9780449004029
ASIN: 0449004023
Publication Date: April 12, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Book selection as BIG as Texas.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 1250
Practical Advice August 25, 2009
H. Waite-Grover (Salt Lake City, UT)
While this book is a little dense, I appreciated the thorough discussion of newborns' and older children's sleep habits. I had read way too many "get rich quick" books on getting your baby to sleep (12 hours of sleep in 12 weeks! etc. etc.), so I liked this book's explanations of the changes in babies' sleep patterns (both night time and napping) from birth through the toddler years. I followed its advice in many regards, and it helped both when my baby was a few months old (and I was trying to help her sleep through the night) and when she hit about a year old (and her daytime napping became a struggle). It is, admittedly, a little thick, so be prepared to read. However, for parents who want more detail as oppose to less when trying to get their baby to sleep better, this book fits just right.
 All parents should read August 18, 2009
Jennifer
Although a bit lengthy, this is a GREAT book to fully understand a baby's sleep cycle. As a first time parent it was hard for me to absorb all of the info before having the baby, however after the baby arrived and re-reading this book after the 1st month, it all made a lot of sense. I used most of the advice in this book and combined it with the information learned in the book "Baby Wise" as well. Although some of the suggestions in the book were not always easily done, or did I adapt, for the most part it is a good starting point to educate yourself on your baby and their behavior. Our son did not start sleeping through the night until 5 months, but ever since then he has been on a great schedule that we have stuck to. At 18 months old currently, he naps without a fuss and goes to bed at night great too. It is all about consistency and sticking to a schedule, it will make your life and theirs much more enjoyable as the book states! I have also given this book as a shower gift for all of my friends.
Not the Method I used, but got really good iedas August 18, 2009
A. Yuen (California, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm not a parent that pro the "cold turkey" method which Dr. Weissbluth actually preferred and that a good amount of his book described and demonstrated. However, I wasn't able to successfully help my daughter sleep through the night without crying until I read Dr. Weiisbluth's book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". According to Dr. Weissbluth, if the parents help develop the good sleeping habits for the baby at earlier age (as early as newborn), there's no need to sleep train the baby at all, weather it's cold turkey, controlled crying or some other methods used in the society; which I totally agree.
I used to rock, hold and nurse my daughter to sleep before she's 4 months old, in which the bad habit of sleeping was developed. As a result, she was waking up 2 - 4 times every night and wouldn't able to fall back to sleep either by us rocking or me nursing. In addition to that, she normally would scream to be picked up after 45 min - 1hr after she first fall asleep, and when we put her down again, she could wake up and scream again until we picked her up. And this can repeats for 2 hours or so after she initially fall asleep before she's finally able stay asleep for a longer period of time (usually 2 - 3 hours before she wakes up again). Then she would wake up again at 2am then at 4am, sometimes even again at 6am. As you can imagine, this is exhausting and frustrating. I wouldn't have anytime to do anything in the evening as I would need to standby to pick her up and rock her back to sleep when she wakes up and scream to be held. So after she turns 4 months old, I decided I need to help correct the "problem". But I didn't want to leave my daughter unattended for the entire night without checking her, so I bought Dr. Ferber's "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" and tried to implement his "controlled crying". I followed his method strictly for 5 nights and no success. She still cries and waking up couple times a night (I wouldn't say there were no improvement at all, but not significant enough to solve all the problems). So after that, I stopped and I went back to the old way of rocking/nursing her to sleep and back to sleep at night until she's about 5.5 months old when things not getting better but worse. Then I finally bought this book and learned all about baby sleeps and how every baby is different that I really need to observe first to determine the best solution for my baby. Some good concepts that this book outline:
1. Observe your child to determine if he/she is colicky, common fussiness or extreme fussiness, different approaches should be applied to different kind of babies. 2. Put him/her down to sleep when you first see the signs of tiredness, and he listed a list of tire signs to watch for (which I found really useful) 3. Most children under 6 months do not stay awake for longer than 2-3 hours at a time without needing a nap. 4. DO NOT just put your child down to nap when you feel like it - watch for the signs and setup schedule and stick with it 5. Most children need to go to sleep at night earlier than you'd think (6pm - 8pm).
Some other benefits of reading this book:
1) It is sub-divided into chapters by baby's age (e.g. 0 - 4 months, 5 - 12 months and etc.) and go into detail of what to expect and how to handle babies' sleeping problem at different age. I found this to be very handy as some other sleeping books are too general on teaching baby to sleep without considering the age of the baby and various things baby go through at different stages.
2) Dr. Weissbluth include a list of other sleep training methods and compare and commented on those versus his method (e.g. he commented the "controlled crying" method could work as well as his as long as the baby is not extreme fussy or colicky). It's helpful guide to help parents decide which method to use
After all the good ideas I learned from this book, and observed my child for a couple week, I decided to combine Dr. Weissbluth's concept and Dr. Ferber's method and I give my daughter a week to test our the result before turn to the cold turkey method. And on exactly the 7th day, my baby fall asleep in 2 seconds without making a sound. And she sleeps from 11- 12 hrs at night with one waking of feeding at 4am since then. It's been 3 weeks now and she's sleeping great. So I didn't end up needing to use the "cold turkey" method. Things I learned from my mistake is that
1) Be ready to make adjustment according to your child of whichever method you decided to use, it may not work by strictly following the book.
2) make sure you observe you child long enough (at least two weeks) and chart his sleeping patterns and sleep issues before trying out any method. Also observe to determine the child's temperament. You may not need to go through the "harsh" cry-it-out training if your baby is easy not colicky
3) Setup a bedtime routine. It can be anything, but make sure they're calming and soothing to your child that you can wind him/her down successfully (e.g. reading a book is a common bedtime routine, and it works well for many babies, but it didn't work for my daughter, it'll jus stimulate her more as she would be so interested/curious of the book I'm reading and grab the book and play with it herself). You'll need to experiment and find the best routine that work for you and your baby.
4) Be consistent with your routine once it proves to be working. Do not change them, even just the order
5) Be flexible of the bedtime. If the baby doesn't nap well at day time, shift bedtime earlier to avoid overtiredness. Overtired baby is more difficult to fall asleep
6) Once you start the training, stick with it at least for a week. Chart the time taken every night to obsever for improvement. Try your best not to give up half way, coz it may ruin everything and make things worse
One last remark I want to make is that I have read some other reviews that mentioned their babies either throw up or cried from 9pm to 3am in the morning and thus claimed the method not working. I oppose to that. The strong example is that my daughter cried 2 hours the first night, and still couldn't fall asleep. So I picked her up, give her a bottle, put her back down awake, and she fall asleep in 10 seconds without crying. So even though the book said not to pick baby up the whole time, use your own judgment or just common sense. Imagine yourself crying and screaming for 2 solid hours, if not hungry, you will at least be dehydrated. If you child cannot fall asleep after long hours of crying, pause for a bit and decide if you need to adjust the method accordingly (adjust the method doesn't mean the method doesn't work). Could your child be too cold/hot or wet to fall asleep? Your goal is trying to teach your child how to fall asleep on his/her own, not to abuse your child. And my bottom line is this is a great book and it's worth to buy and read, though I didn't end up using his perferred method.
Like the research - found it a little inconsistent August 16, 2009
Kath70 (Virginia, USA)
I have just finished reading this book and, as we don't yet have a baby to try it out on, it really was all theory to me.
I really appreciated that it was written by an expert on infant sleep and also that it referenced recent studies in the area. The ideas given seemed sensible. I will certainly be aiming to following them.
I did find the book a little hard going at times. I wondered if the book was a summarized version taken from the author's PhD research for example? However, perhaps my confusion was because I chose to read the book cover to cover, rather than dip in and out of it as you may do if you were a parent with an infant that had a specific sleep issue that you needed to research. Possibly, my method meant I was loaded down with information and got confused as to when the Dr is talking about colicky babies, when he is discussing newborns and when he is discussing older babies etc.
The clear guidance as to the average amount of sleep infants require, given their age, was GOLD. I also don't think I appreciated that there was a difference in sleep quality for infants sleeping in cots as opposed to sleeping "on the run" in car seats or in my arms etc. Similarly, I didn't realize just how much older children can be affected by not learning sleeping skills early on in life.
I found in one or two places that the book was a little inconsistent. For example, early in the book there was a bolded and boxed statement "Never wake a sleeping baby". Never means never to me. However, later in the book, the author outlines one or two reasons that you might have to wake a sleeping baby after all. I don't disagree with either the main rule or the caveats, but if you weren't reading the book from cover to cover then maybe you wouldn't have noticed the caveats.
I found The Contented Little Baby Book and this book seemed to have a lot in common, regarding infant sleep training. This book presented a more "gentle" guidance, whereas The Contented Little Baby Book seems to be more dogmatic in tone. Nonetheless, I found TCLBB was clearer with less inconsistencies. Together, these two books have helped me immeasurably in formulating a "plan" for how we will guide baby in their sleeping. When reality hits I believe that having some ideas for infant goals will be helpful - if possibly futile!
My 1 year old Daughter had GREAT Sleep habits August 15, 2009
S. Martin (Texas)
My friend of triplet boys sent me this book, highly recommending I read it when my daughter was born. Both my husband and I read the book and found that is made so much sense. It's easy to follow, he breaks it down by months, so it took some of the mystery out of the going to be behaviors that changed as our daughter got older. She is 13 months now and has excellent sleep habits. When we went on vacation earlier this summer, she was all out of whack. We pulled out this book and took her back to the basics and within a week, she was back to her easy to sleep self.
He supports and explains the need for a sleep schedule. It makes total sense and I can see kids at daycare that do not have a consistent sleep schedule, they are unruly. He also spends time on addressing and providing solutions to a variety of sleep challenges
I highly recommend all parents read this book.
Showing reviews 21-25 of 1250
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