some good advice, not appropriate for newborns | Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and...

High level book that's plenty good | Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby | Tracy Hogg, Melinda Blau

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	• Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby Tracy Hogg, Melinda Blau Ballantine Books, 2005 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 597 reviews view larger image
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Some good advice & common sense approaches

I enjoyed this book and some of the main themes, such as treating your infant like the little person that he/she is and beginning things as you mean to finish them. The EASY routine is a pretty good base schedule and I have found it (altered a bit) to be helpful for us. I also think that her suggestions for correcting learned behaviors are helpful, although I haven't had to use any of them. That being said, you cannot learn to be a parent from reading a book. You also should not expect to agree with or be able to apply everything the author says. I have been reading books like these to get many different views on childcare, so that I can form my own opinions and/or routines that will work best for my baby. I do think that most parents could benefit from this book, even if you only use one or two of the many tips/suggestions.

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some good advice, not appropriate for newborns

This book has some good points/tips in it. The most notable are:
1) Don't overstimulate your child
2) Get your child on an eat/play/sleep rotation
3) Respect babies
4) Talk to babies and tell them what you're doing as you're doing it
5) Give your baby cues before you do certain things
6) Catch your baby's nap signs before he/she becomes overtired

However, the book also doles out a lot of bad advice and unrealistic expectations. For example, I tried the sleeping methods in this book and they did not work for my baby at all! Just go to the babywhisperer website (full of believers in Tracy Hogg) to see all of the people who are also having trouble with pick-up/put-down and shhh/pat methods. These poor parents are staying up with their babies all night to try to get them to sleep in their own rooms/cribs and consequently not getting any sleep! My son would and still will only sleep in our bed and in my arms (He can be put down for up to 30 minutes, but then will wake up). After trying Hogg's methods out for a week, I decided it was making it impossible for me to get anything done and I decided to hold him for most of his naps. Talking to other parents, it seems that many of them have the same issue as I do. Tracy Hogg is very anti-co-sleeping and yet that is the only way I have been able to get any sleep for the past 4 months! After consulting with a child developmental psychologist, I was told that my baby would eventually outgrow this need, but for the time being, he needed bodily contact to feel secure, not an uncommon phenomenon. I seriously wonder about the effects of letting your baby cry and cry to go to sleep, even if you are staying with them, patting them on the back, while they cry. While this is not as cruel as traditional cry-it-out (leaving the baby to cry alone), it sends the same message: I'm not going to meet your needs so don't bother crying.

She also has this attitude that everything you decide to do, you should do from the moment your baby is born ("start out as you mean to go on"). Well I'm sorry, but a newborn and a 6-month-old are totally different creatures. The book does not address the types of changes that babies go through as they get older, such as not needing to nap in between every nursing, etc. It's ironic that she thinks consistency from birth onward is so important since she claims to be able to solve any problem in just 3 days.

This book also has an abysmal section on breastfeeding, in which the health benefits of breastfeeding are completely played down (if I didn't know better, I would think she owned stock in Enfamil). She also advocates timing feedings, and only nursing on one side per feeding. While I agree that you should empty one breast completely before going to the next one, most women aren't able to nurse only on one side per feeding. My breasts are very uneven with the amount of milk they produce (which is fairly common) and I was starving my poor baby for half of his feedings until I figured this out. He also wanted to nurse for an hour at a time for the first 2 months and I'm glad that I let him nurse for as long as he wanted.

Tracy Hogg justifies everything in her book by comparing babies to adults (you wouldn't want to sleep in the living room, neither does your baby, etc.) The notion that babies have the same wants and needs as adults is patently ridiculous. My son certainly didn't care what room he was sleeping in as long as I was in it, preferably holding him. She claims that when babies cry because you're putting them to sleep using her methods, it's only to tell you, "this isn't the way we normally do things." Well how does she know what the baby is trying to tell you when he cries? The bottom line is that this book was written by someone who has a lot of experience with babies but no expertise. It has some good advice, but a lot of bad advice too, so be careful what you choose to follow.

Having ranted about the book for several paragraphs, I still think it was worth the read, but only to take from it what makes sense for your child. I recommend "No-Cry Sleep Solutions" by Elizabeth Pantley and "Your Child from birth to age five" by Penelope Leach. These two books give much more realistic expectations about baby behavior.

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High level book that's plenty good

High level book that's plenty good in terms of managing expectations for newborn care. For the details/theories on why/how/physiology, you'll need much more time to read the many specialized books that abound. In retrospect, it might have been nice to read this book *before* I read some of the others so that I could more easily pick and choose the topics of interest and have some basic clue as to the different philosophies available (e.g. Ferber vs Sears) without having to read a ton of Amazon reviews. :) It's available in many libraries and while I made some notes out of the book, the messages are straightforward and easy to remember; so it probably won't qualify as a must-have reference book.

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Recommended

This is the most comprehensive book I have seen on taking care of your new baby. There are tables with information like how to tell if your baby is tired, what to do when he/she is overtired, and other practical things. The book has great information on avoiding trouble spots, like the baby being dependant on being carried or driven around in the car to sleep.
I used this book myself and bought it for several friends who are having their first or who had a hard time with their first and are on their second.

Best baby book

This is the best baby book--and I read them all!! Why?
1. All the books say "put baby in bed drowsy but awake"--she's the only person who actually describes what that means, and how to get there. AND THAT is invaluable insight.
2. The dictionary of baby cries, and baby body language is so helpful and useful, especially for first time parents.

My daughter has colic, and some of the advice here really helped reduce it, but mainly helped me deal with it. The advice on breastfeeding is excellent, and she's not presumptious or holier than thou about it. With time, and following the routine as much as possible, my baby has been sleeping through the night (ie 7 hours) from 8 weeks...

Two thumbs up

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