My husband and I have always been a fan of suggestions and learning from other people’s experiences. Before we were even pregnant we were asking friends about different parenting tools and techniques they used so once we were pregnant, you can only imagine how our questions went into full throttle. One of the biggest questions we had was about sleep. How do we get through the first year and sleep? How do babies sleep? What is sleep training? Can we get a baby on our own schedule? Basically a million questions along those lines.
We were sitting with friends who had 4 children one night and asked them what they recommended most for new parents and they immediately told us about a book called Babywise. Our friend mentioned that all FOUR of her children were sleeping through the night by 8 weeks and we were sold. Sign us up. She also mentioned that someone else she had suggested the book to had hated it so much she threw it away.
A couple of weeks later we asked a friend who was a single parent of two if she had ever heard of Babywise and she said she swore by it and again that both of her kids were sleeping through the night from 2-3 months and never had any sleep regressions. At this point we were sold. The book was ordered faster than you can say Amazon Prime.
So what exactly is Babywise? It is a form of “scheduling” your baby’s life so that their needs are met but balanced within your own life. It is a balance between baby-directed feeding and parent-directed feeding in order to establish a routine that ensures baby is eating, playing, and sleeping all in a balance. I have had some people say that Babywise neglects or starves babies but those people are uneducated in what the system is, and I can assure you my friends’ children and our own baby are thriving.
Babywise centers on the theory of “Eat, Wake, Sleep” as in, if a baby does not sleep well, then they will not eat well, which means they won’t play well, or sleep well, and you see how the cycle goes. Instead of waiting for our baby to wake up crying from hunger, or wake up crying for who knows what reason, we established a timeline of feedings that balanced sleeping with eating. This also eliminates some “sleep crutches” like feeding to sleep. After a set amount of sleep (age dependent), we wake her up and immediately change and feed her. Then, she is awake for play time until it is time for her next nap. We never let her sleep “as long as she wanted” – we stuck to a very specific schedule and would wake her up to feed her. Yup, we woke a sleeping baby. However, after a year I can say that she has never cried when we woke her up and she has never cried from hunger.
Example Schedule
Babywise does not suggest NOT feeding your baby if they need it off schedule, it just basically says that if you stick to the schedule, odds are they won’t need it. This was the case for us. I can count on one hand the amount of times she needed an extra snack or “cluster fed” during the days and all of them were in the first 6 weeks of her life.
Days vs Nights
Some people say their babies have their “days and nights confused” the first few weeks or even months but we never had this issue. The first couple weeks we followed a very loose schedule but never let her go more than 3 hours without eating. This eliminated a “day or night” entirely. After two weeks, we slowly added a bit more time (an hour at a time) to the nighttime portion of her sleep, eventually “merging” two sleeps together, and then a third. Basically we slowly created “nighttime” for her and she never stayed awake through her sleep only to sleep during the day. Not letting her just sleep as long as she wanted for naps during the day was also essential to this timing.
Safe Sleep
This one is not Babywise exclusive, it is essential for all babies and written on extensively by the American Association of Pediatrics but it still needs to be addressed. For us, safe sleep meant absolutely nothing in the bassinet or crib, swaddles until 8 weeks then transition to a sleep sack, and absolutely no bed-sharing. Most SIDS related infant deaths have to do with bed-sharing. Babywise actually recommends moving your baby into their own room at 8 weeks but we chose to wait until 3 months. The AAP suggests 6 months but having her in our room would have been detrimental to both her and our sleep.
Traveling
You may think “if she is on such a tight schedule, doesn’t any deviation throw her off?” and for us, the answer is no. In fact, we have been able to keep to the schedule most of the time while traveling. Her body seems to know the schedule and she will generally fall asleep within her nap times. Sometimes the excitement cuts into naps but she doesn’t tend to get fussy over it and she is able to bounce right back into her normal routine the next day. If we plan a later dinner, we will bring her stroller in and when it hits bedtime, we put her in it and she falls right to sleep. If anything her Babywise schedule has probably made traveling less stressful for us because we can plan to be driving during naps or plan dinners around bedtime (see my blog post on traveling with an infant here).
Ultimately every baby is different and you have to do what works best for your family but we can’t stop singing the praises of the guidance this book provided us. As first time parents, the structure has really helped us know we are meeting her needs and not missing anything which seems to have kept new-parent anxiety mostly at bay. We have a lot of comfort in the routine and once most people see how it works for us they see how well it works. If you have questions, leave them in the comments below!
Xx
Kali
