You might or might not heard of Babywise before. I will give a brief introduction of Babywise. It is the infant management plan that helps infants synchronize their feeding, wake-time and night time sleep cycles by using parent directed feedings (PDF) method. There are a lot of praises as well as criticism on this theory. Since I am using this theory on Esrene, I thought of sharing my experience and thoughts here.
When Esrene was just few days old, I was told by the lactation consultants to use demand feeding on her, which is the method most of the people practicing. Oh boy, it was a nightmare for me and Selwyn! I will have to feed her as and when she cried (which we assume she is hungry after checking to make sure she has clear nappies). I had to feed her in 30 min, 45 min, 1 hour or 2 hours time. Her sleeping and feeding was everywhere and I was miserable having to feed her on demand, especially at night! We tried for 2 days and decided it was too much for us. So I picked up the Babywise book that I read during my pregnancy and decided to give it a try. I tried the Babywise approach for 2 days and I started to see "the light"!!! She was feeding well and starts to have a schedule. By the end of 7 weeks, Esrene started to sleep through the night (9 hours), just like what the book says!
These are the things we practice from Babywise:
1. Putting Esrene on the schedule of feed, wake, sleep
After feed, I will try to keep her awake for a while (for newborn normally just 5 to 10 min) before putting her down to sleep. I will try to let her has at least 1 to 1.5 hours of nap each cycle.
2.
Keep Esrene on 3 hours feeding schedule during day time (you can do 2.5 hours depends on your baby)
Newborn are sleep head. They can sleep for very long hour without feed. I wake Esrene up after 3 hours if she did not wake up herself to ask for the feed. However, night time I will let her sleep until she wakes up herself (but not over 5 hours to maintain my milk supply). For newborn, make sure she has 7 feeds per day. Esrene is having 6 feeds now after she starts to sleep through the night for 9 hours. When they grow bigger, you can extend their feed longer to say 3.5 hours to 4 hours. If they wake up crying for milk shorter than your predicted hour, feed them.
3.
Using cry it out (CIO) sleeping approach
After putting
Esrene on the cot to sleep, we will let
Esrene cries for a short period of time, maximum 30
mins, before offering comfort. No rocking, no carrying her on the arm to sleep and put her down when she is still awake. The purpose behind is to let the child learn to soothe themselves to sleep. It is never easy to hear your baby crying. At the beginning I can't bear it, but have to close the door and went out to the living room to avoid hearing the cry. I even tempted to let her fall asleep on my breast then only put her down to her cot, but this is not the way to teach her to sleep herself. It requires
perseverance, patience and consistency. This is the toughest part in the whole approach I reckon. Now
Esrene will only cry for 2-3
mins before she goes to sleep herself, sometimes she will not even cry.
4.
"Wait and see" approach when she cryWe were told not to pick up the baby straight from the cot/bassinet when she cries because a lot of baby will have sleep crying, which is very common in their sleeping cycle. During her 3 hour cycle, Esrene will sleep for around 45 min then she will start her sleep crying. Before that I will go in and pick her up thought she is awake. So now when she cry half way through her sleep, I will let her cry for 5-10 mins before I pick her up. 95% of the time she will go back to sleep within 3 min and sleeps for one more hour!! Looking back, I have ruin her sleep last time by picking her up so early!
My feedback on Babywise:
1. Good theory to helps parents set a good feeding and sleeping schedule for the baby. End result ---> happy little bub!
2. Parent directed feeding will not affect baby's weight gain. Esrene has been gaining every good weight. Moreover, if she is hungry before 3 hours, I will still feed her. This is the principle of PDF.
3. A little cry will not hurt the child or make her feel "unloved". Esrene wakes up smiling at us most of the time.
4. When the schedule is established, we parents can plan our day more efficiently. Happy parents, happy baby.
I am not trying to promote Babywise. I am just sharing it as it works for me and Esrene. If you are interested to try out this theory, you can read more from the book
On Becoming Babywise. I also found out this blog which gives a lot of good solutions and sharing on Babywise and other children sleeping, eating matter:
http://babywisemom.blogspot.com
I hope these sharing help!
