I am familiar with FTT and its usually a more chronic situation than a few weeks.
Even that cite lists it as “Other factors that may lead to failure to thrive” after a boatload of far more obvious and clear cut reasons. I would be far more willing to bet that such profound emotional neglect is not going to appear on its own and that other issues surrounding extreme poverty or poor living conditions have far more dramatic impact on FTT than not being cuddled enough.
To be fair though, I think the US is particularly unfair when it comes to time off after a baby. I’m not too concerned about Junior getting to sleep either as far as developing a ‘system’ or ‘training’ him. I mean, if he was awake for days I would be very concerned, but a sleepless night doesn’t bother me because I don’t have to get up and go to work. I have a full year off to get his sleeping sorted out.
If I would have had to go back after 12 weeks…well, I don’t know what I would have done. Gone bananas I suspect. In that circumstance I can understand why different sleep systems have appeal. If you need to get up at 7 AM to go to work and actually be productive while there, getting enough sleep is going to be pretty important to you.
ETA - If we have a bad night, Drew Carry doesn’t care if I fall asleep during the Price is Right while Junior is napping in his swing, ya know?
FWIW (I’m just a chatty Cathy today), RAD is thought to be caused, at least in part, by neglectful care to young children as well, including not responding to an infants cries.
That being said, letting a baby cry it out for a night or two is NOT what is talked about. More like being left alone in your crib, with hundreds of other children in there cribs, with only a handful of nurses and caregivers around to tend to you.
While it’s not impossible for an infant/child with a primary care giver who’s involved to develop RAD, it’s pretty unusual.
Tell me about it! I went back after 11 weeks with #1 and 12 weeks with #2 and I was a walking zombie for about a month, which was around the time I mastered what I call “brown-belt breastfeeding,” or the art of nursing while lying down (black belt is when you can do it in public without flashing anyone).
I don’t think I could’ve survived without having our kids in bed with us when they were tiny. Both were extremely mommy-centric and wouldn’t let anyone but me touch them without screaming bloody murder for a long time.
So true. This reminds me of a ski instructor I had many years ago. She was from England and was retired, but was a ski instructor more because it was her favorite past time. She and I were talking about raising our children, and she said that during the first year of her son’s life, most days, she just put him in the pram and pushed it out into the back yard under a tree, where he would spend hours and hours. He’d have a few toys and but mostly napped and when he was awake, would have the birds and the wind and rustling of leaves to keep him company. She said this was a common practice amongst her friends in England.
Now I have no idea whether she was pulling my leg or not, but I don’t think so.
My beef with Lavenderchick is that the OP was asking for advice. I shared what has worked for me and my family. The op could take it or not, (which she politely said that it wasn’t for her) So be it. But Lavenderchick decides it’s her mission to hijack this thread into a Babywise bashing session and insinuating that anybody that uses it is going to potentially kill their babies, which is a bunch of horseshit.
All kids are different, there is no one way to raise kid that works for everybody. There is lots of advice that has been promoted in this thread, that I personally think is damaging to kids and their parents, and could easily go dig up some cite by a psychologist or pediatrician that would support my opinion. But too each his own. I think the OP is intelligent enough to wade through the multiple opinions here and make their own conclusions. She doesn’t need me to do the sifting for her.
Whoa! I had no idea about the aminomsity towards Babywise. All I took away from it was that baby should be on a 3-hour(ish) schedule - feed, play, then nap. Rinse and repeat. We’re super-flexible with her schedule, but for the most part, we try to keep her on the 3-hour cycle, even if it means waking her up (verrrrry gently) from a nap that’s gone on too long. Otherwise, she wakes with an angry baby vengence because she’s so hungry.
My doctor recommended both Babywise and Happiest Baby on the Block as two different options for us to work on baby’s sleep issues. Which I think is totally fair - every baby is different, and every parent is different. In the end, I read both books and gleaned infomation from both, some of which I accepted and some of which I rejected. I don’t any one person or book has the perfect solution.
Glad to heart, Heart of Dorkness, that things seem to being turning around already!
OK, I just read an article outlinging the negative reactions to Babywise, and I can see why there’s reason for concern:
*
The book’s feeding schedule, called Parent Directed Feeding (PDF), consists of feeding newborns at intervals of three to three and one-half hours (described as two and one-half to three hours from the end of the last 30-minute feeding) beginning at birth. Nighttime feedings are eliminated at eight weeks.
This advice is in direct opposition to the latest AAP recommendations on newborn feeding (AAP Policy Statement, “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk,” Pediatrics, Dec. 1997): “Newborns should be nursed whenever they show signs of hunger, such as increased alertness or activity, mouthing, or rooting. Crying is a late indicator of hunger. Newborns should be nursed approximately eight to 12 times every 24 hours until satiety.”*http://ezzo.info/Aney/aneyaap.htm
Of course I feed baby Smaje whenever she shows signs of hunger! I feed her, and then we try to get back on the 3-hour schedule. Sometimes she wants to eat every 2 hours. Sometimes she wants to eat every 4 hours. I guess the important, helpful thing I took away from Babywise was the order of her activities - feed, play, sleep. It works so well for us.
I think the key to any sleep solution is flexibility!
It seems someone did in post 41. 
I wouldn’t suggest using it without a doctor’s approval of course.
I’m not going to get into defending Babywise, because I haven’t read all the research or anything, but it was one of the books I read when I had my first baby. And I distinctly remember it said multiple times, that if your baby is hungry you absolutely should feed him. It never said you absolutely must not feed your baby except when the clock strikes the three hour mark, it just gives methods to work towards that general schedule. And the feed, play, nap thing was a godsend for me…I had been feeding my baby to sleep, she would fall asleep before she got a full feeding, and thus would wake up before she had her nap out because she was hungry. It was a vicious cycle, and I was feeding a constantly cranky baby like every hour or so.
So it worked for me, but I’m well aware it’s just an anecdote.
Pointing out concerns raised by a group of pediatricians about a poorly written book is not irrational. YOU brought up the book. You have not refuted what the AAP stated other than to complain that I brought up concerns in the first place.
Babywise IS horseshit and deserves to be bashed. The idiot authors need to keep writing new editions because they aren’t medical people and real medical keep pointing out flaws in their work. Despite your repeated assertions to the contrary, the book advocates policies that can literally harm babies. Parents deserve to know that should they mistakenly turn to it for advice.
With all due respect to the OP, she is not the only one reading this thread. I certainly hope she’s found some useful suggestions. At the present time I am currently 31 weeks pregnant. I am reading this one very carefully to store up suggestions so that if my daughter has sleeping problems in the future (like her sister did) I can find some useful advice that works and won’t put the baby at risk. I trust the Straight Dope. Part of that trust is rooted in the knowledge that this is one of the few places on the net where bad advice will thankfully be confronted without hesitation or reservation.
I was gone for the day when my daughter was about two months old on a work related conference. It was a weekend and my husband was looking after her. I came home. The baby instantly smiled and stopped screaming. She’d apparently been screaming just about every single minute since I left. It took me over an hour to convince my poor husband that our baby did not hate his guts.
He had his moment of amusement later when she said dada months before she said mamma.
It’s ridiculous America is still one of the very few countries without paid maternity leave.
Not sure what this has to do with getting babies to sleep, but many companies in the US do offer it. Other’s offer use of paid sick time and vacation. If the company you work for doesn’t offer the benefits you want, you are free to find another company that does.
I can’t speak for LavenderBlue, but she was responding to overly, who was in turn responding to alice, who was saying, essentially, that US parents wouldn’t consider sleep to be a problem if mom didn’t have to go back to work for a year, as is mandated in the UK. And that’s certainly true in my case, at least. We’d have a lot fewer concerns about the baby (sleep, breastfeeding, daycare, health issues, etc.) if I could just stay home for a year - or, say, if my husband and I could each have 6 months and take turns - and know that I could then return to my job. As alice said, if he got up 5 times in a night, who cares? I could just nap the next day.
The issue of paid vs. unpaid leave is a bit of a tangent, since even in the UK, the majority of that year is not required to be paid. The point, though, is that if the leave is unpaid, many moms can’t afford to take it, meaning it may as well not exist (not to mention that companies of 50 employees or fewer aren’t required to offer leave at all).
It’s true that moms in this situation are free to find a company that offers paid leave, and I have indeed heard of companies that do, but I’m willing to bet that the vast majority don’t, because they’re not required to. Particularly in the current economy, employers aren’t exactly desperate to entice new employees with extravagant benefits. On the contrary, my and many of my friends’ employers are cutting benefits right now, because they can do so without worrying about losing employees. But even in a good economy, I’d imagine that most companies don’t offer more than the minimum unpaid maternity leave, because they’re not especially interested in attracting workers who intend to make use of that benefit.
So in short, my guess is that Lavender was basically saying, “Not only do we not get a year of leave (which would be helpful in dealing with sleep issues), many of us don’t get (or can’t afford to take) any, and that sucks.” And it does. I can’t imagine what I would have done if I’d had to go back to work right away. 12 weeks feels like nothing, but it’s still way better than literally nothing.
Sorry, I did not intend any hostility towards you.
Because I’m going with the majority of scientists and doctors on this one, as with all scientific matters. Not because consensus is always right (it has often been wrong by lagging behind), but because generally it’s a better indicator to follow what 1 000 scientists state than what 10 scientists say.
And regarding pedagogics and pediatrics, I do discount the general opinions from a culture that has beating as official educational method, or considers the method of boot camps approriate for teens who dare to talk back. Because to me, that’s over a hundred years behind current scientific consensus.
Do I need to go back to the first page and list all the non tongue-in-cheek advice about letting the baby cry?
This is absolutely true. In my company, as in many companies, you only get paid while on maternity leave if you have short-term disability insurance through your company. Yes, having a baby is considered a short-term disability, which provides you a percentage of your typical pay (in my case, it was 70%). That typically lasts 6 weeks. After that, many women are forced to go back to work because they can’t do without the pay. If you’re lucky enough to afford to take the hit, the rest of the maternity leave - your 6 weeks remaining, because the time you spent on STD also counts toward maternity leave - is 6 weeks unpaid.
I almost chose to leave my company because they originally told me that they couldn’t provide me anywhere to pump other than a public bathroom, and I’d rather that my work situation not dictate how I feed my baby. Apparently I was “valuable” enough to them that they decided that, wait, they did have room for me to pump privately after all.
I felt very lucky that I could afford the 6 weeks of unpaid leave. Many women can’t. And companies are not currently required (though they will be under healthcare reform, I believe) to provide a private location for women to express milk. And if you choose to leave the workforce for a while to take care of your children, women typically have to start their careers all over again at a much lower pay rate than they had been earning previously.
Exactly. Baby sleep issues are easier to deal with when you don’t have to juggle returning to work on top of everything else.
No, but it would be nice if you stopped equating “letting the baby cry” with “ignore the baby as it cries all night long”.
Was this several years ago? Because when I had my baby (Jan 2010) HR told me it was required by federal law for workplaces to provide a place to pump other than a public bathroom. I think it may be a fairly recent thing, though.
I’m wondering if this law might’ve applied to you, too, and someone in HR suddenly realized you could have ammunition to sue their butts off.
That’s probably true. I had kind of a straddle situation - my daughter was born in 2009 (the day after my birthday); I came back to work in February 2010. Quite possibly they realized that they had to provide me a room. Of course, it was a converted janitor’s closet attached to a public bathroom where you could hear everything, but at least it was separate, had a lock and they made attempts to make it more comfortable. It was much better than the public locker room/bathroom I used with my son in 2006.
As everyone else has pointed out, there really isn’t one method that works with every child. I did want to highlight this section. Think about this for a moment…your baby is 5 months old, probably can’t roll over on his own. And you’re worried about teaching him how to sleep on his own. Remember that babies aren’t just little people that need to have things explained in simpler terms, they are physically still developing. So don’t try so hard to train them to do this or that.
We have two children, one co-slept with us, the other slept in his crib/bed from the get go. They’re both fine and it doesn’t really matter in the slightest when all is said and done. Nobody graduates HS still sleeping with their parents. So do what is best for you guys. If you’re not getting enough rest, you’re going to have a harder time with the 10,000 other things you have to take care of as new parents.
Another suggestions is to designate nights. So one night he gets up with the baby and takes care of it while you sleep (with earplugs if you need them), the next night you take care of the baby and let him sleep. This gives you a chance to recover so that both of you aren’t zombies.
Good Luck!