Rating: 
Summary: It really works!
Review: Finally, a book that really can help the sleep-deprived parents out there teach their babies to sleep better without leaving them alone to cry themselvs to sleep. There is a better way! This book is a detailed, informaive text on normal sleep and baby sleep patterns. It is non-judgemental regarding breast/bottle feeding and other decisions that parents may make. It offers detailed information on developing a customized sleep plan for your own family and each individual baby.We had tried letting our daughter "cry it out" before with terrible results. Not only didn't it work, but she got so stressed out by it that she suddenly refused to nurse anymore. Needless to say, we were never going to do that to her (or any other child of ours) again. This book offers an alternative. No longer must we choose between sleep-deprivation and "crying it out." Elizabeth's approach is based on a gradual relearning of "sleep-associations" so that your baby will learn to get herself back to sleep without your help, but emphasizes that the baby can learn at her own pace! For all those desperate parents out there, please give this book a try. You will be sleeping before you know it!
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Summary: No crying for anyone!
Review: Good news, mums and dads: no more "crying it out". This means that worried mums no longer have to take long walks outside while their distraught husbands "ferberize" their wailing 6 month olds. For many parents, this will be a welcome relief. Elizabeth Pantley has come up with a "plan" to change your sleeping life... which you customize to your own needs and wishes. Her solutions are kind to babies and parents and, from a behavioural psychology perspective, they work. Babies are gently conditioned to accept a sleep routine and parents are gently encouraged to stick with it, document it, and revise what doesn't work. It's wonderful. Not only has Pantley come up with this incredible plan, she's also tried it out with several test families. For almost all of them, it worked. And if it doesn't work for you, she gives you some "what to do next" ideas. I found this book after I had trained my son to sleep through the night(without waking every 2 hours to nurse) and I was encouraged that I used some of the same strategies. However, there were a few things that would have been extremely helpful to our situation. That being said, since my son was approaching the age of 2, I did take her suggestion to make a story book of photos of his day... right through to sleeping through the night and getting dressed the next morning... with no nursing mentioned (we're starting to wean). He loves this book and often requests it at bedtime. It's very reassuring. If you are pregnant, read this book before baby comes so you know what to expect about infant sleep patterns and how to deal with it. If you have an older baby or a toddler and you want more sleep, get this book. It may change your life.
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Summary: If you have a newborn, DON'T waste your time!!
Review: First of all, why can't authors who write books on baby sleep keep their books to 100 pages or less??? What kind of sleep-deprived parent has time to read 250 - 300 page books? Give me a break, people! Please re-think your strategy and call your editors! This book is simply a huge laundry list of things you can try to get your baby to sleep. No method or structure is offered. Sleep deprived, first-time parents need immediate, structured, clearly-defined, and PLEASE, TO-THE-POINT HELP. If you have a fussy, non-sleeping newborn, and you don't have time to sift through (and try) a huge laundry list of ideas, do NOT waste your valuable TIME and money with this one. Get "The Happiest Baby on the Block" by Dr. Karp. This one worked miracles for us the FIRST night we used it!! It's almost as long, but it MUCH better organized and can be sped-read/skimmed in a few hours.
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Summary: A Wonderful Panacea for Tired (but Loving) Parents
Review: Ask any parent what the biggest challenge is in raising babies and young children, and most will say, "getting enough sleep." The most common question of new parents is, "is he or she a good baby," which actually means, "is he or she sleeping well?" As the mother of some very good children, who were not good sleepers, I can certainly vouch for the pain of sleeplessness and the frustration of the equation of 'good' with 'sleep.' With my first child, I sought help wherever it was offered, and visited two separate sleep clinics, specialists, took a wide range of advice offered by other parents and read every book on the subject I could find. They were all united in their advice - the only thing which works is to let your child "cry it out." There were a wide variety of techniques for doing this - with differing intervals between comfort sessions ranging from letting them cry all night to going into to pat or talk to your child every few minutes, slowly increasing the interval, but they all amounted to allowing your child to cry. In my desperation I tried "controlled crying" as it was commonly called, and partly because neither my husband nor I had the stomach for it, and partly because my son was rather stubborn, it didn't work at all for me. In fact it made things considerably worse. The only thing which did work was a lot of reassurance (to undo the damage of my aborted experiments) and time, since my now 5 year old son is sleeping through the night almost every night, and even puts himself to bed. I didn't know about Elizabeth Pantley. Her book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution is the only book I've come across which doesn't advocate crying as a solution to sleep problems, and which still provides a set of potential and practical attachment based solutions to help ease your child into better sleeping patterns. Most of the ideas are based on both Pantley's considerable experience as a parent, a lot of research and testing with other parents, and a hefty dose of common sense. None of her ideas are meant to work overnight (and believe me, neither does 'crying') - they are long term and permanent solutions with enough flexibility to handle things like illness, teething and vaccination. None of the suggestions offered in this book will traumatise you or your child, and if you are consistent and persistent, your chances of success are high. The book has chapters on safety, including SIDs precautions, general sleeping precautions, precautions for cradles and ribs and for co-sleeping. There are chapters containing basic sleep facts, creating sleep logs and working out your own particular patterns of sleeplessness, along with a range of suggested solutions for newborns and older babies. The solutions chapter is the heart of the book, offering a range of different techniques such as ensuring that you put your baby to sleep, sleepy but not sleeping, in his or her own bed (sounds obvious but I suspect this was the heart of my problem, since my children both fell asleep at the breast, in their slings, against me and in my bed most of the time). Other ideas include learning to understand the difference between sleep noises and cries, helping your children distinguish day from night, having appropriate naps, increasing bedtime comfort and most importantly, having realistic expectations. For older children, solutions include feeding more during the day, sticking to really clear, predictable routine, establishing an early bedtime and perhaps most importantly, techniques for helping your child learn how to fall asleep without your help (but also without hysteria), including providing sleep cues, changing sleep associations and gradually removing your assistance. All of Pantley's ideas are reasonable and her reasoning doesn't conflict with the basis for the "crying" school - it is just a lot slower, a lot more loving and a lot more likely to succeed (since crying is so traumatic for most children that it makes them come to associate their beds with fear rather than comfort, at least that has been my experience). The key to everything in this book is to start off by observing and charting your current situation and then planning where you want to be (creating a personal sleep plan) and how you will get there. There are a range of templates and charts that you can use to make your plans, along with plenty of moral support, anecdotal evidence from Pantley's series of test mothers and personal advice on coping and improving your own sleep. The No-Cry Sleep Solution is a wonderful book for helping your child gently and calmly learn to sleep through the night. It doesn't promise quick fixes or miracles, nor does it provide a single didactic methodology, but if, like me, you are an attachment oriented parent who doesn't want to put your child through the crying ordeal (or who has tried and failed), you will rejoice at finding a range of options for improving your child's sleep. Of course the best solution of all is to do the "right" things from the start and avoid the sleep problems altogether - in this case, buy the book when pregnant (or as a fantastic gift for a pregnant friend or new parent), and make sure that you create the right associations and patterns from the start.
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Summary: This book got me started....
Review: I used this book to migrate my co-sleeper to his crib at 10 months. I read "Happy Sleep Habits.." and "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" and felt that it was too harsh to go from co-sleeping and breastfeeding all night to crying it out. Using Pantley's method it took about 2 weeks to get him used to sleeping in his crib and not nursing at night, however he would still wake at least once around 2 and need my help returning to sleep and then wake crying early in the am (around 5) and I couldn't get him back to sleep. After a couple of months of this -- and attempting to gently get him to stop waking and keep sleeping in the am -- I realized that he had reached a plateau, was over tired during the day, and that we couldn't overcome this with Pantley's method. I pulled out the Ferber book. After one night of letting him cry at intervals, and really it was mild whimpering - never screaming (for about a total of an hour), he started going to sleep on his own in his crib and sleeping for 11 solid hours. I honestly believe that the Ferber method worked so quickly and painlessly when he was 12 months because I got him 90% there using Pantley's method. I'm grateful to Pantley's book because it gave me the confidence to find the right mixture of "methods" that ultimately worked for us. The other books that advocate "training" tend to make you feel that you will never have a good sleeper unless you strictly follow their advice.
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Summary: This author understands
Review: If people think you are foolish because you won't let your baby cry to sleep. If they make you feel like it's your own fault that your baby isn't sleeping. Then this is the book for you. This author gives you a written hug and reassurance that its perfectly ok to love your baby so much that you can't make him cry. She gives you so many gentle ideas for encouraging sleep that don't go against what you believe. People like us are willing to take a little more time to teach our babies to sleep. We don't need or want a 3 day miracle if it means letting our babies cry to the point of hysterics. I truly love this book as much for the solutions as for the reassuring tone and compassion.
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Summary: I love it!
Review: I read several books on getting my son (now 3 months old) to sleep... I hate the extremes of crying it out or nursing everytime. This book makes sense!! As with any book, there are
parts I don't like or don't relate to my sitution. However, I
love this book. The 'pull-off technique' she discribes is nice... and works! We're somewhere around step 2 or 3 right now. Sometimes he'll go to sleep if I rock him but not nurse him and other times he wants to nurse to sleep. As she says many times, it's a slow process. My goal? To be able to put him in his crib awake and go to sleep on his own by Christmas -- when he'll be 5 months old. He slept 11 hours the other night and usually he only does a 6-7 hour stretch at night so we think this is working so far!
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Summary: All about choices
Review: This is an incredible book with over 250 pages of solutions. You don't use them all, you put together your own plan from the ideas that most suit your family. There is one page that describes a thoughtful, modifidied cry-it-out method for those parents who, for whatever reason (lack of patience?) feel they must let some crying. But on even this solution Pantley offers a compassionate approach where baby is never left alone to cry. This book is most wonderful for it's great number of choices, since nearly every family can find ideas that will help them.
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Summary: nothing new
Review: the book promises to get your baby to sleep through the night - eventually. Well, that might be true. The author has 4 children, but the problems she seemed to have with No. 4 are hard to believe. Did she REALLY not know that you should take your baby to bed when she is tired? Did she REALLY think it is necessary to breastfeed a 10 month old every 2!! hours? Well if you take your baby to bed far too late, if you have no routine and if you think feeding is the only way to make your baby quiet, maybe this is your book.
I am more flexible than that and think most of the ideas in that book would fit on about 3 pages.
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Summary: The best sleep book I have ever read!
Review: And I've read them all! I have three boys; age 6, 4 1/2 and 13 months. I could never let any of them cry it out and I spent many hours worrying over whether or not I was "ruining" them by not "making them learn to sleep on their own". This book is one of the very few (Dr. Sears books are the other ones) that helped me to feel validated in my longing to just be a mom 24 hours a day/7 days a week, not just when it was convenient for me or "time" to be. The fact that Mrs. Pantley has done some work with Dr. Sears helped me to know that "the no-cry sleep solution" book was going to be one filled with loving, gentle advice. And, boy was it ever! I really can't recommend it highly enough!
I AM a little tired, and my 13 month old is not the best sleeper, so I am trying some of the solutions in this book. I am glad, however, that I am not feeling the pressure to let my baby cry it out that I felt when I read several other books on the subject. Not many of them applaud the philosophies of co-sleeping or nursing long term. I know in my heart that co-sleeping and nursing is not a "bad habit" but society dumps that pressure on moms not to do it. This book is very encouraging for moms who DO nurse during the night and let their babies sleep with them. What a breath of fresh air! This is the only book I have read so far that offers useful but gentle advice and gives the parent "permission" to not let their child cry it out all night. Not only books I have read, but grandparents, other Christian friends, even my pediatrician's office staff, all seem to give me the "guilts" when I admit I am not physically able to let my kids cry it out. It literally makes me sick to my stomach. And I know that "this too shall pass" and I will miss those magical middle of the night hours when I can just breathe in his baby smells and watch him nurse in his sleep. This book also helped me to put that into perspective.
I especially loved the comparison to Mrs. Pantley's sweet son and the other baby at the ballpark. I will treasure that anecdote always because it puts into words so eloquently what I have felt in my heart when I see a "well-behaved" baby who's parents are practicing "detachment parenting" and I feel compelled to compare how our children act. I will be reading all of Elizabeth Pantley's books to help me be a better mommy to my precious children.
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