On Becoming Baby Wise: Learn How over 500,000 Babies Were Trained to Sleep Through the Night the Natural Way

Rating:
Summary: 500,000 emotionally starved babies should be the title
Review: Yes it's a pleasure to have your newborn sleep through the night, but at what price to your baby? Starving, dehydration, crying for hours without consolation. Is that how a newborn infant should live? Of course not. But that is the basic principal of Gary Ezzo's Baby Wise, a book that has more critics than it does supporters. (Multnomah Publishers dropped Baby Wise in 2001 due to investigations regarding medical and character concerns and is now unfortunately self-published by Ezzo.) He would rather you manipulate and force your child into a sleeping schedule by depraving her food and comfort, the two most important things a child needs to grow. He also recommends waking your baby during the day. Ask any doctor and he/she will tell you waking a sleeping baby under 3 months old should never be done, not ever.
"Because the desire for continual and immediate gratification begins at birth, the need for cultivating self-control in your child also begins at that point," writes Ezzo suggests that demand feeding, (responding to an infants "cues" that he or she is hungry, the method recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics) trains children to expect immediate gratification. Therefore withholding meals until the parent is ready to feed the children, or punishing them by crib isolation when they do not want or eat when the parent is ready is part of his theory. So babies are left to cry in abandonment or starvation. In contrast, Ezzo created Parent Directed Feeding (PDF), a routine in which Mom, not baby, decides when baby will "eat, sleep and play." How sad!
Well there are other ways to do get your child to sleep through the night when THEY ARE OLD ENOUGH! (read the Happiest Baby on the Block, Baby Whisper) A baby's tummy is so small and they grow so constantly that they cannot withstand to go for more than a few hours without a feeding. That's why the cry = they are hungry and they are in pain. By forcing them to sleep through the night before they are old enough to you are robbing them of crucial nutrition, not to mention the sleep their little brains needs to help them grow into smart happy babies. So many doctors, teachers, parents condone this book because these methods are wrong. Yes a routine can help create a more secure child, but so do comfort, love and nutrition! A child under 3 months cannot and should not be forced into a schedule! Those are the MOST critical months and can be the most damaging. There are HUNDREDS OF REAL cases of FTT (failure to thrive) dehydration, weight loss and damaging mental effects of waking a sleeping baby and not feeding on demand just to get them on a schedule because of these books. Gary Ezzo who does not even have credentials in child development, healthcare, breastfeeding, or baby care, nor does he have an undergraduate degree. His book is not endorsed by ANY pediatric counsel and is discouraged by many doctors, associations, teachers and even followers of his faith. I'm sure there are people who praise this book as made obvious by the reviews, but research both sides of the spectrum before you buy it
http://www.ezzo.info