Secrets Of The Baby Whisperer

I started digging into this book today:

I'm only about a fourth of the way in but so far I love her philosophy...

Her approach is very similar to the one in On Becoming Baby Wise only there is a stronger emphasis on respect for your baby as a person. In other words, call him/her by name instead of saying, "the baby" and talk with him/her instead of at him/her, etc.

David and I strongly believe that children learn the most from what is modeled for them so we definitely buy into the whole, "treat a child with respect and they will grow up to be respectful individuals in return" philosophy. We plan on saying please and thank you to Ayden as much as we expect it from him. This doesn't mean we are adopting a child led approach, or that we'll never tell him no. It just means that we will respect him as an individual with free will and will try to make sure he knows his feelings are important to us too.

In the beginning, the book also has you take a little quiz to see what type of disposition your child may have. The categories are:

• Angel baby
• Textbook baby
• Touchy baby
• Spirited baby
• Grumpy baby

It suggests that two primary caregivers complete the quiz. After David and I both did it we were a little surprised to see that Ayden is a "textbook baby". He has some qualities from the oter categories too but majority ruled in favor of textbook. Him being a textbook baby does explain why he adapted to the EASY routine so quickly as they apparently tend to put themselves on schedules.

Our little textbook cutie :)

Along with explaining her EASY philosophy (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You), the author also suggests using the "SLOW plan" (she's apparently a big fan of acronyms...) which stands for "Stop, Listen, Observe, What's Up?" whenever your baby cries. It's a tool to help you properly determine what your baby is trying to communicate.

So far we have both of those down.  I am looking forward to chapter six when it starts to discuss sleep habits...  I'll keep you posted.

Speaking of sleep, Ayden took 3 of his 4 naps in his crib today and almost all of them were about an hour long.  As sad as it makes me, doing housework with him in the Moby is starting to make my back and knees hurt.  I'm starting to actually feel like I'm pushing 30 (I'll be 28 this month) so I need to only wear him on walks or when I have some sort of chore that doesn't require bending down, which there surprisingly aren't many of.  So since he's only getting heavier and I'm not getting any younger, I decided to try to get him to nap in his crib today.  I thought it might be difficult but with the help of the pacifier I was able to lay him on his belly, sleepy but awake, and he fell asleep on his own.  Now I just need to phase out the pacifier and it'll be awesome! :)  Now if only we can get him consistently sleeping at least 5 hours at night...

What are your favorite sleep training or child rearing books?

~Sarah