Handsome

If you look up 'handsome' in the dictionary, I'm pretty sure you'll find this....

These guys melt my heart every day. I am so lucky to have them.

I'm a Baby Wise Mom and PROUD of it

I've been wanting to share this for a while now but didn't quite know the right way to approach it and have been very hesitant to since there is so much negative feelings towards it. But I realized if the truth was shared by someone who has personal experience with it then maybe, just maybe people might change their minds. What is this "it" I speak of? Baby Wise, or the book that is On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep. It has become an invaluable book that I don't know what I would have done without. A dear old friend of mine was the one who shared it with me knowing I was having twins and had had twins herself, she knew I needed it since it had helped her so much. Luckily I hadn't heard anything about it so I had no preconceived negative feelings about it. She did warn me not to judge the book and to read the whole thing. Well reading the intro and first chapter of it online it felt completely right, it had already stated principles my husband and I had already wanted to do, like not letting our babies fall asleep to nursing or rocking, knowing they would become dependent on that to fall asleep. And its a very Christian based book, the author emphasizes the importance of family and having a nurturing mother and father and how a healthy marriage creates healthy children. Why wouldn't I want to read this book?! So I ordered it having complete faith in it. I then joined a group for Baby Wise Mom's on Facebook thinking it would be a great resource for help, which it most definitely has been. Upon joining I received a message from a friend who saw I joined warning me about it and all the negativity surrounding it. I was very grateful for her concern and to take the time to mention it to me, but I assured her I wouldn't do anything harmful to my babies and if there was anything I didn't feel good about I wouldn't do it. Well I read the book pretty quickly, and upon finishing it I was SO excited to implement the principles! Want to know the basic principles? It teaches a feeding schedule of feed/wake/sleep, instead of the most popular feed/sleep/wake. It helps the child from being dependent on nursing to fall asleep. The book teaches cry it out, which I'm assuming where it gets most of the negativity from, but I don't know why cause there's nothing harmful or dangerous about what it teaches. All it says is to help the baby self soothe. You don't lock your child in a room and let it cry for hours. How horrible is that! I can't believe that's actually what people think. It simply teaches to do it in time intervals, first for a couple minutes, then check, then a little longer, check, and so on. Eventually the baby learns to fall back asleep on its own. I know people who don't use Baby Wise and use this principle and their children are perfectly fine. Next, it teaches to help the baby to distinguish day from night, to have wake time during the day after feeding for a certain amount of time (right now its an 1 1/2 hr for my boys, that's including feeding) so it get's it sleep at night. You learn your baby's cries so you know when they are tired and when they are hungry. You don't starve your child. It doesn't once say don't feed your baby if it cries. In fact it says several times through out the book in the beginning when you're learning your babies cry to first feed if it cries unless you know for certain it's not hunger, i.e. you had just fed them 30 min ago. But once you know your baby's cries there's no need to guess. So, my personal experience. It has worked GREAT for me. It was a little hard in the beginning getting into a rhythm and figuring things out. Especially since I was battling postpartum depression really badly. It was horrible. I'm so glad I was able to recognize it and get some much needed medicine. It thankfully worked, and as soon as it did everything clicked, my mind cleared and everything made sense. Especially with the help of my dear old friend and a new one I made on the Baby Wise Facebook group, they were life savers for me. They gradually started waking up less in the night to feed, then later and later until around 16 weeks (11 adjusted since they were early) they slept from 7-7! 12 hours! I couldn't have been more psyched. All the hard work had paid off. I even turned my skeptical husband into a believer. He sings my praises now and brags to everyone that they sleep through the night because of my hard work. Makes me pretty happy:) The thing is, it's not for every baby or mother. Everyone is different and have their own personal parenting preferences. And some babies it just doesn't work. They're hard wired differently and for some reason or another, no matter how hard you try, they just won't sleep through the night, through no fault of the mother or father. And I've gotten to know several Baby Wise Mom's who don't implement cry it out just cause they don't want to. I think the most important thing to point out from all of this is that my babies are HEALTHY. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. They are developing perfect for their age and are gaining weight like they should be. Their pediatrician is actually impressed with how well they are doing for being preemies. I would NEVER do anything that would harm my children, so know that the Baby Wise principles taught are completely safe and harmless. Also, they are HAPPY babies. Everyone who meets them are surprised at how good they are, they can be content on their own and only fuss when they are tired or hungry. My father in law even made a joke one time, "what drugs are you giving them?" in reference to them being so good. I credit it to Baby Wise. A baby who sleeps well is a happy baby. I truly believe that.

Well I hope that this might have eased your minds about Baby Wise if they ever were uneasy at all. Like the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. You have to read it first, which apparently people don't do in this case. Don't listen to everything you hear. Go to the source, someone who has personal experience. I truly do love this book and would recommend it to anyone who wants help with their baby sleeping at night!


Thanks for reading!