Product Description

Sleep is something all new parents want, both for themselves and their babies. This book offers background information and practical steps to help you establish a routine with your baby that will look after his or her needs -- and yours, too. New parents are given all sorts of conflicting advice on how best to get their baby to sleep through the night. For example, should he/she sleep in your bed, in your room beside your bed or in another room altogether? Should you leave your baby when he/she wakes or cries? Penney Hames tackles every issue, including cot death, and talks about each technique. She examines the need for routine, a comfortable sleep environment and a baby's sleep patterns at different ages and stages. She also explores research into how a child's sleep pattern might reflect its character, well-being, health, and even intelligence, thereby debunking myths and extracting the truth. Two-colour with black and white pictures. The main message Penney Hames gives is that parents should make their own minds up and she offers advice on where to get help with addresses of sleep clinics and other support agencies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #327936 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Penney Hames is a clinical psychologist and postnatal worker with the National Childbirth Trust

Customer Reviews

A good introduction to an emotive subject
The issue of sleep for babies and young children is one that tends to preoccupy many new parents. This book gives you a good overview of the subject, but really is best as an introduction rather than detailed information about any particular method.

It gives lots of quotes by parents which can help you feel you're not alone, and it doesn't make judgements on what the parents feel. However I found some of the parents' comments rather shocking because they were so intolerant of their children's needs at nighttime.

Some things that I think could be improved would be a detailed discussion on different approaches to take for babies under 4 months, and babies over 4 months old. For example you shouldn't be making very young babies cry it out or use controlled crying on them. If they're crying at this age it's because they need something, babies this young can't make themselves stay awake, there's something else going on to keep them awake.

Also even for children over 4 months they may be waking in the night due to hunger, physical discomfort, teething, getting cold in the night etc. The book should address these issues and how you can find out what is making your child wake up. Otherwise you might try to make them cry themselves back to sleep and speaking from experience if the baby is waking from hunger this isn't going to work! The book should mention how to try to meet your child's needs for food and milk during the day to make them less likely to wake at night.

Finally, if you don't want to let your child cry it out, there may not be enough information in this book about other methods to be of much help to you. If this is the case I would recommend Elizabeth Pantley's book The No-Cry Sleep Solution instead.

Very helpful and reassuring
The title of this book says it all -- how to help your child to sleep, not enforce sleep upon him or her. It discusses the child's needs for sleep at various ages, different sleep arrangements with a look at what's done in different cultures, and different ways of helping your child form good sleep habits. One of the most useful things was the idea that whatever method you choose, you have to be able to stick with it -- so a strict method may not work for you.

No help at all
I bought this book after a series of sleepless nights hoping it would give us some guidance on helping our baby to sleep better.

It is one of the worst books I have ever read, and I found it of no use at all. Essentially it has lots of quotes from parents, but I was not after anecdotal evidence. In addition, one of the main things that irritated me was it sometimes references its information, but then in the sections about alternative approaches such as cranial osteopathy, no references are given (presumably because there is no robust evidence in peer reviewed journals).

I would not reccomend it, and have found much better advice in other parenting books such as Gina Ford and the Baby Whisperer.