I had to be stroking his hair, with a lamp on and the door left open, and the baby needed perpetual motion to nod off. Gina Ford is the author of several parenting books, including 'The Contented Little Baby'. Her methods involve getting a baby, from birth, used to the routine which she prescribes. Some commentators have likened her approach to animal training. Deviation from her timetable is not allowed as this will give the baby the idea that it is in control of the parents, when in fact the parents should set the rules for the baby. Whilst some persevere to follow her method 100%, most Gina Ford advocates seem to use her ideas as loose guidelines for working out their own method of introducing routine. Many of these also admit that they would not introduce routine to a baby under 5 months of age, especially if breastfed. In answer to criticism about her methods she writes, "I would never advise that young babies should be left to cry for lengthy periods of time to get themselves to sleep. I do stress that some overtired babies will fight sleep and they should be allowed 5-10 minutes' 'crying down' period." Ford writes further on this subject in her book.

It must be noted that Gina Ford has no children but worked as maternity 'nurse', i.e. looked after other people's babies and therefore had no desire, need, or innate instinct to form a long term attachment with the baby. Instead she would have been keen on babies making her as little work as possible. The same is true of most other 'baby gurus'. Once you have ruled out genuine hunger as a cause, and are ensuring that your baby is well fed, I would advise that you try a solution that I call the ‘assisting to sleep method’. The aim of this method is to get your baby used to sleeping at regular times during naps and in the evening, which will help him to sleep through the night as soon as he is physically able. After genuine hunger and the wrong sleep associations, I find that too much daytime sleep is the most common reason why a baby does not settle in the evening, or wakes frequently during the night. When this happens a vicious circle soon emerges where the baby needs to sleep more during the day because they are not sleeping well at night. Benefits of no crying method: This baby-centric approach minimises upset to parents, baby and family.

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Usually the crying before sleep lasts around 10-30 minutes and diminishes over time if you are consistent with this approach. It usually lasts 5-10 minutes in a baby under 6 weeks old. Remember, sleep is actually a skill that needs to be learned. If you do the hard yards early on, you will reap the rewards into toddlerhood and beyond. Cry-it-out originated in the mid-1900s when some researchers suggested that crying was good for babies. However, these opinions were not evidence-based. The biggest change from this early advice is that it is now not recommended to leave a baby crying for more than 10 minutes, which rules out the extinction method. The other anti Gina Ford battle cry is the way she suggests leaving your baby for a bit to cry it out when you put them down to sleep.

Some babies suffer from colic in the early months. It is unlikely that a baby with colic will respond to sleep training. Colic is not properly understood, but it is believed that it causes babies pain or discomfort. It can last for a few days or even weeks. You can talk to your GP or health visitor if you think that your baby has colic – they may not be able to stop it, but they can help with support and advice. Here’s the tough part. You can’t always respond to your baby when she cries. Ford’s method recommends that you leave her to cry for an hour each day, something which isn’t for all parents. How does it work? She directly relates the fact that she is an insomniac - a handy trait for a maternity nurse - to having slept in her mother's bed: she never learned to get a proper night's sleep on her own. You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to make the connection between this experience and her vocation - despite no formal training as a nurse or a nanny - as the childrearing guru who wants to disentangle us from our children to help them sleep regularly and to establish clear "boundaries". Gina Ford has come to the rescue with her answer: the key to a good night's sleep for the whole family lies in teaching parents to understand the changing sleep needs of their growing baby. This book informs and reassures parents, dispelling many common myths and anxieties and offering practical solutions that work. Learn the secret to getting your baby to sleep through the night--so you can get the rest you need. You’ve heard horror stories about babies who cry constantly, need to eat every two hours, and never learn to sleep through the night. And now, whenever you think about your soon-to-be-born bundle of joy, you can’t help wondering how you’re going to manage those two a.m. feedings and non-stop crying jags--and how you’re going to live your already-hectic life on little (or no) sleep. Relax! If you follow the practical, real-life advice in The Contented Little Baby Book, your baby should be sleeping through the night at around six to ten weeks. You’ll learn why you shouldn’t follow the conventional “feed on demand” advice. You’ll understand why even older babies can benefit from sleeping and eating schedules. And soon you’ll have what every parent wants--a happy, healthy, contented little baby. Drawing on twelve years of experience researching and studying the natural sleep rhythms and feeding patterns of young babies, one of Britain’s top maternity nurses shows you how to… * Recognize the difference between hunger and tirednessIt takes anywhere from a few days to several weeks for babies to learn to settle themselves to sleep without crying. It took me getting to near 40 and having a severe depression to begin to do what she is doing at 22. Thank goodness she won't have to wait so long to take possession of her own life!

When he reaches stage two, where he is settling within 10 minutes for several nights, you should try leaving him to self-settle using the crying down method. It is important to understand that crying down is not the same as controlled crying. Crying down usually lasts around five to ten minutes at which point it will turn into fussing before he drifts off to sleep. It will also help with the self-settling if your baby gets used to being happy in his bed if you put him in it for short spells during the day, when he is fully awake, with a small book or toy to look at, whilst you stay close by, talking and reassuring him. Gina Ford is a UK based author who has 20 years of experience working with babies. She worked as a maternity nurse at a time where formal qualifications weren’t offered or expected. Her book is written from personal experience of working with over 300 babies. The New Contended Little Baby Book combines feeding and sleeping routines for parents to follow. For the purpose of this review I will only be concentrating on the information, schedules, and routines she provides regarding sleep. Find out this sleep experts thoughts by way of ths New Contented Little Baby Book book review. The Good In 2004, the BBC commissioned a series from Outline Productions called Gina Ford's Baby School, using Big Brother-style methods to oversee the progress of newborn babies. In January 2005, Ford had a meeting with BBC and Outline Productions, and refused to agree to certain reality-style aspects of the format. With only a few weeks before filming, Ford pulled out and was replaced by Dr Tanya Byron. [6] Ford was the only child of a single mother, born 42 years ago on a farm in south-east Scotland. Her father left the family soon after her birth, so she and her mother were desperately short of money. "We were so poor we didn't realise we were poor," she says. "To me, working-class people were posh. We were like peasants compared with them."

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Extinction sleep training (or the cry-it-out method) was first recommended in an era when it was believed that crying was good for babies. It is largely practised in America, Australia and the UK. Parts of the method are based on the idea that you can let your baby cry it out for long periods of time without intervention, but this is no longer recommended: 10 minutes is the maximum amount of time that you should leave a crying baby.

But, as the critics cry, having had no babies of her own, how can she really know what it is like to have a baby cry it out? On the other hand, Dr William Sears (a paediatrician who therefore holds actual qualifications in infant development) and his wife, Martha Sears (a paediatric nurse, and also therefore qualified in child development - Gina Ford holds no qualifications at all) have eight children. They are the writers of the highly recommended ' The Baby Book' amongst many other publications. Unlike Ms Ford's book, The Baby Book is not a prescriptive system. The advice is given and it is up to the reader how they apply it. It also has huge amounts of information on all aspects of a child's development from birth to two years old. Crying down is a form of sleep training used to help babies learn to fall asleep on their own without sleep props. This method is best used with babies that have a mild sleep association problem, are overtired or are overstimulated. Gina Ford suggests crying down for babies from birth to six months. My openness to Fordian thinking began a long time ago, when I was a student in New Zealand and my part time job was being a mother’s help to newborn babies in a posh part of town.There have been claims that Gina Ford is now 'breastfeeding friendly'. The fact remains that the use of routine disrupts the mother's milk supply. To maintain supply, to allow for baby's growth spurts, she has introduced the regular use of a breast pump to stop her supply dropping off. This is an artificial and time-consuming way to reproduce an effect that would otherwise come naturally and unconsciously. Pitfalls: Having to respond to your baby the second they cry can be exhausting. Gradual retreat sleep training