“It’s all about the routine”, a friend recently told me.
Her three month old baby had gone from waking five times during the night, to sleeping through, in just over a week of being on said routine. This seemed totally miraculous and too good not to try, so the next day I went out and bought the book, Save Our Sleep by Tizzie Hall.
It seems Tizzie, aka the International Baby Whisperer, is something of a baby mind reader, or cry reader as she puts it. She claims to have discovered her gift as a child of nine when out walking a friend’s baby. When the mother discovered young Tizzie’s talent her career path was forged. Years later, after moving to Australia (Tizzie was born and grew up in Ireland), she wrote the book that will, for the next week, dictate my every move.
Tizzie’s method is not for the faint hearted. There is a strict routine to follow including set feed, sleep and play times. Scheduled expressing times (what the?) and even instructions on which boob to use at particular times of the day (is this a joke?).
I get the feeling that this book is going to accompany me everywhere else I’ll have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.
One thing is for sure, there is going to be a lot of crying taking place. Tizzie tells us that it is OK, and even necessary, to let a baby cry (and cry for as long as is humanly possible) so long as it is only a ‘protesting cry‘. If it is an ‘emotional cry‘, and you leave the baby you can, according to the book, “cause psychological damage and stress”.
So, by the end of the week I will have either trained my nine week old baby to sleep, eat, play, poo, wink, smile and frown according to the uber strict routine and without any crying (either ‘protesting’ or ‘emotional’) or I will have caused him serious and irrevocable psychological damage.
I’d be silly not try really.
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September 24, 2009 at 9:18 pm
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April 5, 2010 at 12:11 am
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[...] one of the recommendations came from the same person who, months ago, enthusiastically recommended I read the book Save Our Sleep. It seems Tizzie Hall’s routines were no match for a teething [...]