Our Babywise Story
A week before Solis was born, I thought I better come up with a game plan on what to do with a newborn. I sought out the advice of a friend and she told me about Babywise. It turned out to be a huge lifesaver for us and I am forever indebted to her!
Now before I go on, Babywise has a bad rap. All you have to do is google it and find out why. But we didn't follow the book 100%. We followed it close enough to get the results we were looking for. Solis started sleeping 5 hours at night at 5 weeks. Then jumped up to 10 hours a night at 12 weeks. When she turned 1, she took 2 solid naps a day and slept 12 hours at night. Now at 2.5, she naps 1:30-4 daily and 8-8 at night. Everyone says I'm lucky. But it's not luck. I worked my butt off that first year to get these results. And I'm not saying non-babywise moms don't work their butts off too. Since people say I was blessed with a good sleeper they just assume it came easily and I'm here to say it didn't! Took a lot of work and sacrificing.
There are so many opinions/books/websites on how to get your baby to sleep through the night but for Shaun and I, we felt Babywise fit our family best. We are going to implement the same strategies for our son and hopefully he is a good sleeper too. I don't judge people who don't use Babywise. Every parent has to do what is best for their family and some moms just don't feel comfortable with the Babywise methods. That's fine! But I love it and if I can help one mom out there who is searching for sleep answers, then I did my job :)
The basic principals of the BabyWise Method include:
- Eat, play, sleep schedule for baby.....which means not nursing to sleep except at bedtime/middle of the night
- Keeping baby awake during and after a feeding
- Striving for full feedings as opposed to snacks
- Putting baby to sleep without many props
- And guess what? If a baby cries, that doesn't mean they have to eat! So glad I didn't follow that or I would have been nursing Solis all day long.
My goal is to post bi-weekly updates on my son's sleep/feeding routine. So follow along for this crazy ride though our failures and hopefully successes! :)
Here's some throwback pictures of the first time Solis slept 11 straight hours. I found her in the morning sucking her thumb. Self soothing is an amazing thing!
