It is CERTAINLY not for everyone, but it did help me a lot. That said, I think it needs commentary. I thought why not just do it here?
I think this book is good if you like order and routine, and it was good for me because aside from having a healthy baby, it was/is REALLY important to me that my baby sleep well through the night as soon as possible. I think by sheer force of will a mother can get their baby to do one or two things, but not everything. What I mean is, if the most important thing to me had been breastfeeding my baby exclusively until 6 months, and continuing to bf for the entire first year, I don't think I would have been able to get Foxy to sleep as well as he does. So different strokes for different folks.
Back to Gina. It's common sense really -- she is all about getting maximum food into your baby during sociable hours, and maximum sleep at night. This means that she recommends waking them up during the day for regular feeding; apparently a lot of people have trouble doing this. This made perfect sense to me, and I was happy to not only wake up Foxy to feed at appointed times, but also to strip him off so he was COLD and would stay awake.
The annoying thing about the book is the tone; Gina is very dictatorial, and also refers to "my babies" which really pisses off some of my mum chums. I found it useful that this book goes ahead and suggests a schedule, and gives you indications of what a normal amount of sleep is for babies at each stage. Most books are all about reading your baby, letting them guide you about when to feed, etc, and that sort of child-led approach does not suit me.
Another common complaint about the book is that mothers can feel like failures if they can't keep to the schedule. I think this is where the tone is unhelpful, because if you really actually read the entire book and not just the schedules, Gina does have advice about tailoring for different types of babies, what to do when things go wrong, etc. Also, I thought of it as the ideal that I did my best to approximate each day, nothing more and nothing less.
I pretty much tried to stick to the schedule until Foxy was about 3 months old, although I ditched the 10:30 pm feed at 5 weeks. (My evenings are even more precious to me than an uninterrupted night's sleep!) He is still on a schedule, but I have tweaked it a bit now. If I had it all to do again, I would do things pretty much the same, but not entirely. I would definitely stick to the principles of doing ones best to approximate the same routine day in, day out. But looking back, I can see that Foxy probably could have done with an extra feed in the day. I think that would have helped him to settle for naps much earlier than he did.
I am also really glad that I took the advice about how to put them to bed, and how to behave at night. Again, I know that this simply wont work for a lot of people, as they find it too cold/harsh. Gina advises always putting them down to sleep when they are still awake. Our first night of doing this (at 3 weeks) it took Foxy an hour to fall asleep, and we went in to stroke him (did not pick him up) every 10 mins. It was hard, but we only had to do this for a few days and have never looked back. For night feeds I was REALLY diligent about not giving Foxy any attention, just the food. I never looked at him or spoke to him.
Previous posts have talked about the most difficult part for me, which was getting Foxy to nap properly. Sometimes it felt like we weren't getting anywhere with it, but I can now say that somewhere along the line it did fall into place. Every day I did my best to approximate the schedule, and I now have a baby that I can simply put in his cot to nap, and I get at least 2.5 hours during the day to call my own.
As I said at the beginning, it is all about what is most important for the Mum. When I get asked what is most important for kids/babies (coz of my job), I say to first take care of yourself, then your marriage, then your baby. For me, this was the best way to achieve those things. For many people, it would not be.
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