Books for Baby Sleep Problems

by Kim West

I can't understand why this book isn't more well known. Most parents have heard of Ferber and Sears and maybe Pantley, but hardly anyone is familiar with the recommendations of Kim West, a.k.a. The Sleep Lady. It's probably because her method is somewhere in between the cry-it-out and no-cry methods, so it doesn't appeal to people who want one extreme or the other.

For my family, this was as good as it gets in terms of sleep training books. Her recommendations are firm and effective, yet she understands the importance of gradually transitioning your child to new ways of sleeping. Also, unlike most other sleep books, she is respectful of parents' needs to make their own decisions and occasionally go against her recommendations. Most of the other authors tell you flatly what you need to do and offer no alteratives. West makes recommendations, but also includes suggestions for how to work it if you're just not comfortable implemeting her recommendation.

I had to modify her recommendations a bit to make the process go more slowly for my child, but I found this to be the perfect balance between being gentle and being effective.

by Tracy Hogg

I didn't want to like this book. I had heard all about how bad Tracy Hogg, a.k.a. the Baby Whisperer, is because she recommends that you get your baby on a (gasp!) schedule at a young age and she's blasé about breastfeeding. But I happened upon her book in a desperate state one day while sleep-walking through a bookstore and decided to give it a try. After five months of hard-headedly clinging to the advice in attachment parenting books despite the fact that it obviously wasn't working for my son and me, I gave in and bought this book and found its contents to be a lifesaver. It's certainly not perfect (e.g. I think her "Pick Up/Put Down" method for soothing babies just upsets them further) but it's the best baby care book I've found. The detailed charts of what quantity and types of foods babies should eat at various stages and sample routines and schedules were invaluable to me.

The Baby Whisperer and her parenting style may or may not be for you, but don't make the mistake I did and blow it off because you've heard some people say she's evil because she's supposedly anti-breastfeeding, pro-scheduling, etc. Flip through it yourself in a bookstore and see if that's the impression you get.

by Marc Weissbluth, MD

Ugh. I suppose I have to give Healthy Sleep Habits at least three stars because it does contain a ton of information about babies' sleep habits. However, I found this book to be mostly irritating. Weissbluth speaks of babies with all the compassion one would expect when discussing lab rats; the book reads like a doctoral thesis and is poorly laid out (the publisher really needs to get a page designer in there for the next version); and I find the fact that he is OK with the "extinction method" for sleep training -- where you put your baby in his room and do not return until morning no matter how much he cries -- appalling.

I actually recommend maybe getting this book to skim through the informational chapters and keep around for a reference, but you'll see as soon as you open it that it is not a "fun read" at all and the author is basically emotionless when discussing what is a very emotional subject for parents.

by Richard Ferber

Richard Ferber's infamous book is the reluctant purchase that so many parents have made out of desperation, their last resort when sleep deprivation threatens to consume their lives. It's a bit out of date and could be organized better (I'd prefer to see issues addressed by age), but overall it's not as horrible as I thought it would be. I found Weissbluth's attitude to be more uncaring and harsh. And, in the vast majority of cases, it works in three days. There is a lot of propaganda out there saying that it causes mothers to become desensitized to their children's cries, that children will become insecure and unbonded to their parents, etc. but I do not know of anyone personally who has experienced this. I suppose it can happen, but it would appear to be the exception rather than the rule. I encourage you to scan through the 300+ comments on Amazon and read some actual parents' firsthand accounts.

That said, as a parent who has tried every method and been chronically sleep deprived for almost two years, I have three recommendations regarding this book and its method: 1) Try one of the gentle, no-cry methods such as Elizabeth Pantley's first. 2) If the gentle methods don't work for your child (as they didn't for mine) consider Kim West's book Good Night, Sleep Tight instead of this one. It's tough-love enough to be effective but not as extreme as Ferber. 3) If you do decide that this method is what you need to do, please actually purchase and read the book first. I know quite a few people who resorted to let their babies cry without educating themselves about what ages it's appropriate for, what the proper technique is, the importance of comforting your child, etc.

by Martha Sears, RN and William Sears, MD

In this book the Sears make the case for "attachment parenting," the high-touch parenting style that encourages you to be closely in tune with your children's emotional and physical needs and promotes co-sleeping and nursing until your child decides he's ready to wean. I give it a low rating for two reasons: first, the ideas in this book ended up not working for me at all and, in fact, caused a lot of problems in the long run. I know many people who had great success with this parenting method but, unfortunately, I am not one of them.

This brings me to my second problem with the book: like all books that espouse a specific parenting philosophy, the Sears make it seem as if their method is the only sane, humane way to raise a baby and they tell outright lies about the risks of not using their method. For example, they sniff that parents who teach their babies to self-soothe have a "let's have babies conveniently" mindset and that such children will develop "diseases of detachment" later in life, including, "anger, distancing or withdrawal, and discipline problems." Anyone who knows many parents who have taught their babies to self-soothe knows that this is just false. It's a shame that they can't espouse their theories, which have many merits, without being so judgmental and unforgiving of parents for whom their method just does not work.