Best book I've ever owned!

Let me start by saying that I understand people being scared of the idea that Dr. Weissbluth suggests letting your baby cry as long as it takes at night- with every single book out there there is going to be at least one thing you disagree with. I have 2 kids and I have never let either cry for more than an hour (and I only had to let my 13 month old cry for 59 minutes ONCE). My 3 year old was horrible for the first 8 weeks. I got the book and understood what was going on and by 10 weeks he was sleeping 12 hours at night. It took until 5 months for him to be a great napping schedule but I wouldn't trade it for the world- he still sleeps 3 hrs. during the day and 11 hrs. at night. My 13 month old was more challenging but as soon as her napping started to become good (6 months) her night-time followed. I really loved Dr. Weissbluth's theories about well rested children and most of his solutions on how to get yours to that point. I will warn you- if you are not an advocate of schedules and you don't want to be tied down at home for a few hours a day, every day- don't waste your money. But believe me I have 2 happy, healthy children mostly because they are well rested, and without this book I doubt I would've had a clue how to get them to that point.

Remember, even Weissbluth agrees that Ferber's method works- I just found it extremely difficult to "tease" my child repeatedly by going in and then leaving- if you add up the time the child spends crying with Ferber I truly believe it is AT LEAST as long if not a lot longer as Weissbluth and probably much more difficult for the parent and baby.

This is the one you're looking for!

This book was absolutely key for us. We have two kids, a boy and a girl, with different needs and skills, but when it came to sleep, we read this book cover-to-cover (and then re-read it for kid #2) and putting Weissbluth's suggestions into practice yielded results that exceeded our hopes and wishes by a mile! Our son was sleeping straight through from 7 pm to 7 am at eight weeks old, and our daughter did the same at around ten weeks.

They are nine and six now, and continue to be a couple of the most well-adjusted children we know. We think it's primarily because of the importance we have given their sleep habits.

Weissbluth understands kids, sleep and contemporary parenting better than any other author, in our humble opinion. Buy this book, read it (both of you!), get in sync about what you got out of it, and put it into practice. It would impossible to overstate our high opinion of the book as an early-parenting tool. Thank you, Dr. Weissbluth!

Good research, bad approach

Since this is written by a doctor it contains plenty of research. The problem is that this (male) doctor is goal oriented, it's about sleep at all costs. The main thrust of any technique given is to let your child cry until he goes to sleep by himself. Not sure if that is really a solution at all, and it certainly doesn't take into account a child's emotional development. If you are OK with your child crying to sleep then just do it and you don't really need to read a book. If you want solutions that take into account your child's emotions and feelings then I'd suggest The No-Cry Sleep Solution which contains many of the same facts found herein but then goes on to provide many non-crying approaches to sleep.