Ah, I love this book. Absolutely love it. Not so much because the solutions in it work (slowly, and with some trial and error) but because it’s written with such care.
Granted, some of it is a bit “home-baked apple pie and Thanksgiving turkey” (the author is from the US) but in the main, it’s just lovely. It’s also totally non-judgmental. It talks about the pros and cons of pacifier (dummy) use; about ways to get bottle-fed babies to sleep; it does not just concentrate on co-sleeping and even has a section on how to move a co-sleeping baby into its own cot / its own room.
To be fair, some of the chapters are perhaps a little long-winded; some of the information seems to be repeated later on. But in the main it’s a lovely read.
But does it work?
Well, the gist of this book is that there seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to sleep. One is to put up with the night wakings until your baby sleeps through the night by him/herself, and the other is to let baby cry itself to sleep (cio – cry it out), either completely, or by using the “controlled crying” method (a variant on cio). Basically, Pantley was knackered but didn’t want to let her babies cio; however she did want some sleep.
The entire idea behind this book is to help your baby change its sleep associations and gradually, and gently, and without any crying, learn how to settle itself to sleep (and in the process, awaken fully less often).
Her methods do take time and patience. But they do seem – so far – to work. (And when I say works, please remember this caveat.) I co-sleep with baby B and although the night wakings don’t bother me, at about six months dh and I decided we wanted our evenings “back” and wanted to put baby B to bed a few hours before we went up. Baby B however had other ideas; he woke up persistently in the evenings, so it was up and down stairs all evening.
A few weeks of Pantley’s ideas and we actually get a few hours of dh & dw time in the evenings; baby B usually wakes up when we come to bed and enjoys about ten minutes of time having a feed, and a little Daddy cuddle before he goes back to sleep.
So when the time does come to move baby B to his own bed I’d certainly employ Pantley’s ideas again.
I think as with any parenting manual you take what you need and leave the rest. I certainly couldn’t be doing with worrying that baby B is getting three hours nap time every day! But yes, if you’re struggling with a non-sleeping baby but don’t want to let baby cry, I’d definitely recommend this; it integrates nicely with AP principles but also more culturally “traditional” ideas of parenting too.
