On Becoming Babywise: Part 1

I still remember that day when I was about 8 months pregnant and my hubby Mark and I were shopping for baby JD’s needs. We were checking out the different brands of baby bottles, and the price of the famed Avent feeding bottles, supposedly friendly for breastfed babies, caused us to wonder how many bottles we would need altogether.

Interestingly, instead of giving us a rough estimate, the saleslady called out to another customer pushing a 5-month-old baby in a stroller. She motioned to the sleeping bundle and asked out loud, “How many times does your baby nurse at night?”

I waited to hear, one, two times a night, and was ready to calculate the number of bottles my baby would use in one day. To my surprise, the lady answered, “My baby doesn’t nurse in the middle of the night. He’s slept through the night since he was two months old.”

I’ve never heard of such a thing, knowing babies usually woke up several times during the night.

“That’s what I learned from Babywise,” she went on.

I nodded, thinking the term to be some sort of baby lingo from popular parenting books like Dr. Spock. But as she went on to explain, it turned out “On Becoming Babywise” was a different book altogether, written by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. As soon as we left the baby department, we decided to hit the bookstore and check out the book. Sure enough, it boasted of being a “classic sleep reference guide” to help a baby sleep through the night. Needless to say, we bought a copy and devoured it over the next few weeks before baby JD arrived!

What did we learn from Babywise? I enjoyed the informative way it presented baby care, especially the practical tips about breastfeeding. This was even more so ‘coz I didn’t have other material that taught me how to do it, and being in a third world country meant there were few organizations that focus on this “skill.” But one of the most memorable things we learned regarding infant feeding proved to be extremely helpful:

I call this the principle of full feedings.

The book explained that babies tend to “snack” instead of getting full meals during nursing time, usually since infants fall asleep quite easily while feeding. This results in an exhausting breastfeeding experience for the mom, because a baby who is not full will tend to cry in hunger in as short an interval as 15 minutes! We saw this in action when we brought baby JD home from the hospital. For the first week, I allowed him to feed whenever he wanted, and it was super tiring! (Moms, anyone can relate with this?) When we tried to give him full feedings as suggested by the book, that is, by keeping him awake (be it by shifting his position every few minutes, tickling his feet! Hehe) surprisingly, the intervals between nursing times extended to the expected 1 ½ hour to 2 hours mentioned in the book!

I find this to be a very important principle, since, a few months after reading and implementing tips mentioned in the book, I chanced across several irate comments on the Internet. And I realized the book was not meant to be used as an all-or-nothing guide, but parental decisions play a big role, after all. The natural effects of giving baby a full meal resulted in the normal adjustment of his feeding routine, and we didn’t have to do a thing to interfere with the wisdom of the way babies are created!
 
Anyway, other learning points to follow in future posts! Stay tuned!