Secrets Of The Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect and Communicate with your Baby [Versión Kindle]

As first time parents, my wife and I were both frustrated and overwhelmed by the conflicting advice that we received even before our daughter was released from the hospital.

In between the feedings and diaper changes during the first few days at home, I read Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, which was given to us by a family friend. Finally, there was a sane voice of experience that helped us to find our own way.

Some of the important points of this book:

1. It is normal to feel overwhelmed.

2. Every baby has a unique personality. While Tracy Hogg's categories may be somewhat oversimplified, she does offer a means of identifying your baby's personality so that you may better handle certain situations. No single approach will work with every baby, because they are all different.

3. You are not evil if you choose not to breast feed. This seems to be the subject of most of the negative reviews on this site, which is unfortunate. However, the author does not advocate either breast or formula feeding, she merely presents the pros and cons of each in a balanced manner, and provides reassurance that whatever method you choose, it is your choice to make, and there is no wrong decision.

4. One of the best pieces of advice: follow a structured routine. "EASY": Eat, Activity, Sleep, time for Yourself. This is another area that seems to have drawn criticism from fellow ... reviewers. "EASY" is presented as an alternative to feeding on demand and scheduled feeding. Actually, it is not as much an alternative as it is a combination of the two.
--> Following a set schedule is often impractical, as we found out ourselves while our daughter was still in the hospital. There, feeding took place every three hours, and at the same times. Most of the feedings went well, but at times, it seemed as though we were were force-feeding the poor kid, and it was implied that we were somehow bad parents if she did not finish the prescribed amount. Once we got home, we were able to be more flexible with the feeding times, which is exactly what EASY suggests.
--> What EASY suggests is following a prescribed routine. Eating is followed by activity, and the activity is followed by sleep. And while the baby sleeps, you have time for yourself. The structure is etched in stone, but the times are not. Who will not agree that flexibility is good? And having the structure will help you interpret your baby's cries and decrease the miscues (for example, trying to feed the baby when the baby is actually overstimulated, or over-tired).

5. The author provides guidelines for interpreting your baby's crying.

6. The author also explains how bad habits start and suggests methods for undoing bad habits. For example: allowing the baby to fall asleep on your chest may lead to the baby needing your chest to fall asleep....

7. Babies need to become independent. This means not rushing to the crib everytime they start to fuss. Babies need to learn to self-soothe and often will go back to sleep.

As with any book of this type, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer is not perfect, and there is some content that I do not necessarily agree with. But that's okay. The author is writing from personal experience, of which she has a lot. You will not find a whole lot of her advice to be in the vein of "studies have shown..." but rather "what I have learned...."

The style in which the book is written is also refreshingly down-to-earth. She speaks to the reader in a friendly voice that is neither condescending nor inaccessible.

Is this book worthy of addition to your bookshelf? Absolutely. I highly recommend it. Read it once, and you'll refer to it again and again.

The best advice that I can personally give anyone who is a new parent is this: TRUST YOUR OWN INSTINCTS. You will hear and read a lot of conflicting advice, none of which is perfect. You will have to find out what works best for you and your baby. No book can do that for you. Where Secrets of the Baby Whisperer succeeded the most for me was giving me the level of confidence to trust my own instincts, while providing some useful guidelines and advice.

There is a lot to like about this book (even though constantly being called "luv" did get old by about page 3)... in many parts there *is* very good advice. Tracy Hogg claims a middle-of-the-road approach to parenting a newborn and I agree with many of her ideas. She does not advocate letting babies cry and communicates overall the belief that parents should respect their babies as the tiny people they are. Overall, there is a lot of comforting stuff in here.

But I have issues with some of her specific advice. First, I find that she's judgmental about attachment parenting in general. I'm no die-hard attachment parent, but I'm no rigid-scheduler either and I totally disagree with her belief that demand feeding, cosleeping and the like teaches a baby bad habits or does not effectively meet their needs. She presumes that if AP doesn't work for some, then it will not work for all and is therefore not even worth trying because you'll end up with a baby with bad habits to break down the road. My experiences with flexibility vs. scheduled routine have been quite different. Gentle transitions from three completely attached newborns to independent individuals without parent-imposed schedules (it's been much more symbiotic than the method Hogg proposes) have worked quite well in our household. While my style may not be right for everyone, it certainly *can* work, something that Hogg fails to recognize. (She believes the "family bed gives parents short-shrift" without acknowledging that it actually *works* for many.)

Then there is the breastfeeding advice. I am disappointed to see someone who calls herself a lactation consultant try to make such a strong case for formula feeding over breastfeeding. As a mom who has both bottlefed and breastfed (and is still breastfeeding), I agree with Hogg that guilt or judgment has NO place in this decision, but I also feel that she has done a great disservice to moms and babies by understating some very important advantages and benefits of breastfeeding. She explains that "one can make a good case for either formula-feeding or breastfeeding." Unfortunately, she never does get around to making the case for breastfeeding.

In this same section, entitled "Making the Choice," Hogg has a sidebar on Feeding Fashions. In this small box, where I presume she's trying to show that while breastfeeding is currently "all the rage," the tide may turn out of its favor in later years as has happened in the past. (It's not clear here whether she's saying therefore don't choose breastfeeding just because it's a modern day "fad" or that if you decide to formula feed against popular opinion, know that 25 years from now it will probably be "the thing to do" just like it was 25 years ago? I don't get it.) She also says here, "As this book is being written, scientists are experimenting with the notion of genetically altering cows to produce human breast milk [yuk]. If that happens, perhaps in the future everyone will tout cow's milk. In fact, a 1999 article in the Journal of Nutrition suggests 'that it may ultimately be possible to design formulas better able to meet the needs of individual infants than the milk available from the mother's breast.'"

Okay, that is fascinating information, but how should it impact any mother's decision *today*? Feed your baby formula now because in the future it might actually be the best choice!? (A statement in itself which is worthy of an opposing dissertation - there are more advantages to breastfeeding than the mere composition of the fluid.)

Later, in the breastfeeding section, she specifically discourages demand feeding - advice which is direct opposition to breastfeeding recommendations endorsed by the majority of professional lactation consultants and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Hogg has a schedule all charted out for new parents, beginning with day one, which becomes increasing less flexible over a three day period, until you're stuck on that infamous three hour schedule by day FOUR and beyond. She promotes pacifier use (she believes in fostering independence from the very beginning), and "dispels the myth" of nipple confusion. And she seems to favor weaning within the first year, which is again not the recommendation of the AAP. Let me say that I actually agreed with some of her breastfeeding advice (don't watch the clock, don't switch sides, find a mentor), but you need to have a pretty discerning eye to know what is the good stuff and what is er, codswallop. Not good for first-time parents or those learning to breastfeed for the first time.

I'm a little surprised that Hogg is an LC at all, because she really doesn't come across as much of a breastfeeding advocate. In the feeding chapter, she puts LLLI and the US Public Health Service (neither seeking profit) in the same category as formula companies, accusing them all of "huge propaganda campaigns." Then she assures moms that SHE, on the other hand, is going to "help you become clearer about your choice, [providing] empowering information - without the rocket science or statistical numwhack that conventional breastfeeding books tend to bombard you with." Ugh.

Tracy Hogg claims this is a middle of the road approach. It isn't. As a parent and as a licensed marriage and family therapist, I have read most of the parenting books on the market. This book isn't much different from all of the other sleep training books out there.

It is obvious it is written from the perspective of a babysitter rather than a medical doctor, psychologist, or experienced parent. Her change a "bad" habit in three days is ridiculous and oversimplified. Yes, you can change a behavior if you are ruthless enough about it, but that doesn't mean you should. Picking up the baby and putting them back down repeatedly as she recommends might make you feel like you are doing something rather than just leaving them there to cry, but you aren't meeting the babies need for closeness. In one example she explains that in one night she picked up and put a baby down 172 times (when he cried, she picked him up and as soon as he stopped she put him down), how frustrating for this poor baby who was trying to communicate a need that went unmet. After several days, the baby gave up and didn't cry in his crib anymore. She cites this as an example of how great her training program is. Babies are people with needs.

I met a family recently who used this approach and their baby responded to this program like a trained pup. She was complacent and passive. She slept through the night without a peep and from 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Her daily routines involved videos, bottles, and crib-time with a bunch of pacifiers. No rocking, no lullabyes, definitely no nursing. It definitely was easy as her "E.A.S.Y." program implies. But, this kind of approach has negative long term effects. The mother said that the approach is great because her child doesn't have to "waste energy communicating her needs" because they tell her what she needs. This is a big premise of this book. I found this very sad.

Children need to learn to identify their needs, communicate their needs, and have those needs met. In this process they learn to communicate and have healthy trusting relationships with others. These sleep training programs are based on behavioral psychological theories. The problem with this is that these approaches are more appropriate for animals, which is how these theories developed. But it is completely developmentally inappropriate to use these behavior modification approaches with human infants. The first 12 to 18 months of life the primary task of a human infant is to learn to trust.

This author really does not understand child development at all, one of her main points is "start as you mean to go on" and she explains how you shouldn't start doing something that you don't want to continue. It doesn't work like this. Young children are needy and as those needs are met, they become less needy. There is a classic study by Ainsworth that showed that young infants whose cries were responded to promptly cried less as older infants, whereas young infants whose cries were ignored or responded to inappropriately or wiht delay cried more when they were older. Books like this make the routine more important than the relationship. This causes significant long term relationship problems that the child will struggle with in the years to come. I see this every day in my practice-problems with intimacy and materialism, attaching and finding comfort in objects continuing later in life- the bottle, pacifier, and blankie become the cigarette, the alcoholic drink, the compulsive shopping, the compulsive eating, etc tomorrow. Of course the occasional use of a pacifier or bottle when mom isn't available is handy, but overrelying on mother substitutes as Tracy recommends is not good for your child.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give is teach your child to love people and use things, and not the other way around. This book promotes loving things and using people. The approach is very manipulative. If you want to learn more about child development, go right to the source and study Winnicott, Kohut and Bowlby. Or if you want to read a book marketed to parents read "The Baby Book" or "No Cry Sleep Solution" or "Good Nights".