Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There's already been a lot of feedback written about this book, so I will try to keep this brief. It was given to me by 2 different families who have wonderful, well-adjusted children, so I read it and very much took it to heart. I enthusastically recommended it to people even before I delivered because it sounded so wonderfully ideal for baby and parents. Unfortunately, after much time exercising the advice with my daughter my circumstances forced me to face that it wasn't working for us. In fact, I believe that applying these principles greatly contributed to my difficulties nursing and my daughter's failure to thrive. (She lost weight the first 6 weeks and it took a few months to regain to her birth weight. Interestingly enough, the author even attributes his method to resolving this same issue in a demand-fed failure-to-thrive infant in one of the chapters! That's why I had a hard time just giving up his methods.) (I think the author relies on his/his wife's experience too heavily and attempts to apply this to all mothers. The fact of the matter is, all women are different with regard to lactation and all babies are different in their skill/efficiency in stimulating lactation. I'm glad they did not have these issues. It's emotionally taxing and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.) It took several months for me to completely abandon most if not all of the advice here and for our feeding and sleeping to find a healthy pattern for us. My daughter didn't sleep "through the night" for a very long time, but my priority had to become to feed her and see her grow. In fact very early on (10 months) I discovered that she awoke at night because she had to relieve herself. Understanding this made potty training incredibly efficient and we achieved some success with it very early. Now at age 2 she will wake some nights to use the bathroom and get back into bed. I don't mind the brief interruption to sleep. She's never had problems wetting the bed. I wonder if I had been so focused on uninterrupted sleep if I'd have noticed this pattern and been able to take advantage of it to teach her what that "sensation" is. Ultimately I will admit that after fighting an uphill battle trying to apply the counsel here I reluctantly fell into a style more like that of the "demand-feeding, attachment parent" that the author criticizes continually throughout the book. I'm proud of that fact now. To become what I resisted for the good of my daughter and my family just shows me how empowering motherhood is and that my priorities can be right on the mark. My daughter is as intelligent and well adjusted as the children I hoped/tried to model when I eagerly awaited the opportunity to apply the advice in this book. I guess there are several ways to be a good parent and this book is not necessarily a "silver bullet" for all readers. I'm glad it worked for them, but I respectfully disagree that this is the one and only way to be "Baby Wise". I'm pregnant again and due in 3 weeks. This time I'm doing things very differently. Just for starters...I threw this book away.