Can Someone Explain the Baby Whisperer Method?

A two week old cannot make associations like that. Just enjoy him and find the book when you have time.

Right now, your baby is trying to survive and live outside the womb. My little guy did the same. He really just needs to eat, sleep, be changed and cuddled.

I think it's fine to teach them how to fall asleep on their own, but please wait a while until your little one just gets used to being here with you. Some kids need to do cry it out to learn how to sleep without nursing, and that shouldn't be started until there has been enough time for attachment to happen. Ferber himself recommends waiting until at least 3-5 months for that.

The Baby Whisperer also suggest starting between 3-6 months, so you've got time to read up.:)

I haven't read the Baby Whisperer and I wonder if you have. What I've heard about the Baby Whisperer does not fit in with what you're asking. I suggest that you keep doing what you're doing until your baby is older. Now he needs to be fed on demand and continue to be held even when he falls asleep. You are now helping him to build a sense of security in his new world. He has to feel that you will respond to his every need.

That means feeding him on demand. If he hasn't eaten enough when he falls asleep, it means that you need to wake him up to feed more or find ways to keep him awake.

He does not need any activity for some time. Just being alive in this world is all the activity he can handle.

I very definitely want to emphasize that it's important for you to continue with attachment parenting with your new baby. I suggest that you don't fully understand how to do that and what parts of what you did with your oldest are necessary to do with your youngest. Of course, you won't be able to do all with the new one that you did when you had only one. But there are many facets of what you did that are important to do with the new baby. Wearing him his one of those. You can wear your baby and still take care of your toddler. Hopefully, you've stopped wearing the first one. If not, then it's time to wean him away from that because your new baby needs it more than he needs it. Your new baby needs the same strong foundation that your first one needed.

Sounds like you want the new baby to sleep less. No way! He needs that sleep. Find a book or a web site that talks about what babies need at certain ages. All a newborn does is sleep, eat, pee and poop. You do NOT need to break the feeding to sleep association with a baby. It's once they're older that you address that issue. Now, your baby needs the sleep. You may need to pat his cheek, jiggle his body, or do something else to wake him up so that he can eat more. Otherwise just lay him down while he continues to sleep.

Know that a baby's nervous system is extremely primitive. The nervous system gradually matures but it will take years until it's fully developed, Actually, it's not fully developed until one is in their twenties. At birth your baby cannot handle much change. He needs to eat and sleep when he needs to eat and sleep. He does not have the ability to make a connection between sleeping and feeding. You're the one making that connection. He's not. He is able to eat when he's hungry and sleep when he's sleepy. That's all at this age.

A cheat sheet will not help you if you don't have some rudimentary understanding of the reasons for what the cheat sheet tells you what to do. I urge you to read the book if you want to use that method.

Here is a description of the books content from Amazon.com.

"When Tracy Hogg’s Secrets of the Baby Whisperer was first published, it soared onto bestseller lists across the country. Parents everywhere became “whisperers” to their newborns, amazed that they could actually communicate with their baby within weeks of their child’s birth. Tracy gave parents what for some amounted to a miracle: the ability to understand their baby’s every coo and cry so that they could tell immediately if the baby was hungry, tired, in real distress, or just in need of a little TLC. Tracy also dispelled the insidious myth that parents must go sleepless for the first year of a baby’s life–because a happy baby sleeps through the night. Now you too can benefit from Tracy’s more than twenty years’ experience. In this groundbreaking book, she shares simple, accessible programs in which you will learn:

• E.A.S.Y.–how to get baby to eat, play, and sleep on a schedule that will make every member of the household’s life easier and happier.
• S.L.O.W.–how to interpret what your baby is trying to tell you (so you don’t try to feed him when he really wants a nap).
• How to identify which type of baby yours is–Angel, Textbook, Touchy, Spirited, or Grumpy–and then learn the best way to interact with that type.
• Tracy’s Three Day Magic–how to change any and all bad habits (yours and the baby’s) in just three days.

At the heart of Tracy’s simple but profound message: treat the baby as you would like to be treated yourself. Reassuring, down-to-earth, and often flying in the face of conventional wisdom, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer promises parents not only a healthier, happier baby but a more relaxed and happy household as well."

The part that is missing in this description is learning what leads up to when you use these skills. I'm sure you don't start out on day one to do all of them. Buy the book. Amazon has used copies available. Or check it out of the library. You need a complete understanding of when and why for the techniques as well as a complete understanding of the techniques themselves and how to use them.

One cannot just say, I'll lay the baby down before he goes to sleep. You need to know when this will work for your baby based on his developmental stage. You need to now what your baby needs. This is where you're at now, getting to know your baby and what he needs. The rest comes later as your baby grows. There is nothing in this approach that you do all at once and at the same time.

I also suggest that you learn more about attachment parenting. Since you've had success with that concept with your first, I would think you'd want to do that with this one. I'm sure there needs to be some tweaking with what you did. Perhaps a lot of tweaking if there are areas in which you're not happy with the result. Attachment parenting is an ongoing task of learning what works. This baby may need different things than your first baby. Attachment parenting, just like Baby Whisperer techniques, is about providing what each individual child needs.

I mentioned it this morning. Newborns don't do activities. Eating is usually activity enough :-). But a 6 week old might like to stare into your eyes or hang out on a play gym for 5 minutes.

I kind of attachment parent. I baby carry, and try hard to listen to my babies needs. The baby whisperer is all about this. How she differs is in her suggestion that while you follow the baby's lead, you also try to shape it into a schedule of some sort. So during the day, we nurse every 3 hours.

She does not recommend putting a cold wash cloth in baby, as she thinks that's cruel. I did do this with my second kid, as it was impossible to wake him up. My current baby was easy at waking to eat. A diaper change would usually do it.

There is no crying. You watch baby for the two yawns, and then try to put her down in the Magical window. When you miss that window, you hold baby till relaxed and then try to put baby down. You can shush as you are doing it, and this helps a lot. In fact, I've been using a noise machine, and I love it! My daughter got into a sleeping 8 hours, eat, sleep another 4 pattern by week 6, and I think the sound machine and the EASY method are the reason. It's also important to move baby to another room if baby noises wake you up. So many times we go to them when they will just settle themselves if left alone. Baby noises are different than cries, and learning how to really listen is what the baby whisperer tries to teach you.

There is a sleep window, and when you hit it, baby puts baby to sleep!

I do recommend reading the baby whisperer solves all your problems. I'm on baby three, and I pick up the book and read while I breastfeed.

Btw, the baby whisperer totally thinks you should feed on demand. What so many of us breastfeeding moms fail to realize, however, is the difference between comfort nursing and actual nursing because they need food! So many times we mistake a need to suck with a need for food.

Her method is very helpful in breaking the nurse to sleep habit. Weisbluth, however, makes a good point: as long as the eyes are still open, and they are seeing where they are going, they will learn to put themselves to sleep. I always double nurse at bed time, so she eats after her last cat nap and then right before bed. In fact, she eats every two hours starting around 3 or 4. She totally empties my boobs and tanks up.

The baby whisperer also believes in dream feedin --waking to feed before you go to bed-- I don't do this, and I don't really think there is a need. I don't mind waking once during the course of the nights, it's the every two hour thing that kills me ---my first did that until she weaned!

I'm not familiar with the baby whisperer method but it sound similar to what I did. I waited until my younger son was about 5 or 6 weeks, before I started. ( I didn't know about it with my first son). Wake up about the same time each day. Only about a 30 minute difference. By the time I started I had a good idea of when my son would wake in the morning to eat. I would get up half an hour earlier so I could go to the bathroom get a little something to eat and be ready when he woke up. I had to go back to work soon, so I once he was fed, I would put him in a bouncy facing me, while I pumped and I would talk to him. (I would wait ti change his diaper until after he ate, so it would wake him up). After I cleaned up the pumping supplies, I would put him on his belly for a few minutes and play with some of his toys while he watched. He was usually awake for about 45 minutes.When he started to get cranky, I knew he was tired and would cuddle and rock him until fell asleep. No nursing!He would fall asleep right away. Let him sleep until he wakes up and do it all again. I was feeding him every 2 to 2.5 hours. At night I would nurse him to sleep. If I remember correctly, it only took about 2 nights before he was sleeping 6 hours a night.
Good luck

At two weeks he will not learn bad sleep habits. Babies don't start to make those kinds of associations until a little older. I just made sure to have mine in their cribs and going down at night awake by 3 months. That should give you plenty of time to read the book, just read a few pages each time you nurse during the day, you will be through it in no time.

I haven't read the Baby Whisperer book, but I just want to say that you need to keep him awake while he's supposed to be eating. You can do this using a cool washcloth, gently wiping his head, taking some of his clothes off so that he's not as comfortable, playing with his feet, etc. You need to keep him awake so that he can have a full enough tummy to not want to snack on you all the time.

Keep him "groggily awake" before laying him down to sleep. THIS will make a big difference in helping him learn to eventually self-soothe. Nursing every two hours will help the baby be hungry enough to really nurse and not just snack. You do NOT want him to use your nipple as a pacifier.

Another thing you can do is offer one breast at a time. The reason for this is that you have front milk and hind milk. If he just nurses for a few minutes on both sides, he's only getting that front milk. The front milk is SO easily digestible that without getting the heavier hind milk, he will get hungry at lot faster. My mother used to move a safety pin to the side of her bra that would be the next side to nurse with, when she was nursing my sister. She was a very experienced nurser (4 babies), and she found that offering one breast emptied it out and her babies were sated better. I didn't do that, but mostly because I didn't like the full feeling in one breast and didn't have the discipline to wait for the next feeding, LOL!

Would you possibly consider pumping in order to offer bottles in the middle of the night? If you could do that, you would have a much better chance of getting the baby to sleep longer at night instead of having to feed him all night long. The reason is that the front milk and the hind milk are mixed together in the bottle (if you empty your breast) and will hold baby longer. My own kids didn't care which they got, bottle or breast (I could not pump, though I sure tried - thankfully, they didn't care whether it was breastmilk or formula, since I had to go back to work...)

I want to add that really and truly, at two weeks old, he is still transitioning to being out of the womb and is almost a newborn, still. There are no activities for a newborn. You hold them, love them, put them down, pick them up, change their diapers, bathe them, feed them, and put them to bed. Talking and singing to your baby is important, but you don't have to work THAT hard to talk and sing. It's really your loving and soothing voice they need to hear, more than anything else. No other activities are needed this early.

I'm sure that you are not interested in the Ferber method for much later, so I won't venture to talk about that with you. But I do think that if you have him on a breastfeeding schedule and help him get that hind milk so that he doesn't snack all day long, your life will be easier and he will do well with it.

Good luck.

When I was a first time Mom, I read that book.

The most important thing you can do, for your newborn, is to get to know... your baby, and his/her own cues.
There is no "method" for a newborn.
They feed, and sleep.
ALL day. ALL night.
And they wake, all day and all night.
It is a 24/7, thing.

There is no "activities" you need to do, with an infant.
Even having a bath, is a major activity for them.
After about 1 or 2 hours of awake time, they get tired, need a nap, and get overstimulated.
You NEED to go, according to your baby's cues.
Each baby, differs and has different needs.
Thus, it is very important, for you, to get to know your infant.
And go, according to your infant's, needs.

Babies, DO fall asleep and while nursing.
Normal.
You also need to nurse, on demand. NOT according to a schedule.
I nursed both my kids, and all day and all night and woke up to nurse them all night. My kids had HUGE appetites as babies. I nursed them. It is their... needs. And nursing them when they need to, is important and affects their development.
And I nursed, using both breasts, each session. And my kids drank me dry.

Newborns, sleep a lot. They sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep, wake, all day long and all night long.
And they need to nurse, all day and all night long.

They don't need, "activities."

Breastfeeding, is not to make a baby sleep.
It is to nourish, them, appropriately.
Babies, need tons of intake, and to be nursed on-demand.
Breastmilk, metabolizes, quickly.
When a baby is full, they detach from the nipple and/or, fall asleep.

I didn't wear my kids when they were babies. They hated, baby slings etc. So I kept them in a "Moses Basket." And when my 2nd child was a newborn, I simply explained to my eldest child that I have to nurse baby brother a lot. And that they sleep, a lot. My eldest child understood. And they also napped, at the same time, too.

A diaper change is enough of an activity, if I remember correctly. It's been a long time since my baby was that little. There is a babywhisperer forum you can go to for help. And I know my local library has the books if you don't want to buy them.

I did read this book with my first. It helped a lot because I had no clue what to do. I think routine is key, ANY routine that works for you. I modified hers into, Eat, Activity, Snack, Sleep and then You time. The You time was generally a nap for me. I had to add in the "snack" as that is what worked for my son. Keep a log of what you are doing and go with what works. I also recommend Sleeping Through The Night by Dr. Jodi Mindell. This is for when your baby is a little bit older, but helps them to learn how to fall asleep on their own. Also will help you decipher why their sleep may be interrupted. A combination of these two books is what helped me. Good Luck!