Ok, so as new parents, Joe and I wanted to do things right. As a first step, we listened to advice from trusted sources. While I think the intentions were good, some advice couldn't have been more wrong. Here are a few of the worst things we heard:

Time the nursing sessions, and switch sides after a certain amount of time has lapsed. This is terrible, terrible advice which cause Joe and I a lot of stress and even worse, stress for the baby. I have come to find through my own research and limited experience that it makes sense to "watch the baby, not the clock." Making sure he gets a full feeding is more important than the amount of time he nurses. Also, having him switch sides based on elapsed time may not allow him to get to the high calorie hindmilk that comes at the end of the feeding.

Feed on demand. The idea here is to feed whenever the baby shows signs of fussiness or rooting. After all, the baby knows when they are hungry and you don't want them to get to the point of crying, right? Sounds good in theory, but not in practice. For me, this caused two problems. One: it causes the baby to be a snacker. This means he is eating too often and only really getting the low calorie foremilk instead of the high calorie hindmilk. This also makes for an exhausted mom and baby. Two: It caused Joe and I to never really be sure of the reason that he was crying. We were trained to assume it was hunger, and we weren't really assessing each case to see what the real need was.

During the day, nap the baby out in the open so that they hear the hustle and bustle of the day and sleep lightly. In theory, this will make them sleep better at night. Couldn't be more wrong. This was one of the worst pieces of advice. Jack was regularly very fussy in the evening due to what we now know was lack of sleep. We attributed it to him just being frustrated or cranky, and we just assumed that it was his nature to be this way. We thought we just had a fussy baby and that there was nothing we could do about it. Talk about frustration for mom, dad and baby.

The good news: Enter On Becoming Babywise. After spending Father's Day evening at my parents house with a fussy, crying baby, my brother's girlfriend happened to mention this book. I cannot stress enough how much this saved the day. It is a God send. Rather than allowing our lives to be infant led, our lives are now parent led. Novel idea. This book teaches practices that cause the entire family to live in harmony. In short, the baby's life becomes routine: eat, wake and sleep. In that order. Believe it or not, this routine promotes nighttime sleep. No more looking to the baby to dictate what the parent does. As parents, we create a flexible schedule which allows us to meet his needs and keep our sanity at the same time. At his age, Jack now eats every three hours, then is awake, and naps for the last hour and a half. To be honest, this is only day two of using the system and there is SIGNIFICANT change. Before, Jack was not napping during the day (maybe only 20 minutes here and there) and was cranky at night. Now, he naps in his crib regularly. He NEVER napped in the crib before. Does he cry when I put him down? Yes, he does. But not for long. Is it easy to listen to. No it's not. But knowing that this is for his own good makes it easier. Soon, he will go down for a nap with no problem. As an infant, he does not know when he needs to sleep and although he may know when he is hungry, he doesn't know how to regulate his metabolism.

The end result is this: We are training our child to be able to sleep on his own and not be dependent on mom, dad, the swing, the car, or anything else in order to fall asleep. Since we are regulating his eating, we know he is getting the proper nutrition. Since we are regulating his naps, we know he is getting proper sleep. In the two days that we have been practicing this, he has not had his evening fussy time. And one of the best results is that the eat/wake/sleep cycle promotes his ability to sleep through the night. Eighty percent of parents who follow the Babywise methods have infants who sleep through the night (7-8 hours) by the time they are 8 weeks old. Jack is nine weeks and he is sleeping 9 hours at night. My advice to any new or expectant parent is to get a copy of On Becoming Babywise and read up.