Twelve Hours by Twelve Weeks

Just a quickie to add... Liz passed along to me a book she used called Twelve Hours by Twelve Weeks.

It teaches parents how to sleep train their children... so yes, you guessed it, they sleep twelve hours at night, by twelve weeks of age, in addition to taking a one hour nap in the morning and a two hour nap in the afternoon.

She also gave me Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.

So far I like the former a lot more. It's very short, sweet, and to the point. The latter is extremely complex, throws around a lot of confusing percentages ("of the 49% of partially fussy children, 37% are not fussy, 51% are medium fussy, and 11% are fussy, compared to the 11% of fussy children, 51% are not that fussy....") and has a lot of complex instructions ("if you are a method A parent, using extinction, and your child is one of the 37% of not fussy children in the 51% of medium fussy children, and your child is between 3-5 months of age, use this technique.") I get it that probably one method doesn't work for all children or all children, but Jeez Aleez.

So whether or not this Twelve Hours by Twelve Weeks could work for me is a different issue. It goes against everything I've ever learned. The author says you should have your child eating every four hours by twelve weeks of age, certainly not on demand or even every three hours. (Though Liz has a friend who has successfully breastfed her child more frequently and still achieved the twelve hour night.)

This sounds impossible, right? But Liz said it took only a couple of days to get her little daughter on this schedule of eating every four hours (daytime only)... and only a couple of days and very little crying to get her to sleep through the night. To eliminate nighttime feedings, you reduce the volume of the feeding (or duration, if breastfeeding) every three days.

Anyway, I would never have believed that this could work... if not for the fact that Liz successfully instituted this (and she knew several people that had successfully done it with her, especially since this author is also from DC). And the fact that her daughter seemed to be smiling every awake minute that I was there, and never cried, and went quickly and easily to sleep... well, I'm intrigued.

I'd love to hear if anyone out there has heard of this book, and knows anyone that has tried it, with either positive or negative experiences.

And here's a link if anyone is interested in checking it out.
http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Babies-Sleep-Hours-Weeks/dp/0976899108/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1302611835&sr=1-3-catcorr