What? She likes Baby Wise?

So you're probably wondering, what is a woman who calls her self A Little Granola is doing promoting Baby Wise? I thought she was a crunchy momma? I want to address this misconception right away.

I'm a natural momma. I wanted a natural birth {more on this later} with no medication, monitors, eye ointment or vaccines. I used a midwife and a doula. I really want a home, water birth someday. I have fed my little man only breast milk with no supplementing until we started solids a week and a half ago. Even with that, I'm only giving him solids that are absolutely necessary (about 1-2 T. a day). I love baby wearing and hate medications most of the time. Get my point?

I first heard about Baby Wise from a friend at church when I was pregnant. I never knew anything about the Ezzo's or this book before this point. My friend said that it helped her get her twins sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. She was a working mom and she had to get some rest-especially with twins! To me, this sounded great! I knew I would have to go back to work at 12 weeks and needed a plan. I didn't actually order the book until my Peanut was about 4 weeks. This was a big mistake on my part. We had no idea what we were doing! I was exhausted & still healing from a rough birth. As soon as I got the book and started reading I knew this fit with our parenting philosophy.

First, I loved the importance the Ezzo's placed on the husband-wife relationship. I love how they stressed that the baby should be welcomed into your family and lifestyle-not the other way around. With this being our first child, it would have been really easy for us to begin framing our family around Peanut. I was trying to imagine doing that with other children around, and that would create havoc!

I think one misunderstanding is people hear 'Baby Wise' and they immediately think that we like to let our baby scream for hours in his crib, we never address his needs, we let him starve, and more. That's not the case. I truly believe sleep training and scheduling is in the best interest of the whole family. It's the natural way to go for our family. If you imagine back in the day, when people were living in tents, wearing their babies all the time-I doubt they planned their whole day around that baby's wants. They had to get up and work, their schedule depended on the day, the harvests, the colony's needs. The baby had to adapt to the family.

Baby Wise is Parent-Directed. Not schedule-led or child-led. This means that we as the parents make the best decision at the time. We don't let the child make the decision, and we don't let the schedule make the decision. The schedule is there to serve our family, not for us to serve the schedule. If we can tell that our baby woke up early because he's hungry-we feed him. If we can tell he's ready for a nap an hour early-we put him down. We follow his natural cues and make sure they fit in the families best interest to make our decisions.

I think the best proof that this is the natural way to go is how happy and well rested our family is. My Peanut is always happy when he's awake. He only gets fussy when he's ready for a nap. He slept through the night at 12 weeks (perfect for me going back to work). With all of this-I am happy and well rested. We all know a happy mom/wife makes a happy home. People always comment on how good our baby is. How calm and well behaved and happy he is. I constantly tell people it's not that we're lucky, it was a lot of work. It was emotionally hard at times. I wanted to pull my hair out at times. In the end it was all worth it.

We're still learning, and it seems to change every time we get accustomed to our schedule. It's a process. I'm not a professional by any means. He's only 6 months and it seems every month I have a question for the women who have been through it a few times. I know Baby Wise isn't for everyone. It's working for us though and that's what's important!