Rating: 
Summary: Just Awful
Review: I have read the book and the more I learn about breastfeeding and infant sleep and development,the more obnoxious that book appears. I am not opposed to routine, I just believe that babies develop their own. I do not like her anti bf attitude,she even goes so far to suggest that someday we will have genetically engineered cows to produce human milk that we can bottle feed to our babies. As if that would be a good thing. That just makes me sick. I also find it completely astounding how she suggests babies don't feel emotions like sadness or loneliness and that parents should look at the baby like they would a puppy or a kitten, when they are vocalizing they are not expressing an emotion, they are only capable of expressing a bodily need like 'I'm hungry, cold or uncomfortable.' My husband read that and said to me, "It sounds like she really hates babies". Many moms nurse or rock their babies to sleep for naps and bedtime and are glad to have such a reliable tool for getting them to sleep so easily. There is no need to put a baby through the sleep training when you already have a peaceful, appropriate way to get a baby to sleep - nursing or holding.
As for trying to stop the baby from night waking, it is not nutritionally appropriate for young infants to attempt to eliminate any night waking during which the baby usually takes a full feed. Parents can tell when baby isn't really hungry since they will only nurse a few minutes and go back to sleep. However if they stay awake actively nursing one must assume baby is hungry and needs that feeding for the nutrition. I like The No Cry Sleep Solution, it has lots of info about infant sleep that the 'baby trainers' like Hogg don't seem to know. Plus it is respectful to the needs of both parents and baby, unlike the 'Whisperer' which seems to me to try to make a baby more convenient for the parents. Yuck. You don't invite a child, a new person, into your life so you can try to make it fit in as if nothing has changed. You welcome them and embrace the changes and new experiences they bring.
Rating: 
Summary: A several page essay could express the same
Review: This book was less than "average". However, this is a book that I believe to be written for the parents who are in need of immediate assistance in parenting their newborns. The book was a waste of my precious time. As all new parents can relate- they don't have time as they bring their newborns home, experience sleep deprivation, heal from the labor and feed every 2-3 hours. The content in the book was basic common sense or information I had already learned from birth classes offered at my hospital during pregnancy. It was a waste of my time and money to read 276 pages that could have been summarized in a few page essay.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally Senseable Parent Advice
Review: This book is truely a blessing. It takes a middle road approach to two sides of the parenting decisions we have to make as parents. The advice is easy to follow and is just plain common sense. This is NOT a schedule! It's a routine! It just doing the same types of activies (eating, activity, sleeping, and you-time) in the same order and not depending on a clock! It is about meeting your babies needs first and by doing that you have to learn what your baby is telling you he/she needs. And by putting your child on a routine you have a little bit of help since you and your baby both know what is going on and what is going to happen next. Instead of letting the baby control your life, you give your baby some structure, but it's all very flexible.
Some of the best advice for me in this book was to do what best fit my family best and not worry about what other people think because what works best for your family may fail miserably in mine and vice versa. There's nothing wrong with doing things different and you need not feel guilt over it since every person is different, every family will be too!
Tracy gives you her "secrets" of what she does and the frame work and then lets you go and have the joy of discovering what your baby and family will now be like with a new bundle of joy.
You will probably like this book if you are frustrated with the battle going on over "co-sleeping, feed-on-demand" and "Ferberizing" your baby and neither seems like the solution for you. You probably won't like this book if you are hard-core one way or another on the issues of sleep and feeding.
Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Air
Review: As first time parents, my wife and I were both frustrated and overwhelmed by the conflicting advice that we received even before our daughter was released from the hospital. In between the feedings and diaper changes during the first few days at home, I read Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, which was given to us by a family friend. Finally, there was a sane voice of experience that helped us to find our own way. Some of the important points of this book: 1. It is normal to feel overwhelmed.
2. Every baby has a unique personality. While Tracy Hogg's categories may be somewhat oversimplified, she does offer a means of identifying your baby's personality so that you may better handle certain situations. No single approach will work with every baby, because they are all different. 3. You are not evil if you choose not to breast feed. This seems to be the subject of most of the negative reviews on this site, which is unfortunate. However, the author does not advocate either breast or formula feeding, she merely presents the pros and cons of each in a balanced manner, and provides reassurance that whatever method you choose, it is your choice to make, and there is no wrong decision. 4. One of the best pieces of advice: follow a structured routine. "EASY": Eat, Activity, Sleep, time for Yourself. This is another area that seems to have drawn criticism from fellow ... reviewers. "EASY" is presented as an alternative to feeding on demand and scheduled feeding. Actually, it is not as much an alternative as it is a combination of the two.
--> Following a set schedule is often impractical, as we found out ourselves while our daughter was still in the hospital. There, feeding took place every three hours, and at the same times. Most of the feedings went well, but at times, it seemed as though we were were force-feeding the poor kid, and it was implied that we were somehow bad parents if she did not finish the prescribed amount. Once we got home, we were able to be more flexible with the feeding times, which is exactly what EASY suggests.
--> What EASY suggests is following a prescribed routine. Eating is followed by activity, and the activity is followed by sleep. And while the baby sleeps, you have time for yourself. The structure is etched in stone, but the times are not. Who will not agree that flexibility is good? And having the structure will help you interpret your baby's cries and decrease the miscues (for example, trying to feed the baby when the baby is actually overstimulated, or over-tired). 5. The author provides guidelines for interpreting your baby's crying. 6. The author also explains how bad habits start and suggests methods for undoing bad habits. For example: allowing the baby to fall asleep on your chest may lead to the baby needing your chest to fall asleep.... 7. Babies need to become independent. This means not rushing to the crib everytime they start to fuss. Babies need to learn to self-soothe and often will go back to sleep. As with any book of this type, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer is not perfect, and there is some content that I do not necessarily agree with. But that's okay. The author is writing from personal experience, of which she has a lot. You will not find a whole lot of her advice to be in the vein of "studies have shown..." but rather "what I have learned...." The style in which the book is written is also refreshingly down-to-earth. She speaks to the reader in a friendly voice that is neither condescending nor inaccessible. Is this book worthy of addition to your bookshelf? Absolutely. I highly recommend it. Read it once, and you'll refer to it again and again. The best advice that I can personally give anyone who is a new parent is this: TRUST YOUR OWN INSTINCTS. You will hear and read a lot of conflicting advice, none of which is perfect. You will have to find out what works best for you and your baby. No book can do that for you. Where Secrets of the Baby Whisperer succeeded the most for me was giving me the level of confidence to trust my own instincts, while providing some useful guidelines and advice.
Rating:
Summary: Not so great- disappointing and annoying
Review: This book had a couple helpful things in it, but overall I was annoyed by her lack of objectivity (while pretending like she was presenting an unbias view). And I did find her tone condescending. I have had a lot of sleepless nights in the past 6 weeks which has given me a great opportunity to fly through baby care books. I have to say that I lean toward books written by doctors or sleep researchers that back up their suggestions with actual data and research. I am a total sucker for science and long bibliographies, and that is what I did not find in this book- just opinion. And sure her opinion will work fine for some babies, but some of her methods are potentially harmful (see other reviews for details). I found her E.A.S.Y. program to be meaningless- Eat Activity Sleep You- whatever! She kept referring to it like it was the meaning of life.
I find it quite amusing that she appropriated the "the ABC's of operant conditioning". She calls it her the "ABCs of Changing Bad Habits". I would have respected her more if she had admitted this was borrowed from learning theory and behavioral psychology instead of pretending like she invented it. She uses the same terms (Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence), but she totally misinterprets how it works. Instead of the common behavioral wisdom (change the consequence to change the behavior- brought to us courtesy of Skinner 50+ years ago and still valid), she says "Change the behavior to change the consequence". But how do you introduce a new behavior? She doesn't touch on that- her ABCs make no sense and just confirmed for me what I had suspected- that she skimmed books instead of doing real research.
Rating:
Summary: Can't recommend it at all
Review: My sister-in-law, who is a phenomenal mom, recommended the book so I bought it when my daughter was 10 weeks old. I'm a certified behavior therapist so I can tell you that everything in the book if used systematically and consistently will, eventually, work for all animals as the principles have been scientifically proven for about a century. That having been said, just because we CAN teach someone to do something doesn't mean we SHOULD. There are, I feel, ethical implications involved in denying a baby food, love, and attention when they need it. I can teach my daughter not to cry in the middle of the night when she's hungry but what has she learned in the process? Not to tell me when she's hungry because I won't attend to her needs when she does tell me. Not exactly the kind of introduction to the world I want for my children. There are responsible books out there which help parents cope when exhaustion and frustration set in, this just isn't one of them. There are no easy answers to the upheavel a baby brings, but trying to change a baby to fit a pre-baby lifestyle seems short-sighted to me.
Rating:
Summary: Thank Heaven for this book!
Review: I like to think of this book as the "owner's manual" that babies don't come with. It's such a feeling of relief to have an idea of why the baby is crying, or what he's trying to tell you. You'll really learn a lot from this book!
Rating: 
Summary: great advice on nursing
Review: This book really helped my baby and me get off to a good start nursing. The schedule she provides gives you a good framework in those delirious days of early parenting. And in particular, her advice to feed only on one side after the first few days has worked very well for us. My daughter gained almost a pound in her first two weeks of life and she continues to thrive. I did not find this book rigid and the author takes pains to builds a mother's confidence in her own judgment, in my opinion. In a way, nursing your baby every time she makes a peep and refusing to schedule naps is itself rigid. However, the book on the whole is not well organized. It's the type of thing you read for an overall philosophy (along with practical info) but it's NOT the book you'll go to to get a quick answer to a specific question.
Rating:
Summary: Parenting books aren't nearly as good as fellow Moms!
Review: Not much better than Babywise. Why are we so obsessed with sleep and schedules? This book advocates not feeding your child unless the clock as well as the child says it is time. This leads to insufficient milk supply and failure to thrive. Don't do it. Babies cry because they have an unfulfilled need. If you are willing to hold your baby, sing to your baby, nurse your baby, then you don't need this book. Intuition is better than some artificially forced and unnatural schedule. Your baby will settle into the schedule that is right for him/her. Trust yourself and your intuition, and if you need help, then don't isolate yourself -- seek out other mothers!
Rating:
Summary: My sanity saver
Review: This book was recommended to me by a friend, after my two-week old infant girl was spending most of her daytime hours awake, and getting very-overtired (her eyes looked like match sticks were holding them open), and nothing would settle her to sleep except rocking or singing. Then she would always wake up crying again after a short nap. A few days of this (one day she barely slept in 12 hours!), and I was pulling my hair out. This book may not have all the answers, but it completely changed our house in a few days. I learned how to read her cues BEFORE she was too tired, and to calm her so was ready and able to accept sleep, in her own crib, so I could actually put her down and take a shower while she slept. This was a lifesaver for me. Now, at four weeks, we're still learning, and I will be reading more books, as she still occasionally needs up to half an hour of help before falling asleep for a nap, but at least she always naps for 2-3 good long naps a day (a few hours each), and she even wakes up smiling instead of cranky all the time. Sometimes now I can even just put her in her crib and walk out, and when I check back in, she's asleep. No crying at all! It's so much easier to appreciate your beautiful baby when you see a smile and some nice nap time. This book gave us some immediate specific strategies, and taught us how to keep a little log of her feed and eat times, so we could figure out what she was doing. It was extremely helpful in our case, and I would recommend it to any other mothers who have "fussy" babies (our doctor called it colic, but she's so easily soothed now that I think she just gets overstimulated and overtired easily). Perhaps once you already know how to recognize the different cries and states of your infant, then this book isn't as necessary. It was perfect for me, and we're now ready to read some of the other books and keep learning, as I do get a bit tired of the strategy of going it to settle her every time she cries now. Anyway, it worked wonders for us this month. Thank you Tracy!
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