Registered Nurse Tracy Hogg: Secrets of the Baby Whisperer
| | Ballantine Books, New York |
| reviewed by Mary Tatko |
The commencement fourth dimension I read Dr. William Sears' alert against "baby trainers," I couldn't help picturing a man in a tiptop hat sending beleaguered babies through a series of hoops. Now I can replace that prototype with the grin face of "Baby Whisperer" Tracy Hogg, the apparent ringmaster in today's earth of baby trainers.
In Secrets Of The Baby Whisperer: How To At-home, Connect, And Communicate With Your Baby, Hogg and co-author Melinda Blau promise to assist new parents maintain residuum by preventing a newborn from dominating their lives.
.
Sorting fact from stance from flat-out fiction in this volume's near 300 pages is something no new parent should have to practice. But parenting advice sells, a fact attested to by the book'due south New York Times bestseller condition, so you lot tin can bet plenty of moms and dads are trying out Hogg'southward suggestions.
Of course non all her communication contradicts the basics of attachment parenting (which itself is a parenting manner that varies from family to family unit). And I share her fondness for such things as cloth diapers and baby massage. But and so much of what Hogg serves up every bit wholesome, commonsense guidance for mums and dads (she hails from the U.K. and likes to play up her "Englishness") is and so apparently counter to natural parenting, and breastfeeding in item, that this book should come with a warning label.
The backbone of Hogg's parenting organization, a "structured routine" she calls East.A.S.Y., has four components: the amount of fourth dimension she prescribes for eating (25 to 40 minutes every 2 � to three hours), activity (45 minutes), sleeping (one half to one hour), and you lot (an hour or more for mom while the baby sleeps). While she acknowledges that the exact amount of time will vary from infant to baby and with the baby's age, she makes information technology clear that post-obit a schedule such as the ane she outlines is crucial to preventing "chaos in the house."
When she lays out the case for her E.A.S.Y. parenting routine, Hogg takes a couple of paragraphs to dismiss rigid schedules and on-demand feeding, setting herself upwardly equally a champion of the reasonable middle ground between these 2 "extremes."
When Hogg states that feeding on demand simply makes babies enervating and that parents who do so will be giving up their ain lives, anyone who knows what attachment parenting is and is not probably will put the book down.
Those who continue reading should, equally Hogg herself recommends more than once about other people's communication, take what they read with a grain of common salt.
On the upshot of breastfeeding, Hogg again plants herself on cocky-proclaimed heart footing. She laments the "controversy" over feeding choices and sympathizes with new moms who must wade through "huge propaganda campaigns." (I would think her attempt to equate the efforts of volunteer organizations such as La Leche League with the money-driven marketing of formula companies must be insulting to many readers, regardless of their feeding choices.)
Even as Hogg congratulates herself on her "fifty-fifty-handedness," she manages to vastly understate the benefits of breastfeeding while giving considerable ink to the claim of formula, which, she informs us, "is more than refined and chock-total of nutrients than ever."
The department of her volume titled "Making the Pick" reads more like a defense force of formula than an objective overview of feeding choices. Amid other things, she poo-poos bonding equally a reason to breastfeed, complains that the health benefits of breast milk have been overblown, warns that nursing mothers must carry an extra five to 10 pounds to ensure proper nutrition for their babies, makes a signal of emphasizing that studies merely advise – not prove – that breastfeeding might offer women protection from a variety of wellness problems, and maintains that women concerned about body image might be ameliorate off using formula since breastfeeding tin get out them "flat as pancakes" or "sagging."
Hogg seems then eager to make upward for the breastfeeding advocates who are, she implies, out to make mothers who choose formula experience guilty, that she can't seem to discuss breast milk without plugging formula in the aforementioned breath:
"The proverbial bottom line is that while information technology is good for a infant to have some breast milk, specially during the first month, if that's not the female parent'due south choice or if for some reason the female parent can't breastfeed, formula-feeding is a perfectly acceptable culling – for some, the preferable alternative."
When it comes to the practical how-to's of breastfeeding, Hogg provides nuggets of accurate information, only she offers upwards numerous duds besides, including such wrong or incomplete information as:
- "After breastfeeding, always wipe off your nipples with a clean washcloth. The residue of milk can exist a convenance ground for bacteria ." (Only not truthful; there is no need to wipe your nipples after every feeding.)
- ". always wait 1 60 minutes (after exercising) before breastfeeding." (The lactic acid buildup she's warning about has not been shown to cause harm, and though some babies seem to dislike the taste of mother'south milk afterward heavy exercise, many babies testify no aversion any.)
- And for a mother worried she isn't producing enough milk: "Once a day, fifteen minutes before a feed, pump your breasts and measure what you are yielding. Taking into account that a baby tin can excerpt at least one ounce more by physically sucking at your breast, yous have a skilful thought of what yous're producing." (While this test might work well for some mothers, it can be misleading for others. Many mothers find that, though they become very picayune milk when they pump, their babies are getting enough at the breast. Weight proceeds and the number of wet diapers a baby produces are amend measures of milk production.)
Another depression indicate in the book is Hogg's accept on nursing toddlers: "My feeling is that when mothers prolong nursing, it'southward almost always for them, not for the baby." She follows this statement with an chestnut nearly a mother who was (gasp!) still nursing her two-and-a-half-year-former. Considering her hubby was not supportive, she was doing so behind his dorsum – evidently not a good situation. To brand a long story short, the mother came to her senses, weaned the babe, and "was automatically a better parent, a improve married woman, and a stronger human beingness."
The strangest line of thinking comes in a sidebar titled "Feeding Fashions" in which Hogg points out that, though breastfeeding is "all the rage" today, "in the postwar decades . the majority believed that formula was best for babies." She fails to mention the reasons for formula's ascension, the consequences of the trend, or that the world wellness community now is in almost-unanimous agreement that breast milk is best. Instead she shares this bizarre thought:
"As this volume is being written, scientists are experimenting with the notion of genetically altering cows to produce homo chest milk. If that happens, perhaps in the hereafter anybody will tout cow'south milk."
Hogg goes on to quote a 1999 article from the Periodical of Diet that suggests formulas may one solar day be so advanced they volition meet babies' needs ameliorate than human milk.
I'chiliad not sure where to file that last chip of information, but there is at least 1 thing this book makes clear: If you're looking for a baby trainer, you can skip the circus and plow instead to Tracy Hogg. If it's authentic parenting information y'all seek, look elsewhere.
— Mary Tatko is the stay-at-domicile-mom of 19-month-erstwhile Jake.
Mary comments:
As y'all can run into, I mainly focused on the chapter almost feeding choices, though at that place was enough I could have issue with in her chapter on slumber. As you might imagine, Hogg is not a fan of shared sleep. She sets upwardly her recommendations about slumber in the aforementioned way she takes on other issues: She dismisses those whose views are "extreme," and so presents what she claims is a "middle-of-the-road, commonsense approach." When she'southward getting set up to pitch her organisation for "sensible sleep," she cites Dr. Sears, La Leche League, and "Mothering" magazine equally the extremes on the family bed side of the issue. (Dr. Ferber is her case of the other side.) And while she encourages those for whom such practices work to "by all means stick with it," she warns that "extreme practices don't work for many people."
Source: https://kellymom.com/parenting/reviews/review_babywhisperer/
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