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Save Our Sleep

Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 By Glowstars.

We’re lucky in that Little Mister sleeps quite well. He naps regularly (even if sometimes those naps are catnaps), he tends to go down easily at night. He sleeps through. Pretty much. Our issue is with the 05:00-06:00 hour. That hour’s far from perfect.

You see we don’t often wake Mr A up in the mornings. Nearly every day we leave him to wake on his own. It’s the key to our actually making it out of the house in the mornings. The plan is I get up for work at 05:40 with half an hour of the time before I leave being set aside for his morning feed. He feeds whenever he wakes and I fit in everything else around him. In an ideal world this means that he wakes, or we wake him at around 06:45. In reality this means he wakes any time from 05:00 onwards, feeds and then naps until he wants to get up. Depending on whether I’ve made it back to bed before the alarm goes off and how much time’s left over before I leave, he might get a top up. The rest of the day he falls into a routine of bottles, play and naps until I get home and it’s bedtime. What I’d really like to see is a solid sleep until 06:45 so he gets up with the rest of the boys and I get a certain extra half hour’s sleep.

Enter Tizzie Hall and her book Save Our Sleep (£9.99) which was sent to me for review.

Save Our Sleep provides routines for babies of differing ages in an attempt to synchronise their actions with baby sleep cycles and get them sleeping through the night. If it sounds like it might be quite rigid you’d be right; in the early days of babyhood it seems so but as the baby ages the routines do become a little more relaxed. The book also contains useful information on how to settle the youngest of babies and teach them to self-settle, baby products, weaning, toilet training and disciple. It’s not just a sleep-training book but a baby care aid. There’s even sections on children with individual requirements and unusual situations.

That’s where we come in. Our situation is not usual and certainly not normal as far as babies are concerned. At six months most babies won’t find their mother at work five days a week and certainly not out of the house for the entirety of the 12 hours they’ll be awake and napping. In addition, if that’s the case, I would imagine a significant proportion of those babies would not still be fully breastfed. (I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong!)

I was directed to the Save Our Sleep website where I was assured that Tizzie Hall answers all enquiries personally. She may well do, but not at the price of one book. I posted a query on the message boards and was advised that I should purchase a membership for the online advice area. Memberships don’t come cheap with a read-only membership and book updates for a 12 month period costing £38 and the upgrade to full 12 month membership costing another £147. At £175 it’s cheaper to purchase a token for a consultation with Tizzie Hall herself. Needless to say my query is still unanswered.

Save Our Sleep isn’t just a book, it’s a whole package. If you have a straightforward situation and don’t mind sticking to a routine then I’m sure it would work. If your situation is a little different and you don’t mind buying into that package then it probably would to. If you’re looking for a fix to a situation that’s not covered in the book then it’s not worth the money. Caveat emptor.

You can buy Save Our Sleep from the online shop or find Tizzie on twitter or facebook.

2 Responses to “Save Our Sleep”

Melaina25 says:

25 July 2010 at 14:35

I reviewed this book as well and honestly it didn’t apply to us. NBH works from home and I’m still on maternity leave so Blondie Boy stays up later and sleeps until 8-9am.

I did find some helpful tips about jet lag and babies, but I probably could have googled that, too.

Glowstars Reply:
July 27th, 2010 at 15:54
I guess that’s the trouble with a lot of advice books now, if you’re the time you can track it all down on google.