Gina Ford routine

[AndreaY]

my baby was also on the routine since the day coming home from hospital and she has pretty much stuck to it, sleeping thru the night from 8 weeks, apart from when teething. She is now 16 months and is a good sleeper and never whines and refuses to go to bed at bedtime. In fact, when sleep time is near, she will automatically say "sleep sleep, night night" before we actually prepare her for bed. It was difficult to keep her awake for the stated time at first, but then I found that certain activities kept her more awake than others, like playing on activity mat etc., then I just made sure she spent those minutes that she find harder to stay awake on the activities that stimulated her more. But after a very short while, she got used to the routine and managed to stay awake for the time stated. I know many have slagged off the Gina Ford routine, but it has worked very well for us and our daughter.

[cheesecake babe]

Hi. Just arrived from UK with my 6 month old last week. We have followed Gina routine from about 3 weeks and also found it very helpful for both me (I need some routine too) and babe - who has slept through to 7am after 10:30pm feed for several months now. Even helped by fitting flight time to fit in with 10:30pm feed - no problems on 12 hour flight. You can initially get a bit paranoid (I and other UK friends who followed did) if babe does not follow exact routine, but what you soon realise is that they probably will given time. Like Zones I also have friends wishing now that they had tried it. It isn`t all plain sailing, however, as the book may have you believe from day 1. My babe had problem at 7pm sleep for many weeks - crying for up to an hour on occasions (and yes we did comfort her after say 10 mins). Think that is fairly typical time of day to cry and they do grow out of it - eventually. As for quick feeder - another friend of mine also had a quick feeder (10 mins b/feed) and she`s doing very well weight wise at 6 months.