Save Our Sleep by Tizzie Hall

Rating: 2 out of 5

Save Our Sleep is for anyone who is having sleeping issues with their baby. It is written by Tizzie Hall who is an internationally renowned baby whisperer and has spent 18 years working with parents resolving issues with their babies.

I had heard about this book through various people and was a little dubious about it. From what I had seen and heard Tizzie Hall's advice sounded very harsh and rigid. I bought the book thinking I should at least see what Tizzie Hall has to say as some people raved over it. But I did not really believe it would be of much help and definitely not for us. So I was rather surprised to find the book was no where near as bad as I thought.

Tizzie Hall's greatest tip for a settled baby is routine. She has various examples for different stages of a babies life in her book. Tizzie states that the routines are flexible and should be tailored to suit your life (for example if you have other children to work around etc).

Tizzie's other big point is learning the difference between a complaining cry and an emotional cry. She doesn't believe in the "crying out" method and firmly advises against it. Her belief is there are two main cries a baby does, and you can safely ignore one (the complaining cry) and absolutely not ignore the other (emotional cry). Which to me sounds like a variation of controlled crying, which we do not agree with.

Save our sleep also touches on other common sleep problems. These includes things like starting solids, teething, and health issues. It also discusses SIDS and safe sleeping arrangements. But there is no real depth to these issues or strategies to deal with them.

I can see how this book would appeal to distressed sleep deprived parents with the promise of a baby sleeping through from 7pm - 7am. I know far to many people it didn't work for then those who it did work for. Also I had a problem with the lack of scientific evidence in this book, all of Tizzie's advice is based purely on her beliefs and observations not on actual studies or facts. One piece of advice even flies in the face of advice given by the World Health Organisation (Tizzie believes babies should start solids at 4 months not the recommended 6 months).

Overall I would not recommend this book to other parents. I think it sets expectations to high that you can force a baby to sleep from 7pm-7am. The books focus is on routines, not really sleep problems. In the end I feel this book could cause more stress to parents if their baby failed to conform to the routine and was not "normal". The thing this book was good for was making us realise this method really was not for us, and we can set a routine that suits us.