Thanks for your comments!

My intention in sharing the “horror” stories was to show the effect that a schedule can have on babies whose mothers have very small milk storage capacities. I was attempting to include both extreme ends of the spectrum by telling about the couple we knew who had NO problems whatsoever and then other people who had very serious problems. Certainly not everyone who implements Babywise (or one of the other popular scheduling programs like Baby Whisperer, for example) is going to have this happen. My point is that there are VAST differences in experiences with schedules, and milk storage capacity goes a long way towards explaining why that is.

I’m not sure how fair it is to accuse the parents who had serious trouble of not doing their research. You’re right that Ezzo does tell about watching wet diapers, but the problem is that he also manages to scare a lot of people with tales of the “dangers” of demand feeding, and he gives the false impression that all babies can and should follow the eat, wake, sleep routine. Babies whose mothers have small storage capacities often need to do eat, wake, eat, sleep, or even eat, wake, eat, wake, eat sleep.

It’s true that there are babies who do not “demand” to eat frequently enough and could wind up in serious trouble, too. This has nothing to do with milk storage capacity, which is why I didn’t discuss it in my post. But you’re right, it is certainly dangerous to think that if your baby isn’t crying that he isn’t hungry. (Incidentally, I dislike the term “demand feeding” for that exact reason. It makes people think you only feed your baby when they are “demanding” it by crying forcefully. “Cue Feeding” is a much better term. You’re paying attention to cues: mouthing, rooting, increased alertness, and even the clock when you have a sleepy baby who needs to be awakened to nurse.)

Just the same horror scenarios could be said about demand-fed babies–my first would have ended up in the ER if he were demand fed because he slept deeply–all the time–but mine wouldn’t have ended up in the ER because I was vigilantly watching his poops, pees, and weight gain to make sure…
(which I learned from Ezzo)…

It’s still a fun article. (:

Anyway, back to nursing.. (:

Thanks for bringing up this important point. We ALL need to learn and relearn daily that we are not the center of the universe. God is.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Babywise actually teaches what it claims to in this area.

Take a child whose mother has a very large milk storage capacity. He’s being offered food right about when he starts to get hungry or even a little before, so from his perspective, life is pretty cushy. His every need is anticipated and met “before he asks or thinks.”

But a baby whose mother has a small milk storage capacity is hungry, very hungry, long before the minimum time has been met. This is especially true at night, when he is supposedly being “trained to sleep.” A mother following Babywise to the letter could leave him crying in pain from legitimate hunger for as long as forty-five minutes. And indeed many sincere, well-meaning parents, thoroughly convinced of the dangers of being “child-centered,” have let their babies cry much longer according to the testimonies I referenced in my post. For all this baby knows, his parents have gone away and can’t even hear him. From his perspective, life is pretty rough. When he hurts, no one cares. When he asks for help, no on comes.

The happy child seems like a “good” baby and a testament to how Babywise “works.” The suffering child looks like he’s unwilling to get with the program and seems a little strong willed. But neither child has learned what his parents were actually trying to teach him.

I believe that the problem is that withholding food and ignoring a child who happens to be awake when his parents don’t want him to be are both completely extra-Biblical ways of dealing with our innate selfishness. The Bible never mentions them in conjunction with parenting, ever. The Bible has LOTS to say about child training, and about our sinful, self-centered natures. But the Bible’s methods for dealing with them are speaking constantly of God’s precepts (“when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up,” Deuteronomy 6:7), and enforcing them with the “rod of correction” (Proverbs 22:15), NOT hunger and loneliness. Since babies are not mature enough for God’s methods, I have wonder whether God actually means for them to be learning these lessons at this point.

Also, for the record, there are other methods to bring predictability to your day without following an external routine. If you simply wake your baby up at the same time each morning, within a few days, you will have a sense of approximately what times he needs to eat and sleep, and you can plan your days accordingly.

Apparently, I don’t have much storage space. :p But feeding every 1-2 hours round the clock in the early days really paid off, as I was able to fully breastfeed all three of my sons for the first year, without adding formula or solids for nutritional value. I never could get my kids on a “reasonable” schedule or sleeping through the night without much shrill screaming on their part and engorgement on my part. They were just hungry all.the.time. I don’t think I’m going to bother with the “experts” from now on. I’ve finally learned that what my babies need and what i need is something we have to work out between us, and is not likely to be found in bullet points in a mass produced book.

Thank you for your comment. You are right that Babywise isn’t as classic a schedule as something that says: Feed your baby at 6:00, 9:00, 12:00, etc. However, it does have many of the dangerous characteristics of a schedule, despite the authors’ attempts to distance themselves from what they term “hyper-scheduling.” The routine itself requires babies to sleep (and to sleep for a parent determined amount of time) before they are supposed to eat again. What that means is that the baby’s sleep schedule translates to his feeding schedule as well, which effectively limits number of feedings by number of naps. In other words, a four month old baby who is only taking the usual two naps a day is only allowed to nurse four times a day (once after sleeping all night, once after each of two naps, and once more before bed). Women who have large milk storage capacities have no trouble giving their babies plenty of milk on this schedule/routine, and can be just like your friends: nursing exclusively for many months, and having healthy, growing babies. However, women with smaller milk storage capacities are not going to be able to follow the Babywise routine because their babies are going to need more than four feedings a day.

Babywise is a rather confusing book because, while you are absolutely correct that it frequently encourages flexibility and feeding hungry babies, it also stresses the “dangers” of demand feeding, and the necessity of sleeping through the night. Women with very small milk storage capacities simply cannot go all night without nursing and are not going to be able to stay on an eat, wake, sleep routine during the day, which is going to mean “demand” feeding, since instead of using their babies naps as nursing cues, they’ll have to use traditional nursing cues (mouthing, rooting, restlessness, etc., NOT crying, as Babywise mistakenly claims–crying is actually a late indicator of hunger).

You’re right that inflexible scheduling is horrible for breastfeeding, but I don’t think it’s possible to be truly flexible on the Babywise routine. For instance, if your five month old is following an eat, wake, eat, wake, eat, sleep pattern during the day and still nursing once or twice at night (which is the sort of pattern that develops for women with smaller milk storage capacities), can you really be said to be “doing Babywise?”