Adventures with Gina Ford

Before having Sofia, friends in the UK swore that one woman made parenthood not only manageable but positively a pleasure - Gina Ford. She is the author is 'The New Contented Little Baby Book' and several other texts about training babies and toddles to do anything short of circus tricks.

So back in March when we were in the UK. I picked up her book and read it cover to cover. Ready and confident to get Sofia sleeping through the night in a matter of weeks, I was disappointed when I brought Sofia home and realized that she her schedule and temperament didn't lend itself to Gina's rules. So I put the book aside for the first few weeks and began tinkering with it again around 3-4 weeks when Sofia started to become more alert and went longer between feeds (i.e. 3-4 hours). Since then, we have tried to follow Gina's strict regime and truth be told, some days have gone well and other have not. But by 6 weeks, she was eating and sleeping well and was only waking up once between 11pm - 7am.

Then GiGi came to town... (that is my mom). Like a knight in shining armor, she arrived and took over the night shift, allowing Antony and I to catch up on some much needed sleep. I also worked a couple of days and she was more than happy to babysit. And for the first day, mom followed Gina's rules to the letter. Sofia was awake and asleep during the right times, ate the right amounts and slept in her crib during every nap. GiGi had it under control but then Sofia threw us a curve ball and went through a growth spurt -meaning that regardless of what Gina said, she wanted to eat as much and whenever she wanted! So we were feeding her absurd amount of milk so often that it felt like she was starting another bottle as soon as she finished the last! Needless to say, this all had a serious impact on the schedule and by the last day of mom's visit Sofia was eating and sleeping whenever she wanted and would only sleep at night when she was being held by GiGi on the sofa. Mom said that she was there to help us get some sleep - not to issue tough love. Too true! So now 'Mean Mommy' is trying to get her back on the schedule which resulted in spending FOUR hours getting her to sleep in her crib last night! Ouch. But at least I feel really rested and that does wonders for my patience levels.

While mom was here we went into Antony's work, only for Sofia to pee all over Antony's desk which dribbled down into all three of his drawers. We also got a photo of her smiling, which is Sofia's newest trick!