A Pastor's Wife's Experience and Observations

When my first baby was about 6 weeks old I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I had no friends with babies and my family lived 5 hours away.  I was very isolated. I didn't know what was normal and what wasn't.  I got most of my support from my mom which was great except she never breastfed a baby.  I was very committed to breastfeeding for financial reasons: my husband was a pastor and we were on a very strict budget. Formula just wasn't an option.

A young mother in my mother's bible study group recommended the Ezzo curriculum..  I found the 1995 edition of Babywise at my local Christian bookstore. I was so excited. The book seemed to understand where I had messed up my baby and promised to fix her and make her a model citizen.

I had assumed from the beginning that "crying it out" was the only way to get a baby to sleep. I started the three hour feeding schedule and thankfully she did it with no problem. We started putting her down at night awake, no sleep props, etc. She would cry and cry and cry.

We would go in and comfort her every 15 minutes by picking her up and rocking and calming her almost to sleep -- there was some double talk in that edition about comforting in 15 minutes-- and she would just keep crying. She could cry for up to 2 hours in 15 minute increments. Ezzo said in the book that it might take us "late starts" up to 2 weeks to get our babies on the program. It took mine 2 months of crying at bed time for at least 30 minutes before she started going down easily.

However, the second night we were using the program she slept through the night. So I thought that meant it was working. Now I think it was a fluke. She didn't start sleeping through consistently until closer to 4 months. But because I thought that one time meant she was ready (an Ezzo teaching), I quit feeding her when she awoke at night. This was the goal of the whole program after all. So when my little daughter got her first illness at three months of age, no night nursing. When she was teething, no night nursing. When she got croup at nine months and woke up with that awful barking cough, no night nursing. One of the things Ezzo is so insistent on is being consistent and not setting up bad habits. I bought into it fully.

I remember laying on the couch listening to her cry and cry thinking motherhood wasn't supposed to be like this. And seriously considering not having more children. Yet I was convinced this was the only way to have a baby that was not in control of me and my marriage. My husband went along with it but I think if he had had a little more experience he would have put a stop to it sooner.

About the time she was 4 months old my baby started going down easily for night and naps. This is about the time infant sleep patterns normally consolidate. It is a normal developmental phase so I do not give Babywise credit for this accomplishment as it probably would have happened at this age anyway. However my daughter never slept long than 45 minutes for a nap. I didn't let her cry herself back to sleep. Either I missed that part of the book or it wasn't in there. She just took 4 45 minute naps during the day.

Breastfeeding continued on the 3 hour schedule but I never offered the breast for comfort or before sleep. On the rare occasions during the training phase when my will would break and I would nurse her to sleep (maybe two times) she would go right to sleep and stay asleep when I put her down.

When my baby was about 4 months old (about the time the Babywise promises started materializing) my dad suggested I look for info about it on the web. I see this next part as God's providence. My search yielded the GFI website and Rebecca Prewitt's website. The GFI site wouldn't load on my dad's computer despite my trying it over and over at different times. Rebecca Prewitt's did and it was then that the "scales fell from my eyes"and I realized all the controversy surrounding Babywise.

As I learned more and more about Babywise and was really. really angry. By that time, my baby wouldn't nurse except for food, so I don't think I could have gone back to nursing on demand. She'd never really nursed for comfort and just wasn't interested. Instead she found comfort in her thumb and her blankey. I know lots of children have blankies and other loveys and suck their thumbs. My third child is a thumb sucker and has a blankey but for my first it was different. The comfort this child derived from that blankey was extraordinary. As a preschooler you could watch the tension drain away from her when she sucked her thumb and smelled her blankey. As a one year old it was the ONLY way to keep her happy from 6-7:30 at night onward. She would go from fussing and crying to humming softly to herself when I gave her her blankey.

This week my now 7 year old daughter decided to put her shredded blankey away at night. She still sucks her thumb. Even now as a seven year old, we are taking this giving up blankey thing one night at a time. (She wanted to get rid of it for fear that her friends would see it.) I think this attachment to her blankey was a direct result of being left to cry and to develop some means of self-comforting from her own limited resources as an infant. In the big picture she is a happy well-adjusted almost third-grader.

Since that time I have become a lactation counselor. I have seen milk supply problems and weight gain problems associated with Babywise use. Most often, though, I have seen Babywise set up an adversarial relationship between mother and baby.

For instance, one mom in my Bible study expected that her baby would be a little robot, sleeping when he was supposed to sleep, playing quietly when it was playtime. The shock of reality was extremely hard for her. Her baby cried all the time (I suspect often alone). By the time he was 3 or 4 months old they discovered he was allergic to both soy and regular formula and had reflux. Reading between the lines of what she said during this time, I think she thought he was just being manipulative and difficult.

Another mom I know had a breastfed baby that quit accepting an occasional bottle at 5 months. He lost weight between 4 and 6 months. She wanted to wean to formula but he refused the bottle. He cried hysterically at any separation. When I realized she was following Babywise (she called me for lactation consulting help) it was VERY difficult to convince her that the problem was that Babywise had her not feeding the baby enough, thus her milk supply had dropped too low. In fact I never did convince her. I think she added a feeding but ended up weaning at about 8 months. In my opinion this baby was desperately asking for more positive attention from his mother. She was very negative about him and his crying.

The moms in the Bible study where I met this woman seemed heavily influenced by Babywise. If a baby had trouble separating from mom in the nursery, instead of adopting a compassionate attitude, the mothers said he was "difficult", "fussy", or "trouble". There was lots of eye rolling and sighs about these "difficult" babies. The mothers would comment that certain babies needed Growing Kids God's Way despite the fact that the most "difficult" baby in the nursery was a Babywise baby.

In fact, I have not met a family that I didn't think had problems while using Babywise. However, they may not have seen the problems as clearly as I did.

I still feel angry and sad when I think about what I did to my daughter. I feel most sad though when I hear young, inexperienced mothers talk about their babies using words like manipulation, showing him whose boss and staying in control.


by M. H.
submitted 6/7/04

Stories of Former Users and Supporters

  • On Becoming Wise to Ezzo's Information +

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  • Follow Jesus, Not Methods +

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  • Our un-Wise Baby Experience +

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  • Naïve Young Parents in Chicago +

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  • Failure to Thrive +

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  • Nourishing and Nurturing +

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  • Baby Loves Routine +

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  • Read the Baby, Not the Book +

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  • Pediatric Nurse and ex-Ezzo Parent +

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  • Our Journey to Freedom +

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  • GKGW Myths and Misconceptions +

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  • Just in Time +

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  • A Pastor's Wife's Experience and Observations +

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  • Frazzled and Uptight No More +

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  • Learning to Trust my Instincts +

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  • Deep Regrets, New Mercies +

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  • Relaxing into a Routine +

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  • Coping with Attachment Disorder +

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  • The "Y" Family's Experience +

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  • The "H" Family's Experience +

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  • Open Letter about Failure to Thrive +

    The purpose of this letter is to generate public awareness about yet another child who has surely suffered due to following a Christian parenting program entitled Preparation for Parent-ing/Preparation for the Toddler Years (secular versions marketed in stores as On Becoming BabyWise 1 & 2) by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo . We hope that knowledge of his case can be used to promote existing and future efforts to inform communities of the extremely serious dangers associated with following the Ezzos' program, even in its newest editions [1998 at the time
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  • Confessions of a Failed Babywiser +

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  • Failed Babywiser - Russian Version +

    Confessions of a Failed Babywiser - Russian Translation
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  • An Ex-Contact Mom Speaks Out +

    While I was a contact mom for GFI (for a year and a half), I never once met a mom who breastfed long-term (at least a year or longer) without modifying the materials. I did see babies who appeared listless and in a depressed state, who were smaller than average or scrawny. I met scores of moms who struggled with milk supply to a point that it completely removed the enjoyment of nursing their babies. I met babies who went one or two months without gaining any weight at all
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  • Thoughts from a Former Contact Mom +

    I used Ezzo stuff because it really fit my personality. I'm very structured and don't handle lots of chaos very well. I started with Preparation for Parenting when my youngest was a newborn. He is 12-1/2 now. My other kids are 11, 8, 5, and 7 months. I was also a "contact mom" for GFI for several years. We used Preparation for the Toddler Years (back before it was even an "official" program), and GKGW, also. We read through Reflections of Moral Innocence and ended up not using that. Having
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  • Former GFI Leadership Couple, Eric and Julie Abel +

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  • A Group of Case Studies +

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  • More Stories from around the Web +

    7/20/1997 Link to post "...the church's youth pastor invited me into his office and told me about the Ezzo's programs and how important they were to effective Christian and biblical parenting. ...I took the book right home and read it straight through. I immediately felt immensly guilty that I had been demand-feeding my baby and sat down to scratch out a schedule for him. But even as I was doing it I had a very uneasy feeling in my gut, so I prayed and asked God for wisdom regarding accepting
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  • Babywise Stole Precious Weeks +

    BabyWise stole many precious weeks from me in the beginning of my son's life. I wish I could have just loved on him without all the fear that Ezzo put into me about creating a spoiled baby. When I found out I was pregnant with my son, I sought the advice out of women that I knew and respected who had children. My own mom died when I was 19, and I felt truly lost as I searched for the "right" way to be a mom. One of the friends
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  • Ezzo Lived in My Brain +

    I heard a lot about how awesome GKGW and Babywise are so naturally I bought Babywise when I was pregnant with my first. But my baby was teeny (6.5) and jaundiced, so the lactation consultant adamantly emphasized feeding on cue and even suggested co-sleeping.  My husband brought her in our bedroom the first night home from the hospital and said, "we can't just put her away". He can't stand to hear a baby cry. We did not end up actively using Babywise.  Even so, having read the book, Ezzo lived
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  • Young, Naive, Pregnant with First Child +

    The year was 2008. A young, naive woman is pregnant with her first child. She is unsure, lacks confidence and wants to be certain she does the best job for her unborn child. Yet there are a great deal of books, resources and information - which ones to start with? Which ones to trust? So she turns to older, more experienced mothers who all but thrust this book into her hands and begin making the promises.
    Read More
  • A note of appreciation from an older parent +

    Let me start by saying that 14 or 15 years ago, I was in the unhappy position of having to do everything in my power to force two sets of new parents to drive their babies to the emergency room because, after following the Ezzo’s advice, these babies were severely dehydrated and lethargic.  The parents were not bad parents.  In fact, they were trying really hard to be good parents, according to guidelines which had been sanctioned by their church.  The fact that both contacted me for a home visit,
    Read More
  • Confessions of a Former Babywise Advocate +

    This story comes via the blog "Banned from Baby Showers".   The blog owner shares a mother's account of how she used Babywise successfully -- as far as she knew -- until her baby was 7 months old, and then her milk supply began to peter out.  Confessions of a Former Babywise Advocate
    Read More
  • A Forgiven Mama +

    Our first child was born in the summer of 09, and I promptly began trying to apply the Babywise method. The book had been highly recommended by a distant relative, and promised structure and sanity amidst the exhaustion and upheaval I felt as a new mother. However, our baby did not respond the way the book promised he would if we followed the schedule. All my attempts to adhere to the book led to deep frustration, arguments with my husband (who knew better than to let a book dictate our newborn's schedule), feeling like a
    Read More
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Add Your Voice

letterIf you would like to add your voice to the Voices of Experience, please email ezzo.info@gmail.com

As you can tell by reading the stories, young parents often receive glowing recommendations and even peer pressure to implement the Ezzos' methods.  What is sometimes lacking is a voice of experience to caution parents about negative effects, and to reassure them that they do not need to use these methods in order to raise good kids in a healthy, happy home.  Feel free to share your story for possible inclusion on this page.