The Effing Baby Whisperer

[storminateacup10]

DD now 3 and was, in retrospect, bloody easy first baby (tho didn't realise it at the time, being swamped in typical new motherhood crises). Am remembering some of the cringeworthy crap I read when she was crying/not feeding/not sleeping etc, in desperate hope to find the answer.
I think if I had to ceremoniously burn one particular book, it would have to be The Secrets of the Effing Baby Whisperer (spent a whole week agonising that my baby was a Grumpy, whilst up-her-own neighbour's opposite was Angelic- what a crock of shite. Which book would you tear up from those early newborn moments?

[ToysRLuv]

For me it would have to be SIL's very thoughtful, but ultimately unsuitable, gift "Your Baby Week by Week". My, in many ways, nonconforming DS was, for example, still waking up several times a night on the week he "should have been sleeping through" (he still wakes up once or twice on most nights and he is 18 months old). Made me feel demoralized and a failure, as well as if my DS was some kind of freak. Sorry SIL, but what a piece of shite!

[storminateacup10]

That's the thing though isn't it? So many of these self-help parenting books actually don't help at all, but cleverly tap into new parents' feelings of totally inadequacy- my neighbour must have had virtually every text available and was incapable of drawing on her own intuition any more...

[AngelDog]

Baby Whisperer for me too. :)

[storminateacup10]

[CharlotteBronteSaurus]

yeah, all that stuff about "Accidental Parenting" is a right load of bolleau. I rocked and jiggled dd2 to sleep quite deliberately, because that's what small babies like. and her implication that you will burn in hell, and ensure your child needs years of therapy, if you let an overtired baby cry by themselves even for a few minutes......

[emmyloo2]

Baby whisperer and Save our Sleep. They both made me feel like an absolute rubbish mother who wasn't trying hard enough to get the baby into a routine. They both had me in tears.

[emmyloo2]

I should also say - what saved me in the end was listening to my own instinct and listening to the very practical common sense advice of my mother who said - the baby hasn't read the books so throw them away!

[Bucharest]

Yes, Baby Whisperer here too. More annoying and guilt inducing by far than She Who Must Not be Named. At least she did what she said on the tin and didn't try and dress it up as pseudo-psychological-American-huggy-bollocks.

People slag GF off for being an expert with no children, but to me, being an expert with children, who you leave to live with their Gran while you go to America and make your fortune is far nastier.

Annabel Karmel "my baby loves liver" and "daddy likes poached chicken in orange juice too!!" made me heave as well.

If there were to be a next time (which there won't as I'm nearly eligible for gransnet) I'd stick with Kaz Cooke and Deborah Jackson and just go with the flow (to sound all pseudo-psycho myself!)

[RitaMorgan]

Baby Whisperer is amazing for managing to induce guilt in parents for being both too soft and too harsh If you rock your baby to sleep you're an Accidental Parent, if you do controlled crying you've broken their trust.

Plus all her bollocks about listening to your baby (unless of course they want to be fed more than 3 hourly in which case they can't possibly be hungry).

[WorrisomeHeart]

Totally agree re the Baby Whisperer - I read it when my DS was 2 weeks old and completley fell apart - ok so it's not entirely her fault I have PND, but I'm sure it was a factor!!!! I remember reading a part about reading baby's signals and one of them (for tiredness I think) was the baby 'clawing at his face' - my god, I was in absolute terror of my tiny, tiny baby doing this and the fact that I wouldn't have been able to judge his requirements fast enough to avoid it!

[matana]

Gina Ford's Contented Baby or whatever it's called, without a shadow of a doubt. Treats babies like dogs and i agonised for ages that my DS wouldn't fall into a routine. I should have just enjoyed the cuddles and closeness and not given a rat's ass whether or not he was waking at 7, feeding at 10, relying on 'sleep associations' to get him to sleep etc etc. He was tiny FFS! You never get that newborn time back again and i'm very nostalgic about it now as my DS has just started solids and is getting all grown up!

[nethunsreject]

Agree with all the above, but would add Rachel Waddilove's hideous baby-hating offering 'The baby book - how to enjoy year one'. I threw it in the bin.

[storminateacup10]

Baby Whisperer is really up there in the top 3
Totally agree with emmyloo2 : 1 book and 1 dvd down the line I gave them back (very sweetly, I may add) to 91st-centile-obsessed-mother-across-the-landing and listened to my mum...who initially had enraged me by suggesting that DD may be crying "because she could be extra hungry...have you tried feeding her more?" and duh, yes she was. Would have had to be prize Jersey cow to feed her even more than I was- I blame German dad who is waaay to tall anyway and helped create extra hungry in the first place
Sorry, must not digress...
Bucharest YES!!! GF struck terror to my heart too- just sold my Potty Training on Week on ebay hurrah! Pile of wank. Never could have worked. DD now 3 and only just trained- made me feel inadequate until only a few days ago.
Anyone remember that bloody awful Australian dvd of some silly cow swearing she could read the sounds of a baby crying and distinguish what they were telling her? Can't recall name- aside from being absolutely irritating as f*ck and making me want to hurl, DH and I spent hours llstening to DD screeching and trying to make out if there was any 'nnnn---nnn" sound in the scream...apparently this indicated presence of hunger. TOSH!

[smoggii]

Thanks to threads such as this i read whilst pregnant i didn't read a single baby routine book, i've been very lucky and DD has fallen into her own routine.
I would like to burn all the books which made me feel massively inadequate for not having a 'natural' childbirth, i ended up having aa ridiculously medicalised birth as my beautiful baby tried to kill me on the way out! I know the intervention was for the best but i still feel bad that it wasn't all fake tealights and lavender oil.

[storminateacup10]

hear hear smoggii...flashbacks and guilt trips galore for having emergency cs- and didn't the books just crow about how unnatural we had been...bastards. Wish I had know about MN when I was pregnant like you!

[carve133]

Tried not to read books but a free copy of Baby Whisperer made it into the house. I misguidedly read it during some vulnerable moments. It ended up in the recycling. DH cheered.

[LovelyDaffs]

I loved my baby week by week, can't remember why but I found it reassuring to know what was 'normal'.

[thesurgeonsmate]

What to Expect: The First Year may or may not be full of useful advice, I just found it totally unworkable as a reference. They scattered information around, then scattered cross-references on top. In the high-pressure atmosphere of double grannies and still no minutes free to do anything at all, this made me crazy. I was looking at a notebook from around the time of dd's birth recently, and spotted "Get a Better Book" on one to-do list. More recently, I've been using the back section on illnesses etc. and saw some of their advice on solids, which is just mysteriously complex and contradictory. If you tried to follow it you would have no idea who could eat what when, but you'd be sure it mattered hugely.

[beanandspud]

My Baby Whisperer went to a nearly new sale - what a lot of tosh - and I read lots of books. I tried her Pick Up/Put Down method for one night and swore never to do it again.

And GF... DS actually slept pretty well as a baby and every morning I would wake up to find that I was already an hour behind the sodding Routine and it wasn't even 8am.

[Alicious]

Agree about the Baby Whisperer-I just wish I had realised what drivel it contains when I was failing to understand the needs of DS1-I would never put myself through all that again!
Much more sane advice on mumsnet!

[storminateacup10]

you lot are infinitely more worldly and wise than any sodding baby book ...aaah isn't hinesight a wonderful thing

[zayla]

I'd so like to burn the chapter on sleep in The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Clearly written by somebody with no idea what it is like to have a bad sleeper and who thinks that cosleeping and not trying to do too much or have too high expectations will basically make everything ok. At least The No Cry Sleep Solution, even though it didn't work for us, was written by somebody who you felt understood what it was like to get four hours sleep each night for months on end. Actually I think I'd like to burn all attachment parenting books (though the routine books aren't any better but at least they don't make you feel guilty about wanting just a teensy bit of sleep!).

[yawningbear]

I actually did burn the baby whisperer, DP had suggested the charity shop but I really didn't want some other poor sod to end up feeling as bad as I had, truly awful. Would never in a million years have thought that I would be advocating burning books

[annawintour]

Another one who thinks the baby whisperer was unhelpful.

The bfing advice is completely wrong.

I found the concept of "YOU" time with a very young baby, although probably novel is very unrealistic, as is describing babies by type.

[MummyBerryJuice]

I didn't really read any books except Sear's Baby Book and the only thing I remember from it was being told to trust myself and my instincts and not to listen to baby 'experts'. Best advice I got from anyone IMO.

NCSS hasn't worked for us either unfortunately