Advice on baby books for a first-timer please - all opinions welcomed

[ScreamIfYouWantToGoFaster]

Hi experienced Mums!

I'm due in April with my first DC, and ideally I just want to read up on as many different parenting styles as possible BEFORE my baby arrives, so that I'll have a lot of ideas buzzing around my head when the LO is actually here.

I already have 'What To Expect The First Year', and 'Your Baby Week by Week'. Those are my "general" books on all things baby related including how to bathe them, change nappies etc. For more of a specifically "parenting style" / "sleep strategy" book I'm considering getting the following:

No-Cry Sleep Solution - Pantley
The Contented Little Baby Book - Ford
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer - Hogg
The Baby Book - Sears

Has anyone found any of these books useful? Does this cover all the main parenting styles on offer (in terms of parenting books) or is there another key book to add to this list?

ooh one thing i would add that i believe is VERY important is that you need to be addressing you in all of this, you're the element you do know. what sort of life do you want? what sort of way of doing things will fit with your quirks? what are your quirks? which will be obstacles that you can work on now? eg. i was awful at asking for help, had a very determined sense of indepedence and realising that in pregnancy i started to work on it and ask for help in simple matters eg. lifts to the hospital when my spd got bad etc. it had to be worked on because i knew as a new mum (and a single one) i would need to be able to accept help where i could get it so needed to get over my fear of it.

i also had a quirk about letting strangers in my house and realised i was going to be inundated with midwife visits, health visitor etc so i tried to deal with that issue too before the time came.

all the books tend to focus on the baby obviously when in reality the most important thing to that baby is a happy, healthy, confident mummy x

Santa.....Satan speaks wise words. Which is why Naomi Stadlen's book is so important - it's about being a mother and how that feels.

I bought loads & wish I hadn't. Too much conflicting advice! Just go with the flow and post on Mumsnet if you want tips on anything specific.

Agree that it's best to go your own way then read a book that validates your choices (dr sears and three in a bed in my case!)

I threw Ford and Hogg across the room in the first week of DS's life and the MW quietly suggested to my DH that he hide them as they were stressing me out too much. On bonfire night we added them to the bonfire and had a ceremonial burning!

Oh FFS, here am I, sensibly suggesting that the OP chucks away all the books because they just make you (well, me!) feel guilty, then you lot bang on about one that I don't have (What Mothers Do) and I find myself drifting towards ebay, then to 'buy it now' and hey presto, I have ANOTHER baby book. Bugger!

Ditto Truth! Have just this minute ordered it on Amazon.

I would recommend this

Haha. Thanks Queen knowing I'm not the only one makes me feel better. Now if you could just help me hide it from D'notanotherbabybook'P that would be much appreciated!

Margot Sunderland 'What every parent needs to know' is much recommended. It explains how baby's grow and develop wrt how they learn, how the brain connects and grows. Gives a completely different perspective to the books that are more week by week timeline/milestone based.

Agree on 'What Mothers Do' too, although you may not get it fully till you have your baby.

It's not available for the kindle, I checked that too! I'm hoping DH won't realise it's new. Most of them all look the same - sleeping baby on the front cover. Those canny marketeers...

If it makes you feel better , Truth, it's not so much a baby book as a mother book

Ah, read the lot then make up your own mind.

It sounds terribly tiger-parentish but I always recommend 'How To Raise a Brighter Child: The Case for Early Learning' by Joan Beck. It's a great book - not for day-to-day baby care but on how a person's mind develops from birth-6. Beck is/was a journalist so she's not pushing her own parenting 'style'.

I second "Why Love Matters", but a much easier read with the same very important message is Margot Sutherland's "What Every Parent Should Know". I didn't trust the Gina Ford rubbish, sorry I meant method, the moment I read it, and when I read these 2 books it confirmed my instincts on why I felt it was wrong to leave a baby to cry it out or force them to submit to your will. Sorry GF fans.

Oh, I love parenting books, have read all of your list above inc. the ones suggested, except 'No Cry Sleep Solution' - not that my DS is a great sleeper but since I've decided he knows what he is doing anyway, I'm not in a hurry to intervene in how he sleeps (with us, taking milk from me when he fancies/ wakes up/ teeths). LOVE Penelope Leach 'Your Baby and Child' and think 'Why Love Matters' is the Have to Have - I give it to ppl I know who are pg because I really think it is important enough to spend my dwindling redundancy settlement on making sure ppl have read it. I do.

Wow, thank you so much to everyone who has posted. I think the library suggestion is a great one and I'll be heading down to my local with a nice long list of all these books and hoping to at least skim read them all before buying maybe just one or two (or three or four....! ). I particularly like the sound of the 'What Mothers Do' book.

I understand where people are coming from when they say there's no point in reading any parenting books, I can imagine that a lot of people do get stressed out if they feel they need to be following a particular plan to the letter. However this whole new-Mum thing is only going to work if I trust my instincts and do what works for me, and I know that I feel more confident in myself if I have read as much around a subject as I can. That's how I approach most things in life! I'm pretty independently minded, so I've never had any problems in the past with sifting through conflicting advice and ignoring any elements I don't feel comfortable with. I'm really not worried in the slightest about feeling like a failure if my baby doesn't stick to Ford/Sears/Hogg's schedule - the only thing I'm certain of is that every baby is unique! So while I appreciate that parenting books aren't helpful for everyone, in my case I definitely want to explore what's out there. I'm just trying to have as many tools/ideas/options up my sleeve as possible for when the going gets tough!

If anyone else has further recommendations please keep them coming - all gratefully received!

I would avoid the likes of Ford and Hogg like the plague. It's such a vulnerable time when you bring baby home - however prepared you think you are, the reality is very different, and you can find yourself reading these books and getting so stressed that your baby doesn't "fit" their prescribed pattern. There's a bit in the Hogg book I read when DS was about 2 weeks old that made me cry - he was going through a phase of non- stop crying (of course he was, he was 2 weeks old!) and she says that if your baby is persistently crying and you don't work out why, you're not meeting their needs and eventually the baby will stop "asking" for it's needs to be met when it feels no-one is giving it what it wants. NOT what you need to read when you've been awake for 24 hours solid trying everything you can think of to soothe your baby. Also, Hogg and Ford know bugger-all about breastfeeding and trying to follow their "advice" with it could well cause it to fail.

My advice? Firstly, go with your baby. You cannot spoil a newborn. They want to be cuddled constantly (get a sling and you can still get on with life) and they want to feed constantly for hours on end (normal and doesn't mean you havent got enough milk). Remind yourself that this too shall pass. And there's one book
I think is worth reading, and it's The Food of Love by Kat Evans. Brilliant and makes you feel so much better at 3am night feeds...

I agree about reading around a subject (but also agree with lurcherlover....) because IMO parenting is NOT instinctive at all. Of course caring for and protecting your child is an instinct, but how best to do that is a set of learned behaviours and there's no harm in mugging up on some recommended techniques rather than just muddling through.

That said, Baby Wisdom by Deborah Jackson is a very interesting read because it describes methods of raising babies from days of yore and in numerous different cultures - so it underlines that fact that ideas on parenting change and vary all the time, there is no one right way of doing it.
(although bear in mind that Jackson is very pro-co-sleeping and attachment parenting techniques, so she comes from that angle, even though this book is more of an anthropological test than a prescriptive one.)

Re Dr Harvey Karp
YES, YES, YES to learning his fantastic baby soothing technique!! I found the DVD more helpful than the book, but if you can't find it going cheap on eBay/the library, there are loads of clips of him demonstrating the technique on Youtube. The one featured in The Richard and Judy Show is a good one, but there are lots of others available to view. I wish I'd known about the technique when my DD was first born, but it still worked like magic even when she was four months old (it's most effective in the first three months).

Another tip: sign up for the Wonder Weeks email list. It's a fascinating study of infant brain development by a coupe of Dutch researchers who have pinpointed certain weeks where babies' cognitive abilities take massive leaps forward. It also often results in disrupted sleep patterns, fussiness etc. So reassuring to know what's causing you LO to behave in a challenging fashion for a few weeks!
You'll find their website with a bit of Googling.

Bear in mind that your baby won't have read the same ones!
I would make sure that you read widely and never get into the idea that there are attitudes and methods that are 'right'. Take them all with a pinch of salt, some have no DCs and if they do you have no idea how they turned out. Take bits that you like but never swallow the ideas whole!
As you get more confident ditch the lot!

What Mothers Do is a lovely, lovely book. I've not read all of Ford or Hogg but I do know their BF advice is not entirely up to date so if you do want to BF then something like The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding is a good read. If there is a LLL group near you then they have library books that you can borrow, so you can save a few quid for nappies and the like

Whatever books you read, just take what works for you and ditch the rest. Every family is different so what worked for the author of the book may not work for you. You get bombarded with advice when you become a parent but the expert of the baby is the one who spends the most time with them- you :)

I am similar to you in that I like to be well read on a subject before I make my mind up! And most of the books have useful bits in.

But I would agree with discarding any BF advice by Ford, Hogg, or Jo Tantum (Baby Secrets) as the stuff I read definitely had a role in damaging bf first time around for me (actually, sorry, I don't know if you plan to BF, but if you do...go to the NCT or LLL for advice!).

Also, I think the NHS book you will get from your health visitor - the Birth to Five book - is a decent source of advice too. It is kept up to date and is written in a straightforward way without being too patronising.

oh and there is a book called Dream Babies by Christina Hardyment which is basically a history of childcare advice - it is fascinating reading if you are at all interested in social history and/ or baby care - and shows how and why advice changes over time. Helps to put it all into perspective (which is easy to lose when you have a newborn...)

OP - I'll buck the trend on here as well. I did find it useful to read parenting books, as I didn't have a clue what I was doing first time round and had few other frames of reference. TBH, I only wish I had read a few more before having DS, as I had precious little time afterwards!

Like you, I like feeling prepared, and reading around an issue is one way for me to do this. I was completely comfortable with picking and choosing from all the advice out there; I had no expectation that one book or point of view was going to be the holy grail.

I found What to Expect in the First Year a useful and relatively impartial book to dip in and out of once DS was born. I also found Gina Ford's book reasonably useful. I didn't follow her advice to the letter (I would have probably gone mad if I had tried!) but I did pick and choose the elements that worked for me. I found having a loose routine from 1 or 2 months in worked for us, but accept that this is an entirely personal thing and it won't necessarily work for others. I read the Baby Whisperer but it wasn't really my kind of thing, even though I'm sure it works for others.

Good luck!

Hi scream :)

I got 'What Mothers Do' after DS was born and loved it. I also had a 'Your baby week by week' one which was ok.

Before he was born all I had was the Rough Guide to Babies because I found the pregnancy one amusing. It was actually written by someone else so I then got the 'Babies and Toddlers' one too... They are both ok but Kaz whatsername and the author of the Babies one are both quite opinionated in places which annoyed me occasionally!

I am a shocker for buying books...

I have also got 'Why love Matters' and a couple of 'No-cry' ones.

I think I should be banned from Amazon.