The truth about baby books, or, babies don’t read Gina Ford

It seems to me that the truth about baby books is that they are there to train the parents not the child. If they were aimed at the child well then I would just leave the book propped up in the cot and in no time at all I would have a baby that slept through the night, could tell the time and wake up at regular and predictable intervals and could latch on the breast and feed with no fuss.

Another truth might also be that the first book is to make you paranoid so you go out and buy lots more, thus sustaining the baby book industry.

When I ventured to buy books I checked out the review on Amazon first but for every review that said “this is the ONLY book you need and your child will grow into a useful and prosperous member of society” there was another that said “this book advocates child cruelty and your baby will grow into a maladjusted, ASBO toting hoody if you buy it”

So I decided to ask my friends which books they had.
My friend Lis came up with a list of three. Blooming Birth
, which I talked about here, the Dorling Kindersley Complete Book of Mother and Baby Care. Which she recommended as being informative but old fashioned, but worth it because everyone looks so awful in their 80’s hair and Lady Di smocks that you feel like a glamour puss even with baby sick in your hair and milk stains on your chest.

I found both these books very helpful and Mr. C liked the baby care book too as it has lots of illustrated how-to’s which are very useful for a chap that hasn’t had much contact with babies before.

The final recommendation was The Contented Little Baby Book
by Gina Ford. My eldest brother also recommended this, with a; “brilliant book, only book you need, we did it with the girls and they turned out well.” I didn’t like to point out that he had gone back to work and it had been my sister-in-law that had had to look after the babies. When I talked to her, she had a slightly different view of Gina. In fact most of the people I have spoken to have a similar view of Gina, one I now share.

I read it all the way through and I understand Gina’s main points and they seem pretty sensible to me. Get as much food down the baby in daylight hours so she will not wake with hunger through the night and don’t let her sleep too much in the day. Seems simple and she gives you detailed plans for various weeks of baby’s life to help you do this. My only problem with this, apart from the book being quite badly written, very patronising in parts (it tells you how to sort your washing – for goodness sake!) and littered with comments along the lines of “this study by Mr. Doctor Know-it-all, confirms what I’ve been saying for years”, is that my baby can’t read so she didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing when.

I would start each week thinking that this would be the week to crack it, but I would last a couple of days and then it would all slide because I wanted to do something not on Gina’s schedule. Something like leave the house to get milk or jump around to the Jungle Book CD or eat apple strudel. Really there has to be more to life.

Perhaps all the case- studies in the book have worked because Gina was hired to help so the parents had a third person helping them and taking over when they were tired. You certainly need a strong resolve if you are to go this way without Gina on hand.

In the next round of book buying I decided to use the recommendations in the Blooming Birth book as I had found the book to be so useful that I thought they would have some sensible suggestions.
I now have a very good book on breastfeeding
, a beautifully laid out and informative baby and child care book by Miriam Stoppard
and a book about healthy sleep by Dr. Marc Weissbluth
.

Now the Dr. Marc book is quite interesting. It gives you reasons why your baby needs to sleep, apart from the obvious one of so its parents don’t go stark raving mad. It also tells you how sleep relates to various stages of your child’s development and what to expect to happen when, and then it gives you strategies for helping your child into sleeping patterns.
What I like is that it presents options rather than just one way of doing things. It tells you what you should aim for and presents various ways of going about it. It also recognises that you might not succeed every time.

And so far Dr. Marc has been bang on the button. Baby C. did get more whiney and fussy in weeks four, five and six, then she got less fussy and a bit easier to settle. Best of all, now at eight weeks she suddenly decided that she could sleep through the night. She did two nights sleeping all the way through and has done a few with just waking up once at around 3 am, this from waking at least twice most nights and some nights every two hours.

Overall, I would say that in a stand up fight Dr. Marc would kick Gina’s butt, not least because his book is about three times as thick as hers.