Contented Little Baby Book - Softcover

Ford, Gina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091869145 ISBN 13: 9780091869144

Publisher: Vermilion, 2099

Synopsis

The Contented Little Baby Book, based on Gina Ford's personal experience of caring for over 300 babies, was first published in 1999. It quickly established Gina as an influential new authority on baby and childcare issues and has remained one of the bestselling parenting books in the UK for almost 20 years.

This completely revised edition of The New Contented Little Baby Book contains the most up-to-date advice available to parents. Using the feedback from numerous readers and website members, Gina has been able to develop and elaborate on the information in her first book, while clearly setting out her philosophy on simple feeding and sleeping routines.

By creating routines that match a growing baby's innate natural rhythms, Gina prevents the hunger, overtiredness and colic that can lead to excessive crying. Babies who are settled into Gina's gentle routines are happy and contented because their needs for food and sleep are appropriately met and they should sleep for their longest spell at night from an early age.

With detailed, prescriptive information on everything parents need to know, this book includes chapters on:

- Preparation for the birth
- How the routines evolved and the benefits of following a routine
- Milk feeding in the first year
- Understanding your baby's sleep
- Establishing a routine
- Introducing solid food in line with government and World Health Authority guidelines
- Common problems in the first year.

Whether you are expecting your first child, or are experiencing difficulties with an older baby, this comprehensive guide contains all the expert guidance you need to help your baby feed and sleep well.

About this title

Review:

If you are still struggling to get your newborn to sleep through the night, still getting up throughout the night to feed the little one, or perhaps you are feeling as if no end is in sight, you need to read Gina Ford's The Contented Little Baby Book. It may be the only thing you need to bring peace back into your frazzled existence with your tiny baby, or babies.

After all, this book promises to teach parents tried and tested methods to get their baby to sleep through the night by the time they are 10 weeks old.

For parents who are craving their first night of unbroken sleep, Ford's book may be the answer.

Ford's methods conjure up the image of a strict and loving old nanny from yesteryear. Her techniques go against the grain of many currently popular parenting philosophies. For example, Ford, an experienced maternity nurse, is against demand feeding, believes in the necessity of waking a sleeping baby in order to establish a daily routine. Her philosophy may not be the norm today, but Ford is confident of her methods based on years of experience handling hundreds of babies.

Providing an hour-by-hour, week-by-week guide on how to get a new baby into a routine, the book includes feeding and sleeping schedules based on a baby's age. The Contented Little Baby Book provides so much information that it may be necessary to keep this paperback book handy for reference should you employ Ford's techniques.

Experienced parents may not benefit from Ford's methods, but first-time parents may learn a lot from her ideas, and for the discerning reader of parenting books, this one is a must have. For the reader who would like to weigh other parenting methods before adopting Ford's techniques, the following books may be of interest: The Baby Book, by William Sears, M.D. and Martha Sears, R.N.; What to Expect in the first year, by Eisenberg, Murkoff and Hathaway; and Your Baby and Child, by Penelope Leach. --Abbe Jacobson

Review:

"Gina Ford is the Delia Smith of parenting...while Delia tells you how to make the perfect omelette, Gina Ford in her baby-care manual The Contented Little Baby Book, draws on 30 years' experience to tell you how to nurture the perfectly happy baby." YOU Magazine "For me she was an absolute godsend." -- Kate Winslet "It is hard to overestimate the good she has done...How to reward this great benefactor of mankind?...My wife takes the view that only sainthood will do." Peter Osborne, Political Editor, The Spectator "I devoured it (Contented Little Baby Book) in one sitting. It was hilarious. The claim that a baby of five months could be trained to sleep from 7am to 7pm made me laugh out loud. Little did I realise that this was the start of my conversion to the gospel according to St Gina. That Gina Ford would soon acquire an almost divine status in my life...I look back on my BGE (Before Gina Era) and think of how many of my babies has cried and cried as I ever more desperately struggled to get them to sleep...My only regret, of course, is that Gina did not write her book years ago, when my older children were born. I look in the mirror and wonder what a difference that would have made to the bags under my eyes. If motherhood had always been as easy as it seems this time, I might not have had five children - but 10. Maybe Ruth Kelly's secrets is that she has a copy of St Gina." -- Martine Oborne Evening Standard "This book could be your salvation!" The Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Vermilion
• Publication date: 2099
• ISBN 10: 0091869145
• ISBN 13: 9780091869144
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176