My Baby.....Now what ? (The Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Ford)

Member Name: thegarleon

Product:	The Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Ford
Date:	21/11/05 (231 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great advice . use it as a guideline .

Disadvantages: Very strict .

The fun of courting,the joy of sex, the waiting of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth......the sheer terror of your first night at home with your first child! Ha ha ha. Grandparents love this. As a father to be I read like a man possesed. You name it, magazines web sites and books........on pregnancy conception and birth. No one thought to tell me about the bit where the loud bag of skin-wee and poo comes home for the first time.

I can only speak from personal experience here but I found the majority of reading material post birth to be debatable. From a father's point of view at least. Anyone with an interest in basic psychology knows that women are emotional and empathetic......men get frustrated and can be pathetic UNLESS we are armed with manuals. OH YES. We can do anything from tuning in a tv to full lpg home conversions on our cars if we have a manual by our side,we never read it, we just blame said manual when we get it wrong.

I have found that manual for babies.It is a God send.I first heard talk of this book from a fellow father to be at a parentcraft class. We were talking while our wives were breathing. I instantly forgot all about it. That is until i made my first trip to the 24 hour Tesco supermarket at 2am on the night we first took our son home.

Gina must be a very rich lady from this book. The more people you talk to about baby problems, the more her name comes up. There may be gaggles of baby advice books in conjunction with tv shows now, but from what I can tell, Aunty Gina was there before them all.

Aunty Gina is the Grandmother,Nanny,Nurse and Mother we would all hate to have looking over our shoulder. Her advice on topics such as "let your baby cry himself to sleep" seem horrible. "Do not let your baby fall asleep in you arms" sounds like terrible advice. But if you have fallen into the trap of having a baby that develops into a toddler that will not fall asleep in his own bed......blame yourself.

I would say that this book actually should come with three things. 1. A volume controll- to turn down Gina shouting at you for being a very bad parent. 2. A pinch of salt- to be taken with a lot of the advice. 3. A warning- that you should not follow everything to the letter.

The advice on sleeping patterns, getting baby to sleep in his own room and weaning were ideal for us and our son. The colic suggestions, teething and persistent crying solutions were as much use as the birth control we used 9 months previous.

The Headmistress that is MS Ford (i am assuming the MS) works by routines. Strict routines. No leeway at all routines. She doesn't share the compassion of a lot of other baby advice books. But a lot of what she said did work for us.

If nothing else this book can get you talking to other parents about what they have tried from the book and what works for them. Each baby, each family, and each day are different. We found the advice gave us good foundations to work with ourselves. We adapted a lot of the Hitler youth training schedules to our own.

If you are in a position where you can't get advice from your own mother or a decent health visitor, then this book can help give you some of the old fashioned style methods. No whisky on the dummy though!

There are case studies of horrible brats or problem cases and solutions at the end of the book that are invaluable. So is the list of further contacts and useful addresses.

Remember that Gina will advise and instruct, but do, in my opinion buy this book, even if it is only to get a different viewpoint from the "modern" baby whisperers.

My final verdict
Hard nosed witch will arm you for the battles of taking - baby - home - and - getting - baby - to - do - wot - u - want - baby to do now! But just remember that this baby is your world and you do love them so water the routines down. Your kid will pick your nursing home one day!

Summary: The routines are strict, but adapt them to suit your baby.