The Contented Little Baby Book (The Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Ford)

Member Name: keels100

Product:	The Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Ford
Date:	01/11/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets your baby into a good routine and helps you both to know where you are

Disadvantages: Very strict regime

This book promises to give you a happy, contented baby who will be sleeping through the night by 10 weeks but only if you follow the strict regime that Gina Ford insists upon.

I don't know about anyone else but when my daughter was only a few days old and was screaming her head off because she was hungry, there was no way I was going to be able to keep to the strict feeding timetable set out in this book.

Gina Ford has a timetable for everything from when baby should be asleep, when they should be woken, when they should be fed and even when their nappy should be changed! Funnily enough my daughter didn't seem to want to fit in with this timetable so very early on the book was thrown to the side and natural instinct just took over instead.

However, before you think this is just going to be a rant about how awful Gina Ford is and how no-one should ever read her books, I did have a change of heart a few weeks down the line!

When my daughter was about 5 weeks old and I could see a sort of routine emerging to our daily lives I decided to give the book another go. Before too long, both me and my baby were fitting in well with Gina's wake at 7am, nap at 9am etc etc and amazingly enough my daughter did seem to be pretty contented with it all.

I have to admit though that I didn't follow Gina's routines to the letter as to do that, I feel that you would never be able to leave the house! The main things that I followed were the times of sleeps and feeds. I was bottle feeding though so it was probably a lot easier for me than for someone who would be breastfeeding.

One of the things that I ignored from the book was the insistence on baby sleeping in a completely dark room. This just wasn't always going to be practical and I'm happy to say my daughter can sleep with curtains open or shut!

I also decided not to wake my daughter up at 10pm for a quick feed to try and get her to sleep through longer. It just seemed madness! She would be in a lovely deep sleep and on the couple of times I did try it, it didn't make her sleep any longer than if I left her to sleep all the way from 7pm.

Admittedly my daughter didn't sleep through the night from 10 weeks but she did from about 4 months so I don't think that's bad going!

Did I have a contented baby - most of the time but then again so did my friends who didn't follow Gina's routines.

Would I use this book again - yes I would and have just recently purchased her toddler taming one - whether that works remains to be seen!!

Summary: Take what you want from it and ignore the rest - use your own instinct!