... The book gives a lot of general advice, including case studies of babies with some form of sleep problem, and a series of suggested routines for babies from 2 weeks to 1 year.
I found a lot of the advice to be very sound, although since my daughter is only a month old I haven’t tested ... Read review
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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'sThe Contented Little Baby Book...
never be taken lightly. Research has shown that a name can have a significant effect on a person's life; while the right name can contribute to personal and professional success the wrong one can often lead to a lifetime of unhappiness. The minefield of potential problems can be enormous and questions that must be asked include: Does the chosen name go well with the surname?; Do the initials spell anything unfortunate?; Will your child be teased at school?; Will the name grow with your child? Is it a name that will date? Packed with over 4 000 names The Contented Little Baby Book of Names can help you find the perfect name every time. It lists them alphabetically and provides the origin meaning and short forms where appropriate of each one as well as giving sound advice for avoiding any mistakes. Also included are the latest top-ten most popular girls' and boys' names.
equally have come from the thousands of mothers who have put Gina Ford's kind but firm routines into practice and put some calm back into their lives. Sleep-starved nights inconsolable crying feeding on demand - stories that make the prospect of bringing a tiny baby home for the first time daunting for any proud new parent. Fully updated and with helpful input from clients readers and mothers who simply love her routines "The New Contented Little Baby Book" gives reassuring and practical advice to new parents that works from one of the UK's most respected and most talked about maternity nurses. Her secret is simple and amazing - a strategy developed through years of research and experience. When put into practice 'Gina babies': sleep through the night from an early age; feed regularly and well from either breast or bottle; and are less likely to suffer from colic. And parents are calm and contented too!
wean' to how to establish routines and make sure babies get all the nutrients they need. This guide also contains parent-friendly schedules, feeding plans...
and most talked about maternity nurses. This book could be your salvation! A quote from the Daily Telegraph, but this cry could equally have come from the...
early months of parenthood and Gina's expert advice on weaning makes a baby's transition from milk to solid foods as straightforward as possible. Successful weaning establishes a pattern of healthy eating in babies avoiding the pitfalls of fussy eaters restricted to a narrow diet. In this revised edition of The Contented Little Baby Book of Weaning Gina includes the latest recommendations regarding breast-feeding and the introduction of solid food from the World Health Organisation and the UK Department of Health. She aims to take the worry out of weaning guiding parents step-by-step through the process and shares the insight and expertise gained from personally helping to care for over 300 babies and advising thousands more parents via her consultation service and website.Included in this revised edition: - The best time of day to introduce the first solid food - Which foods to introduce and at what age - Getting the balance of milk feeds and solids right - How to eliminate night feeds once solids are introduced - The importance of introducing finger foods at the right age - Extended parent-friendly feeding plans to take parents step-by-step through the different stages - Newly developed rotating meal planners for older children up to the end of the first year - Brand new questions and answers giving the most up-to-date advice to parents. The Contented Little Baby Book of Weaning is the definitive guide to ensuring babies eat well now and as they grow up and is as relevant and helpful to those parents who have not previously followed Gina's routines.
A review by madlucy on The Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Ford June 14th, 2002
Author's product rating:
Degree of Information
Medium
How easy was it to read / get information from
Relatively easy
How interesting was the book?
Interesting because I'm interested in that subject
Would you read it again?
Yes
Value for money
Good
Advantages:
some sound advice
Disadvantages:
ridiculously rigid routines
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Well firstly I have no idea why this book is in the health and beauty section and not the parental books section – it’s a book about coping with babies from 0 to 1 year especially with regard to getting the little darlings to sleep through the night. Perhaps it’s the health of the parents/mother who the categorisers at Ciao had in mind?
Anyway, as it says in the intro, Gina Ford is a very experienced maternity nurse (a nurse who goes to live with mothers to help them look after babies – wish I could afford one of those!). Her philosophy is essentially that babies need routines and that “feeding on demand” (as espoused by many baby-care gurus) can often be counterproductive. The book gives a lot of general advice, including case studies of babies with some form of sleep problem, and a series of suggested routines for babies from 2 weeks to 1 year.
I found a lot of the advice to be very sound, although since my daughter is only a month old I haven’t tested much of it out yet. She suggests, for example, that to prevent a baby from waking at 5am in the summer, you put black-out curtains in her room. She also suggests that you feed newborn babies every three hours (not every four as hospitals used to advise, and not on demand) and this did seem to work fine with my baby – she’s already gained almost a kilo!
Where she and I disagree is on her routines. Here is a sample from the routine for a 2 to 4 week old baby:
“Baby should be awake, nappy changed and feeding no later than 7am. He needs 20-25 minutes on the full breasts followed by 10-15 minutes on the second breast after you have expressed 2-3 oz…”
Ford insists that if a baby is to awake only once at night (or not at all from about 8-10 weeks), he needs 5 feeds before midnight and therefore must start at 7am. Now I don’t know about you, but for me getting up by 7am completely defeats the purpose of trying to get baby to sleep through the night! Furthermore, I find that if my baby wants to sleep, then I have to be quite forceful in waking her up and the chances are she will just drop off again when I try to feed her.
I thought about transposing the routines to run from 8 or 9am, but Ford advises against this, saying that babies are happier on a 7am-7pm routine. I felt a bit guilty about this for a day or two, but then I realised that it is utter twaddle – if there is a best time for babies to get up, why isn’t it 7am in winter, but 8am in summer when the clocks go forward?
Having said that, a lot of the philosophy behind the routines is sound. My baby started to suffer from colic at about two weeks (for those who don’t know, this means an hour or so of crying in the afternoons after her feeds). Ford says that none of the 300 or so babies she has cared for suffered from colic, so on her advice I started spacing feeds to 3 and a half hours and it seems to be better now. It’s not cured, but maybe that’s because I’m not getting up at 7am! She also gives lots of useful information on social and physical development, on weaning babies onto solid food and on “sleep training” for older babies who still don’t sleep through the night . In fact I think it’s worth having the book purely for the advice on sleep training just in case!
In conclusion, this book is useful for any new parent or parent-to-be, but, as with all advice on babies, don’t take it too seriously! All babies, not to mention parents, are different and I think you need to at least try to find your own way first as it may well be the best way. Finally, if you think this book will miraculously give you a good night’s sleep (as I did!) you’re sadly mistaken
More Reviews
Aaaahhh To Be Content Review ofThe Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Fordby
Katie-Jane
Advantages: Good Advice taken from years of experience Disadvantages: Routines are sometimes impossible
WHAT THE BACK COVER SAYS....
The prospect of bringing a tiny baby home for the first time is daunting. Horror stories of sleep-starved nights, inconsolable crying and feeding on demand can make any proud parent fearful of what the future may hold. If you can afford it, you hire a maternity nurse to help the baby settle but for most parents this isn't an option. The Contented Little Baby Book is the perfect alternative. Based on twelve years of research ... ...follow and takes into account the needs of individual babies.
Gina's secret is simple. Once you've established her routine, everything else will follow. As a result, your baby will:
* Sleep through the night from an early age
* Feed regularly and well from either the breast or bottle
* Be less likely to suffer from colic and
* You will get a better night's sleep and feel more in control
Practical and calm and packed with lots of parent-friendly ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: some useful advice Disadvantages: detached from reality
...Gina Ford’s parenting methods, some the very opposite. After the first read, I absolutely hated the Little Contented Baby Book, not so much because of the sleep training stuff etc. but because it was like reading a maths book; devoid of all emotion involved with bringing up children. I’m not talking about pampering (although I do feel you cannot pamper an infant anyway, as they do not know what it means) or anything like that, rather ... ...I thought I would try the routines out just to see for myself what 'the fuss' (about her methods) was all about. Very quickly I realised it wasn’t going to work for our family, because following the routines AND enjoying the early stages of your son's life (without monotonious and repetitive schedule), would’ve been an impossibility. However, I did pick up some useful information regarding feeding times (only as a guideline though) and ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: great as a guide, some very useful tips Disadvantages: makes you feel like a failure if all does not go to plan!
The New Contented Little Baby Book was recommended to me when I was just three months pregnant. Being very innocent and believing that I would have the perfect baby anyway I decided to give the book a read to help me along. Gina Ford - author, claims that by following her very strict routines for feeding, sleeping and everything else in between you could have a baby that "feeds well and regularly from breast or bottle, is less likely to suffer colic ... ...Two weeks later and the eagerly awaited book arrives on my doorstep and I get reading.
Chapter 1 preparation for birth - probably the most helpful chapter of all as it does not blind you with science and just gives you some really good advice on things like what to buy for the nursery without having to spend the earth, Equipment needed for breast and bottle feeding, clothing and tips on washing those very expensive items of clothing! Tips include ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: You will get your baby sleeping through the night and it does what it says. Disadvantages: If you are not into routines then this won't be for you.
...have decided to rewrite it. The rewrite is very long. Be warned**
As I used to be a nanny I am aware of how important routines are for children. If they have a routine they feel safe and secure.
I have used the routine in this book in some of my past jobs and it worked very well then. I was very keen to try it when I had my first baby, but also a little dubious about whether it would work for us when we were the ones doing the night as well as ... ...hired by some families for the first few weeks to help them settle into a routine. They aren't cheap but they do work very long hours and they will often do the night feeds.
The first few chapters of the book are about preparations and to help you understand how routines can help your baby. CHAPTER ONE is about what you need to buy for the baby, their room, and feeding. It goes into how to go about choosing things, how many clothes of different ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Degree of Information
How easy was it to read...
How interesting was the...
Would you read it again?
Value for money
very helpful
29.08.2003
(06.11.2003)
A great resource Review ofThe Contented Little Baby Book - Gina Fordby
Rainbow2911
Advantages: Good advice, easy to follow Disadvantages: May be too regimented for some people
...was bought this book, and the weaning book that accompanies it by a friend whilst I was pregnant with my first baby. They had recently had thier first, and to hear them talk you would think that the book changed his nappies by itself! In fact this book tends to provoke strong feelings where ever you mention it (well on baby related websites mostly!). People either seem to love it or think it is the source of all evil in this world! So what's all ... ...baby to:
"*sleep through the night from an early age
*feed regularly and well from either the breast or bottle
*be less likely to suffer from colic, and
*you will get a better night's sleep and feel more in control"
Well, as every sleep deprived new parent with cracked nipples (well okay mother only there presumably!) and an uncontrollably screaming collicky baby knows, those points are the holy grail of early parenting! So we have some impressive ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: excellent advice and common sense Disadvantages: none for me
...I wanted to share with people the huge value that this book gives. I can't begin to describe in words the immense gratitude I give to GinaFord for her knowledge, experience and advice she gives in this book. I have two children and have used it in the explicit sense with my first child and more loosely with my second and both times I have had very 'contented' babies.
The contents of the books chapters cover the following topics:
1) Preparation for the birth (equipment, nursery, clothes)
2) After the birth
3) Feeding in the first year (milk production, expressing, breast and bottle feeding)
4) Understanding your baby's sleep (sleep and demand feeding, early-morning waking etc)
5) Common problems in the first few months (e.g. burping, colic, dummies etc)
6) Establishing a routine
7) Routines for the first year
8) Introducing...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Helped my baby sleep through night at 8 weeks Disadvantages: Very regimented if you follow it to the letter
...I bought this book after receiving a free 'taster' to it in a pregnancy magazine and I am so glad I did! Whilst I have been around children all my life, I have never had one of my own so working out a routine etc was all new to me. I found GinaFord's advice excellent. My son is almost 6 months old but has been sleeping through the night from 11pm to around 7am since he was eight weeks old. He is very happy, rarely cries and generally settles well for naps etc. I am aware that the book is very regimented e.g. baby must be awake and feeding by ... but I simply used the book as a guide and applied some common sense and a little juggling and I have to say the routin works fantastically for me. I have also just returned to work with my husband helping with a lot of the child care so being able to tell him when our son will need fed...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
Advantages: Good advice, helped me enjoy my baby Disadvantages: Rather strict sounding, but you don't have to follow it to the letter
...My experience:
Firstly, I'd stress the point that this book isn't for everyone, but I would like to say that it saved my sanity. On having a baby I tried to take the relaxed approach, feeding on demand and basically letting my baby do whatever he seeemed to want. However, by the time he was 4 months he was feeding every hour in the night and most of the day too. I gave Gina's advice a try and for me it worked. By sorting out my baby's sleeping and feeding routines, my life got much easier and my baby did become much more happy and 'contented'. I noticed a marked improvement in the day time almost immediately, and by 4 weeks of following the routine, my baby was sleeping through the night.
I have read other reviews, where people say the routines are cruel etc. At no point does Gina tell you to leave your baby to cry, in fact...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
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