Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 March 2015

The Best Baby Books

I love to read and I love to learn, so when I was pregnant I stocked up on some good solid reading. Yes I had subscribed to all the web newsletters and week by week updates, but for me personally I need to read a book, to feel the ink, to glide across the glossy photos for it all to sink in.


There are millions of ‘baby’ books and you will learn new information in all of them, but I will review the three best books that I read and how they helped me.

There is a reason this book is in it’s fourth edition, it is superb.
The new book contains a lot of information on cesareans, which account for almost 30% of deliveries in the UK and Ireland. It has a week by week development of your baby and also week by week changes to your pregnant body. It covers all aspects of pregnancy from conception to delivery, problems, solutions and the need to know info.
I like that it lays out the information and does not try to influence you into a particular way of thinking. It is something you will dip in and out of and open every week or so. It answered more questions than my random google searches… and there were a lot of those. I left the delivery part until my third trimester as it scared me so much, but I felt empowered after reading this.


I LOVED this book. From the very first page to the end, it is funny. Lucy gently guides you through some of the basics for your first baby and also boosts your ego and assures you things will go horribly wrong and perfect in the same hour! It addresses the needs of the baby, but also the parent. The best chapters for me were - what happens immediately after the birth and what to do when you get home. It provides reasons why babies cry and even the useful diagrams on how to hold a newborn, winding and feeding. It goes through baby development, sleeping, feeding, games to play with your baby and a huge amount of baby concerns.
The moment I knew this book was for me? When I read the top ten new parent worries and the number one question was “Will my baby die? (Yes, we all worry about it.)”
Don’t think about it just buy it!


Now this one is probably a little controversial. I will write a post soon on our baby’s routine and how we started it, why, and how we got on. This book was given to me with the advice “you don’t need to be as strict as this, but it is a good guideline.”
At first reading of the book I thought, wow this author is a b***h. It sounded so mean, like your baby was robot, it seemed like every minute of the day was dictated by this book and the routine that she guarantees will work.

If you are an organised person, someone who likes routine, who works to deadlines  and who understands time keeping then having a baby will turn you upside down and when that happens reach for this book. It helped to put order on life with a chaotic newborn and within one month I got the result I worked for, my baby slept through the night.


**This post was not sponsored - this is my own opinion**
Follow me on Goodreads.com

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

The passage of time


I got my reward the other night for sticking with a hard book to read.
(No not 50 Shades of Grey shite)
For the past few months I have been struggling through Virgina Woolf's To The Lighthouse.
The draw to the book was not the title or the cover but the strange and mysterious author.
Now To The Lighthouse is not a difficult read, it is a small book. But the story line is certainly not gripping and so I find it difficult to lay aside time to dedicate to it.

But I was rewarded last night – the chapters entitled 'Time Passes' were jewels you do not find in contemporary books. Beautifully, lyrically, written it has been swirling around in my head all day. And it has me pondering on the general subject of time.


This weekend I will unite with a best friend who I have been separated from for over 18months as a result of her emigration. A lot has happened over the year and a half.
I started to think about how those changes have affected me and in turn our friendship.


Also what do you pick to talk about and what do you throw away. Do we keep the conversation positive, talk about the things that make us smile and laugh or do we tackle the things that make us cry?
Do we take the recap chronologically? Event based? Maybe go along with a theme – love/ loss/ embarrassing moments?!

Or do we just forget the catch up and live in the present?