But it is also the most emotionally rewarding, exciting, delightful and pleasurable times too. Making sure you and your partner get the balance just right is about being privy to the finest childcare advice available.
With the extended family all but extinct and familial diaspora commonplace support is on the wane. However, help is at hand as baby and childcare expert Gina Ford leads first-time and existing parents through the tumultuous and thrilling initial twelve months, with the beautifully presented new book The Contented Baby’s First Year.
Moving on from the best-selling The Contented Little Baby Book, which centres on feeding and sleeping, this new title is a full colour, definitive, month-by-month guide of a baby’s development, featuring delightful photography. It does, of course, include Gina’s famous methods of how to achieve a settled routine for your newborn, but in addition to this it also offers detailed direction on many aspects of a baby’s mental and physical progress.
Focusing on topics from the more obvious; immunisation, teething, weaning and childcare options - to the lesser discussed; hair washing, holidaying with a little one and social skills in infancy The Contented Baby’s First Year is perfect for busy parents to dip in to when looking for much needed practical advice.
The Contented Baby’s First Year has an easy-to-follow format containing a useful Q&A section for each month, which offers reassuring solutions to particular problems that may arise at certain stages of a baby’s development. In addition, there are plenty of ‘top tip’ boxes garnered from Gina’s twenty-plus years experience as one of the world’s most famous and respected maternity nurses .
This glossy hardback, illustrated with stunning photography, is an indispensable guide and at just £15.99 is a perfect gift idea for parents of a new baby.
Gina Ford’s first book, The Contented Little Baby Book, published in 1999, was a runaway success that caught on through enthusiastic, word-of-mouth recommendation. Since then it has consistently been the bestselling parenting book in the UK, having sold over half a million copies to date.
Gina’s philosophy has struck a chord with millions of parents up and down the country. Her sensible, pragmatic approach acknowledges that modern life is busy and hard to manage, if both parents and baby have not had a good night’s sleep. A survey in The Daily Mail named her one of the 100 most influential women in Britain today.
At the heart of Gina’s thinking is the belief that the liberal trend towards demand feeding and sleeping, which gained popularity in the 1980s, often results in an unsettled baby and exhausted parents. Her famous routines are designed to fit in with a baby’s instinctive feeding and sleeping patterns and naturally enable him or her gradually to sleep for longer stretches at night.
Gina Ford devised and perfected this structured approach to childcare through 20 years of hands-on experience as a sought-after maternity nurse, specialising in caring for newborn babies and toddlers with serious sleeping and feeding problems. During this time she worked all over the world with a wide range of families. In 1999, after the success of her first book, Gina gave up maternity nursing and launched the highly successful website
www.contentedbaby.com. Its aim is to make her specialist knowledge and expertise accessible to a much wider cross section of parent, providing advice, latest news and features as well as a discussion forum for parents.
Seven further books have followed since 1999: From Contented Baby To Confident Child (2000), The Contented Little Baby Book Of Weaning (2002), Potty Training In One Week (2003), The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers (2003), The Contented Child’s Food Bible (2004) with Paul Sacher, The Gina Ford Baby and Toddler Cook Book (2005) and Gina Ford’s Top Tips for Contented Babies and Toddlers (2005), Good Mother Bad Mother (May 2006), A Contented House With Twins co-written with TV personality Alice Beer (September 2006) and Gina Ford’s Bedtime Rhymes (October 2006).
As well as achieving bestselling status in the UK, Gina’s books have also been published in the US, and translated into Spanish, Hebrew, Dutch and Chinese.
1. All Gina Ford titles are available from all good bookshops and by mail order with free p&p to all UK addresses. All major credit cards accepted. Call 01206-255800 to order..uk or buy the book now at
www.rbooks.co.uk
