Dec
01
Gentle Baby Care : No-cry, No-fuss, No-worry–Essential Tips for Raising Your Baby
Filed Under (Tips) by admin on 01-12-2009
From the bestselling author of The No-Cry Sleep Solution–everything parents need to know during their baby’s first year Gentle Baby Care provides immediate answers to the daily questions that arise when caring for a baby. Written by bestselling author and parenting expert Elizabeth Pantley, this valuable guide includes information and practical tips to allow readers to choose the gentle, loving solutions that best suit their parenting style and their baby. Gentle Baby Car…
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This helpful resource has a lot of heart and a friendly tone. Though hefty, the book’s appealing format, well-organized material, supportive writing style and clarity make it inviting and accessible. Readers need only look inside to appreciate the author’s positive attitude and notice how practical and thorough the information is. Each of about 125 brief chapters uses a similar pattern designed to provide quick factual direction and encouragement for its intended audience of parents of normal infants. A wide selection of topics, from health issues to overzealous grandparents, swimming, test driving strollers, developing a read-aloud family culture, and teething, is arranged alphabetically with labels that, for the most part, make sense. The table of contents and extensive index are well-conceived. Lots of white space, attractive type, and logical layout make skimming for specific advice easy. Reading the book straight through is pleasant and informative too. Comparative parenting philosophies are not covered. Pantley is forthright about concentrating on attachment parenting. She supports her preferences well and discusses many approaches in a broad context. Breastfeeding, for example, is assumed, yet she doesn’t belittle readers who opt for formula. Curiously though, homeopathic medicine is suggested a few times with no further explanation about it. In general, Pantley speaks sensibly to hands-on, involved parents interested in natural ways to rear secure, strongly attached children safely. Development itself is covered here only as a minor topic with lists of normal milestones. Helping parents understand particular issues and evaluate their best options is Pantley’s focus, so her sound advice includes tips with developmentally appropriate variations throughout the book. She is adept also at sharing pertinent considerations for each subject without prescribing, except for certain definite procedures or emergency requirements, what choices a family should make. Her presentation of current knowledge and research is concise and responsible. She provides additional websites and resources for further interest and respectfully leaves the outcomes up to her readers’ values and decisions. Gentle Baby Care has a more developed style than Pantley’s earlier Perfect Parenting. The same sensitive logic in her No-Cry Sleep Solution is in her writing here. She considers each topic thoroughly with particular awareness of safety issues, and cogently presents, with the utmost respect for parents and their babies’ well-being, the practical information and thoughtful opinions they will find useful. Expectant, new and experienced parents will all find this book a handy and reliable reference.
If you support the attachment parenting philosophies of Dr. Sears and Katie Allison Granju, you will love this book. If, however, you’re after a book that is a little bit more mainstream, this may not be the book for you and you may wish to stick to a less AP-oriented baby book. This book assumes you will be opting for extended breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and that you will be using the night-time parenting strategies spelled out in the author’s other book. If you’re not making these particular parenting choices, this book may leave you feeling a bit guilty for the parenting choices you have made.