The New Contented Little Baby Book: The Secret to Calm and Confident Parenting

Not many American's are familiar with Gina Ford but she is renown in England. IF you follow her guidelines to a tee, you will enjoy hours of sleep, your child will be well rested and adjusted, you'll be able to plan because you are on a schedule and life will be bliss with a newborn. the key is following the somewhat rigorous schedule which many people can't figure out how to do. You will need to make adjustments but like anything the first week or 2 are tough but then it gets easier and then it's just the way of life. I hear so many parents speak of having to sleep with their child, oh my child is different, oh s/he just won't go to sleep, we could never have a schedule - we are too busy, etc. All excuses in my book. Look, it's simple, usually the problem lies with the parents - it's their issue, they need to go to this or that event, they like holding the baby all night long, they don't want to hear the crying, etc. Get over it! kids need boundaries. This book helps you set them early on and while you are helping your child you are really helping yourself. Gina does an amazing job of outlining a very sensible feeding and sleeping schedule, and most importantly the little things that are often over looked like black out blinds. it's an easy read, and your pages should be earmarked. By 10 weeks we had gotten rid of the baby monitor and our baby was sleeping from 7pm to 7am with no waking up. The benefits don't stop when they turn 1 - by teaching the child at an early age the lessons in this book, they carry through the rest of their life. Today, at 8, my child goes to sleep with no trouble at 8pm and sleeps until 7am. Date night at my house every night! I have given this book as gifts to 1st time mothers and the ones who thank me for it have babies who sleep through the nights and they too are well adjusted. The others, well they rattle off one or more of those excuses above. I've read all the other baby books out there because I'm a huge fan of research and not one of them stands a candle to Gina Ford. If you buy one thing to help a new mother or for yourself, this is it! Forget the baby clothes, toys, and other gifts, this book will keep giving all your life and through your child's.

In a world where very few of us are around small children enough to know what is normal/good for sleeping and eating, most of us need guidance. I wanted to know when she should nap, eat, etc. I bought this book looking for schedules, and it was perfect. It met my needs and changed the way I parent. Now here's the thing, I call Gina Ford the Schedule Nazi, but I mean it in a good way. Use your common sense. Things aren't always going to work on schedule, but both of my children (breastfed exclusively until 13/12 mths respectively)have greatly benefited from regular bedtimes and naptimes. Neither ever required extensive bedtime rituals, crying it out or any of that stuff. When I followed the schedule, they slept well. Period. BTW, on the breastfeeding, I never found it a problem. My firstborn always nursed at 3-4 hr intervals, and at night from about 8 wks on, I went at least 5-7 hrs without nursing her. Your body adjusts. Sure the first night is hard. Big deal. It never compromised my milk supply, I never supplemented with formula (not once!),and she was always on schedule growth-wise at her check-ups. My 2nd was a mth early so he ate more often as a preemie, but around 6 weeks, he too went on the longer schedule with no problems. His growth has also been fine, and he walked sooner than my daughter. Overall, some people have a real aversion to schedules. They think children should be allowed to find their own schedule. I think that's the biggest bunch of nonsense I've ever heard. We teach them how to eat, walk, talk, not hit,. . . and the list goes on and on. Why would teaching them how to sleep (at night/naps) and putting them down at set times most beneficial to them be any different than that? Parents know best--not babies. It's ludicrous to think they're born knowing what schedule is best for them. Puh-lease--they know the basics of how to suck, sleep, cry, and defecate/urinate. But that doesn't mean they're even any good at those. I laugh when people say breastfeeding is natural--that babies know how automatically and so do moms. You've got to be kidding. It's a skill you learn like any other. And it's not always easy to learn or to teach the babies. Why do you think so many women give up breastfeeding? It's b/c they don't know how to do it! Use the book. Take what you need. I didn't use the food advice as much as I did the sleep stuff. However, I recommend this book to all my friends, along with Babywise. Good luck, Moms & Dads, and remember there are a number of right ways to do things. Some, however, are easier than others! Don't make things too hard for yourself! BTW, I glanced over some of the reviews, and I had to laugh at one comment. **All the people who complained about Gina Ford giving advice but not having any children.** I think it's safe to say that she has worked with more newborns than most of us "real" moms will work with in our entire life. Along the same lines, how many of us had doctors we trusted to deliver our babies--but who never had children of their own? Either b/c they were MALE or b/c they were childless females? If we're going to criticize, criticize her advice, not her person.

Pros - The baby was sleeping through the night by week 2 - The feeding schedule works if you follow it diligently - Helps set guidelines for what to expect with child development Cons - It is a controlled and "selfish" approach at parenting - Can seem cruel to third parties unfamiliar with the techniques First off, every baby is different. We are very lucky that our baby has been easy and took to the schedule almost immediately. We really only read about 70-80% of the book and applied about 60% of the techniques. We followed the techniques closely and never strayed too far. Some key takeaways (and again, every baby is different!): 1) Getting the feeding schedule down is the backbone. The book is very detailed with the feeding schedule and amount to feed at each meal. We followed each and every word of the schedule for the first 6 months. There were only 2 memorable nights where I had to wake in the middle of the night. My wife and I sleep 8 hours every night since our baby was born. 2) Don't be a softy and give in, stick with the schedule. You will be tempted to feed when she cries, let her nap when she dozes. Don't give in. Especially early on, every minute you stray from the schedule is potentially another minue you'll be awake in the middle of the night. Straying from the schedule has a cascading effect that throws off the schedule for the next day, then the next. The grandparents hated how we allowed our baby to cry and kept the baby awake, but in the end, my wife and I are the ones that suffer the consequences of an off-schedule. We had our baby within 2 weeks of my wife's sister. Her sister is a stay at home mom and has a laissez faire approach. She's had many many sleepless nights for feedings, sleep cycle reversals etc. Every baby is different, so it is hard to say how effective the techniques are. All I can say is that it seems to have worked for us. Our book is all beat up with dog ears and notes around each of the feeding schedules. We've abandoned the book at around 6 months, as we have been very lucky with our baby, and no longer need the tips and tricks. We are believers, and will definitely be following the same guidelines when we have our second and third!

At two months old, our son's sleeping and eating schedules were totally erratic. My husband and I were playing baby roulette, constantly guessing at what he needed whenever he cried. He was fussy when he was awake, and he would only nap in 15-30 minute intervals. We were exhausted, and frankly, worried that we would never grow to love our baby. Enter "The Book." Out of desperation, I jumped right to the schedules after lightly skimming the other chapters. We implemented the 8-12 week old schedule that night with a fierce devotion. Within 3 days, our son was taking 3 solid naps a day and sleeping for 4 hour blocks at night. He was also much more content during his waking periods. We were ecstatic. A week into the schedule, however, we started to run into problems. Some days, he would be screaming for a bottle an hour before he was due to have one, and we felt horrible "holding out" until the allotted feeding time. Other days, he would wake in the middle of a nap and be unable to go back to sleep. The schedule didn't say what to do in those situations. OR SO I THOUGHT. Frustrated and convinced that the schedule wasn't working, I decided to go back through the book in its entirety, to see if there was anything I had missed. And indeed, there were a number of things in the chapters that weren't in the schedules. I ended up typing out my own schedule with various notes incorporating the tips from the other chapters. With these refinements, we were able to get our baby completely on track, and we had the confidence to deal with "off days" without worrying that we were losing the schedule completely. Today, at three months old, our son takes three naps every day, and he goes to bed at 6:45 each night, waking only once for a feeding at 3am. (To be fair, we wake him at 10pm before we go to bed for one last feeding.) He takes 5 bottles every day at regular times, and he's generally happy and calm when he's awake. Is he a perfect baby? No, not by any means. But my husband and I are now confident that we know what he needs when he needs it, which has made the baby feel more relaxed and happy. Plus, the regular schedule means we all know what to expect each day, and we can plan our activities accordingly. So, if this system works so well, why only four stars? Because most exhausted parents are going to do exactly what I did, which is flip to the schedules first, without really reading the entire book. I know it says to read the whole thing, but when you're desperate and sleep deprived, you just don't have time. The author could have easily done what I did, which was create a more nuanced schedule that incorporates the tips from the various chapters. I'm not sure why she strung out all the important tips throughout the book, but that's how she did it, so you have to read the whole book. Otherwise, you'll still just be guessing some of the time, and you'll lose the confidence that's necessary to make the schedule work. One last note about the tone of the book. Several reviewers on Amazon have commented on how severe the author is, and how often she uses words like "must" and "cannot" when imploring parents to follow the book to the letter. While we generally follow the timing of the schedule, we don't completely follow her method in every way, because we've learned that some things just don't work for our baby. For instance, our baby has reflux, so he sleeps in an inclined rocker, not in a crib. We also put him to sleep tightly swaddled, though the book says he should only be loosely swaddled at this age. Lastly, we allow him to fall asleep for his final nap with a pacifier, which is a HUGE "no no" in her book. We've learned that this is the only way to ensure he takes that last nap, which he still really needs. So, take her exhortations with a grain of salt. There are some things that just won't work for your baby. The sleeping and eating schedules, however, will make a HUGE difference for most families, especially if they are stuck in baby roulette mode, like we were. Best of luck to all the new parents out there!

UPDATED 1/2/15 This book is worth a read, but it has limitations. It's very important not to put her word before your own instincts and the advice of your pediatrician, but I found the concepts were still helpful if you are confident enough to adapt her ideas to your own baby. As an example of what I mean, Gina Ford says your baby should be capable of feeding 5 times per day by 8-12 weeks and lays out her schedule accordingly, with the goal of achieving a full night's sleep for the parents. However, almost every other pediatrician, lactation consultant, or professional in the field will tell you that babies who are exclusively breastfed very rarely go longer than 2 hours between daytime feedings at this age, although they can often muster one good 5-6 hour stretch at night. That means most breastfed babies will need to nurse between 8 and 10 times in a day, which makes adhering to her schedule practically impossible. Bottle fed babies can indeed go 3-4 hours between feedings at this stage, so my guess is that her schedules weren't properly adapted when she updated this version to emphasis breastfeeding over formula (apparently the original book was very formula-centric, which makes sense). Also, breastfed babies usually nurse longer than bottle fed babies, so not only are the feedings more frequent, they take longer to complete, leaving far less time for all the play time, bathings, pumpings, and other activities that Gina seems to fit rather easily into her schedules. All that being said, I have still found the idea of scheduling to be a helpful one for me, as it made both my husband and I feel much less helpless in the early days, as though our daily lives had been totally yanked out of our control. Babies can be somewhat predictable, and although our baby's needs ended up diverging from Gina's ideal after about 4-6 weeks, by observing her patterns of nursing and napping we were able to plan our days much more effectively than by shackling ourselves to the seemingly random whims of an infant. As a separate issue, I will say that this book is not very well organized, as you can see in my original post below (before our path and Gina's diverged so starkly). ORIGINAL POST: I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it is one of the only clear guides for adjusting to life with a newborn so that both the baby and the parents have all their needs met. When we came back from the hospital with our first child it was truly a godsend to have everything laid out explicitly for us, and even though we often made slight adjustments to the schedule day-to-day (as critics have rightly pointed out, babies are not machines and it seems inhumane not to make exceptions when they need it), the system was flexible enough to accommodate this and we never got off track. However, the book itself is horribly organized, to the point that it is almost useless as anything other than a step-by-step reference as you move through each routine. I am shocked that the editors let it be published in its current state. The first four chapters are meant to introduce you to the core concepts of the system and the reasoning behind each, but each one is a jumbled mess completely disconnected from the others (preparation for birth, why follow a routine, milk feeding in the first year, and understanding your baby's sleep). There is good information in there, but it is hard to find when you need it later, and you often feel you're only getting half the story at a time (naps, for instance, will be covered from a totally different perspective in the sleeping chapter than the feeding chapter, creating both redundancy and gaps). There are also whole topics that are mentioned in passing (such as baths) but never discussed fully in any chapter (does my baby need one every day? if so, why?) I want to like this book because it has been so helpful for our family, but I find I am reluctant to recommend it to friends since it is just so difficult to get through. Even once you reach the routines, the formatting of the schedules aren't necessarily intuitive (I found I had to rewrite them purely in chronological order to keep everything straight) and sometimes there are inconsistencies between the overview and the detailed outline. NOTE TO PUBLISHERS: please release a new and improved version asap! The content is good but this book is just terrible. There has to be a better way to do this (see Happiest Baby on the Block for inspiration).

I’m a stay at home mom. I bought this book in June 2014 when my baby was 4 months old and a terrible sleeper. According to the book she was on a 2 week old baby schedule. So I gave her 1 week to catch up to the 4 month old schedule (the book suggests being nicer and moving them up slower but I was EXHAUSTED!!!) By the end of the week she was going to sleep EASILY and waking up happy/contented, just wake up coo until I came in to get her. I’ve used this book on a total of 3 babies born 2014, 2015, and 2017. All of them are fantastic sleepers to this day (April 2018). Baby born 2017 is now 7 months and taking well to the schedule. He’s sleeping through the night according to the books definition. Nap time is easy. He goes down and when he wakes he’s happy to hang out in the crib till I come to get him. I couldn’t be happier with this purchase. I did and do arrange my life around the schedules in this book. It is tricky in the beginning but TRUST me it’s worth it in the end!! Tips: Gina Ford gives lots of troubleshooting tips. Use them when you are stumped. Listen to your intuition. If something is not working for you adjust it a little to fit. I used the book as a general guideline but ultimately went with my gut. For example: around 6 months the lunch time nursing is stopped and replaced with food. I always still nursesd and followed up with food. I was nervous about my supply dropping. Non-negotiables for me were: never rock the baby to sleep. Never nurse the baby to sleep. However, I am NOT opposed to using a paci only at bed time if you are having an especially difficult time. 2 of the 3 babies I used this book on took a pacifier at bed time. But it was not allowed out of the crib. **I have a total of 4 babies. My first was NOT a good sleeper. She was born 2012 and when baby #2 came in 2014 I was terrified of another BAD sleeper. So after my first was born I used this book on the next 3 babies with fantastic success.

It helped me a lot in the first 3 months but unfortunately my baby changed his routine and i didn’t want to follow this method. Every baby is different and not all routine fits for each baby. Overall this book gave me a better understanding of a simple routine at the end of the day you need to adjust what works for you and you baby.

I bought this book while I was pregnant, but in all honesty did not open it up until about seven weeks after my baby was born. It was recommended to me by two of my female relatives who've found it useful as well. Reasons for not using the book right away were 1) my first baby 2) not having any image of what motherhood would be like 3) I was determined to just 'go with the flow' and take the advice of lactation consultants etc. So truth be told, I only started using her routines and only as a 'guideline' from about seven weeks onwards. The reason I finally opened the book was that my breast milk had come in and was well established. I'd already experienced two growth spurts and I was finding waking up all hours and feeding anytime my baby seemed upset was leaving me very tired and drained. What I took from the book and its routines is that * sometimes the baby is crying because of a wet diaper and not because he's hungry * sometimes the baby is crying because of tiredness and not because he's hungry The question is - how do you know when these things are happening? I had gotten into the habit of feeding him, changing him, letting him play or sleep; and repeat. As a new mother I was clueless as to how often a baby should sleep during the day and how often he should be exercising, eating... etc. I was starting to feel a bit trapped by his needs and unable to meet my own! Having followed (as a guideline and NOT to the letter) her routines... I don't give my baby cooled water though I was interested in how to sub in formula occasionally... I found the book to be very helpful. It also helps me set a schedule for when I can come and go and what to expect. He doesn't always follow the book to a T but at least there is some schedule that allows me to plan out my day and feel much more confident in my mothering abilities. Now, as my son approaches his fourth month - I am interested in introducing a bit of food early. I read some of the criticisms of this book - and bottom line is - no one is forcing you to follow the book to a T. Its up to you to take the good and reject what you consider to not be useful. My baby is fully breastfed with the occasional bottle. Pumping breast milk was not easy for me earlier but has started to become easier as both me and my son become a wee bit more independent of each other (bonus if my husband can give him a bottle from time to time!).

I bought this book when my son was 2 months old. It took us a month but we are finally there - sleeping through the night. From 7 pm to 7 am with a 10 pm feeding and diaper change through which he does not even wake up. Everybody was telling us its too early for a routine/schedule. In our case, due to the amazing tips in this book, we have a set routine. I know when I can have people visiting, when I can go shopping, when I can meet up with a friend for a coffee. Due to this routine I get 9 hours of sleep myself (uninterrupted!!!), my house is clean and my laundry is done. The key to introducing this technique is to listen to your baby's cues while using the tools and the knowledge that this book provides. This is going to be my shower gift to all of my girlfriends.

Un dinero muy bien invertido. Me compre otros libros de ella. Si sigues lo que dice y lo combinas con algunos ajustes dependiendo de tu hijo, saldrá todo perfecto!

Saved our marriage and saved our sanity It’s a full manual to having a contented baby who sleeps through the night and saves your sanity and marriage.

A very good book .should be read by all new parents.

Nachdem ich mit unserem kleinen Baby fast verzweifelt bin habe ich dieses Buch empfohlen bekommen. Ich hatte mir ein zufriedenes Baby gewünscht, statt dessen hatte ich ein unberechenbares, unzufriedenens baby und ich wusste nie genau, warum eigentlich - wir konnten keinen festen Schlafrythmus finden, Stillen klappte mal besser mal schlechter, und ich konnte meinen Tag nicht planen. Die Abstände zwischen den Stillmalzeiten waren zwar recht regelmäßig jedoch jeden Tag zu einer anderen Uhrzeit - ich wusste nie, was mich an dem Tag erwartet. Nach der Lektüre dieses Buches habe ich zum ersten Mal begonnen, mein Baby zu festen Zeiten ins Bettchen zu legen - und siehe da, plötzlich hatte ich Mittags 2h Zeit um selber etwas zu kochen und zu essen, um mich kurz auszuruhen. Das Baby hat einfach so richtig gut geschlafen. Es war zunächst eine große Umstellung sich an die festen Zeiten zu halten, und es hat ca. 2 Wochen gedauert, bis alles eingespielt war. Aber es war jede Mühe wert. Nach ca. 3-4 Wochen schlief das Baby von Abends 11 bis morgens um 7 durch, und das seit dem unverändert. Abends um 7 lege ich das Baby ins Bett, es schläft von alleine, zufrieden mit einem Lächeln ein, und wir haben den Abend für uns als Paar zum Abendessen und entspannen - das ist phantastisch. Tagsüber habe ich ein ausgeglichenes, zufriedenes Baby. Klar "motzt" das Baby mal, hat auch mal schwierige Phasen/Entwicklungsschübe etc. - aber es ist alles handlebar. Ich fühle mich nicht mehr so "ausgeliefert" und dem Zufall überlassen sondern ich habe einen festen Tagesablauf, mit dem ich als Mutter planen kann. Dieser Rahmen beinhaltet sicher auch Einschränkungen und feste Zeiten, die ich jeden Tag einhalten will. Für mich überwiegen jedoch die positiven Seiten - ich kann meinen Tag planen, entsprechend den Bedürfnissen meines Babys. Aber ich kann auch meine Bedürfnisse als Mutter berücksichtigen. Ich kann dieses Buch nur jedem ans Herz legen, der sich einen festen Tagesablauf und ein zufriedenes Baby wünscht.