I was a bookworm when I was a child. I always loved books. My dad was a book editor, our house was full of books and I think it’s in my blood. I remember feeling delighted when my parents told me that I’d fallen asleep with a book in my hand!
Continue reading “Celebrating World Book Day #ShareaStory #ad”
Before we started weaning, I bought a few books to help us through it as I found all the information online a bit overwhelming! We wanted to try baby-led weaning so we bought a book by Gill Rapley as a lot of peers named her as a guru. In case this route didn’t work, we’d need to try purees so I bought a book by Annabel Karmel who is known as the queen of weaning through puree recipes!
While buying these, Amazon also recommended ‘Baby-led weaning, step-by-step’ by Julie Clarke, and this ended up being the most useful book of the lot!
I found Rapley’s book very theoretical – one big, long advert on why you should do baby-led weaning (the most useful bit being lots of quotes from parents who had gone through it). But I’d already decided we wanted to do weaning the baby-led way, so I wanted something more practical on what foods to try and when etc.
This is where Julie Clarke’s baby-led weaning book excels – it’s very practical – full of advice and tips including:
The other big selling point for me is that there’s a real-life case study running all the way through the book – you get to follow baby Rosie’s weaning journey – it’s always useful to hear real-life stories e.g. how they initially missed a few meals due to nap times etc (something we’re trying to work our way around!)
The chapters are split by the age of the baby, but obviously not all babies are the same and they might not follow these months religiously! Like with everything, I tend to read and then do things my own way – so for example, the book recommends starting straight away on 3 meals a day, but we wanted to start with 1 meal a day initially (check out our first weaning update) – so I’d recommend you use this book as a guide to suit you, not a rule book! We’re also doing a bit of spoon-feeding (or guiding the spoon in the right direction) and initially tried a bit of baby-specific food like baby rice – the book recommends against this but isn’t judgemental about it – again, do what suits you!
That’s all I can really say about the book without giving away all the tips! The only thing I would have liked a bit more info on is gagging – it does mention it, but it would be good to know a bit more about what to expect when it happens, I’m not sure exactly what I was after but it was definitely the thing I was most nervous about when starting our weaning journey!
So overall I highly recommend the book, it’s already been really useful and I’m sure it will be over the next few months! It’s very easy-to-follow and understand, and very practical – to buy it, support your local bookstore or click on the Amazon link in the image…
Co-incidentally, I’ve ended up chatting to the author on Twitter and I will be interviewing her for the blog about all-things-baby-led-weaning! So if you have a question for Julie, please leave it in the comments section below by Dec 1st (2014!) and I’ll give you a mention when the interview goes live early December!
Early on in my pregnancy one of my best friends lent me a stack of pregnancy books and magazines, they were all really useful and I’m not sure if I would have thought of buying any prior to that if I’m honest. I was given another as a gift from my CEO in work (!) and bought 2 based on recommendations… here are my favourite 5 books out of that stack (in no order of preference!)
(c) 2006 by Susan Magee – ISBN 978-1-59474-573-7
I love all the weekly update books and email lists (I signed up for loads including NHS, Netmums, Mothercare etc) – it was always good fun to see how big baby was compared to various fruits and veg, and what was coming up in terms of baby’s development and my body!
Out of all of the weekly update books though, my favourite was this one because it was:
Only downside is that’s it an American book, but most of it still makes sense to us Brits 🙂
(c) Rachel Foster, Carrie Longton and Justine Roberts ISBN 1 84403 0717
Staying with the ‘real tips’ theme that I like from book #1, this book is entirely made up of snippets of quotes from real mums, compiled by the founders of Mumsnet. Again, this is great as you get a ‘real’ take on everything and always a wide range of opinions which made me feel better about everything from drinking caffeine to whether to go to NCT classes or not e.g. in the ‘diet – what did you stop eating’ section:
(c) Zoe Williams, 2010 ISBN 9780852652664
This is a funny, great read – an antidote to all the books about what you should and shouldn’t be doing and feeling. At times I found pregnancy to be one long worry e.g. from one scan to the next. Reads like this helped to relax me – Zoe takes a lot of pressure off mums-to-be and new mums on topics from alcohol (devoting a chapter to proving that there’s no proof that a couple of drinks does any harm) to the pressures to breastfeed.
All of this done is through great writing and humour – an easy, essential read. I remember taking my other half to A&E after he took a knock at football, and I was just sat there reading this paragraph laughing out loud! This was argument #33 she remembers having with her boyfriend – if you had any funny, irrational, hormonal arguments hopefully you’ll find this funny:
‘We had argument after argument about room temperature in our bedroom… You’re meant to have it really low otherwise babies catch cot death, and yet you can never let it get low enough without freezing your over-exposed tits off and C says ‘what this room needs is a throughput of air’ and I thought he said ‘Rupert the Bear’, and normally I would think ‘Well, I just misheard my beloved’ but on this occasion, I thought, ‘This idiot, how would Rupert the Bear help? How would we even get hold of Rupert the Bear?”
(c) 1975, 1977, 1980, 1990, 2002 Book Publishing Company ISBN 13 978-1-57067-104-3
Everytime I get nervous thinking about labour I come back to this book and read a couple of the birth stories. Long story short, Ina May is a guru who pioneered natural home births in the States and this book is full of positive birth stories based on that, with some of the main learnings for labour from a wide range of birth stories being:
If you do this, you can expect to feel ‘rushes’ not ‘contractions’ and hallucinations… and a natural, drug-free birth 🙂 ‘Over and over again, I’ve seen that the best way to get a baby out is by cuddling and smooching with your husband. That loving, sexy vibe is what puts the baby in there, and that’s what gets it out too’ (Cara)
I particularly like the story about a baby who was talking a while to get out, so, in established labour, the couple got married and the baby popped out as he/she obviously wanted to enter into the world of a married family! (My other half wasn’t having ANY of this!)
So an essential read if you’re interested in natural birth – reading it relaxes me and inspires me.
To be honest if you’re not interested in natural birth you’ll probably find it a good laugh including all the photos from the 60’s and 70’s and the language used 🙂
(c) 1992, 1998, 2005 by Marie F. Mongan
I’m not aiming for a hypnobirth – I haven’t been on a course/ bought the CD/practised anything from this book but again it was really useful reading when it came to thinking about a pain-free, natural birth.
I found the intro an interesting read in terms of how as recently as the 70’s women were tied to the bed and babies delivered under general anaethsthetic compared with the way some African women still give birth – taking a break from work and just leaning against a wall! Main learnings and techniques for a natural, pain-free labour are:
with lots of examples for each. Similar to book #4, they suggest a calm atmosphere and using love-making to bring on labour: ‘hugs before drugs’
Critics of this book argue that there’s no such thing a pain-free labour, I have no idea as I haven’t been through it but, similarly to book #4 this book has lots of practical exercises on how to relax in the early stages – which has to be worth a shot!
So I hope you found this round-up useful – essentially all of these 5 books have helped to relax me throughout my pregnancy whether it was worrying about having a glass of wine or wondering how I will get through labour! (I’ve included links so that you can buy them but of course check out your local bookshops too!)
If you found it useful please share it via social media or leave a comment, thanks 🙂
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