Product Description

In this revolutionary book, one of Britain's top maternity nurses challenges the traditional "feed-on-demand" advice-and shows parents simple ways to get their babies to sleep through the night.

* Recognize the difference between hunger and tiredness
* Establish a good feeding and sleeping pattern from day one
* Choose baby equipment and clothes
* Set up the nursery
* Deal with crying and colicky babies
* Wean baby from breast to bottle

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123663 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-01
• Released on: 2001-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780451202437
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
'Gina Ford is the Delia Smith of parenting...while Delia tells you how to make the perfect omelette, Gina Ford in her baby-care manual The Contented Little Baby Book, draws on 30 years' experience to tell you how to nurture the perfectly happy baby.', YOU Magazine .'for me she was an absolute godsend', Kate Winslet, Baby & You ."It is hard to overestimate the good she has done...How to reward this great benefactor of mankind?...My wife takes the view that only sainthood will do.", Peter Osborne, Political Editor, The Spectator .'"I devoured it (Contented Little Baby Book) in one sitting. It was hilarious. The claim that a baby of five months could be trained to sleep from 7am to 7pm made me laugh out loud. Little did I realise that this was the start of my conversion to the gospel according to St Gina. That Gina Ford would soon acquire an almost divine status in my life....I look back on my BGE (Before Gina Era) and think of how many of my babies has cried and cried as I ever more desperately struggled to get them to sleep....My only regret, of course, is that Gina did not write her book years ago, when my older children were born. I look in the mirror and wonder what a difference that would have made to the bags under my eyes. If motherhood had always been as easy as it seems this time, I might not have had five children - but 10. Maybe Ruth Kelly's secrets is that she has a copy of St Gina."', Martine Oborne, Evening Standard

About the Author
Gina Ford has over twenty years' experience of looking after babies and young children. She has worked as a maternity nurse all over the world for all kinds of people, from lawyers and bankers to newspaper editors, pop stars and other high-profile media personalities. She now runs a consultancy service for parents.

Customer Reviews

Very bad advice for breastfed babies
The advice in this book should come with a strongly worded health warning: it can be DANGEROUS for breastfed babies. Trying to follow Gina Ford's routine can lead to not establishing a good milk supply -- or reducing the milk supply once it is established -- and babies consequently not putting on weight and growing as they should.

Ford expresses sympathy with women who want to breastfeed their babies, and gives some partially accurate advice for establishing a good milk supply in the early days. However her book is riddled with so many innaccuracies that if you try to follow it "to the letter", as she insists you must, it is inevitable that you will have to provide top-ups of formula before your baby turns one, whether you want to do this or not, or risk damaging your baby's health and growth.

Ford is very critical of "feeding on demand" (less judgementally known as "baby-led feeding") and blames it for all sorts of behavioural and sleeping problems. She proposes a feeding schedule instead. She rightly points out that health professionals advise women to "feed on demand" because this is the only way to ensure that a baby gets as much milk as she needs. What she fails to address is how her feeding routines can ensure that a baby will get enough milk to meet his needs.

Here are just a few of the problems with Ford's breastfeeding advice:

1) For women whose babies are having sleep problems, she recommends that you express your milk at a usual feeding time on the theory that this will show you how much milk your baby is getting. WRONG. A woman's body responds to her baby in a different way than to a pump, and breastfed babies are more efficient at getting milk from the breast. Expressing will NOT tell you how much milk your baby is getting.

2) Ford states that feeds need to be spaced 3 hours apart because it takes the baby this long to digest breastmilk, so feeding more often than 3-hourly may cause gas problems. There is NO scientific evidence to support this belief. And if you examine Ford's routines, some of her feeds are scheduled 3 hours apart. If it takes the baby 1/2 an hour to finish a feed, this leaves only 2 1/2 hours in between feeds for it to be digested. So even Ford's routines don't adhere to this schedule. (Incidentally, a windy baby may breastfeed more often because this helps to RELIEVE wind.)

3) Breastfed babies who are fed as often as they wish to feed, do not need any additional fluids during hot weather, because the composition of breastmilk changes -- thus more foremilk is available to naturally increase their intake of fluids. The key however is to feed the baby as often as they wish. Breastfeeding on a schedule could lead to a baby becoming dehydrated in hot weather. Ford never addresses this possibility. (Giving water between feeds is not the answer, as this can fill up the baby's stomach and reduce their hunger, thus replacing some of the breastmilk which he or she needs for optimum growth.)

4) To avoid the "inconvenience" of feeding more often when a baby is going through a growth spurt, Ford recommends having a stock of expressed breastmilk available so that you can just give the baby more milk at his usual feeding times, rather than feeding the baby more often. There are two problems with this. Firstly, the composition of breastmilk changes over time to keep pace with the growing baby's needs. Furthermore, when a baby feeds more often it signals to the mother's body that the baby needs more milk, thus increasing her supply. Continuing to feed on a rigid schedule during a growth spurt may mean that the milk supply does not increase adequately to meet the baby's needs.

5) At one point in this book Ford states that a feed from one breast "can be classed as" half a bottle feed. Though her wording is vague, this seems to indicate that she believes a baby feeding from one breast is receiving the same amount of milk as a bottlefed baby who drinks half the milk in a bottle. This is an absolutely ridiculous idea, and suggests that mothers should be restricting breastfeeds in a completely arbitrary way to bring them in line with the number of times a bottlefed baby would be fed.

6) Ford says that once protein has been introduced at lunchtime, a baby no longer "needs" a milk feed at this time and that the milk will interfere with the absorption of iron from the protein. This is true of dairy products, but not of breastmilk. The iron in breastmilk is far more readily absorbed by the baby than that in dairy products (including formula). Dropping the breastfeed at lunchtime -- especially if the baby still needs and wants it -- will thus reduce the amount of iron that the baby gets overall.

7) As the baby grows older Ford recommends dropping breastfeeds so that by the time the child is one, they are only receiving two breastfeeds per day, in the morning and at night. This is not consistent with the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics and breastfeeding experts worldwide that breastmilk should remain a baby's primary source of nutrition for all of the first year. Furthermore, once a baby is only breastfeeding twice a day, the mother's body is receiving the signal that a baby is almost weaned, and therefore only needs a small quantity of milk -- which in most cases will not be enough to enable the baby to sleep through the night, thus leading to the night wakings that Ford's routine is designed to avoid at all costs.

Ford's advice may well be suitable for bottlefed babies. However she is very ill informed about the physiology of breastfeeding, and for her to offer such inaccurate advice on breastfeeding is highly irresponsible and potentially dangerous for the health of babies. I would recommend that both she and her publisher seriously consider amending future editions of this book to state that its advice is only suitable for bottlefed babies.

Don't Be Deterred by the Credentialists
I write this mainly to respond to two prominent critical reviews, one by a "sleep researcher" and the other by a pediatrician. Their reviews are marked by an extraordinary lack of balance or equanimity, which causes one to question the seriousness of their postings, and to wonders: what are they so outraged about, particularly given the positive testimony of so many people who have been aided by the book (myself included)?

First, let's examine the initial complaint of the "sleep researcher."

"I could not believe my eyes when I flipped to one of the routine pages. She has everthing laid out to the minute"

One hastens to make two points: First, the reviewer says she "flipped to one of the routine pages," and also mentions reading the introduction. One strongly suspects, given that the review that follows is merely an objection to the content of those two brief sections, that the reviewer never read any further. Second, as to the content of her complaint ("laid everything out to the minute"), how exactly is that an a priori disqualification of the book? Does the researcher have some God-given knowledge that highly articulated schedules are to be shunned? So she doesn't like them: that's hardly a reason to discount the success that many people have had with this book.

My own experience, not unsurprisingly, was that the method described by the author of the book worked better the more zealously it was followed. That's not to say I haven't made alterations to it in order to tailor it to my own life and my baby's needs. But I have done so after carefully reading the book (repeatedly) and understanding the principles that each of the tedious details represents.

It is also peculiar to me that the occasional need for flexibility (an important social engagement or growth-spurt induced feeding clusters) would be cited as reason to shun this book. Why? One of the benefits of having a very hard and fast schedule is that the rhythms become very ingrained and are not terribly disrupted by having a chaotic day or two once in a while. The rigorous schedule is precisely what gets you through the tumult without having to utterly start over again. (It probably bears saying, though, that people who are extremely literal or who have problems with authority probably should avoid this book. Such a person will not understand that on special occasions, schedules are often put aside, and that both the celebration and the schedule can live on, without one negating the other; but instead the person will become angry or resentful, feeling that impossible demands are being placed on them. And this may be the case with the reviewer.)

A related complaint is that feeding should not be scheduled at all. Feeding on demand, the reviewer says, is "proven" as the best method. Certainly, there has been a resurgence of this sentiment, backed, in many specifics, by some scientific findings. But certain questions remain open: for what age group? 1 week? 4 months? A year? How long do you carry that on? What are the implications for the mother's sleep and, thus, health? What about babies who want to suck for comfort and aren't really feeding? A weak-sucking on-demand baby gets a) little hind milk, b) an exhausted mother, c) no sense of distinction between day and night. At the same time, trying to implement a rudimentary schedule after a week or two will never prevent you from noticing that your baby is hungry. Nor does providing a set routine of feedings prevent you from supplementing these by responding to the baby's hunger at other times. On-demand and schedules are not entirely incompatible. (Ever had a snack and still ate dinner?) In fact, a baby who tends toward the late day cluster-feeding that the reviewer talks about could be easily incorporated into Ford's schedule, since the whole point is trying to get more eating done during the day time so that less need will be felt at night.

The hard part, the real "job" of interpreting the signs of these little pre-linguistic wonders, is figuring out sleep, which the baby often does not know how to recognize as a need and often does not know how to achieve it if she did. This issue becomes an enormous problem for many mothers, but the reviewer seems not to recognize it. Of course, she is a doctor, and doctors often have rather attenuated relationships with sleep. But some of us very much like to sleep through the night, and very much like to do so on a regular schedule. This book has proven helpful in achieving that goal for many people.

At the end of the review, the reviewer turns personal, and perhaps gives us some insight into my initial question: why the outrage? She apparently chooses to follow a more irregular schedule with her own child (goes out a lot, visits friends, doesn't keep a consistent routine, has fun!) and that is certainly her right. But she is reacting defensively, as if the existence of this book is an accusation against her and her lifestyle. It is not. Perhaps her baby sleeps more than enough on a less regular schedule. In any case, the reviewer's own insecurities should not be the basis on which the efficacy of this book is determined.

The reviewer dismisses all of the positive anecdotal evidence for this book as a sort of placebo effect: "any book may have worked for them."

I sincerely doubt "Catcher in the Rye" would have done the trick for my child, but admittedly, I didn't try it. In any case, this is a rather cavalier dismissal of data for a "sleep researcher" to be passing out. Aren't there other possibilities? What if it turned out that many of these people had tried other books, but hadn't found success? It's as if the sleep researcher knows all the answers already (a helpful talent for a researcher), without talking to the subjects, without reading the book. She has her degree and her list of "FACT," but are the actual facts--and not the lazy, generalized slogans then may engender--incompatible with this book? Not in my experience. In any event, how can she know without actually reading it? We might have actually benefited from her expertise if she'd read it and gave a more nuanced response, acknowledging areas of insight and practical successes of the book, while raising red flags in areas that women might want to be cautious of (e.g., don't be tempted NOT to respond to a hungry baby who isn't getting enough food on the schedule.)

Finally, Ms. Sleep Researcher, shame on you for criticizing Gina Ford's "gaul." You should rise above ad hominem, especially where such jingoism is involved. Frankly, I don't even think Ms. Ford is French.

The second reviewer, the pediatrician, also appears to have not read the book, which is a shame, and writes something that is clearly untrue, suggesting that the book counsels a breastfeeding schedule that will cause milk supply to diminish. "This book reccomends a lagtime of 5 hours in the daytime and almost 9 hours overnight for feeds." In fact, the book says quite explicitly that a baby should not go more than 3hrs between feedings in the first week. Did she read the book?

Or perhaps the doctor's point is not directed towards newborns, but older infants, when Ms. Ford's schedule does indeed suggest the baby sleep 8 hrs without a feeding? But if that is the case, what are we to make of the doctor's statement that her own child slept through the night at 5 1/2 weeks? And how, one wonders, did she manage to maintain her milk supply?!

What the doctor unwittingly acknowledges with her own experience is that schedules--whether rigorous or not--exist for everyone, regardless of their view of this book, and that they change frequently as infants grow older. The question presented by this book is whether they should change with some level of parental management. Should you push a baby towards longer times between feedings as the weeks pass, and towards a schedule that encourages nighttime sleeping and daytime eating? The book says yes. Rather than finding this shocking, I would think the rational reaction would be "inevitable."

Babies aren't born knowing that 8-10 EST is primetime and after that we head to bed. Left to their own inclinations, they may develop a habit of sleeping consistently for 8 hrs in the middle of the day. Any guess as to what will happen during the nights? But they respond like any human to repeated schedules. If you eat every day at a certain time, that's when you'll get hungry. If you are woken up at a certain time, that's when you'll tend to wake up. Anyone who travels across time zones knows that if you want to deal harmoniously with the world, you have to subject yourself to arbitrary schedules. The quicker you get on it, the better your days will go.

So it is for the baby: Newborns have special needs, but within a few months, they can indeed sleep for long periods of time. They won't do so automatically, however, and they won't automatically do so during the time of day you want them to. But, eventually, regardless of what book you buy, the child will have to live on society's normative schedule. Moving there gradually but expeditiously from the start will help everyone in the family, including the baby, get more sleep more consistently. The literature on the many dysfunctions caused by lack of sleep in the world today is copious and I commend it to the two MD critics.

Finally, the doc says that "babies need love to grow." That's sweet and true, but deceptively simply. Actually, they need people to express that love by giving them food and helping them to sleep. This book provides techniques that help you do that. The doctor seems to have had an easy time getting her kids to sleep through the night. But does she know people whose kids aren't sleeping that well after a year? I do. Mothers who are sleep-deprived month after month after month have an increasingly hard time being loving people, you will find.

As for my own view of the general efficacy of this book, I have only anecdotal evidence and thus, cannot guarantee anything about how your baby will react to any given schedule. If the proud MD critics here were behaving according to the methodologies their science degrees purport to represent, they would refrain from issuing their all-knowing fatwas as well, and would certainly not be titling their reviews with such inflammatory headings, or propagating actual falsehoods about the contents of the book.

Undoubtedly, not every reader will be able to live by Ms. Ford's schedule, and not every baby's sleep problem will be solved by it, and the book, in its tone and structure, is not perfect. But what I can say with confidence is that you should do what the two critics here obviously haven't done: read the book for yourself.

It's not a fluke!
How I have longed to write a review of this book for 2 years now but I had my doubts.... All my friends told me I was just lucky to have such an easy baby. He constantly smiled, rarely cried, slept 12 hours a night and seemed so alert and active in his waking times and at the same stage as babies 2 or 3 months older than him. I was certain it was this book my husband and I call 'our bible'. So everyone waited with baited breath to hear how this next baby would take to it. And lo and behold again I have the easiest baby.
It is possible it's a fluke and that both times I have been exceptionally lucky.... but I don't think so. The book was recommended to me with the advise of try it for 2 weeks before you give up. And I pass that on to everyone I recommend it to. With my first baby we started it at 6 weeks and he was sleeping through till 7am (other than 10pm feed) at 7 weeks. With the next baby he was a little more gradual (but we were also less structured) and he slept through till 7am at 10 weeks.
This book makes parenting easy. It means you all get to sleep well and we are all aware sleep deprivation is the 'mother of all evils'.
The benefits of this book become more obvious as time goes on and I see the experiences other friends are having with their non-sleeping babies. Patting them for hours to get them to sleep, loss of sleep for both mother/father and baby because the baby can't sleep without help, relationships suffering, angry with their children and their partners because they are tired, and worst of all just not enjoying parenting. With this book you will find you have so much time on your hands you want to wake them up so you can play. And when they are awake you can really truely enjoy them as you are also well rested. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
The worst thing about it is that as a normally non judgemental person I get most upset when I see so many people doing it wrong. And reading ridiculous reviews about how bad it is. My baby hardly ever cries and if you read the book you would read that Gina mentions that she would be surprised if any of her babies cried for more than a few minutes in a whole day. This is because you know exactly what they want and at what time- so rather than having to wait for them to cry to get your attention- you anticipate their needs. Hence happy children.
Another advantage we have found with the book is that my husband and I are always on the same page so to speak with where the baby is up to. We don't have to give a full brief when one is rushing out the door and the other one is taking over. We know when they need to nap, eat and bath. And each day we don't have to make up new plans of when we are going to do this or that. What a brain strain that must be to those people who have no routine. I hate routine for me but on those days when the baby routine is out the window due sickness or traveling or special events life becomes hard work. With this routine we know exactly what we are doing and for new parents with no previous experience people couldn't believe how relaxed we were.
It is all just so easy and most importantly ENJOYABLE. We can not believe how much we love being parents and how much FUN we are having.
One of the greatest gifts you could ever give your child is the ability to sleep well and if you actually believe you are being kind by rocking them to sleep then tell me how kind and gentle it is to have that poor baby waking up during the night and getting all upset because no-one is there to rock them to sleep-in effect they are forcing the wee thing to have to cry to get the attention. I am sure there are a number of books with similar techniques and as long as you stick with something that's sensible it will work for you.
This one worked exceptionally well for us. We don't always follow it to a T (and I never followed the volumes for breastfeeding and pumping) but we stick fairly close and I think it was written for the natural babies cycle so really requires just a little parental guidance to work well.
($51 is not a normal price for this book!!!!)