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After all, this book promises to teach parents tried and tested methods to get their baby to sleep through the night by the time they are 10 weeks old.

For parents who are craving their first night of unbroken sleep, Ford's book may be the answer.

Ford's methods conjure up the image of a strict and loving old nanny from yesteryear. Her techniques go against the grain of many currently popular parenting philosophies. For example, Ford, an experienced maternity nurse, is against demand feeding, believes in the necessity of waking a sleeping baby in order to establish a daily routine. Her philosophy may not be the norm today, but Ford is confident of her methods based on years of experience handling hundreds of babies.

Providing an hour-by-hour, week-by-week guide on how to get a new baby into a routine, the book includes feeding and sleeping schedules based on a baby's age. The Contented Little Baby Book provides so much information that it may be necessary to keep this paperback book handy for reference should you employ Ford's techniques.

Experienced parents may not benefit from Ford's methods, but first-time parents may learn a lot from her ideas, and for the discerning reader of parenting books, this one is a must have. For the reader who would like to weigh other parenting methods before adopting Ford's techniques, the following books may be of interest: The Baby Book, by William Sears, M.D. and Martha Sears, R.N.; What to Expect in the first year, by Eisenberg, Murkoff and Hathaway; and Your Baby and Child, by Penelope Leach. --Abbe Jacobson
Saved my sanity, 2008-11-15
I can't recommend this book enough. I suffered with my first son everything that she suggested can happen with baby-led feeding. He was a sleepy baby, following a traumatic birth for both of us, and therefore was only waking for a feed once every 6 hours approx, at the time when I should have been building my milk supply up. Exactly as she says, he perked up at 10 days old and was wanting feeding in the evenings. It was so bad, I was feeding 10 min on, 10 min off for hours. It was so exhausting. Obviously this was because I had not built up a good milk supply over the last 10 days, and after a day of doing things my milk supply was lower anyway. I know this 'cluster feeding' (I know it is called) was because my son was not having his hunger satisfied. This had the knock on effect of him not settling all night and us being completely sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation and stress caused me to not build up any milk, completing the vicious circle. When asking the health visitor for help, she told me this was completely normal and to carry on!

I must point out, I am a trained nurse and am involved mostly in health promotion. I do not understand how new mothers can be taught to continue this practice, as I was so close to giving up breastfeeding and moving to the bottle. The CLB completely addressed all these problems and more, and I was able to get breast feeding back on track and make sense of life again. This meant I was able to really enjoy my son properly and fall completely in love with him, rather then be constantly worrying about the things that were going wrong.

The way things were going with my son I was heading to depression. I know as a health professional, how we have to teach what is evidence based and decided to be followed by the DoH, but as a person with common sense, I know that there is always evidence to contradict that evidence, not to mention new evidence that comes out. The number of times I have discovered by experience that evidence doesn't work and have wished I had used common sense to help a patient. I am aware there are a few occasions throughout the book that Gina suggests something where there is no evidence to back it. However, it is obvious she is suggesting these things because that is what her years and years of experience has taught her, something I can relate to.

Having a routine in our lives (obviously always worth taylor making it to your individual lives) was not restricting in the slightest. Because as a family we knew what to expect, we felt so free. Initialy, however, we found not being able to go out as couple in the evenings whenever we wanted restrictive, we soon realised that that is parenthood, and 4 years later, our son is happily going down to sleep at the correct time that a child of his age should and is not suffering from sleep deprivation that so many kids are these days.

Bottom line, if evidence based practice is causing the whole family distress and depression to the mother, surely an alternative must be sought. After all, the most important thing, I believe to a mother and baby, is a bond. I am convinced that the effects of a mother's PND on a baby is much worse than aiding that baby into a routine, that falls into so naturally.

Great book