What to Expect the First Year (What to Expect (Workman Publishing))
What to Expect the First Year (What to Expect (Workman Publishing))
- ISBN13: 9780761152132
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
What to Expect the First Year (What to Expect (Workman Publishing))
WHAT TO EXPECT THE 1st YEAR is a comprehensive and practical month-by-month guide that clearly explains everything parents need to know – or might be worrying about – in the first year with a new baby. Featuring dozens of Q&A sections, as well as a first aid guide and charts on monthly growth and development, feeding and sleeping habits, this is the only book on infant care to address both the physical and the emotional needs of the whole family. Covering the most up-to-date knowledge, both medical and developmental, WHAT TO EXPECT THE 1st YEAR is, above all, down-to-earth and reassuring – and an invaluable aid for all parents of new babies.
List Price: $ 26.95
Price: $ 14.10
Disclaimer: PramStroller.org is a paid affiliate of Amazon.com
[wprebay kw="the+first+years" num="6" ebcat="-1"] [wprebay kw="the+first+years" num="7" ebcat="-1"]
Comments
I like it, but it has some flaws,
I absolutely hated What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Hated it. So when a friend gave me this book as a gift when I was pregnant, I kind of put it to the side, never expecting to use it.
Well, I surprised myself. I actually refer to this book a lot in caring for my now almost-6-month-old son.
What I like about the book is that the questions that it addresses are very much like real-life questions people ask about their babies. Some of the questions are word-for-word questions my husband and I have asked each other. That makes the information very accessible and I think, reassuring. You get a sense that “Oh good, my five-month-old is not the only one in the world who seems to be coughing just to get my attention.”
There’s a really comprehensive amount of information about nearly every parenting topic you can think of. In particular, the section about infant illness is invaluable. Great charts of symptoms and treatments for those symptoms, explanations about how to do home treatments, etc. My son has gotten a couple of colds, one of which brought on a croupy cough, and the book’s advice about steam treatments and a quick trip outside helping were right-on, and exactly what my mom and grandma had told me worked to help croup. Without the book’s specific description of what croup and stridor sound like, and how to treat it, I probably would have ended up in the emergency room with my son.
That being said, here are the things I don’t like about this book.
- The information is supposedly unbiased, but the author comes down firmly on the pro or con side of an issue and there’s not a lot of doubt about what the author feels you “should” or “should not” do. The author is against pacifiers, against co-sleeping, is much too cautionary about babywearing, and advocates CIO as a way to get a baby to sleep – there’s a whole section about how to do CIO in the six-month chapter. The book is also very, VERY pro-breastfeeding. I breastfeed, so it didn’t “bother” me, per se, but if a mom has to or chooses to formula feed, the constant references to breastfeeding and questions about breastfeeding that are found over and over and OVER in the book’s pages would probably be a big turnoff. There’s some lip service paid to “well, formula feeding is an OK choice” but there’s a VERY clear and VERY strong message that you should breastfeed until your child is a year old, period. I know a lot of women who tried valiantly to breastfeed and just could not, and I have had my own challenges with it. I am all for breastfeeding advocacy and I consider myself an advocate for breastfeeding, but the tone and the repeated admonishments to breastfeed for a year were over-the-top even for me.
- The aforementioned section about CIO was pretty terrible. There were no discussions about ways to avoid CIO other than extended family bedsharing (which the author was lukewarm about recommending, at best), and there is a middle ground between the two. There was also no discussion about the fact that CIO doesn’t work for all children – some kids are crying escalators, they don’t calm down after crying for an extended period but instead get more upset, and trying CIO with a baby like that is going to be traumatizing for all involved. There’s a pretty terrifying section that talks about how to deal with the noise of CIO, by notifying your neighbors, trying to muffle sound, etc. I just have to say, if your baby is crying that loud, that piercingly, and that long when you try CIO, you should consider the possibility that CIO is not working and is actually scaring or harming your child. CIO is a great tool for some kids, but not for all kids, and the book treats CIO like it is the cure-all for sleep problems. You get a sense, reading that section, that there really is no alternative to CIO other than having your baby sleep with you until they’re 10, and there are other options (the No Cry Sleep Solution has some great suggestions about the sleep issue). There’s also no discussion of the idea that nightwaking, especially for breastfed babies, is a developmentally normal and appropriate thing and will get better with time even without resorting to sleep training measures.
- The developmental milestones are treated as gospel truth and there is some alarmist information about “if your kid doesn’t do X by Y month there could be a BIG PROBLEM.” There’s no discussion about what developmental milestones really mean in terms of development or the idea that babies can have developmental strengths in one area and weaknesses in another. My baby has always been WAY ahead in his gross motor development and lagging in his fine motor, which is a totally normal thing. But there’s really no allowance for that, or explanation for why that would happen, in this book.
Overall I think this book is good and I don’t think it’s nearly as guilt- or panic-inducing as the Expecting book, or the Sears…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|There are much better books than this one.,
I wholeheartedly agree with the reviewers who found this book alarmist and overly one-sided on many issues. My pediatrician agrees, and instead recommends the American Academy of Pediatrics’ CARING FOR YOUR BABY AND YOUNG CHILD, REVISED EDITION, BIRTH TO AGE 5. What to Expect is a great book as long as your child does everything exactly as the authors prescribe. Otherwise, you’re up a creek. Today’s example: My 8-month-old isn’t incredibly interested in finger foods yet, and this book makes it sound like she’s doomed to eat Gerber purees for the rest of her life as a result. It also suggested that I was setting her up for a childhood of poor eating habits. A new mom, of course I called my pediatrician and he said I had nothing to worry about! Go with the other book instead. Rather than month-to-month guidelines which make you feel like your child is “behind” if he doesn’t do something “on time,” the AAP book wisely speaks about 4-7 month-olds, 8-12 month-olds, etc., at once. The authors recognize that every baby proceeds at her own pace. (What to Expect puts in its disclaimer that every baby is different, but its tone on many topics suggests otherwise).
Was this review helpful to you?
|good reference but major flaws,
This is a good parenting book to have in your library but it should definitely not be the only one. All parenting books have their own bias about co-sleeping and breastfeeding and this one was definitely biased against co-sleeping at all and breastfeeding after the 9th month or so. When I first brought my baby home from the hospital, the only way she would get a decent night’s sleep is to sleep with us. Otherwise she cried and fussed the entire night. After two months she was ready to sleep in a cradle but initially we had to adjust our parenting style to include co-sleeping because it was the only thing that would comfort our daughter. If this was the only parenting book I owned I probably would’ve felt incredibly guilty about having done this–the section of this book that addresses co-sleeping has nothing but negative things to say about it. I found “Good Nights” and “Gentle Baby Care” (perhaps because they were written by attachment parenting advocates) to be very thorough about the topic, with plenty of practical advice.
As noted by other reviewers the book also contains some misleading information about breastfeeding and seems to assume that you’ll begin weaning sooner than currently recommended by the govt.
I also found this book to be very poorly organized. Because all babies develop according to their own schedule, it doesn’t really make sense to have much of the information organized chronologically. I read “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” when I was pregnant and they advised you in the beginning not to “read ahead” so I was doing the same with this book until I realized that it wasn’t answering most of my questions! I needed a babysitter when my daughter was two months but for some reason that section was stashed in the third month section! Why? So now I have read into the 10-month section even though my daughter is only 3.5 months because I’m wondering if there are other tidbits of information hidden away in there. And I expect I’ll have to reread it all again when she’s actually 10 months.
Finally, there was some conflicting information. I’m thinking of the alcohol and breastfeeding references in particular. At various points in the book it says to (a) have a single drink rarely if at all and then to wait two hours before nursing if you do have a drink, (b) have a drink just before nursing to “relax”, (c) consult a doctor if you find yourself unable to stop at two drinks a day (what happened to the “rare” drink?!). And finally, it referenced no actual studies about the effects of alcohol on a nursing baby. For such a serious topic, it seemed amazing to me that they could have included so much conflicting information and no scientific backup.
And finally, as someone who is using cloth diapers, I was put off by the offhand remark that (to paraphrase) “in your mother’s day, diapers were cleaned and boiled and reused and now people simply throw their diapers away.” There is a significant percentage of people who actually use cloth diapers but to read this section you would never know it! This was just one of many cases of the authors assuming that everyone does or should do things their way.
All that said, the book did include good information about safety issues and child development and for these reasons I’m glad to have it on hand. The authors must seriously revise this book, however, for future editions.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Leave a Comment