Most of these books I read on my ipad. Some of them I read while nursing O for 45 minute stretches late at night when he was newborn. He was too little to turn his head and look, and I set my ipad to airplane mode, so I didn't worry about screen time or EMR. I liked being able to bookmark, hilite and search. Many times I want to search the book for something specific and digital format helps.
I think that reading all of these books has confused me as much as it's helped me. They are all well written and persuasive and I have often felt like I read a book and suddenly want to shift my parenting in a whole new direction. If I could go back I would probably read a subset of these and maybe only "Your Self Confident Baby".
Author: Magda Gerber
Magda Gerber is the mother of RIE philosophy (Resources for Infant Educarers).
RIE is about treating your baby as an individual and speaking to them, communicating with them, watching them, respecting them. She emphasizes not treating the baby as an object by interrupting their play to move them around, or picking them up without warning to place them on a changing table and change a diaper while talking on the phone.
In addition to being full of wisdom about how to think about your child and your roll as a parent, this book is also full of practical advice about sleep issues, feeding issues, diapering, choosing day cares, and so forth. If you're going to read one parenting book, this is the one I would recommend.
There are plenty of things I disagree with in this book, like rocking chairs create an "altered state" and you should listen to your child cry for as long as you can handle it, but overall I like her approach.
I read this while I was pregnant and I loved it. The book is arranged week by week, like many books, and I learned about my baby's development and what was happening in my body as the pregnancy progressed.
Author: Gary Greenberg
Someone gave this to Alex as a gift and we both liked it. It's fun, quick read, and very practical. It has science experiments you can run on a newborn (touch their cheek to make their head turn, evoke startle response, etc). We learned about how to test bath water and how to hold a baby in the bath. Lots of illustrations.
Author: Pamela Druckerman
This is a popular memoir about an American journalist who moves to France and has babies there. She notices that French babies sleep through the night at two months and sit patiently for 3 course meals in restaurants. She endeavors to find out why.
The book is similar to a Malcolm Gladwell book in the sense that it's a collection of anecdotes from which the author draws bold conclusions. However, it's a really fun read and there are some good ideas in the book which will serve you well.
Author: Marc Weissbluth
If you search Amazon for "Baby Sleep Book" this is the second hit.
This book is widely regarded as a solid resource for parents wanting to learn about baby sleep stuff. A lot of my friends have read it and recommended it. The author, Dr Weissbluth, is a pediatrician who has been practicing for ages and doing his own sleep studies and collecting data from his patients. So he clearly knows what he's talking about. The book has some solid factual information about when babies transition from one nap to two, what the phases of sleep are, why early morning waking is common, etc. It also has good problem solving stuff like what to do if your baby takes short naps or wakes up early in the morning.
This book will also recommend cry-it-out for babies over a certain age. The author believes that if you do things right when the baby is newborn you won't need to do cry-it-out. Ferber is another author who recommends a type of cry-it-out, called "Ferberizing", which involves lengthening intervals of crying interrupted by soothing.
Author: Elizabeth Pantley
If you search Amazon for "Baby Sleep Book" this is the first hit.
When Oliver was born I felt that cry-it-out was wrong. It felt counter to all of my parental instincts, no one could tell me why it worked, and friends told me they had to repeatedly do it. Plus I felt my roll as a parent was to teach the child how to do something like ride a bike, give them the tools and the opportunity to use those tools, rather than push the kid off a hill and yell "figure it out!".
This book is for people who don't believe in cry-it-out. It has things to try and methods to assess your progress. I followed the program for about a month and didn't really feel like it was helping me. I was already trying to do 5 things perfectly and I felt like this added 15 new things to stress about (play in the crib 5 mins a day, spend time outside early in the morning, establish a "key word" or phrase that means it's sleep time), none of which really seemed to help.
This book has been recommended widely by friends and coworkers. However, it's written by two mothers who have no formal training in child development but decided to run self-help groups and discuss sibling issues with other parents. The book is a collection of anecdotes and lessons learned based on those self-help group meetings. Despite the authors' lack of credentials, it does contain some interesting food for thought. It's a quick read and I found it overall helpful. The main message is that you should not make comparative statements about your children, even in the form of praise like "Joe's so athletic and Susie's the academic". These types of comments create rolls for them that are harmful to self identity.
Author: Michael Thompson
My mother, who is an excellent Montessori teacher, attended a seminar about raising boys in this era and the speaker recommended this book. This author is also the person behind the BBC series "Raising Cain" about raising boys in America. The book spans birth to 18 years old, so each chapter covers a short time frame and covers the basics, but doesn't go deeply in depth into any one topic. The main themes of the book are about how boys crave movement and collaboration and how the school system is built for girl-style learning. He also mentions over-diagnosis of ADHD. It's a good read, and pretty quick. You can just read the chapter for the age your son is at now.
Author: Lise Eliot
I got this book because I wanted to know what life was like for Oliver as a newborn. I was thinking "What can he see? What can he hear?". This book is excellent at answering those questions. It's written by sense, starting with the sense that is first to mature (smell) and moving through them as they will come online for the baby. It also talk about emotional development. The book is full of fascinating studies, brain diagrams, and scientific talk about neurotransmitters. The only downside is that many of the things we know about child brain development we know because of children who suffered horrible fates and were injured or abused in some way. These stories are always heart breaking to read.
Later I read "The Scientist in the Crib" which is a very popular book which many people have recommended to me. It seemed like I had already read about every study they cite, plus many more. I think this book has a lot more fascinating stuff than Scientist in the Crib. However, Oliver is ten months old and I haven't quite finished this dense book, whereas I finished Scientist in the Crib over a weekend.
Author: Alison Gopnik
See my notes about "What's Going on in There?".
Also, this book does include some interesting history of the field, which WGOIT does not.
And the authors of this book are highly respected as top scientists in the field.
Author: Michael Chabon
This was a fun book to read essays about parenthood. Nothing much was learned, but it was nice to get my head into the parenting space.
Author: Brene Brown
This is a must listen. I love Brene Brown. I appreciate how her work is based on science, data and studies, but also very warm and she uses stories to make it relatable. Everything in here was so spot on and inspiring for me.
This is the book that I read to guide me through potty training.
Oliver's teacher recommended this book when Oliver was 6 and doing a lot of risky play / breaking rules at school.
We found this book after Hazel was 4 1/2 years old. She was never really able to consistently make it through the night without peeing in her bed. We believe she is super constipated because of chronic dehydration and that the poop is pushing on her bladder. This book has really helped up figure out how to help her.