Recommend some good pregnancy/parenting books

[cbawlmer]

@Interrobang!?

Oh, and I almost forgot – the yang to just about every other parenting book’s yin: Judith Rich Harris’ The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, which points out that whatever you do, your child’s personality is not yours to program like a computer. Your genes have already done it for you.

Yeah, lucky for me (but not my parents)! In fact, my husband and I both wrestled off the molds our parents tried to cram us into, so I imagine our children won’t put up with any forcible molding either. We’re just ornery like that. That sounds like a cool book.

[Nightingale]

I am a fan of the What To Expect books – I never found them too alarmist. For a few laughs, we liked What to Expect When Your Wife is Expanding and Keeping the Baby Alive Until Your Wife Gets Home.

[flodnak]

I never liked the What to Expect books, personally. The tone just rubbed me the wrong way. I’m more a Penelope Leach kind of mom.

I also heartily recommend Dr Laura Walther Nathanson’s Portable Pediatrician series - one for birth to four, another for five through eleven. In particular, the sections on illness in babies and toddlers were very comforting some mornings at 1 a.m. - listing symptoms with very clear indications of how serious they were, from “call your doctor tomorrow if it doesn’t go away by itself” up to “put down this book and call an ambulance NOW”. As it turned out our kids always landed in the “call tomorrow if he’s still sick” category, but everything seems a lot worse at 1 a.m…

[Velma]

@Dangerosa

If I were having kids now, I don’t know if I’d buy the books, or just spend a lot of time on the internet.

The internet can be just as bad. I signed up for all those baby site newsletters when I was pregnant that you get each week or month, and they say things like 'by now your child is doing XYZ…'as others have pointed out that’s fine for looking at a group of kids but each individual child is going to be ahead in some areas and behind in others. Plus does anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that people LIE when they answer those polls on lots of sites? How can every child be so far ahead of the average? Or people only answer polls where their child is ahead and skip the ones where their child is behind. I do still go online to look up odd symptoms or behaviors though, and if you pick your sites carefully you are right, there is no reason why you have to buy a book too.

Meh, right now I am just bitter because I have a 15 month old who is refusing to walk and I keep getting e-mails “By now your child is running around the house, yes of course he is! 90% of all children are walking by now!” etc. etc.

[Elza_B]

@Velma

The internet can be just as bad. I signed up for all those baby site newsletters when I was pregnant that you get each week or month, and they say things like 'by now your child is doing XYZ…'as others have pointed out that’s fine for looking at a group of kids but each individual child is going to be ahead in some areas and behind in others. Plus does anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that people LIE when they answer those polls on lots of sites? How can every child be so far ahead of the average? Or people only answer polls where their child is ahead and skip the ones where their child is behind. I do still go online to look up odd symptoms or behaviors though, and if you pick your sites carefully you are right, there is no reason why you have to buy a book too.

Meh, right now I am just bitter because I have a 15 month old who is refusing to walk and I keep getting e-mails “By now your child is running around the house, yes of course he is! 90% of all children are walking by now!” etc. etc.

Don’t worry, I didn’t walk until I was 17 months old, but I taught myself to read at age 2 1/2 .

(Pssst…I was also formula-fed. I’m a freak of nature!)

E.