Top pregnancy and baby books…
Best baby book by far – “what mother’s do” by Naomi S – I’d recommend reading this while pregnant, on maternity leave and then soon after baby is born. I could have written most of the chapters but would have found it strange to read while pregnant but will give a brilliant insight into what it’s really like at home with a baby… lovely book!
Other good pregnancy ones…
The Best Friends Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki I
Anything by Sheila Kitzinger such as Pregnancy and Childbirth or Giving Birth: How it really feels
The Rough Guide to Pregnancy and Birth
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
When it comes to baby books / manuals, my advice would be handle with care as reading these made me mainly miserable and stressed and in lots of cases they aren’t right! According to The Baby Whisperer, I shouldn’t have held my baby all the time in the early days as she would never be put down and now she plays independently quite happily! But I wish I could have spent the time holding her and enjoying it rather than trying to put her down and making her cry!
The ones I read were:
The Contented Baby book by Gina Ford – would never have worked for us but wanted to see what all the fuss was about
The Baby Whisperer
The Fussy Baby book – Sears
Other random books worth a look:
Good Mother, Bad Mother by Gina Ford
Letting Go As Children Grow by Deborah Jackson
The one by Jools Oliver – Birth to 9 months, I think