Category: books read

How should you get your baby to sleep? Should you leave the baby alone in their cot until they cry themselves to sleep? Is there even another option? The author of this book (a mother of 4) says there is, and offers a long list (half to two-thirds of the book) of ways to settle the baby, so that the baby doesn’t have to cry itself to sleep.

Whether you agree with the stance or not, it’s helpful to read such a long list of different ways to soothe a baby, and to understand what to expect with regard to a baby’s sleep patterns.

up the duff

Though not as comprehensive as what to expect when you’re expecting, this book is a much more entertaining read. We’ve found it a useful one to read together week-by-week, so that we know what dramas are coming that week.

By keeping a sense of humour, it’s easier to assimilate the information, and makes it an easier book to keep coming back to. This is the book that we’ve bought a number of people, as soon as we hear they’re pregnant. Indeed, I bought this one the day after we found out about puff.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

This is the most comprehensive book on pregnancy going. Not designed to be an entertaining read, but rather, the answers to literally every question you could have about your pregnancy. Well worth having, to save you stress when something comes along that would otherwise keep you awake at night.

being dad

Ok, not really a book, but this DVD was given to me by a friend – another expectant father. There are a lot of tips, including lengthy interviews with an Obstetrician to get the technical information right, but the whole thing (except perhaps the footage of a birth) has the feel of a conversation down the pub amongst blokes.

Perhaps the one drawback is the lack of mention of God; the impression is that no-one in the DVD is really religious (the doctor talks a lot about the way that “mother nature” designed things) except briefly, in the lead-up to the birth. Not surprising, but worth pointing out.

As you’d expect from conversations in a pub, the language is at times coarse, but this does give a pretty good cross-section of blokey opinions in the lead-up to fatherhood, and in life after birth.

From Here to Paternity – Sacha Molitorisz

The third book on this subject I’ve read, but the first one to drift further beyond the birth, and into the realms of fatherhood proper. As a SMH journalist, Molitorisz has a particular writing style that will be familiar to readers of that broadsheet.

Not the definitive guide to the subject, nor does it set out to be, but useful as far as it raises topics to consider, and starts the prospective father thinking about what life will be like during and after pregnancy.

Whatever, by William Bee

When I saw this picture book in Better Read than Dead in Newtown, it had a “staff pick” sticker on it, and so I read through it. It has such a dark sense of humour that I knew it would make a perfect gift for kel. Perhaps not suitable for the smallest children, this reminds me of the best of the darkly comic works mum used to read to me when I was small.