Recommended Baby Books.

I highly recommend "Baby Love" by Robin Barker. Robin is an experienced nurse, midwife and early childhood nurse as well as a mother and grandmother. The book is easy to read and full of helpful advice and information on sleeping, crying, breastfeeding, nutrition, illnesses and growth and development. It also has a section of recipes for babies and it is Australian so it has Australian specific resources.

Another book I highly recommend is "The Wonder Weeks" by Hetty Vanderijt and Frans Plooij. The Wonder Weeks is about the eight major developmental leaps that babies make within their first 14 months. It covers how to help your baby through these fussy periods, what they go through during this time and what the developmental leaps are. It also covers which games and toys are best for babies at different ages and stages. This book was hugely valuable to me. It was good to understand what Em was going through at different times and also to know what sorts of games and toys would suit her best at the different stages. As a new mother I often found myself wondering "what's going on now" and this book helped me to understand why Em was doing what she was doing and what she was trying to learn. I also found myself not knowing what games or toys to introduce and when. Again this book helped me to know when the best times to introduce different games and toys were. I really can't recommend this book highly enough. I think every new mother should have a copy. The only problem I found is that it is not available in book shops. Perhaps you can ask for it to be ordered in? I found it easiest and cheapest to search online. The book typically retails for about $50 in Australia but if you search around you can find it for around $30. It is also available in libraries and that's how I first stumbled across it.