The Baby Book: How to enjoy year one: revised and updated

By Rachel Waddilove

Becoming a parent is one of life's greatest joys - and one of its greatest challenges. It is a time when we need a helping hand. In The Baby Book, Rachel Waddilove shares the wisdom of her considerable professional and personal experience to help parents through the first year of their child's life. This reassuring book includes advice on: - breastfeeding and bottle feeding - establishing a flexible routine - sleep issues and getting your baby to sleep through the night - crying - introducing solid food - travelling with your baby Since its first publication in 2005, thousands of new parents have benefitted from The Baby Book. If you are an expectant or new parent, and want the best for your baby, Rachel's down-to-earth style and wealth of experience make this an essential guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Books
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9780745968599

Rachel Waddilove

Rachel Waddilove has over 30 years' experience as a maternity nurse and nanny, working with families all over the world including celebrities, politicians and royalty. Rachel is also a mum and granny and runs a consultancy service from her home in Devon.

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The Baby Book

Praise for Rachel Waddilove

‘When you first bring your baby home from the hospital it can be a very daunting experience. All you can think of is giving your child the best start in life. Having Rachel with us for the first few days helped us to understand and learn the basics.

Rachel’s knowledge and understanding is incredible; she completely put us at ease in those early days and gave us absolute trust in her and our ability to be a great parents. Her support in putting our daughter into a flexible routine and getting her to sleep well was life-changing.

As we can both be away from home frequently, it was important to establish a great routine and have a baby that slept well. With Rachel’s help our daughter was sleeping through the night from six weeks. Having a baby changes everything, and we found that Rachel’s presence in those early days was invaluable.

We have grown into confident parents because of our time with Rachel and the advice she gave us. We believe that this book will do the same for you.’

Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall

The Baby BOOK

HOW TO ENJOY YEAR ONE

RACHEL WADDILOVE

Text copyright © 2006, 2016 Rachel Waddilove

This edition copyright © 2016 Lion Hudson

The right of Rachel Waddilove to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Lion Books

an imprint of

Lion Hudson plc

Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,

Oxford OX2 8DR, England

www.lionhudson.com/lion

ISBN 978 0 7459 6858 2

e-ISBN 978 0 7459 6859 9

First edition 2006

Acknowledgments

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The ‘NIV’ and ‘New International Version’ trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790.

p. 230 Excerpted from the book Children Learn What They Live copyright © 1988 by Dorothy Law Nolte and Rachel Harris. The poem Children Learn What They Live copyright © 1972 by Dorothy Law Nolte. Used by permission of Workman Publishing Co., Inc., New York. All Rights Reserved.

p. 234 ‘A Baby’s Prayer’ by Dorothea Warren Fox. Used by permission of Charles Fox on behalf of the estate of Dorothea Warren Fox.

Cover image © Bob Anderson/Masterfile/Corbis

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

I dedicate this book to my darling children and grandchildren, who mean so much to me. I would not have been able to write it without them. To my son Ben, his wife Helen, and their children Hannah and Jessica; my daughter Sarah, her husband Reuben, and their children Zack, Bethany, and Joshua; and my daughter Jayne and her husband Peter: thank you for all your encouragement to me to press on and write ‘my book’. I do hope that you enjoy it and that you are able to pass it on to future generations in our family. Thank you for encouraging me to revise The Baby Book and be in my office yet again!

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

A Note from Rachel on the Revised Edition

1 Introduction

My background

The aim of this book

My approach

Breastfeeding

Integrating babies into family life

Sleeping through the night

Teaching babies to settle themselves

2 Needs for the Nursery

What to take into hospital for you and your baby

Clothing

Somewhere to sleep

Feeding equipment

Nappies and changing equipment

Bathing and washing equipment

Travel equipment

Toys and playtime

Final thoughts

3 Coming Home from Hospital

Registering the birth

Your feelings

Bonding with your baby

Visitors

Your physical needs

Your emotional needs

Things that don’t matter

4 General Care of Your Baby

General baby care, nought to six months

General baby care, six to twelve months

5 Feeding Your Baby

Breast or bottle? Making your choice

Breastfeeding

What if I can’t breastfeed?

Problems with breastfeeding

Advice for both breast and bottle feeding

Bottle feeding

Using a bottle when you are breastfeeding

Weaning your older baby onto a bottle

6 Establishing a Flexible Routine

Why is routine important?

Why is flexibility important?

Daily timings, nought to one month (three-hourly feeding)

Daily plan, nought to one month (three-hourly feeding)

Daily timings, nought to one month (four-hourly feeding)

Daily plan, nought to one month (four-hourly feeding)

Daily timings, one to two months

Daily plan, one to two months

Daily plan, two to three months

Routine for three to six months

Daily plan, three to six months

Dropping feeds

Routine for six to nine months

Daily plan, six to nine months

Routine for nine to twelve months

Daily plan, nine to twelve months

7 Sleep

How do you know when your baby is tired?

Length of sleep

Where should your baby sleep at night?

Where should your baby sleep during the day?

Your baby’s sleeping environment

Swaddling

Positioning your baby for sleep

Helping your baby settle to sleep

Putting your baby down to sleep

Sleep training methods for night-time

Sleep training for daytime naps

Why isn’t my baby sleeping?

Summary

8 Crying

Reasons for crying

Dealing with crying at specific ‘problem times’

Crying and family life

Conclusion

9 Introducing Solid Food

When to start giving solids

Equipment for solid feeding

Hygiene when preparing food

Introducing first solids

How to make, freeze, and store home-made baby food

Using pre-prepared baby food

Adding texture and variety (from six months)

Moving on to finger food (six to twelve months)

Foods to avoid

Drinks

When to stop giving breast milk or formula

10 Your Baby’s Development

Your newborn baby

Your baby at nought to three months

Your baby at three to six months

Your baby at six to nine months

Your baby at nine to twelve months

11 Common Illnesses

Jaundice

Gastro-reflux

Colic or wind

Eye infections

Coughs, colds, and chest infections

Ear infections

Raised temperature

Cradle cap

Eczema

Rashes

Nappy rash

Thrush

Constipation

Diarrhoea

Urinary infections

Bites and stings

Burns and scalds

Cuts and grazes

Bronchiolitis

12 Family Life

Integrating your baby into family life

Becoming parents

Becoming a family

13 Travelling with Your Baby

Planning your trip

Preparing for travel

Car journeys

Plane journeys

Ferry and train journeys

14 The Spiritual and Emotional Needs of Your Child

Love

Joy

Peace

Patience

Kindness and gentleness

Faithfulness

Self-control

Faith in family life

Conclusion

Quotations from Rachel’s Clients

Further Resources

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Dr John Tripp, Consultant Paediatrician at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospitals, for his invaluable medical advice. Thank you, John, for the time you have spent reading and rereading the script, for all your helpful comments, and for writing the Foreword. My thanks also go to my dear friend, midwife Fiona Cochran, for reading the chapter on feeding and giving me helpful comments.

To all the families I’ve worked for: thank you for having me in your homes and allowing me the privilege of looking after your babies and children. You have given me much valuable experience and support in writing this book. Thank you for your wonderful quotes. It has been a real pleasure and delight to work with so many families, and many have become long-lasting friends. Thank you for all the feedback I’ve had which has helped to shape this book. It has always been the greatest joy to hear from parents I’ve worked with that their babies are contented and are growing up into happy children. My gratitude also goes to all the parents I’ve advised on the telephone, whom I’ve never met, for encouraging me to write this book. To all those friends who are now grandparents, thank you for your contributions to my thoughts on this important role.

Thank you to Gwyneth Paltrow for wanting to be involved with this book and encouraging me to persevere. I am grateful to you for all your love and support. To Penny Mountbatten, thank you for all your enthusiasm and your endorsement of the book. A big thank you to Julia Cuddihy Van Nice for reading the chapter on routine, and giving me useful comments as a new mum. I am hugely grateful to Max and Sue Sinclair for their continual encouragement and for introducing me to Lion Hudson.

From my time writing the first edition I would like to thank Rhoda Hardie and Morag Reeve from Lion Hudson: thank you, you’ve been very easy to work with and have always been there for me along the way. As I have been revising this edition of The Baby Book I would like to thank again Rhoda Hardie at Lion Hudson who as always has been a real encouragement to me to keep on writing. Also to Becki Bradshaw at Lion Hudson who has been such a help with editing this edition. Becki, it has been a real pleasure working with you.

I would like to say a big thank you to Naomi Gilbert for her assistance in editing this revised edition, as well as her invaluable help with the first edition. Naomi, it has been good to meet up, especially when we have been able to combine working together and lunching in Exeter!

Last but not least, my dear husband John: I couldn’t have written this book without your support. Thank you, darling, for all your patience with me spending hours at my computer and forgetting we hadn’t had a meal. Thank you too for keeping the house and garden up and running, and for all your practical help. You’ve encouraged me throughout to keep on going.

Foreword

This is a book for new mums and dads, which I feel confident will help to demystify the experience of parenthood and be a guide to parents with a new baby at home, through to the end of the first year of life. It is written by a hugely experienced trained nursery nurse who has worked in hospitals and helped parents in their home environments over a number of years. Rachel also has good recall of her childhood experiences of being an older sister and of her own experiences as a mother. The author has clearly learned all the way through her life, and developed good tips and hints for minimizing the stresses and strains of parenthood. The references to her own experiences are limited but relevant.

Rachel helpfully lays out lists, routines, and other useful information very clearly. I applaud the balance between routines (imposed by parents) and responsive parenting (for example, long-term demand feeding entirely responsive to a baby’s crying). I agree that routines are invaluable but need to be flexible. Rigid routine is in danger of making us insensitive to babies’ needs and at the same time unnecessarily limiting parents’ decisions, whereas an absence of routine usually ends in a very stressful existence for parents, which may stretch into infinity.

The whole book is full of personal, understanding, warm, and hugely useful expert advice, but is at the same time soundly based on a wealth of experience. Our babies need a warm and unconditionally loving environment to develop feelings of being valued, without which it is hugely difficult for them to meet life’s challenges. Equally, however, they need a clear perspective as to who is in charge in their early life, to learn that they cannot always have their desires met – only their needs. Routines are the forerunners of rules, and dealing with the challenge of discovering that you do not own and run the world is critical to children growing up through the rest of childhood and adolescence to become socially aware and ‘socialized’ adults. It is never too early to begin the process of discipline, because discipline does not mean punishment; it is defined in the dictionary as ‘the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour’. Thus, I used to give a lecture for midwives entitled ‘Discipline for the Newborn’. No discipline means chaos, and chaos means stress. The key recommendations for structured but flexible routines coincide closely with the sort of advice that I give parents – and so must be right!

John Tripp

Paediatrician, father, and grandfather

Consultant Paediatrician, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospitals NHS Trust Senior Lecturer in Child Health, University of Exeter Medical School

A Note from Rachel on the Revised Edition

It’s now ten years since I wrote The Baby Book! I’ve been overwhelmed with the positive response to the book from mums all over the world, and have enjoyed being able to hear stories about how my advice has supported them in those first precious months with their babies. However, I’ve also had useful feedback from families who would like more detail on certain aspects of parenthood. My advice on a flexible routine hasn’t changed, but I have added more options for how you can adapt this routine to your situation. I have also added more advice on preparing food for the transition to solids, and on travelling with a baby.

In the ten years that have passed since the publication of the first edition of The Baby Book, sadly my dear mother and my brother have passed away. This has meant great loss for us all as a family, especially as our brother died when he was only fifty-nine. Losing my mother and brother has made me realize even more how precious family life is and how important it is to support one another within family life. Having a close family is a true blessing.

During this period, I have travelled widely, particularly to Dubai, where I have delivered seminars for ex-pat mothers and local Emirati women. I have enjoyed meeting women from different cultures around the world and realizing that the challenges of new parenthood remain the same. Mums have taught me so much as I have listened to their stories and worked alongside them in their families. I am so grateful to them for all they have given me.

So much has changed for parents in these last ten years and it can be hard to keep up with the pace. The Internet is awash with baby care advice, but there is so much to wade through that it can be difficult to know where to start. My hope for this revised edition is that it will be a reassurance amidst all the conflicting advice that there is a simpler way through your baby’s first year.

1

Introduction

Over the years in my work as a private maternity nurse with families, my clients have said to me on numerous occasions, ‘You must put your methods of establishing a routine and looking after newborn babies down in print.’ These words have spurred me on to write this book. Before I go any further, let me describe my background and training.

My background

I am the eldest of six children and my youngest sister is ten years my junior, so I grew up in a home where it seemed that there were always babies and young children around. I think that this is where my love of babies and young children began. My parents had a private maternity nurse for their first four children. I vividly remember this very official-looking lady in a starched uniform coming when my two brothers were born. I think my father was terrified of her, and I certainly was! I always remember not being able to go into my parents’ bedroom to see my mother and the new baby, and feeling very left out. This experience has made me keenly aware of the importance of involving older brothers and sisters in family life when a new baby is born.

At the age of seventeen I attended a Doctor Barnado’s residential nursery training college in Kent to train for my National Nursery Examining Board Diploma. My course at college involved working with many newborn babies, which I loved. I began my training in the 1960s, before the Abortion Act and before the Pill was widely used, and therefore a number of babies were brought into the unit to be placed for adoption. Part of my training was spent at St Thomas’s Hospital in the maternity unit, which I also loved. I very much enjoyed teaching mothers how to bath, feed, and care for their newborn babies, and that time in my life was a happy one.

Having completed my training, I went to London to take up my first job as a maternity nurse, looking after a premature baby. The baby was my responsibility for twenty-four hours a day, and I stayed until she was six months old. I then moved on to another family, with three children under the age of three, where I worked until my marriage. I married a farmer, and we had three children of our own. During those years of bringing up the children, I would help and advise friends with their newborns. Demand feeding was becoming popular at that time, and I could see that friends’ babies weren’t settled and they were struggling with sleeping and feeding problems. This confirmed my deep feeling that babies and young children need a loving routine and structure in their lives from an early age.

After moving to Devon, I returned to work as a nanny helping local mums with newborns and young children. Not long after this, I went back to maternity work, having been encouraged to specialize with newborns, as this was where I felt my gift was. I have travelled around the UK and the world with my work over the past decade. I now have five grandchildren, and have been able to go and help and give advice with them when they were born. This has been a real joy to me; there’s nothing quite like working with your own family.

Some years ago I set up a consultancy business in Devon, but it is by no means confined to the West Country. I have a website (www.rachelsbabies.com) where many parents and grandparents can read my advice and get in touch with me. It is actually managed by a dear friend Lucy Binns, whom I gave advice to when her twins were born ten years ago. I offer advice over the telephone, which sometimes is all that a mum needs – to be encouraged and affirmed in what she is doing. Many parents call me with issues regarding sleep with their babies, but I also deal with feeding, eating, potty training, and behaviour issues with children up to the age of about five years. I also do home visits which can be daily or overnight, depending on the family’s needs. What a joy it is to be able to help and encourage parents with young children and give them confidence as well.

The aim of this book

‘Antenatal classes only take you up to day one and breastfeeding. It would be much more useful to learn about coping, washing, sleeping, and weaning, rather than just breathing classes.’

Maymie White, fourth baby

My experience in working with families is that parents with new babies, particularly first-time parents, can be very fearful, as there are all sorts of conflicting ideas and advice given today. This is the primary reason why I wrote this book.

It is a very scary thing to come home from hospital with a newborn baby, whether you’ve had no experience of babies before or whether this is your third or fourth child. Often those first few days, and maybe weeks, after coming home from hospital can be very tearful times, particularly with the lack of sleep and perhaps the feeling of not quite knowing what to do. The early days after giving birth are different for everyone. Some women feel ecstatic and all set to get on, whereas others feel exhausted and wonder how they are going to cope with this little bundle of life who seems to want continual feeding, particularly at the times when they just want to sleep.

Since the first edition of The Baby Book, the rise of the Internet has meant that mums can get advice and information on almost anything at the click of a mouse! This can be a wonderful tool, but sadly I have seen that often mums get terribly confused and worried when they read so much conflicting advice. And often their babies are actually behaving in a perfectly normal way. I do think it is important to maintain a balance in all this – that’s why it is important to find someone you trust who will give you good, sound, practical advice. My aim in writing this book is to guide parents through the first year of their child’s life. Many of my families have said to me over the years, ‘It’s time we had some good, sensible, down-to-earth, workable advice given to us to guide us in bringing up our families.’ Society today has changed so much that we seldom have our parents and wider families around to encourage and help us with our newborn baby. My hope is that this book will be a comforting and helpful friend.

My approach

I believe babies are a precious gift to be enjoyed as part of family life, and it seems sad to me that parents are often fearful of bringing any routine or structure into young babies’ lives, as both babies and the family unit thrive on a good routine.

I’m a great believer in routine with flexibility, as over the years I have seen this work well in many families. This is how I was trained as a nursery nurse, and my own mother used routine feeding for all six of us. Routine is the beginning of healthy discipline. In my personal experience, establishing a routine in the early days of a baby’s life makes for settled and secure children. My chapter on Establishing a Flexible Routine (Chapter 6) will explain the routine and give you plans for how to introduce this.

Breastfeeding

I’m a great advocate of breastfeeding, and have tried to encourage all the mothers I’ve worked for over the years to at least have a go at it. Most of my mothers have continued breastfeeding during the first year, and have always been pleased that they were encouraged to try. Sometimes mothers are not

Reviews for The Baby Book

[taadam-901231 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent guide to schedules & helping both you and your child adjust to the new realities of parenthood. Knowledgeable and realistic.