Baby Love: Everything You Need To Know About Your Baby's First Year Book

A major flaw with this book is that it is not up to date with safety information. For example, it recommends a quilt on an infant's bed, which goes against Sids and Kids advice (). This means that I would not use the book as my sole resource.

The other thing that that I disliked was the inherent sexism. The author states at the beginning that she will not refer to the parent, but only to the mother, because in her experience dads don't do as much as mums, and surveys show that women still do more housework than men. Surely this means that men should be encouraged to do more rather than left out entirely?! Ironically, my beautiful partner is more excited to read the baby books than I am, because he plans on being an extremely hands on father.

Yes, the book contains no-nonsense, straight forward advice, but sometimes life is more complicated than that. Sure, if you're a midwife for 25 years, there may be absolutely no difference between nappies, but if you have one baby with terrible nappy rash or eczema, it could make all the difference in the world. Sure, many women have safely drunk alcohol while breastfeeding, but why encourage it when its so easy to express milk or even not drink?

Even with these flaws, the book contains some excellent and thorough advice, such as the guide to breastfeeding problems and guide to how long you can keep expressed milk for, so I will definitely keep it and refer to it again.