Reviews for Mother of All Baby Books

The average rating for Mother of All Baby Books based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-08-13 00:00:00 Chris Bennett So, I was happily reading this book and kept telling my husband about how much I like this book & that it ranks # 2 as far as baby books go (Baby 411 is the absolute BEST one) & I have read ALOT of baby books. Anyway I get to this sentence that really makes me mad - it is better to smoke & breastfeed than to not breastfeed at all - I tried to breastfeed my son for 3 months and we just could not do it. He was born with low blood sugar thanks to my diabetes & was given a bottle as soon as he was born. On top of that he had severe jaundice that required us to supplement and he preferred the bottle over having to work for milk. I never felt a let down of milk, I pumped every 30 mins. for 2 weeks straight & all I produced all day long was 2 oz! After going to 3 different lactaction consultants (not to mention the several nurses while in the hospital) none of which could help my baby latch on properly I finally gave up when he was 3 months old. I now have a BOTTLEFEED baby who is 7 months old & is already learning to walk, according to his Dr. he is way ahead of his peers developemently. I babysit a exclusivly BREASTFEED baby who just last week has learned to turn over (my son was turning over both ways at 3 1/2 months old) & has gotten sick double the amount of times that my son has. I feel bad enough about bottlefeeding without hearing sentences like that, I smoked for 11 years and quit a year before getting pregnant because I didn't want to expose my child to that let alone breastfeed a baby while smoking. I don't think that statement makes bottlefeeding mothers feel very good about their decision, we already get enough grief from everybody else and don't need books to make us feel more guilty. And besides second hand smoke can contribute to lung cancer, bottlefeeding can't. If you ignore that one sentence in the book then it's a wonderful book.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-19 00:00:00 Kyle Hockridge Ann Douglas had me at hello, when she started off the book with travel analogies. I love to travel and I totally related right away to what she was trying to say. I found The Mother of All Baby Books super easy to read, and even though it was a hefty book, I was able to complete it in a fraction of the time it took for me to read similar sized Pregnancy / Parenting books. While this edition was a little dated, I believe that with some creative revisions in the mind of the reader, the message is still clear and very helpful. Take for example when Douglas talks about the babymoon and using voicemail to provide baby updates to eager relatives and friends so that new parents could spend some uninterrupted time with their baby. All I had to do was sub "voicemail" for "social media" and voila, same results. I actually wish I had read this earlier (I was 31 weeks along when I started reading it), as there are some great tips on what new parents really need to buy and how to choose the one that is right for us. By the time I read that part, we had made most of our big purchases. I also really appreciated the breastfeeding chapter as it talks about breastfeeding, bottle feeding and pacifiers, with tips and tricks for breastfeeding. While it is obvious that Douglas is a strong advocate for breastfeeding, I don't agree with some of the reviews I've read where people felt turned off because she was mom guilting them. I didn't feel like she was shoving breastfeeding down my throat at all, and in fact, she even acknowledges that some women may have trouble breastfeeding for various reasons, and may have to resort to using formula. The Mother of All Baby Books is the 4th (pre) parenting book I've read and it's reassuring to know that a lot of this stuff has already been covered in some of the other books I've read and the message and research is very similar. My conclusion is it's a great book for those who only want to read one book.