Baby Development

Breastfeeding is natural, but it is not entirely instinctive for either mothers or babies. The Nursing Mother's Companion has been among the best-selling books on breastfeeding for over 30 years, with over 1,000,000 copies sold. It is respected and recommended by professionals, including The International Lactation Consultant Association, T. Berry Brazelton, and The American Academy of Pediatrics, and is well loved by new parents for its encouraging and accessible style.

A groundswell of women are taking back their pregnancies and childbirth and embracing a natural way. Genevieve Howland, the woman behind the enormously popular Mama Natural blog and YouTube channel, has created an inspiring, fun, and informative guide that demystifies natural pregnancy and walks Mom through the process one week at a time.

In his New York Times best seller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina told us how our brains really work—and why we ought to redesign our workplaces and schools. Now, in Brain Rules for Baby, he shares what the latest science says about how to raise smart and happy children from zero to five.

Full of mother-wisdom, reassurance, and support, Sweet Sleep is the first book on nights and naps for breastfeeding families. It is a comprehensive how-to guide for making sane and safe decisions on how and where your family sleeps, backed by the latest research in pediatric care.

When the empirical meets the adorable. Babies can be a joy - and hard work. Now they can also be a 50-in-1 science project kit! This fascinating and hands-on guide shows you how to re-create landmark scientific studies on cognitive, motor, language, and behavioral development using your own bundle of joy as the research subject. Simple, engaging, and fun for both baby and parent, each project sheds light on how your baby is acquiring new skills - everything from recognizing faces, voices, and shapes to understanding new words and learning to walk.

There are three simple questions to determine whether you should listen to this book. Do you spend HOURS trying to get your baby to sleep? Do you dread the nap and evening routine, knowing what is to come? Would you like your baby to fall asleep quickly, on their own, and to sleep all night long...even if you honestly believe you've tried everything...and in as little as three days. If you answered YES to any of those questions then you need to listen to this book.

"I'm going to love my baby and give her lots of attention," Jade said. "I'll show my mum she's wrong." Jade, 17, is pregnant, homeless, and alone when she's brought to live with Cathy. Jade is desperate to keep her baby, but, little more than a child herself, she struggles with the responsibilities her daughter brings. Cathy is worried as soon as Jade arrives: she's never looked after a pregnant teenager before, but none of the mother-and-baby carers is free.

The Happy Sleeper shows parents how to avoid and undo cumbersome sleep habits, putting their babies and little kids on track to a full night's sleep. Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright teach parents that babies have an innate capacity to self-soothe, as well as the brain machinery to sleep well. So why do many families struggle at night? Most do what works today, but don't notice when it's no longer needed tomorrow, and then push harder when it becomes a hindrance the day after that.

Learn from Dr. Sarah Mitchell, an experienced sleep coach and member of the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, how to put your baby to sleep with ease. If you are tired of the sleepless nights, the endless cycles of soothing, and the exhaustion that's taking a toll on your family, then this book is your ultimate lifeline.

As the founder of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), Magda Gerber has spent decades helping new mothers and fathers give their children the best possible start in life. Her successful parenting approach harnesses the power of this basic fact: Your baby is unique and will grow in confidence if allowed to develop at his or her own pace. The key to successful parenting is learning to observe your child and to trust him or her to be an initiator, an explorer, a self-learner with an individual style of problem solving and mastery.

We heard it too many times: “Babies don’t come with an instruction manual.” Instead of taking the old cliché at its word, we asked, “why not?”. The famous Moms on Call series is here to help, equipping parents with trusted resources and practical guidance to navigate their child’s first four years with confidence, clarity, and better sleep.

A baby is a blessing - and also a completely life-altering event. Written by a psychologist and relationship expert, Baby Bomb offers powerful tools based in psychology and neurobiology to help you and your partner co-parent and co-partner as a supportive team - while also cultivating mad love for each other!

The Gentle Sleep Book offers gentle, no-tears sleep solutions for exhausted parents of newborns to five-year-olds. A large percentage of parents find their young children's sleep - or lack of - challenging. This new audiobook from Sarah Ockwell-Smith, founder of BabyCalm, will be an indispensable guide for parents, whatever challenges they are facing with their child's sleep - from the day they bring their newborn home until their child is settled in at school.

Spirited infants are the outliers—the exceptions to the “rules,” the extraordinary ones. They arrive in this world genetically wired to be alert and intense. Spirited babies put parents to the test and raising them takes special skills and patient perseverance. In this groundbreaking new book, beloved parenting expert Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D., offers her findings in the fields of neuroscience, sleep, temperament, self-regulation, attachment, and parent-child interactions, and shares what she has learned from hands-on experiences with families.

Why do current medical guidelines insist that cosleeping is unsafe? What is the difference between SIDS and SUID, and are they related to cosleeping? What should parents do to make a safe sleep space for their infant? If a family chooses to cosleep, how should they respond to reproach from friends, family, or medical professionals? In Safe Infant Sleep, the world's authority on cosleeping breaks down the complicated political and social aspects of sleep safety, exposes common misconceptions, and compares current recommendations to hard science.

The first six months with a new baby is a special and exciting time full of milestones and new experiences. This updated edition of Your Baby Week by Week explains the changes that your baby will go through in their first six months. Each chapter covers a week of their development so you’ll know when your baby will start to recognise you, when they’ll smile and laugh for the first time and even when they’ll be old enough to prefer some people to others!

It’s a freezing winter’s night in 1954. A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside. After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.

Superheroes don’t have babies; real and imperfect non-superhumans do. When we come to terms with this, the result is a happier and less traumatizing start to motherhood. Becky Vieira, the mom behind the popular Instagram account @WittyOtter, provides actionable advice for new parents on what to expect after pregnancy and how to successfully navigate the frustrations and challenges that come with having a baby.

This is not a "cry it out" approach. Instead, you will learn how a host of factors—whether you feed your baby before or after they nap, how you comfort them when they are upset, and how you interact with them at nighttime—all contribute to your baby's sleep.

Employing no taboos, no mom shaming, and no hard and fast rules, this book goes where no other baby book goes: to the heart of what it really means to make the transition from womanhood to motherhood (while elbow deep in diaper blow outs and smiling through unexpected visits from your in-laws). Celebrating variety and difference among mothers, steeped in a sense of camaraderie and togetherness, and packed with practical tips and encouragement, Baby’s First Year is as much about taking care of yourself as it is about taking care of your baby.