Bringing Up Bebe
I was seeking one real thing from this book, and I got it. I was looking for an answer to my wife’s anxiety about the possibility of losing a ton of sleep in first few months of a new baby. I can lose however much sleep I want. Not only will I have a lot more time off initially, I tend to handle lack or loss of sleep perfectly fine. It’s one of my wife’s worst fears and anxieties.
So this book was a well-received sense that things can work out in general, and there might even be an element of control over it. Is it possible that it’s entirely wrong and not at all true? Sure, but that’s not what I needed, I needed the possibility to stem some feelings.
This book covers a wide range of topics in baby-raising from an American ex-pat, married to a British man, and living and working in Paris. Our author seems to notice that the French don’t seem to be experiencing the same difficulty she is in acclimating to having a baby and other topics related. So she starts investigating. She discovers some cultural elements of French-ness (and look, don’t correct me — I am currently taking the author at her word) that would explain it. Many of these very same things are happening all over the world, but in the US especially there’s an absolute nightmarish glut of opinion in the form of researched books about babies, and made up nonsense about babies. So something that spells out some simple ideas works for me.
And of course, this book is not a complete guide, not all that well-researched, and kind of mean at times, but it does offer up some ideas. I took this book as a syllabus of what kinds of topics and questions I might not know going in, with enough humor to soften the overwhelmingness of it all.
Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems
The negative reviews of this book seem to say a lot about how divisive this topic is. What we find in this book is essentially the exact same basic principles I find in other books, but spelled out in clear and empathetic language.
Something I’ve noticed about two topics especially about babies, feeding and sleeping, seem to pull out two behaviors in new parents that I find very human and very annoying. One is defensiveness about choices. That’s common about parents, and I think book that teach you to be fine with choices (as choices in general) within a certain range are the best. Anne Lamott in Operating Instructions feels conflicted about her situation and her choices, and doesn’t mind the conflictedness be the way she feels and talks about it. But for a lot of parents, there’s a real desire not to just defend their choices but promote them as best. The other behavior is starting with the goal and then finding the proof afterward. Some people want to sleep in the same bed as their babies, and some people want to stay up basically all night with their babies, and sometimes these same people will tell that this is BEST and RIGHT and NATURAL, and Dr Ferber won’t tell you those things. Instead, what he will tell you is that if that’s what you want to do, here’s some ideas of how to deal with that. This is a guidebook that recommends the best path for whatever choice, and since he doesn’t really argue for a certain set of choices, but practices within those choices, well he’s “controversial”.
