Gearhead Mom

Monday, April 28, 2008

Information Please - Baby 411 Answers The Call

Posted by Missy W. @ 1:30 PM

Ed. Note: Thanks to my pal Ashli, mother to her fabulous one year old, for writing her first GHM review today!
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I received “Baby 411” as a gift from a friend of my mothers. “It’s written by a local doctor,” she told me, and visions of would-be-Dr. Spocks danced in my head. I took one look at the cover (the version I have is a bit tacky) and thought, I don’t need another baby book. But eventually I cracked it open and like a frog turning into a prince, this has become my favorite book for that first year. 

Written by Dr. Ari Brown and Denise Fields, the book offers a mixture of good practical daily baby rearing advice and medical knowledge. It tackles all those questions that no one else really seems to know the answers to (it was the only book I found that broke down - by ounce - how much formula or breast milk a baby takes in each month). 

The tone is one of a busy doctor who has a limited time to see you and is happy to answer your questions but not chit chat unnecessarily. Sometimes she has to break it to you a bit harshly, i.e. “It’s time to break the bottle habit at one year. Don’t get stuck here. You don’t have a baby any more. You have a toddler. If you want a baby in your house, go have another one.” Other times she avoids the long-winded explanations and simply tells you “No” or “Yes”. “Question: Will my child get an ear infection from lying in bath water? Answer: No.”

Baby 411 is divided into sections—“Labor Day” “Solid Foods” and “The Other End” for instance—and is particularly helpful for the medical section which gives you the inside scoop on what to look for in an illness that indicates it is something warranting immediate visits and what things just come with the baby territory and are not to be worried about.  She goes through (and largely dispels) Old Wives Tales. And the authors definitely reveal their own mom status and get what that means (their take on tackling the terrible twos: “My advice is have a glass of wine at dinner for the next two years. Just kidding - sort of.") And her constant no-nonsense approach sounds very much like what your own doctor would tell you if you anted up the big bucks to see them every time you had a question. 

The book suffers a bit from small press syndrome (the aforementioned cover, typos here and there) but the quality of the advice and the immensely readable manner in which it is delivered won me over. This book eventually became the only one I read or referred to, and it is the one I’m going to keep in case I do decide that it’s time for another baby.

Ed. Note: Dr. Ari Brown has also authored “Toddler 411”. I so need to get that. You can even buy the two books as a gift set, what a great shower gift! I also loved my Baby 411 book, it came highly recommended by many pals.

Both authors have blogs: Here’s Dr. Ari Brown’s 411 blog .
And then there’s Denise and Alan Fields’ blog. They have a lot of interesting recall tidbits amongst other gear-related topics. Denise and Alan Fields are the co-authors of Baby Bargains, now in its 7th edition, which I am sure most of you have purchased, borrowed or read about.

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