We recommend the following books, some of which are helpful if you are breastfeeding, others just help with being a parent!
Most of these books are in our library in Cwmbran (these are marked), and mums are welcome to borrow them.
If you would like to buy any of these books please help us by 'clicking through' to Amazon from this page. Breast Start receives a small percentage of each item bought this way, which will help us to continue supporting breastfeeding mothers and promoting breastfeeding in Torfaen.
We have books on:
Breastfeeding
The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding (La Leche League International Book)
Written by mothers for mothers this book will answer basic questions in practical language. Items covered include: How to prepare for breastfeeding during pregnancy; How to avoid sore nipples; how to combine working and breastfeeding; and how to be sure your baby is getting enough to eat. Highly recommended.
library book
Adventures in Tandem Nursing: Breastfeeding During Pregnancy and Beyond
An invaluable resource, with personal stories and helpful information and support. There are lots of answers to many of the questions mothers can have when they find they are pregnant and are breastfeeding an older baby.
library book
Bestfeeding: Why Breast Feeding is Best for You and Your Baby
This book blends academic knowledge, clinical expertise, and practical skills to educate first-time and experienced mothers alike. Mothers will find precisely the information they need to help their babies grow and thrive physically and emotionally as a result of breastfeeding.
library book
Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing: How Ecological Breastfeeding Spaces Babies
This book explores an aspect of breastfeeding often misunderstood and underrated - it's contraceptive effect. It gives a good introduction to natural family planning and explains how diffeent styles of breastfeeding can affect fertility.
library book
The Breastfeeding Answer Book (LLLI) by Nancy Mohrbacher and Julie Stock
This book is designed especially for those caring for breastfeeding mothers, presenting a broad ranging, in-depth exploration of breastfeeding issues, and offering a variety of possible approaches and solutions.
library book
Breastfeeding Matters: What We Need to Know About Infant Feeding
This book is not only a reference text, but also a practical manual on breastfeeding for mothers and their health care providers.
library book
Breastfeeding Your Premature Baby
A basic guided to help parents to provide the benefits of human milk to their tiny infant. Tips on pumping, establishing a milk supply, getting baby started at the breast and coming home.
library book
Mothering Your Nursing Toddler
A lively discussion of breastfeeding beyond the first year of life. The author considers the importance of the breastfedding relationship, natural weaning, and society's expectations vs. the child's and/or family needs.
Parenting
Adventures in Gentle Discipline: A Parent-To-Parent Guide (La Leche League International Book)
This book explores discipline tools such as redirection and natural consequences, takes an eye-opening look at time-outs and rewards. Quotes and essays from mothers show creative adaptions of gentle discipline methods in different families.
library book
Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for your Baby and Young Child
A complete guide to the concept of attachment parenting, which argues that parental responsiveness to a baby's needs leads to a well-adjusted child, offers tips on breastfeeding on demand, responding to a baby's cries, minimizing parent-child separation, and avoiding baby.
library book
The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting Your High-need Child from Birth to Five
A supportive and practical guide to coping with difficult and fussy children with proven methods for dealing with a multitude of difficulties. This book gives: Ceative ways to soothe a fussy baby - Information on medical causes of infant fussiness, from infections to food sensitivities - Effective ways of coping with common high-need personality traits and behaviour - Proven strategies for discipline -- getting connected to your child early, providing structure, setting limits, knowing when to say yes and when to say no - Tips on learning how to talk and listen.
library book
Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic
This book helps you to understand you and your child, and the power of positive actions. It includes strategies to handle behaviour at mealtimes, bedtime, school, holidays and much more.
library book
Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
A bestseller in the USA, Siblings Without Rivalry offers serious advice for parents coming to terms with the unpleasant conflicts that arise when siblings forget they are human beings. The book is written with humour, compassion and understanding.
library book
When Your Baby Cries: 10 rules for soothing fretful babies and thier parents
Best-selling childcare author Deborah Jackson reminds us that babies soak up all the love we have to give. Here are ten effective ways to care for even the most distressed baby, while looking after you own needs as well as boosting your confidence. Learn how to relax, become your own expect and deal with unwanted advice. Find out how crying works and why it gets out of control. Discover babies's secret signals and how to cope with colic. Crying babies and harassed parents everywhere can breath a sigh of relief: here are the rules for restoring the harmony of family life.
Eating
My Child Won't Eat!: How to Prevent & Solve the Problem (La Leche League International Book)
This books explores why a child refuses food, and the way that growth and activity can affect a child's calorific needs. Questions covered are: Why won't my child eat? How much does a child need to eat? Why don't children like vegetables? What does it mean to breastfeed on demand? When should my baby start to eat solid foods? What if adults were forced to eat?
"This book saved my life. After being a fussy eater my daughter now eats a wide variety of food, will very little fuss! I would recommend this book to all parents to read before weaning!" 5/5 stars, FR, Cwmbran
library book
How Weaning Happens
Covers the questions parents ask and reassures them that weaning is a natural process which does not have to be stressful for mother or child. Includes the personal experiences of mothers who have weaned in a variety of ways.
Sleeping
Nighttime Parenting: How to Get Your Baby and Child to Sleep
Deals thouroughly with nighttime dilemmas, tips on safe sleep-sharing, the benefits of nighttime breastfeeding, whether to let your baby "cry it out", handling wakeful toddlers and getting children to bed without a struggle.
library book
The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night
There are two schools of thought for encouraging babies to sleep through the night: letting the baby "cry it out," or the grin-and-bear-it solution of getting up from dusk to dawn as often as necessary. If you don't believe in letting your baby cry it out, but desperately want to sleep, there is now a third option. Based on her research, Pantley's guide provides you with effective strategies to overcoming naptime and nighttime problems, all with no crying.
library book
The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Gentle Ways to Stop Bedtime Battles and Improve Your Child's Sleep
Getting babies to sleep through the night is one thing; getting willful toddlers and energetic preschoolers to sleep is another problem altogether. Written to help sleep-deprived parents of children ages one to five, "The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers" offers loving solutions to help this active age-group get the rest they - and their parents - so desperately need. Parents will discover a wellspring of positive approaches to help their children get to bed, stay in bed, and sleep all night, without having to resort to punishments or other negative and ineffective measures. The book tackles many common nighttime obstacles, including: refusals to go to bed; night waking and early rising; reluctance to move out of the crib and into a big-kid bed; nighttime visits to the parents' bed; naptime problems; nightmares, "night terrors," and fears; special sleep issues of twins, special needs children, and adopted children; sand, sleepwalking, sleep talking, snoring, and tooth grinding.
library book
Three in a Bed: The Benefits of Sleeping with Your Baby
A Biritsh look at family co-sleeping, a manual for parents seeking an alternative to broken nights. How to get some sleep yourself when there is always a little person around at night. invaluable benefits for breastfeeding mothers (and babies). Includes discussion and research into cot death.
Other useful books
Eat Well, Lose Weight, While Breastfeeding: The Complete Nutrition Book for Nursing Mothers
Expalins the weight loss process whilst breastfeeding and includes information on dieting, exercise and realistic goal setting. With recipes.
library book
Hirkani's Daughters: Women Who Scale Modern Mountains to Combine Breastfeeding and Working
The title of this book, Hirkani's Daughters, was inspired by an ancient tale from India about a young mother, Hirkani who lived in the mountain ranges of Western Ghats during the 1600's. Legend has it that when she was accidentally locked behind the fort gates of the Kings palace, Hirkani scaled down a 1000-foot vertical cliff to breastfeed her baby. When the King heard of her courage, he was so impressed that he honored her by naming the village where she lived Hirkani Village. This village still exists today. Hirkani's Daughters is a compilation of inspirational stories written by mothers from around the world who have overcome various obstacles to continue breastfeeding and working. They too are finding their own ways around the gates people have shut before them. And they, too, are excited, scared and missing their children. Some of the stories share Hirkani's drama; others speak with a quiet calm. At their core, they are all stories of women evaluating their options through trepidation and a beating heart, and in the end bravely taking the path that works best for their families. Hirkani knew well the difficulty of finding that balance with each and every step that she took as she climbed slowly down the mountain.
library book
My First Signs
All children naturally communicate with gestures, even before they develop the ability to speak. By teaching simple sign language to children from as young as seven months we can help them to convey thier emotions and their needs, as well as giving them a valuable head start in their social and intellectual development.
library book
The No Cry Potty Training Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Child to Say Good-bye to Nappies
From bestselling parenting author Elizabeth Pantley, a potty-training plan that is foolproof and easy to implement. The No-Cry Potty Training Solution is a realistic, stress-free plan to help your child become independent in the bathroom. Pantley's potty training solutions are realistic, as they have been tested by actual families in every parenting situation: Busy households, single parents, working parents with limited time and money, twins and multiples, and children of varying age and temperament.
The Politics of Breastfeeding (Issues in Women's Health)
This work shows that breastfeeding is much more than a matter of personal inclination. Women all over the world are still being tricked into feeding their babies artificially, and this affects everyone - people's health, the environment and the global economy. In this revised and updated edition, Gabrielle Palmer asks whether bottle feeding really does free women to lead more fulfilling lives. She examines social attitudes in a world where a woman who does breastfeed her child risks losing what little income she earns, and alerts the reader to the commercial reasons behind doctors' recommendations. With a blend of facts, insight and anecdote, Palmer puts infant feeding "fashions" in their historical and economic contexts. The book is also updated with information on AIDS and breastfeeding.
library book
What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing
If you are a mother, and have ever felt: that nobody understands what you do all day; overwhelmed by your feelings for your baby; tired all the time; that nothing prepared you for motherhood; uncertain what your baby seems to want; short-tempered with your partner; you will find this the most reassuring book you have ever picked up.
library book
