Cherish the First Six Weeks: A Plan that Creates Calm, Confident Parents and a Happy, Secure Baby - Softcover

Moon, Helen

 
9780307987273: Cherish the First Six Weeks: A Plan that Creates Calm, Confident Parents and a Happy, Secure Baby
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307987272 ISBN 13: 9780307987273
Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

From baby nurse to the stars, a step-by-step plan to managing sleep and feeding issues to survive—and enjoy—the first six weeks of your newborn baby's life.

Have you ever wondered why celebrities look so rested in such a short time after giving birth? The answer: baby specialists like Helen Moon. A baby specialist and professional nanny for the past 25 years, Helen has worked closely with hundreds of families, including some of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Helen knows that the first six weeks of a baby's life—when parents tend to be nervous, siblings are needy, and new babies need immediate and constant attention—has a huge impact on the entire family. Getting a baby on a sleeping and eating schedule is an achievable dream, and it's not a mystery. Helen's step-by-step plan shows new parents exactly how to integrate their baby into the family so that she will be able to sleep when she's tired, eat when she's hungry, and calm herself when she's fussy—self-regulating skills that will enable her to thrive for the rest of her life.

Assured that their babies are secure and happy, parents can confidently enjoy this most precious time of their baby's life, trusting their own instincts, and—most importantly—sleeping through the night themselves!

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

HELEN MOON is a certified baby specialist with over 25 years of professional experience. One of the most exclusive childcare experts in the US and UK, Helen has appeared on the reality series Scott Baio is 46 and Pregnant.

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Chapter 1

Why the First Six Weeks Are So Important

Have you ever wondered why celebrities don’t seem stressed or sleep deprived, and they look so good after giving birth to their babies? In addition to the benefits of private chefs and in-home personal trainers, celebrity moms usually hire a baby specialist like me!

Now, it’s your turn to learn all my inside tips for caring for your newborn. I may not be able to come to your home and guide you in person, but I can share with you all my years of baby and parenting wisdom, practical advice, and tried-and-true shortcuts. Since babies don’t come with instruction manuals, the next best thing is a book that will make your baby’s first six weeks as smooth and comfortable for both baby and parents as possible.

As a baby specialist and professional nanny for the past twenty-five years, I have worked closely with hundreds of families in England and the United States, and I can comfortably say that I have probably seen--and heard--it all. There’s nothing like getting involved in the first six weeks of a baby’s life to understand the huge impact that this short time period has on both the entire family and a child’s entire life. Parents tend to be nervous, siblings are needy, and new babies need immediate and constant attention.

I can remember vividly the first day I walked into actor Andrew McCarthy’s house. Neither Andrew nor his wife had had a great deal of experience with babies before, so they looked to me for guidance at every turn. We quickly established a feeding routine to benefit their new little boy, and we worked together to reset the baby’s nocturnal sleep cycle, gradually teaching the baby to sleep more at night and less during the day.

Like any couple, Andrew and his wife, Carol, were full of questions: “Is he eating enough? Is it normal for him to be pooping so frequently?” And my favorite, “Is it normal to have a contented baby who is eating well and sleeping well?”

I remember vividly Andrew actually commenting on the fact that he hadn’t watched so much TV in his life, as we all sat together and watched the first series of The Bachelor. He was so relaxed; watching television was a pleasure, and not something he thought he would have time to do.

I think it was at this point that Andrew turned to me and said, “You need to write a book! I don’t know how we would have done this without you!”

That was about ten years ago, and I am finally writing that book--for you.

In this book, I will share with you a nurturing yet practical approach to caring for babies that will show you exactly how to put your infant (or baby) on a sleeping and feeding schedule in the first week and how to help your child (or children!) sleep through the night as early as six weeks old, as well as realistic suggestions that will ensure that everyone else in the family will also get enough rest.

My plan, which I refer to as CHERISH, will show you exactly how to get your baby on a sleep and feeding schedule that will become a template for the rest of her infancy and beyond, giving her the foundation of how to sleep when she is tired, eat when she is hungry, and calm herself when she gets fussy--all of which will help her self-regulate, enabling her to thrive for the rest of her life! With these life-long skills established, you are able to rest assured that your baby is secure and happy; you, in turn, can comfortably and confidently enjoy this most precious time of your baby’s life, not to mention sleep through the night yourself!



WHY SIX WEEKS?

Why are the first six weeks of a baby’s life so crucial? Because in that time period it’s not only possible but also absolutely crucial for parents to put into place a feeding routine and a sleeping schedule that, in essence, can help regulate your baby’s internal body clock, his ability to calm himself, and other foundational aspects of physical, emotional, and social development. Does this sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. It’s absolutely possible, and I’m going to show you how.

Yes, the days, weeks, and months after your baby is born are a beautiful, thrilling time period, but it’s also a time when many parents panic and stop thinking for themselves. One of the first things I do when I meet a new family is reassure the parents that they already know a lot about what it takes to be good parents: we are all born with an innate understanding of what our babies need. Unfortunately, parents often second-guess themselves, listen to others instead of themselves, and then make themselves crazy with worry and anxiety. These doctors, friends, family members, and even respected experts are all well-meaning, and often their counsel is well-founded. But together their input often becomes a jumbled mess of conflicting advice and a new parent in near panic mode cannot make sense of any of it. I recently had a famous singer-turned-fashion designer ask me when it was okay to introduce her baby to cereal. Her baby was more than five months old and was showing very clear signs of needing more than just milk. But when she asked her pediatrician if she could start to offer her a little cereal, the pediatrician stated that if you give a baby cereal before she is six months, she will be prone to obesity!

The mom immediately decided that she couldn’t possibly feed her baby cereal now--even though her instincts were probably more accurate. In this case, with her baby only a couple of weeks away from being six months, and clearly growing well (she was already 16 pounds), it would have been just fine to feed her cereal a couple of weeks early.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, and even as late as the 1980s, our parents fed babies cereal at three months, and sometimes even earlier than that. At that time, it was a common misconception that putting cereal in your baby’s bottle helped her sleep longer. One grandmother told me that she put cereal in her son’s bottle when he was just two weeks old!

Giving cereal to newborns is dangerous, as their little digestive systems are not yet developed enough to handle more than breast milk or formula. On the other hand, I don’t believe that feeding babies cereal before six months is what has created the obesity epidemic; that has arisen from lack of exercise and overeating processed food.

One of the primary characteristics of the CHERISH approach is to learn to pay attention to the needs of your baby, so that you can follow your instincts, think for yourself, and turn to accurate, reliable information about your baby’s health when necessary.

The good news is that how you approach your baby’s first weeks or months does not cause a lot of stress or require extensive thinking, but it does ask you to plan a little and stay calm a lot. What does that come down to? Be organized and don’t panic! The more you are able to stay calm, the more likely you will be able to pay attention to your baby’s cues, stay in tune with your newborn (or baby), and understand his needs. Is your baby hungry? Tired? Complaining because he’s wet? Fussy because of gas?

Babies are not all that complicated, but when parents are sleep deprived or feel insecure about what to do, they can easily get confused, overwhelmed, or both. My approach to taking care of your baby is designed to make you feel calm, confident, and self-assured, so that you know exactly what to do; so that you and your baby can sleep through the night; and so that you won’t spend twenty out of twenty-four hours each day worrying that there’s something wrong with your child--or your parenting skills. I want you to be able not only to enjoy this glorious time of your new...

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Verlag
Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307987272
ISBN 13 
9780307987273
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland