Infant-and-Newborn-Care Books

This book captures the unique qualities of a newborn baby. A fleeting moment that most new parents don't appreciate because they are too exhausted! It makes me want to have another baby just to experience those first few days and have a chance to take some pictures of my own.

Fantastic black and white photography of newborn infants ranging from 1 to 22 days old. The photographs are tastefully done and show the beauty of a newborn. Rather than bore the reader with words, Schatz allows the story to be told in photos. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in newborns and to all expecting or new parents.

I ordered this book (two of them) as Christmas gifts for family members. After looking through it, which is basically a collection of naked baby pictures, I realized I couldn't give this book to anyone and I didn't even want people to see it at my house, so I hope to return it. I hate to offend the author, knowing he will probably read this. Maybe he is from Europe or something, where pictures of naked children are more acceptable and not considered perverse. It wouldn't have been quite as bad, except that there is at least one picture of JUST the genital area - no face, no legs, just torso and genitals. Close up. The babies faces are adorable, and clothed babies are great (which there are none of in this book), but this book just seems like a legal dream come true for pedophiles. Why the picture of JUST the genitals? Many of the pictures are of the entire naked baby. At least then you can pretend you're looking at the baby's face. I don't see any point in having so many pictures of naked babies unless you want to come across as a weirdo. Yeah, I realize it's "art". Whatever. It's not the kind of art that's going to be in my house. If you are as embarrassed as me by this sort of thing, don't bother buying this book. I hope I didn't just convince a bunch of pedophiles to purchase this book. Even my husband agreed it was over the top and there was no reason why we couldn't just look at babies' faces or clothed babies. If you want a coffee-table book, get something with travel pictures in it. Or, I hear Al Gore has a new book with family pictures in it (wearing clothes.) Yeah, I'm uptight about this type of thing, but I think most people are just like me, so I wanted to warn you what is actually in there before you buy the book in case you would be as embarrassed as me by having a book like that in your home. I hope Amazon will take this back and issue me a credit.

This book has many good examples of pictures of newborn babies but does not have any details on how to take pictures or what techniques to use other than the picture examples. If you are looking for a coffee table book this is the book for you. If you want a book to show you how to .. this is not for you.

I have used this book as a text for teaching grief and loss to naturopathic medicine and midwifery students for the past 4 years. Medical students find the information thorough, and appreciate the biological causes of pregnancy and neonatal loss, and the case studies at the end of every chapter. Midwifery students find that there is not enough information on grief counseling. To fill that important gap I supplement this book with Worden's Grief Therapy and Grief Counseling. This book would be significantly improved if it included chapters on abreactive grief responses, wholistic grief counseling, multicultural mourning practices, and complementary and alternative medicine approaches to the physical, emotional and spiritual experiences of pregnancy and perinatal loss.

the book informative and up dated , but very small hand writting and difficult to read comfortabley , so either make larger size the letters or increase the number of papers .

This book was recommended for a class I took in Childhood Language Disorders. If you want to know/learn everything about at risk infants and infants in NICU, this is the book for you. This does not help at all with pre-school or school-age children, only infants.

Fits in my pocket and has some info, but nothing this compact can have everything. Not as much on differential diagnosis, but it gives me a place to start. As with most of medicine, you end up reading more in other books anyway.

This book is extremely informative and a great place to start if you're looking to think "outside of the box" about fertility issues. I'd also recommend "Inconceivable" by Julia Indichova.

I'm a big fan of using natural means to overcome fertility issues and have used them with great success myself. I've truly enjoyed some other books I've read on this subject and have found them very useful. I had high hopes for this book as well, but found some really serious problems with it.

First of all, I was expecting a book on actual Natural methods of enhancing fertility [kind of like "Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition" I suppose]. The first third of this book is about nothing but conventional medical treatment. That's kind of annoying, but my real problem is that I don't think its even covered well - for example, she's listing "pros and cons" of all these different medical treatments and leaving out pretty important things [like mood swings and depression being a side effect of Clomid - pretty well accepted I think].

I also had a real conflict with this book as a Catholic. [This may be irrelevant to many readers, but I'll include my concerns here anyway in case they are helpful to some]. She makes an erroneous and inflammatory comment about the Catholic Church in a section on "Emotional issues with Infertility" where she says that "some Churches are extremely hard on Infertile couples. But there has been a breakthrough with the Catholic Church in that they have recently accepted a proceedure to open blocked fallopian tubes.". [The Catholic Church is the only Church mentioned by name, definitely seeming to single it out]. The author comes accross as pretty negative towards the Catholic Church and insinuates that the Catholic church doesn't support infertility treatment. This is actually untrue - the Church is *extremely* supportive of treatment for infertility [including surgery to open tubes, certain drug therapys such as Clomid, etc]. What the Church absolutely DOES not support or condone is proceedures where embryos are created and then destroyed - for *Catholics* that is Murder and it is unconscionable. The Church also doesn't condon artificial insemination or cloning [which violate the God given nature of conception according to our religious beliefs]. She doesn't cover this at all and leaves the reader with the impression that the mean old Catholic Church just doesn't want poor infertile couples to get any help at all.

I had a real problem with the book morally - under her section on InVitro Fertilization she doesn't even mention the fact that routinely about 20 embryos are created and all but 2 or 3 are either destroyed or frozen. She doesn't mention this as a concern or an issue in her "pros and cons" section. I think that if she is truly writing an objective book trying to educate people she should at least be *honest* about the pros and cons - for many people, creating embryos you *know* you'll destroy IS a problem. She also doesn't mention the high incidence of "selective abortion" where a woman may be implanted with multiple embryos and three or more "take" - then the doctor is likely to recommend selectively aborting some of the babies. This is also fairly routine and is a moral problem for some people.

These issues are not a problem for many people, so this won't be relevant to them; but the moral issues are worth mentioning as fair warning to those with religious belief systems that don't support some of the things she's recommending. Regardless of one's beliefs, her failure to mention these things at all is NOT a balanced or honest presentation of the procedures she's purporting to describe objectively.

Aside from the moral issues, I just don't think this book is very good - its not that well written [she wanders around in paragraphs and switches topics mid-stream and the book isn't edited very well]. It also doesn't really hold true with the title - it isn't really about "Natural" Fertilty Enhancement, it is trying to be more of an "all encompasing" Infertility handbook as far as I can tell, including much info on popular medical treatments. In trying to cover *everything* she covers none of it well - including the sections on natural methods. I just don't find this book outstanding in any way unfortunately.

As a relative newcomer to the field of natural/holistic remedies and appraoches, I found this book to be highly useful. I really appreciated how clearly everything is laid out. I found a great web site, fertileheart.com, that deals with similar topics and would be of interest to those in similar situations.

I got this book as a gift (prematurely in my opinion!), and did not learn anything new about holistic practices or natural remedies.

The "success" stories were more like horror stories and made me more nervous than hopeful.

I am going to stick with good diet & exercise, drinking lots of water, eliminating alcohol and caffeine, enjoying lots of sex, and maybe some acupuncture.

I would say that this book is not even worth buying it used for $1.

I think this book may be helpful to people who have absolutely no experience with holistic therapies, but if you are not new to alternatives, please make another choice. This book will not be worth your money. It basically lists the alternatives available (homeopathy, reflexology, accupuncture, etc.) and some testimonials for each type of alternative.

I would suggest skipping this one, even at the low price, and buying the latest Baby Bargains -- This book appears hastily put together, has information that is so self-evident it doesn't need to be stated, snubs its "target" audience of first time mothers by putting in a whole section on preparing siblings for the birth, and has out of date information -- The Midas car seat deal it suggests is no longer offered, for example. Also it has no index, so even for the few things I found interesting were very hard to find again.

Call me lazy, but I was really looking for a spare, organized month-by-month or week-by-week CHECKLIST. This is a regular book (albeit a short/small one) and not a particularly well-organized one at that. I want to know what to do when . . . I don't want safety tips for strollers or fluffy and outdated information on maternity clothes. Save your money; I wish that I had.

This being a first pregnancy for me, I was very interested in this book. It hasn't let me down. The book is pretty good really, & I would recommend it to any first time Mom who is uncertain of when she should buy what. The author explains how to use the book, breaks down the checklist by trimesters, offers advice for after the baby arrives, & even includes a pregnancy calander.

While not chock full of information about pregnancy in general, the book does give you guidelines to follow for purchasing important baby items & making baby plans. I think I'll use this book throughout my pregnancy. It's definitiely worth the money

This book is more about identifying colic than actually doing anything about it. Mr. Lester runs a clinic and seems to promote it quite a bit throughout the book. He identifies the pitch and sounds of different types of crying but doesn't offer any practical advice, tips, or suggestions for parents struggling with a colicky baby. I would recommend The Happiest Baby on the Block for parents in need of practical advice.

I had to read this book for a project for work. I had a colicky baby, but those years were behind me when I read Barry Lester's book. I just couldn't believe that this information hadn't been disseminated widely. My only criticism is that I wish there was more information on how to sooth a colicky baby. For understanding colic, this is great. For dealing with colic, I would recommend "The Happiest Baby on the Block."

This book wasn't helpful to me at all. The advice is impractical, and trite.

My husband and I just recently had our first child and we have done a great deal of research. I purchased this book because I have had good experiences with this series. However, this book seemed to present opinions rather than different options. For example, the book devotes a great deal of time to environmental problems with disposable diapers and not much time on how to change diapers, preventing a diaper rash, etc.. I was especially disappointed with the section regarding sleeping location. There are many studies that support the increased likelihood of sudden infant death syndrome in babies that share a bed with his/her parents. This book downplayed those studies and encouraged bed sharing. The author used a home movie that a movie producer shot of him, his wife, and baby as proof that bed sharing is appropriate. The book should not have downplayed the outcome of many studies and the recommendations of many professional organizations. I felt as though it was irresponsible.

I was very disappointed and wondered how much other information was presented as non-biased information when it was far from being non-biased. I really wish I could return this book and get back my money. I don't want to donate it to the library for fear that someone will read it without looking at other sources of information.