William Sears - The Baby Book, Revised Edition: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two

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James

Robert

Peter

Hayden

Erin

Matthew

Stephen

Lauren

Andrew

Lea

Alex

Jonathan

Joshua

Ashton

Morgan

Thomas

Landon

W.S. and M.S.

W e have not only written this bookwe have lived it. In The Baby Book we, Bill and Martha, share with you our experience in parenting eight children and caring for thousands of others during forty years in pediatric practice. As Dr. Bob and Dr. Jim have joined our practice, raised their own families, and contributed to our writing, we have expanded our collective experience and ideas. As we have all learned to become keen baby and parent watchers, we kept track of what works for most parents most of the time. This book was written on the job. Each day in our office we gleaned from successful parents practical advice on baby care. You will find these tips scattered throughout the book. We realize that love for your baby and the desire to be a good parent makes you susceptible to any baby-rearing advice. But children are too valuable and parents too vulnerable for any author to offer unresearched information. We take responsibility for our teachings seriously. Every statement has been thoroughly researched and has stood the test of time.

We also make allowances for the busy lifestyles of todays parents. We too juggle the spontaneous needs of our children and the duties of our professional lives. In our book we present basic tools to help you become a sensitive nurturer as you arrive at a parenting approach that meets the needs of your baby and fits with your lifestyle. We advise a high-touch style of parenting to balance the high-tech life of the new millennium. In The Baby Book you will find a way of caring that brings out the best in you and your baby.

Since its first edition in 1993, The Baby Book has been dubbed the baby bible by millions of parents. We are so pleased that our advice has made baby care more enjoyable for new parents throughout the world. In this new edition, we add many new topics based on reader feedback and also include updates that have occurred over the past twenty years in the fields of parenting and pediatrics.

The thousands of thank-you notes, fifty thousand Facebook fans, five thousand Twitter followers, and millions of website users have given us a helpers highthat priceless feeling that, because of this book, many children and parents are happier, healthier, and more connected. It gives us great joy to know that by our family advice in this book we have become in some small way part of your family.

Bill, Bob, Jim, and Martha Sears

San Clemente, California

January 2013

VISIT DR. SEARS ONLINE

AskDrSears.com

Now you can access thousands of pages of pediatric medical and parenting information. Our comprehensive online resource, personally written by the Doctors Sears, expands on many of the topics discussed in The Baby Book. We continuously update the health information on our website to provide you with the latest in parenting and health care issues. AskDrSears.com offers valuable insights on such topics as Pregnancy and Childbirth, Infant Feeding, Family Nutrition, Discipline and Behavior, Fussy Babies, Sleep Problems, and Vaccines.

Our website also includes these unique features:

You can also follow us on Twitter @AskDoctorSears and @DrBobSears and on our Ask Dr. Sears and Dr. Bob Sears Facebook pages.

There is really no such thing as one best way to parent a baby, just as there are no perfect babies and, would you believe, no perfect parentsonly people who have studied babies and people who have more experience than you. Being a parent requires on-the-job training. Too much advice from experts can actually interfere with the beginning parents intuition and block their ability to learn as they grow. We are going to show you how to become your own baby experts. Our goal for this book is to help you and your baby fit. This tiny word economically describes what parenting is all about.

Lets get started!

P arenting, in a nutshell, is giving your children the tools to succeed in life.

Every other baby book is missing a chapter that would be entitled Parenting Your Baby. Now, together with you, the expectant couple or new parents, we are going to construct this chapter.

From our mutual experience as parents and pediatricians, and Marthas as a nurse, we believe that the best way to achieve the proper fit between parents and child is to practice a parenting style we call attachment parenting. This style is a way of caring that brings out the best in parents and their babies. Attachment parenting has been around as long as there have been mothers and babies. It is, in fact, only recently that this style of parenting has needed a name at all, for it is basically the commonsense parenting we all would do if left to our own healthy resources.

Forty years ago, when I began pediatric practice, I had already trained in the two top pediatric hospitals in the world, and I thought I knew everything about babies. In fact, our friends used to tell Martha how fortunate she was to be married to a pediatrician, to which she would reply, He only knows about sick babies. My first week in practice was really a shock. Mothers kept asking me all sorts of nonmedical questions: Should I let my baby cry? Are we going to spoil her if we pick her up too much? Is it all right to sleep with our baby? I didnt know the answers to any of these questions, but parents were relying on me to be the expert. These were not medical questions, but questions about parenting style. I knew what we did with our own two babies, but I didnt think this made me an expert. So I read baby books, just as you are doing now. The books were confusing. They seemed to be based on the authors opinions rather than on actual research. Most authors either lacked common sense, refused to take a stand, or preached only what was popular at the timewhether or not it worked.

I decided to consult the true expertsexperienced parents in my practice who appeared to have a handle on parenting: parents who seemed to be in harmony with their children, who were able to read their babies cues, and who responded intuitively and appropriately; parents who enjoyed parenting and whose children seemed to be turning out well. These parents and their children became my teachers, and I became an astute listener and a keen baby watcher, keeping careful notes about which parenting styles they practiced. I accumulated a what works list. Martha worked with me in those early years (until our fourth child, Hayden, came along), and she is still active as a parenting adviser and breastfeeding consultant. My practice was our field research, and we had our own growing laboratory at home.