The Discontented Little Baby Book

The baby is utterly and exquisitely present to you, every feeling that crosses that darling little face transparent to you! The idea that the competent mother must structure the days hydraulically, with machine-like and predictable routines, arises directly out of last century’s scientific paradigms. Twenty-first century scientific models embrace c

It’s important not to put your hand or fingers on the back of your baby’s neck or head, because this triggers a back-arching reflex.

And the research definitely shows that attempting to change the baby’s sleep biology with sleep training in the first 6 months of life does not improve the baby’s sleep habits or development down the track.

You are the expert on your baby. You are uniquely positioned to experiment,

our longing to give our child the best of all possible lives.

Around half of Australian women go back to work in the first year of their baby’s lives,

After 60 years of anxious, expert-driven over-control of family meal-times, we’ve finally learnt that parents need to relax about food intake. The little saying, ‘Parent provides, child decides’

The metronome version of time disappears for a while, and stretched, flexible time plays out around you. The hours repeat themselves in spirals and circles, in slow ebbs and flows. It’s a version of time that is available to you when you spend time with the baby, so that the baby becomes an emissary from another world,

Left to their own devices, parents and caregivers learn to read cues by pattern recognition. Each baby’s system of communication is unique, and meaningful only in the context of the events in her little world. You contextualise your baby’s communications, and build up a picture over time, experimenting with your responses in a sensible way so that