We put this little tip at the beginning of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook because as discussed earlier this week, it’s easy to put your love life on hold when you have explicit instructions from the doctor to do so.  But remember: Dr. Obgyn never said you couldn’t make out.

The Rookie Mom’s Handbook is available on Amazon.com.

We asked our Facebook community of 9000 moms to answer this: What piece of advice do you give to new moms?

There were so many responses that we have to break it up into several posts, and I thought this list of books and DVDs might be a good place to start.

Do you agree or disagree with these recommendations? Did any of these items help you? Did any of them make you feel terrible or confuse you?

What to read or watch when you need help with your new baby, in no particular order, according to our readers:

1. The Baby Sleep Solution book by Suzy Giordano
2. The Happiest Baby on the Block DVD
3. Dunstan Baby Language DVDs will help you understand what your newborn wants.
4. Itsy Bitsy Yoga has some poses that help calm babies and improve digestion. One mom says, “The Divine Drop was a lifesaver.” (Google it!)
5. The Dr. Sears library of books
6. Babywise
7. Baby 411 book
8. The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding book
9. Secrets of the Baby Whisperer

I notice that no one mentioned Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, which was one of Heather and my most trusted sources. Is that book out of fashion?

This little excerpt of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook is designed to inspire you to pick one of the challenges from our 52 outings for new moms.

If you went somewhere with your baby today, we’d like to give you a virtual high five. Where’d you go?

(Find The Rookie Mom’s Handbook on Amazon.)

That’s a pretty bold claim, huh? Well, it’s true. If you follow the exercises and suggestions in the Minimalist Parenting: Enjoy Modern Family Life More by Doing Less book by Christine Koh and Asha Dornfest you will automatically bring more good stuff into your life while avoiding more crap.

Here are a few brief excerpts that I highlighted in my copy of the book:

The goal is actually quite simple: keep or add the stuff that increases the joy, meaning, and connection in your life, and reduce or get rid of the stuff that doesn’t.

The question goes from “How do I fit everything in?” to “What’s most important to fit in?” The beauty of this approach: when you minimalize your schedule, you have a shot at ending most days with the knowledge that you did most of the things that matter.

For me, it is exactly the right book at the right time. As I am rereading through Minimalist Parenting slowly, I’m taking notes on all my favorite parts and lessons like how to de-clutter or shop through the lens of decreasing long-term stress.

Both authors are amazing people that I’m proud to call friends. I met Asha from ParentHacks in 2006 at my very first BlogHer conference and Christine in 2009 after she had already written such nice things about our book. Whitney and I each received an advanced copy of the book and when we sent our feedback, they blurbed us! You’ll have to look pretty closely to find it because many people gushed about it.Oh how this resonates with me: To keep the stuff that increases joy and reduce what doesn’t. But realizing this goal requires Asha and Christine’s gentle coaching, exercises, and examples. Their tone is authentic, encouraging, and above all realistic. I only wish I had this book sooner.

Whitney summarized her take, “Minimalist Parenting is not about following someone else’s plan, but finding the path that works for you. The tips provided by Asha and Christine are not only actionable, but reassuring. Reading this book is liking talking to a friend that understands your challenges and cheers you on.”

Or as I so eloquently said about Minimalist Parenting on twitter:

More unicorns, less donkeys! #gno #MinimalistParenting

— Rookie Moms (@rookiemoms) March 27, 2013

If you’re not capable of reading a book right now, no problem. The authors offer “MinCamp” , a free 14-day dose of their philosophies via email. You’ll make progress toward minimalist parenting in about 5 to 15 minutes a day. If you want to do the deep dive, you can buy the book on Amazon in paperback or on kindle (how minimalist!).

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This love letter was not sponsored.

Did you or do you keep a pregnancy journal? Unless you count this here blog, I did not. Geralyn Broder Murray created a diary with sweet illustrations and thought starters to help you remember the agony and — in dreams with Ryan Gosling — ecstasy of pregnancy.

Because those memories fade (which is why some of us go on to have more children), Geri shares her illustrations and some tips for remembering to remember the small moments.

Here are a few ways mamas-to-be can get the most out of their pregnancy journals:

- Carry the pregnancy journal in your purse - this way you can jot down a few notes very quickly while waiting at a doctor’s appointment/car wash/check-out line.

- Collect those little scraps of pregnancy memorabilia to attach inside the journal later – an ultrasound pic, a belly pic, a shower invite or kind note from a friend.

-Be candid. This journal is for you and you alone. Don’t be afraid to share what’s really happening with you and your baby; you don’t want to look back on simply a good pregnancy story – you want to look back on your pregnancy story.

I have a nine-year old and a six-year old. What that means is that I was pregnant FOREVER ago; before sleeping through the night and first steps and first bites and potty training and swim lessons and T-ball. It also means that what I remember of being pregnant – those precious months – are pretty much that my stomach was huge (both times!) and that I was by turns nauseous and ravenous.

I wish, truly wish, that I remembered so much more – more of what it felt like when the baby was moving, hiccupping, rib-tickling me, and what it was like to attach dreams to a little person who was still only theoretical and fully contained. I really think those nine months deserve to have a sweet little chronicle of their very own.

From Pea to Pumpkin can be found at www.peatopumpkin.com and on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/PeaToPumpkin

Susan Brink, a journalist and grandmother of six, has authored a new book called The Fourth Trimester: Understanding, Protecting, and Nurturing an Infant Through the First Three Months. After hearing about her research, I asked her, “What is the deal with newborns? Why are they so fussy and floppy? And how is it possible to love someone who has never even smiled at you?”

Though she dodged my question, what she said was pretty interesting:

Yes, you were expecting a wide-eyed, chubby cheeked baby, and instead you have been presented with a toothless and wrinkled newborn that looks more like your great-grandparent than the little cherub you imagined for nine long months. With all due respect to newborns, science tells us they arrive somewhat half-baked. The first three months of life is a time of transition from the womb to the world, a fourth trimester of development.

Here are some surprising facts about newborn life that may help you to understand why this not-quite-ready-for-prime-time infant can be so difficult.

1. About 75% of brain development takes place after birth. Newborn humans are the least neurologically developed animals on earth, arriving with 25% of their brains developed, compared to, say, apes, who arrive with half their brains developed.
2. Some 100 billion neurons, or brain cells, are formed in the baby’s brain during pregnancy, but it’s only after birth that the brain connections, or synapses, begin to form. The infant brains begin the work of pruning away the brain cells not needed and establishing connections among those that will be needed. So when you coo, cuddle and comfort a baby, the brain connections responding to loving behavior will endure. Abusive behavior, like screaming, neglecting or striking a baby, cause brain connections that respond to stress to take hold. The brain pathways that are repeatedly used, even as early as the fourth trimester, are protected.
3. Every interaction you have with your newborn helps to build those brain connections. Smiling, cooing, feeding, singing, soothing are quite literally helping to form the person your baby will be.
4. Adult brains are hard-wired to be attracted to the very traits that infants possess: waiflike eyes, chubby cheeks, rosy mouths. Looking at those characteristics, scientists have found, trigger activity in the reward centers of our brains and result in a nurturing response. Those hard-wired reactions are strong and deep enough to help us overcome non-stop wailing and our own sleep deprivation and provide the care the infant needs.

“Hang in there,” writes Susan. “Your baby is well equipped to develop with your loving attention. Soon enough, you’ll be rewarded with the first smile—a smile that shows you that love is flowing in both directions.”

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Thank you Susan. To find out more about Susan’s research, find her book on Amazon.

This discussion of food issues is a little off-topic for Rookie Moms, but the theme of how people react to being criticized is broad and universal. I think that anyone who lives with a partner would find it interesting.

I was really excited about the opportunity to interview Dr. Dean Ornish, nutritionist and author of Eat More, Weigh Less, a book that floated around my house when I was growing up, and The Spectrum, a newer title devoted to helping people make healthier — and not crazier — life choices. Not only did I get to sit with him and ask one-on-one questions for nearly half an hour, but we went out to a group dinner afterward.

“I am not the food police,” he assured everyone at the table, who I’m certain felt as I did, that it would be embarrassing to order a plate full of carbs, cheese and red meat while dining with the man who has helped thousands of followers reverse heart disease through improved diet, exercise, and emotional support — not surgery. He was not judgemental; he was lovely, supportive, interested in everyone’s story, and ate a bunch of fig, fontina, arugula pizza right off of my plate. This guy is all about intimacy and how it benefits our health, and his values really came across as he chatted with all of us about topics ranging from blogging, IUDs, meditation, and how to savor dessert.

The Mars company (makers of M & Ms and now the healthier snack bar called goodnessknows) supplied a video crew to tape our conversation, and I want to share this segment with you.

The issue I asked him to address, after he revealed himself to be so in tune with emotional health issues, is how to deal with power struggles around food. No one wants to feel judged, yet in our own families, we often receive — or dish out — messages in the vein of “You’re going to eat THAT?” which I believe creates great tension around meals. I really dug what Dr. Ornish said about people wanting to feel in control, and that when that freedom is threatened, it can squash intimacy.

Also, I feel a shocking amount of pressure as a parent to coach one’s children toward healthy food and that I feel a great deal of failure and/or success based on what my kids eat, hence I spend a lot of effort trying to control it. I got a lot out of talking to Dr. Ornish about how we need to not judge ourselves as “good” or “bad” based on foods that we have rated as “good” or “bad”.

I have more interview segments I can post, but I’ll wait and see how this resonates with you guys first.

Note: I did not receive compensation for this, but I did receive dinner compliments of Mars. I very much enjoyed learning about Dr. Ornish’s book The Spectrum which is about freedom of choice. Nothing is forbidden. No guilt, no shame, no pressure. (Read reviews on Amazon.)

Rita Arens started her blog, Surrender, Dorothy, while on maternity leave with her now-eight-year-old daughter. In celebration of her new book launch, we asked her to look back in the wayback machine to share how she found support in the blogosphere.

I remember those early days — and my desperation for connection at odd hours — vividly. The transition from married-professional-on-the-side-short-story-writer to MOMMY was quite jarring for me, and my new-mommy friends seemed to be handling it a lot better than I was. In fact, I was sort of afraid to level with my new-mommy friends and tell them how lost and lonely I felt. I became a voracious blog reader, and after about a week of reading, I decided I needed my own outlet. Surrender, Dorothy was born.

First, a disclosure: I know the author of this book and she is a lovely person. Second, I won mine at the EVO conference I attended in May. There was an Oprah moment where the presenters announced that everyone should reach under their chairs and that ten people would have won a copy of Elevate the Everyday: A Photographic Guide to Picturing Motherhood. It was a little bit thrilling to find that “WINNER!” card with my fingers and feel lucky.

Heather and I met Tracey at our first blogging conference. We were wowed by her because as a professional photographer, she had already published two books, and was much further along in her motherhood journey than we were. She still is.  And with that perspective in mind, she has written a guide for moms to help them document their lives through images. She provides prompts and examples of beauty in the small moments as well as tips for landing on compositions that work.

If you want to improve your photography, this book may help, without getting too technical.

Here are a few nuggets I gleaned from Elevate the Everyday:

1) Try shooting from a bird’s eye view. I did this a fair amount with my babies by standing above them on the bed.

2) The images you take of yourself holding your baby in your arms in the mirror will be favorites in future years when they are too big to fit in your arms. I can attest to this. It’s happening.

3) The “trimmings” as Tracey calls them are the details that mark the moment in time. That thing your child insists on carrying around or wearing around his neck can be the subject of a photo. Her feet dangling from a chair will remind you later that her legs did not yet reach the ground. The toddler toothbrush lying on the counter of the sink, the mess left after a long LEGO session. I love this picture of Julian from a vacation we took when he was two-and-a-half. He was really into water play, so when we needed some downtime, we gave him a few containers from the kitchen of the condo we had rented, and set the hose on a trickle. He kept busy this way every afternoon.

Congrats to Tracey on this lovely book. (Amazon link)

Like many new moms, Suzanne Barston struggled to breastfeed her firstborn son. Despite support from her husband, consultations with lactation consultants, and a strong will to make it work, it simply did not work. As much as I would like to report that she was able to shrug it off, start a blog called FearlessFormulaFeeder.com, and move on, it was not that simple.

The disappointment, embarrassment, and guilt that came from her frustrating infant-feeding journey is a complex issue. She DID start a blog called Fearless Formula Feeder where women can share their stories and support one another, and now, she has published a book: Bottled Up: How the way we feed babies has come to define motherhood, and why it shouldn’t.

I couldn’t agree more with Suzanne that this is a topic worth the study she’s made of it. Part memoir, part sociocultural essay, Bottled Up addresses the position moms are put in when they read that breastfeeding is “the most important thing a mother can do for her baby,” and they cannot do it.

Whether due to physiological reasons, work, an intentional decision or not, formula feeding is perceived as an inferior path, as a lack of dedication to one’s baby.

For medical reasons, I was not allowed to breastfeed my son for ten days. The whole time, I felt like I wasn’t a real mom. I felt a heavy embarrassment in the hospital when I asked for formula, like I had to tell the story of all my blood work to every nurse so that they wouldn’t think I was uninformed. When I attended my first new mom support group, I felt grateful that my humiliating bottle-feeding phase was behind me, and then felt terrible for judging myself so harshly.

I thank Suzanne for opening dialog on this topic and for allowing me to share this excerpt of her book:

To be clear: this is not an anti-breastfeeding book.  I think breastfeeding is an amazing thing, and I’ve seen it work very well for many of my friends. But this book is not for people who are trying to breastfeed– there’s already a plethora of great books on that subject, and more to come, I’m sure. This book is for the parents who wanted to breastfeed and couldn’t; women who are conflicted about nursing and want to make a truly informed decision about what to do with their bodies; breast-feeding advocates and care providers who are willing to listen to the myriad reasons that women may choose not to nurse; and for people who are curious about the other side of this worldwide baby-feeding frenzy.

Mostly, though, this book is for the woman who is in tears, with cracked nipples and a screaming baby whom she can’t mother because she is constantly hooked up to a pump, who wants so badly to quit breastfeeding and finds nothing but fear-and-guilt-inducing literature every where she turns… I hope this book will help her sit beside her breastfeeding friends, free from insecurity and judgment. I hope that it can inform a discussion which ultimately allows all women to feed their babies with pride, whether they are nourishing their babies from their breasts or from a bottle held in their hands, and that, ultimately, all women will have the freedom to find their own formula for good mothering.

> Find Bottled Up on Amazon.
> Read the posts on Fearless Formula Feeders

If you have the book Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth then don’t be a sucker and buy Your Fussy Baby like I did. YFB is entirely included in HCHB. And I know this because I read both of them cover to cover when I had a super fussy baby.

When my first baby cried a lot, it was stressful and crazy-making. I had been told by people whom I trusted that six weeks was the “peak of fussiness” so when he was off-the-hook screamy at five and a half weeks, I broke down and bought the second book. (A remarkably similar thing happened with my third baby only I could instantly order with my mobile phone in the middle of the night rather than drive to the book store with my hair and clothes a mess!)

Don’t get me wrong. I love Dr. Weissbluth’s advice and techniques — pretty much everything about him except his editing skills. He is rock solid. He provides tangible steps that you can follow and reassuring words that this will not be your life forever.

Imagine my surprise when, after reading the entirety of Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child, I felt that we needed to escalate to Dr. Weissbluth’s other book, more specifically addressing fussy babies, and cracking it open to learn that I had read every single word of advice already. Brilliant marketing, Doctor.

Bottom line: Buy the bigger book Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child and you’ll have his expert hand-holding all the way up through your child’s teen years rather than just the first three months.

The book, Bringing Up Bebe, by writer (and mother) Pamela Druckerman made a splash upon its release, most of which was related to the theme of social behavior.  Why do French children eat like adults? Everyone wants to know. How do I get my kids to exercise good manners and accept foods with a variety of  textures and sauces? When will I be able to have an adult conversation without interruption?

Well yes, I want answers to these questions as well, but what I thought might be most helpful to rookie moms in a summary of this book comparing French and American styles of parenting was the portion about sleep.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the book, so you know where the author is coming from. She is an American living in Paris, having married a British man and given birth to a daughter.

Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I’d clocked at French playgrounds, I’d never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn’t my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn’t their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had? Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life… I decided to figure out what French parents were doing differently. Why didn’t French children throw food? And why weren’t their parents shouting?

The answer to all these questions turns out to be wrapped up in one concept: Waiting. Patience. Timing.

The author observes that in every aspect of socializing their children, what the French seem to do differently than Americans is take a beat. Take. A. Beat.

Rather than engaging their children in a cycle of negotiation in which the child learns that crying or whining will grab their parent’s attention and open a dialogue through which the child has an opportunity to bend the parent to his or her will, the French teach their children patience.

They demonstrate that the adult conversation will be concluded before the child can have the floor. They do not give out bags of finger foods at all hours of the day: French children learn to wait for snack time. A little hunger is an acceptable human sensation. Instant gratification is not a priority.

Children learn patience by practicing it.

Ok, so this might all be obvious to you. If we allow our children to be self-centered and whiny, they will have little motivation to behave any other way. If we teach them that tantrums capture our attention, they will use that tool as necessary. Got it. We’ve all got it.

Waiting and Infant Sleep

But when my first little bundle of joy arrived, I wasn’t worried about behavior modification. Babies just need what they need, right? Milk, sleep, human contact, sleep, and dry clothing. And sleep.

Wait, what about that sleep thing? If they need so much damn sleep, why do they have such a hard time falling asleep? And why do they wake up so frequently?

This is the bit of the book I wanted to share. According to the author, it is American parents who expect sleep deprivation in early parenthood. French parents expect the baby to begin “doing his nights” as they say in French, very quickly.

How does this happen? What do they know that we don’t know?

French parents observe their babies, explains Druckerman. They wait a moment. They take a pause. Frazzled new mom Druckerman notes this habit in the park where she sees moms and nannies not responding quite so quickly to baby-fussing that would inspire her to take immediate action. And she’s annoyed by it.

But she learns through her research that there may be something to The Pause.

A baby who cries out in his sleep may settle himself, but we parents can only learn this if we pause to observe the baby, rather than running to scoop him up out of his crib, possibly jostling him all the way awake and then needing to soothe him back to sleep.

Dr. Michel Cohen, who is sort of a celebrity pediatrician in New York City and whose medical degree was obtained in France, tells Druckerman the same thing when she interviews him.

No one ever pointed it out to me, either, and I think it’s a valuable tip.

Does this perspective bring anything new to you?

Note: You can read most of the “Doing her nights” chapter by clicking the “Search inside this book” link on the Amazon page for Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. Also? Random House sent me this book in an Audio CD format. I listened to it in the car.

Related: French Kids Eat Everything, a book in a similar vein that focuses solely on eating.