Happiest Baby on the Block. I was really glad I learned about the "fourth trimester", and I got reassurance that I could not spoil the baby during this time, so I enjoyed my baby snuggles.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None. I go by what I learned growing up

How did you learn how to breastfeed or sleep train an infant? How could you remember that.

NP, but I grew up in a religion that is very family-oriented and has a strong community. As a result, I was volunteering with kids as a middle-schooler, babysitting as a high-schooler, as a young adult I would see moms or dads with babies and kids every week at church or church-related activities and would hear about their experiences, hold their babies sometimes to be helpful and see them nurse/bottlefeed/diaper/burp/rock/etc. their babies and watch them guiding and disciplining toddlers and older kids. I knew roughly what to expect at different stages of development, knew what a lot of the big hurdles were, had heard some of the common approaches to sleep, etc. just by osmosis from having been around a lot of babies and kids.

For me, pretty much everything. I love to read and had spent very little time around kids prior to having them.

Ellyn Satter on food/feeding has been indispensable to me.

I know there are a lot of people who look down on parenting books, but for me they've been a great resource.

Good sleep habits. We followed “eat, active, sleep” as soon as we got home from the hospital, and researched how much sleep babies should be getting at each age. Of course, you have to be somewhat flexible with a baby. But we avoided a ton of bad habits and our DS has always been a good napper as a result. Night sleep was more challenging - he’s kind of an “average” night sleeper. But I shudder to think how much worse it would have been if we got in bad habits with bringing him into our bed, nursing/feeding bottle to sleep, lasting day/night confision, etc.

Other than that I didn’t “research” much and just went with the flow. A lot of internet information isn’t even reliable anyway.

Sleep (including schedules)
How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen -- this one is so important
Conditions for gross motor development
Nutrition

Sleep training.

Anonymous wrote:None. I go by what I learned growing up

How did you learn how to breastfeed or sleep train an infant? How could you remember that.

Sleep training and breastfeeding. I started DD with good sleep habits (wake, eat, play, sleep) at 4 weeks.

Potty training, Oh Crap was spot on.

None. I go by what I learned growing up

I read up on breastfeeding--how to--not whether to do. But nothing takes the place of working through all the ups and downs of the real thing.

I didn't have to research vaccines b/c I knew the science was sound and Wakefield was a fraud.

The Sears baby book was a great resource as were the CDC milestone charts.

I ended up having to research delays in speech b/c my kid did have delays, which in turn manifested as language based delays. I put my trust in experts like developmental pediatricians. Didn't think I would need to do this, but oh well.

Anonymous wrote:Vaccines.

+1

Vaccines.

Bedsharing changed our lives. My son had horrid, horrid reflux and it was the only way ANYONE got any sleep.

I'm curious what aspects of parenting people found it helpful to research or learn more about -- for example, sleep, discipline, feeding, safety, etc.

It is really interesting to me that in our modern times, we need to do this to get information that would have been passed down by one's community or family from other sources. At the same time, there are many things I've found out through books or articles that have been more helpful than the vague advice of others.