Book Recommendations

Being a great first-time dad doesn’t mean being perfect. It means having the tools you need to be a supportive partner during and after pregnancy - which is exactly what We’re Pregnant! The First-Time Dad’s Pregnancy Handbook is all about.

From heartburn and headaches to birth and breastfeeding, We’re Pregnant! features practical, action-oriented pregnancy advice from the author of the Dad or Alive blog, Adrian Kulp, a (once clueless) dad who’s been there and done that - three times, in fact!

Prenatal nutrition can be confusing. A lot of the advice you have been given about what to eat (or what not to eat) is well-meaning, but frankly, outdated or not evidenced-based. In Real Food for Pregnancy, you will get clear answers on what to eat and why, with research to back up every recommendation.

Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is a process of continuous learning and adjustment; Birthing From Within provides the necessary support and education to make each phase of birthing a rewarding experience.

With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater decision-making in the early years of parenting.

Enter Leslie Schrock, first-time mother whose own struggles opened her eyes to this widespread problem. With the frank, funny warmth of a trusted friend, she delves into everything from in vitro fertilization and prenatal testing to lactation consultants and postpartum birth control. She debunks the most pervasive pregnancy myths, explores the complementary practices, and cites the latest science (with a dash of been-there-done-that experience) to help you make the best decisions every step of the way - for both you and your baby.

Good Mothers Have Scary Thoughts is packed with world-class guidance, simple exercises, and nearly 50 stigma-busting cartoons from the viral #speakthesecret campaign that help new moms validate their feelings, share their fears, and start feeling better.

In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.

What to read after What to Expect . . . . A badass, feminist, and personal deep-dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and early motherhood that debunks myths and dated assumptions, offering guidance and camaraderie to women navigating one of the biggest and most profound changes in their lives.

The Covid-19 pandemic shed fresh light on a long-overlooked truth: mothering is among the only essential work humans do. In response to the increasing weight placed on mothers and caregivers—and the lack of a social safety net to support them—writer Angela Garbes found herself pondering a vital question: How, under our current circumstances that leave us lonely, exhausted, and financially strained, might we demand more from American family life?

In Essential Labor, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. A first-generation Filipino-American, Garbes shares the perspective of her family's complicated relationship to care work, placing mothering in a global context—the invisible economic engine that has been historically demanded of women of color.

A kinder, more compassionate world starts with kind and compassionate kids. In Raising Good Humans, you’ll find powerful and practical strategies to break free from “reactive parenting” habits and raise kind, cooperative, and confident kids.

Whether you’re running late for school, trying to get your child to eat their vegetables, or dealing with an epic meltdown in the checkout line at a grocery store - being a parent is hard work! And, as parents, many of us react in times of stress without thinking - often by yelling. But what if, instead of always reacting on autopilot, you could respond thoughtfully in those moments, keep your cool, and get from A to B on time and in one piece?

With this book, you’ll find powerful mindfulness skills for calming your own stress response when difficult emotions arise. You’ll also discover strategies for cultivating respectful communication, effective conflict resolution, and reflective listening. In the process, you’ll learn to examine your own unhelpful patterns and ingrained reactions that reflect the generational habits shaped by your parents, so you can break the cycle and respond to your children in more skillful ways.

It’s time to change the way we see babies.
Drawing on principles developed by the educator Dr Maria Montessori, The Montessori Baby shows how to raise your baby from birth to age one with love, respect, insight, and a surprising sense of calm. Cowritten by Simone Davies, author of the bestselling The Montessori Toddler, and Junnifa Uzodike, it’s a book filled with hundreds of practical ideas for understanding what is actually happening with your baby, and how you can mindfully assist in their learning and development. Including how to:

Prepare yourself for parenthood–physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.
Become an active observer to understand what your baby is really telling you.
Create Montessori spaces in your home, including “yes” spaces where nothing is off-limits.
Set up activities that encourage baby’s movement and language development at their own pace
Raise a secure baby who’s ready to explore the world with confidence.

In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don’t have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it’s built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.

Bébé Day by Day distills the lessons of Bringing up Bébé into an easy-to-listen-to guide for parents and caregivers. How do you teach your child patience? How do you get him to like broccoli? How do you encourage your baby to sleep through the night? How can you have a child and still have a life?

Alongside these time-tested lessons of French parenting are favorite recipes straight from the menus of the Parisian crèche and winsome drawings by acclaimed French illustrator Margaux Motin.

Witty, pithy, and brimming with common sense, Bébé Day by Day offers a mix of practical tips and guiding principles to help parents find their own way.

Includes a bonus PDF of recipes and meal plans.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn't aspire to become a "French parent". French parenting isn't a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren't doing anything special.

Yet the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two or three months old while those of her American friends take a year or more. French kids eat well-rounded meals that are more likely to include braised leeks than chicken nuggets. And while her American friends spend their visits resolving spats between their kids, her French friends sip coffee while the kids play.

Motherhood itself is a whole different experience in France. There's no role model, as there is in America, for the harried new mom with no life of her own. French mothers assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children and that there's no need to feel guilty about this. They have an easy, calm authority with their kids that Druckerman can only envy.

The expert, hilarious, and tactically comprehensive baby sleep book!

Parenting a baby or toddler is the grandest adventure of all, when you’re not miserably exhausted. Sleep expert Alexis Dubief, of the wildly popular website Precious Little Sleep, imparts effective, accessible, and flexible strategies based on years of research that will dramatically improve your child’s sleep, detailing seven methods to teach your baby to sleep so that you can find what works best for your family.

This book will help you tackle the thorniest sleep snags, including:

Navigating the tricky newborn phase like a pro
Getting your child to truly sleep through the night
Weaning off the all night buffet
Mastering the precarious tango that is healthy napping
Solving toddler and preschooler sleep struggles
If you’re looking for practical solutions to improve your child’s sleep in a book that won’t put you to sleep, this is for you!

Why do current medical guidelines insist that cosleeping is unsafe? What is the difference between SIDS and SUID, and are they related to cosleeping? What should parents do to make a safe sleep space for their infant? If a family chooses to cosleep, how should they respond to reproach from friends, family, or medical professionals?

In Safe Infant Sleep, the world's authority on cosleeping breaks down the complicated political and social aspects of sleep safety, exposes common misconceptions, and compares current recommendations to hard science. With the latest information on the abundant scientific benefits of cosleeping, Dr. James J. Mckenna informs listeners about the dangers of following over-simplified recommendations against the age-old practice, and encourages parents to trust their knowledge and instincts about what is and is not safe for their baby.

Many parents worry about their child’s sleep, and parents of new babies are often exhausted – but there is hope.

This realistic, reassuring, and refreshing guide to sleep looks at sleep for both parents and children, and aims to empower and encourage parents to feel calm, confident and compassionate in their parenting. It strikes a balance between prioritising infant and child mental health and attachment, and being compassionate about the reality of raising a family in today’s society, with social support and understanding often in short supply.

With practical and easily implementable ideas, and clear explanation of the many myths surrounding infant and baby sleep, this gentle and holistic guide is sure to allay many parents’ fears and help everyone in the family get the rest they need.

Many parents feel pressured to "train" babies and young children to sleep. But kids don't need to be trained to sleep--they're built to sleep. Sleep issues arise when parents (with the best of intentions) over-help or "helicopter parent" at night, overshadowing their baby's innate biological ability to sleep well. In The Happy Sleeper, child sleep experts Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright show parents how to be sensitive and nurturing, but also clear and structured so that babies and little kids develop the self-soothing skills they need to:

fall asleep independently
establish a full, 11-12 hour night of sleep
take regular, healthy naps
grow into natural, optimal sleep patterns for day and night.

The Happy Sleeper is a research-based guide to helping children do what comes naturally--sleep through the night.

The demands of a new baby can test a couple’s relationship like nothing else! When we factor in sleep deprivation, hormonal changes, depression and anxiety, and different personalities, life with a newborn can feel a bit CRAZY.

Couples tend to misinterpret this rough patch as a sign that something is wrong with the relationship, but when couples take steps toward open communication and safeguard their relationship, they can face everything new parenthood throws at them together.

From the team behind the bestselling Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts comes a new guidebook of short essays, comics, and quick journal prompts about the stressful newborn stage, the struggles that so many new parents face, and the skills you need to tap into your strength as a couple.

Having a baby is a joyous experience, but even the best relationships are strained during the transition from duo to trio. Lack of sleep, never-ending housework, and new fiscal concerns often lead to conflict, disappointment, and hurt feelings. In And Baby Makes Three Love Lab experts John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman teach couples the skills from their successful workshops, so partners can avoid the pitfalls of parenthood by:

maintaining intimacy and romance
replacing a culture of criticism and irritability with one of appreciation
preventing post-partum depression
creating a home environment that nurtures physical, emotional, and mental
health, as well as cognitive and behavioral development for your baby

Complete with exercises that separate the “master” from the “disaster” couples, And Baby Makes Three helps new parents positively manage the strain that comes along with their bundle of joy.

Preparing for Baby is a must-have resource for every new and expecting parent, a legal and financial version of What to Expect While You're Expecting. Often, parents don't have the time or energy to deal with important legal and financial matters―like buying life insurance, learning how to save for college, or creating a will.

Preparing for Baby provides plain-English information about the basic legal and financial issues most new parents' face, broken down into an easy to digest and reference Q&A format for parents busy with the day-to-day aspects of caring for their babies. This guide gives readers the information they need to make smart legal decisions in the months before and after baby arrives.

The first sleep book by a leading scientific expert - Professor Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab - reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better.

Walker answers important questions about sleep: How do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us, and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and immensely accessible, Why We Sleep is the crucial account on sleep that will forever change listeners' minds on the subject.

No matter how much you earn, own, or owe, you can create a secure financial future for your family.
In her engaging, down-to-earth style, nationally known credit and money management expert Erica Sandberg provides no-nonsense strategies on how to overcome the challenges every parent faces, from raising a family on a reduced income, to the practicalities of debt repayment, to managing expenses over the course of a child’s life.

Indispensable and easy-to-use, Expecting Money offers you the tools to:
Maximize employer benefits—during pregnancy and after the baby is born;
Manage the cost of new baby expenses;
Conquer financial challenges, whether you’re a one- or two-income family;
Shop smart and use credit to your family’s advantage;
Plan for the future—”including childcare and education costs from pre-school to college.

A guide to soothing newborns and improving sleep routines for both babies and parents.

Comprehensive strategies to establish consistent sleep patterns for infants and toddlers.

Detailed information on natural family planning and fertility awareness methods.

The definitive guide to pregnancy, covering every stage and answer to expectant mothers’ questions.

A practical approach to establishing routines that help babies sleep through the night.