Well, Ingrid has definitely learned to roll over now. Twice today I’ve put her down on her front and found her on her back a few minutes later.

It seems like she hasn’t quite understood what is happening, because both times she was a bit upset afterwards and wanted to be turned back. She hasn’t turned the other way yet (back to front), but she’s been very close. She probably can, she just doesn’t know that she can.

No, make that three four times. She just did it again.

Soon she’ll probably be rolling all round the house, like those sheep who roll over cattle grids.

Gina Ford is a phenomenon. Every parent in England will have heard of Gina Ford, and most will have a very firm opinion about her. The majority appear to be split into two opposing camps: one that loves her and one that hates her.

I looked at her The New Contented Little Baby Book before I’d heard about Gina, found the book terrible, and put it back on the shelf. Eric bought it because “everybody knows Gina Ford, so let’s see what all the hoopla is about”.

So what is the hoopla about? Her main point is that babies need routine. Things should be done in the same order and at the same time every day. A large part of the book (50 pages) is filled with detailed schedules setting out feeding and sleeping times with 5-minute precision. Another 30 pages are dedicated to discussing the different parts of the routine. This is supposedly “the secret to calm and confident parenting” (as the front cover blurb promises) and will lead to a contented baby.

This is the complete opposite of the “feed-on-demand, baby-knows-best” approach which seems to flourish in some places (notably among Swedish midwives, from what I read on Swedish parenting sites). In Sweden the common view seems to be that you shouldn’t meddle with small babies’ sleep rhythms but leave them to find their own rhythm. But I don’t see how a baby is supposed to figure out that night is for sleeping and day is for playing, if parents don’t teach this.

And the followers of each approach are often fully convinced that the others are mad, misled, and probably horrible parents. Gina’s book, therefore, gets very conflicting views from readers: of the 478 reviews on Amazon UK, 76% give it either 1 or 5 stars. Gina has even been compared to terrorists, and sued an online forum.

I started out reading The New Contented Little Baby Book mostly out of curiosity (and because it was there). I was inclined to discard much of the talk about routines. It just sounded ridiculous – and insensitive and unworkable. In the first few weeks I fed on demand, and Ingrid slept most of the time when she wasn’t eating. But then as she became more alert, I gradually felt the need for some more order, and started using a simple sleep-eat-play routine (i.e. doing things in that order, all the time) based on Tracy Hogg’s advice. I found it helpful, but at the same time it was hard to figure out how to adjust this as her sleep needs changed. And I was still spending a lot of my time guessing – is she tired? hungry? in pain? simply cranky?

I came to refer to Gina’s book more and more frequently for a more carefully considered routine. At first I was thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I am following this horrid book,” and yet I was gradually won over. Ingrid took well to having a routine, and I liked having one. It simply works very well for us. I have made a 180-degree turn: I now find Gina’s routines very helpful, and I am glad I have this book at hand. In our household we’re now on first-name basis with Gina: “Gina suggests…”

But I still can’t say that I like the book. I’ve got the hate-Gina and the love-Gina camps both right here inside my head, because the book manages to mix very good things with very bad ones.

This is what Gina gets right:

• I totally agree that having a routine is good and leads to more confident parenting. I find it much easier to read Ingrid’s signals when I can immediately exclude several reasons for crying. Ingrid never gets overtired; she is happy almost all the time and rarely cries without an easily discernible reason. And she definitely never cries for long (unless she is in pain because of reflux) because I can figure out what she needs, and help her.
• A routine makes it a lot easier to distinguish baby’s habits, and to tell chance from a changing habit. Because we do things at roughly the same time every day, I notice quite easily when Ingrid is able to stay up longer without bad effects, and when she is getting too much daytime sleep (because she is awake for a longish stretch during the night).
• A routine means that I know when Ingrid will sleep, which lets me plan my own day as well. (And it ensures that I get my daily feeds as well!) And since we have a well-functioning basic routine, I can adjust it when necessary to fit in outside activities.
• Gina provides not just a routine like some other books, but a routine that changes over time. There is guidance about which naps should get shorter, and which waking times longer? This is probably the most important and useful part of the book.
• Gina’s advice to limit daytime sleep by waking baby from naps was counterintuitive, but turned out very helpful. Ingrid learned the difference between day and night quite early, unlike some babies I read about.

This is what Gina gets wrong:

• She assumes that all babies and all mothers are the same. “Baby should eat x minutes on the first breast and y minutes on the second breast.” One day Ingrid may need 10 minutes for a feed, and the next day it takes 25. And this is just a single baby and a single pair of breasts! Imagine the variation, then, among millions of combinations of babies and breasts. A baby should eat until she is full.
• While she does say that her schedule is a guideline and should be adjusted as needed, the wording of the schedule flat-out contradicts this (“He needs a sleep of no longer than 45 minutes”) and there is hardly any advice in the book on how to adjust the schedule if you think it isn’t right for your baby. I get the impression she really means that the schedule should be strictly followed, but then everybody would get all upset, so she says (without much conviction) that it’s just a guideline.
• She pays too much attention to minute details and ignores more important questions. The schedule micromanages the day (down to telling you what to have for breakfast: “8am: try to have some cereal, toast and a drink no later than 8am”). But at the same time there’s no help for dealing with mishaps. If the baby woke up an hour early, do you stretch each nap a bit, or just the longest one, or do you put in an extra nap? You’re on your own there.
• The book commands instead of explaining. Why is this nap longer than that one? Why is the third nap dropped first? You can figure this out by experimentation and observation, or (more likely) see that it just works that way, but but more explanation would certainly be useful.
• She strongly discourages doing anything that upsets the routine, most of all getting out of the house. If you listened to her you wouldn’t even be able to go to the doctor, not to mention shopping or coffee mornings! Mothers need a life, too!
• Much of the book is written in an unpleasant tone which I found quite offputting. It’s all about “should” and “must” and “must not”: I picture a nurse in a starched white uniform who will not listen to anything you say. There is no joy. She is also far too fond of doling out guilt and disappointment: a baby should be able to do x at 3 months, and so on, and anything that goes wrong is because you haven’t done everything exactly as she says. As another reviewer put it:

  I would say that this book actually should come with […] a volume controll- to turn down Gina shouting at you for being a very bad parent.

• Finally I think the book is badly organised. It is hard to find the important bits, and even the schedules are not so easy to read. The book would definitely gain from a better editor.

As I said, I do find Gina’s advice helpful. But following it to the letter, as she insists, would be a nightmare. I’d need an alarm clock. My whole life would be taken up with her schedule. As it is now, we often deviate up to half an hour in either direction from the schedule, depending on what seems to be needed. Yet the only reason I can fiddle with the schedule (for example to fit in a swimming lesson at a time when Ingrid would normally be getting sleepy) is that we have a schedule to begin with. In order to break the rules, you first need to know what the rules are.

And Ingrid would most certainly not be contented with Gina’s standard routine. She has always needed more sleep and more food than Gina’s “average” baby. At the age of 3 months her routine most closely resembled what Gina suggested for a 2-month-old. At 3.5 months she still wakes up twice every night for feeds – and it’s not just snacking, she takes a proper meal. And she definitely cannot be just put down in her bed awake, in the dark, to fall asleep on her own.

Buy the book. Find the best bits and ignore the rest. Add a large dose of common sense, and relax about the schedule. Then Gina’s book truly is useful.

Amazon UK, Amazon US.

…are just totally irresistible and infectious, and so open and heartfelt. What a difference they make to our relationship!

She smiles when she sees me in the morning. She smiles when I change her nappy. She smiles when I turn up and talk to her. She smiles when she’s done eating and is full and contented. She even fires of completely spontaneous smiles in the middle of a feed, just because.

The minor miracle has now been followed by a medium-sized one!

Ingrid still goes to sleep in the sling, and I take her out and put her in the Moses Basket after about an hour or so. Then I normally wake her for a last meal just before I go to bed, in the hope that she will then wake fewer times during the night. The plan has been to do this at around 10.

Ingrid got used to this and started waking up just before 10. But then for the past week or so, she woke up earlier and earlier, sometimes even just after 9, interrupting whatever I was doing and messing up my evenings.

Today she did it again, and I was a bit annoyed, because I had to finish my blog post in about a minute, before she got too upset. But given how well she has generally been sleeping – rarely waking when I take her out of the sling, and falling asleep well after night feeds – I had the audacious idea of trying to get her to settle again. And to my great surprise it worked! I hadn’t expected this at all, which made my success even more pleasing. Victory dance!

The technique seems to have two key parts. First, turning her on her side: I had noticed that she fell asleep better after night feeds if I kept her on her side instead of laying her flat on her back. Second, gently rocking her side-to-side (or front-to-back, depending on how you look at it). She seems to find movement very soothing, and is probably very used to it given all the rocking she’s gone through in the sling.

More generally, she is a lot better at falling asleep now. Even though she still falls asleep either in the sling or the pram during the day, she does it faster and with far less crying than before. And the slinging no longer involves insane amounts of bouncing – we’re down to a gentle rocking and patting. I haven’t tried actually getting her to sleep directly in the bed or the basket, but given today’s success, I guess I should try! That would be a major miracle.

I’ve also introduced lullabies. We got a CD with Estonian lullabies for Christmas, and I’ve been playing it for her every time I put her to sleep. The plan is that she will get so used to these tunes that they will become a signal for her to go to sleep. I don’t know if that’s made any difference – sights matter far more to her than sounds – but maybe they will. In any case, the lullabies provide a nice rhythm for the rocking and swaying. They actually make me sleepy sometimes!

… or rather, watery activities.

Several mums at the Tower Hamlets NCT coffee group mentioned going swimming with their babies. I thought that sounded like fun, so I signed us up for a baby swimming class at the nearest pool. We had our first session last Tuesday, and the second one today.

To call it swimming is really a gross exaggeration. It’s more like floating and bouncing around in water. Or rather, being floated and bounced around in water, because the babies do not participate very actively. The parents do most of the work.

The activities were surprisingly varied. Firstly there were ways to get the babies used to the feel of water: splashing water on their heads so it trickled down their faces (which led to some serious grimacing and nose-wrinkling) and pouring water on them from small plastic watering cans. Then “jumping” into water from the pool edge. And then of course various ways of moving across the pool: bouncing up and down, floating on the front, floating on the back with mum holding baby’s head only (so they can feel what it’s like for the body to float freely), floating on the back with baby’s head on mum’s shoulder and mum making kicking movements with baby’s leg, etc etc.

Ingrid was the youngest participant, as she barely clears the 3-month threshold. (Not the smallest, though.) So she’s not able to do any of the more “advanced” exercises such as kicking her legs, or gripping the rail on the side of the pool, or pushing a ball in front of her – mostly because she has no clue what is expected of her!

That doesn’t matter, though. And it doesn’t matter that what we do is nowhere near swimming. If this gets her used to water, and if she comes away with the understanding that water is pleasant and fun and not scary, then swimming can follow later. For now we’re just having fun.

At least I’m having fun. Ingrid mostly just seemed totally overwhelmed. New sights, new sounds, new smells, all this water everywhere… After both sessions she’s been quite exhausted and fallen asleep as soon as the pram started rolling. I hope she will get less tired as she gets used to this, and then enjoys it more. Still, even now, I think she has been interested in this new experience – she has not shown any signs of not liking it.

Ingrid has crossed that vague line between “tiny baby” and “big baby” and established herself firmly on the other side. She no longer looks or feels fragile. Even her skin appears to be less sensitive: there’s no more crying when she’s naked for a moment after her bath, or for a nappy change. She stays awake a lot longer than she used to, and spends a significant portion of that waking time on her tummy – sometimes up to 20 minutes. Her neck is strong so she is now working on the arms and upper body, trying to push herself up further from the floor. But she is still wobbly as jelly when I hold her in a sitting position.

She is clearly more aware of the world and the people around her. She looks at me, and at things in front of her, and not just lamps and windows. She responds to smiles by smiling and “talking”, and sometimes greets me with a spontaneous smile. She seems to actually experience boredom, and “asks” to be turned or moved when she’s spent too long in one place.

She continues to grow as if planning to beat some kind of record – when we last weighed her she was over 7kg which puts her above the 98th percentile. All of her 0-to-3-month clothes got packed away in the attic around New Year’s Eve when she was about 2.5 months.

After my two-week Christmas holiday with Eric at home, I started this year rested and with lots of energy. (Relatively speaking.) I was determined to get more done – to get out more, to have more fun during the days, and generally just try to avoid getting stuck in a rut.

It is very easy for me to get worn down by the endless repetition of small stuff, and lose all ability to take initiative. After a few rounds of breastfeeding, nappy changes, and slinging Ingrid to sleep, my brain just slowly shuts down and I let the rest of the day pass by without doing anything much. Even though I like to read, I can’t be bothered to pick up a book. Even though we have lots of good movies at home, it’s easier to simply surf the web for an hour.

One of the changes I’ve made – probably the most important one – is to go out for a long walk every afternoon, as long as the weather isn’t atrocious. This one change alone has worked wonders on my energy level, and that in turn has led to more good changes. Mental energy, unlike the physical variety, generates itself like a perpetuum mobile – you really can get more energy out of an activity than you put in.

I am also trying to find regular activities that I could commit to. It’s easy to skip a walk because it’s drizzling outside, but if I was signed up for a course, for example, I would be more likely to ignore the weather and go anyway. Now that I think about this, the best kind of activity would be something where others depended on me – I have such a strong sense of responsibility that I would make a real effort to do what I have promised. Hmmm… something to ponder.

Anyway, I have only found one weekly activity thus far – a local NCT coffee group, i.e. a group of local mothers who get together and drink coffee (or pomegranate and raspberry juice) and eat cookies and talk about their babies.

I went to a coffee group for the first time last week. Most babies there were older than Ingrid, around 7 to 10 months, but there was one other 3-month baby there. And she was so tiny next to Ingrid! She looked no larger Ingrid did at 1 month. And she also seemed about as strong as Ingrid was then. Ingrid looked like a pro wrestler in comparison, with her ability to lift her head and wave her legs around and all that.

I couldn’t help feeling really proud of my baby. I know that most probably very little of her rude health is due to anything I have done, and she would probably look and be as robust if someone else was taking care of her. She happened to be of slightly above-average weight at birth, and happened to be good at eating and growing. The other baby happened to be born small, and possibly grow slower. There’s not much a mum can do about this. But still, I couldn’t help it. I was inordinately proud of my big strong beautiful baby, and still am.

Look, world, this is my baby! I created this lovely creature! It came out of my body! And it’s my milk that’s made her so strong!

This is something my hormones do to me, I’m convinced, to make sure that I take good care of her. It’s a bunch of selfish genes wanting to survive and procreate and then in 20 or 30 years’ time they can make her feel the same so the genes get to go another round. And every other mum’s genes do the same to her. Doesn’t matter. I’m still so proud of my baby.

Well, the miracle didn’t last… She woke 40 minutes later and wouldn’t settle, so she’s back in the sling.

Still, that definitely counts as progress! And it meant that I could eat dinner without her on my chest – which was very good since dinner was soup, and otherwise I would have worried all the time about letting hot soup drip straight on the top of her head.

Wow. Something incredible just happened. I moved Ingrid from the sling, where she’d gone to sleep, to her Moses basket. She woke halfway, and I sighed and started putting the sling back on, but she WENT BACK TO SLEEP! This has never ever happened before.

The last couple of nights I have also managed to settle her when she has half-woken by just laying a hand on her chest. That has also never worked before.

Maybe all that was/is needed for better sleeping habits is just time for her to grow a bit.

After smiling, Ingrid has learned to use her face for other expressions too. Ingrid and I now have a game we play: I make a face and she mimics me. We’re limiting ourselves to faces that require no fine muscle control (no wiggling of eyebrows) – just simple things like smiling, opening the mouth wide and saying aaah, sticking out the tongue, or pouting.

Sometimes she gets so excited by this game that she fires on all cylinders at once: I stick out my tongue, and she responds by first saying aah, then sort of sticking out the tongue, and then smiling as well, all within a few seconds.

Our current challenge is to stick out the tongue from one corner of the mouth. She sort of seems to get the point – I can see the tongue tentatively edging towards one side of the mouth – but she hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

And when I try to get her to say aah, she actually manages to produce a strained, gargling “ngaah” sort of sound! I think she’s starting to realise that she can make more varied sounds than just crying.