ABSTRACT

Finding Your Way with Your Baby explores the emotional experience of the baby in the first year, and that of the mother, father and other significant adults. It does so in a way that is deeply informed by psychoanalytic understandings, infant observation, developmental science and decades of clinical experience.

Combining the wisdom of many years' work with the freshness of up-to-date knowledge, Dilys Daws and  Alexandra de Rementeria engage with the most difficult emotional experiences that are often glossed over in parenting books – such as pregnancy, through birth into bonding, ambivalence about the baby, depression, and the emotional turmoil so often brought to the surface by being a new parent. Acknowledgement and understanding about this darker side of family life offers a sense of relief that can allow parents to harness the power of knowing, owning and sharing feelings to transform situations and break negative cycles and old ways of relating. With real-life examples, references to current thinking and a calm and simple writing style they also provide new insights into the more commonly covered issues such as weaning, sleeping and crying. 

Finding Your Way with Your Baby is primarily aimed at parents but it will be a helpful resource for all those working with parents and babies including health visitors, midwives, social workers, GPs, paediatricians and childcare workers. It will appeal to parents and professionals who are interested in ideas from psychoanalytic clinical practice and the latest research in developmental psychology and neuroscience.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

PART I Becoming a parent

chapter 1|16 pages

Life will never be the same again

chapter 2|10 pages

Bringing your baby home

chapter 3|16 pages

Bonding

chapter 4|27 pages

Being a good parent

chapter 5|14 pages

Figuring out fatherhood

chapter 6|11 pages

Baby blues and post-natal depression

part |2 pages

PART II Being with baby

chapter 7|13 pages

Conversations with your baby

chapter 8|17 pages

Feeding

chapter 9|17 pages

Sleeping

chapter 10|18 pages

Crying babies: listening and comforting

chapter 11|8 pages

Weaning and teething

chapter 12|9 pages

Learning through play

chapter 13|16 pages

Your baby’s emerging sense of self

part |2 pages

PART III The wider world

chapter 14|19 pages

Wider family and other support

chapter 15|11 pages

To work or not to work