Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Year

by Mayo Clinic

Becoming a new parent is both exhilarating and overwhelming. Being thrust into a new world of responsibility for a tiny human being can leave new parents feeling unprepared for the task.

Now, Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Year gives the clear guidance new parents are looking for from trusted experts. The editors are Mayo Clinic pediatric experts who, as active parents, can personally relate to the joys and challenges of parenthood.

Co-medical editor Esther H. Krych, M.D., is a mother of three young children and a pediatrician.

“Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Year is a one-stop resource for caring for a newborn,” she says. “From baby-care basics, to month-by-month development, to health and safety, this book covers it all. It is an easy-to-navigate and easy-to-understand guide that all new parents can trust.”

Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Year is in full color, including color photos of common skin rashes and conditions, and is divided into six easy-to-navigate sections to help new parents quickly find the information they’re looking for. The subjects covered within the six sections include:

• Understanding your baby’s temperament
• Managing and enjoying parenthood
• Growth and development month by month
• Encouraging good sleep habits
• Succeeding with breast-feeding and bottle-feeding
• Introducing solid foods
• Choosing good child care
• Comforting a crying baby
• Choosing the right diapers
• Baby bonding
• Immunizations
• Common illnesses and concerns

The companion book to Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, this is the second in a series of parenting guides by Mayo Clinic’s pediatric experts.

Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Year offers the unique expertise and support of Mayo Clinic—the gold standard in medical research, education and patient care for more than a century.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Health, Childrens, Family, Reference, Self Help

897 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2012

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd really liked the Mayo Clinic pregnancy guide, so I got this one as well. I was not disappointed. Once again, they're science-based without being overly clinical, unsentimental but still reassuring. There's a refreshing lack of fads and an acknowledgement that parents need to make the best choices for their circumstances without bowing too far. (So they strongly recommend breast-feeding, with its associated health benefits, but do not condemn parents for whom this is not a reasonable option. But they have little patience with the anti-vaccination crowd.) There are chapters for special topics, including adoption and multiples. They cluster the list of the really horrifying but very unlikely diseases/defects at the end in a chapter they warn you not to read unless you have to, which helps a lot with the tendency towards hypochondria.

I particularly appreciated the charts: the appropriate windows for various vaccines, the lists of milestones that should be looked for in each month, the photos of common skin rashes that all look terribly alarming but are mostly harmless.

Down-to-earth, easy to use, and lacking in moralizing. We'll see how it compares to the actual experience, but I'm feeling a lot more prepared for my expected addition than I was before.

[Aprill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ill informed about circumcision, boys are not born with phimosis,phimosis occurs when there is forced retraction. Removing the foreskin does not help with STDs. Only America and some other small countries practice RIC (routine Infant circumcision), circumcision started in the 1800s when people recognized the foreskin was very sensitive and they removed it because they did not want the children to masturbate. For more info please Google an elephant in the hospital and visit drmomma.org or yourwholebaby.org

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This guide was helpful with lots of good information. I felt like a lot of it, though, was fluff. The chapter introductions take a lot of time to establish a topic.
I will admit that my review might be overly harsh since I have been a nanny and so a lot of subjects -- like the basics to changing a diaper -- are things I have hands-on experience with.
What I did like (and the reason I got this book) was the monthly descriptions of how my baby is developing. When is he probably going to cut teeth? What games and toys are developmentally appropriate? What does research suggest for language development?
These questions were all answered well and knowledgeably. I especially liked suggestions of certain games with your baby.
The other really good part of this book was an alphabetical reference guide on childhood illnesses. Mayo Clinic is an excellent source to look up any information on these.

[Chen Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent guide for all new parents. We actually got this book from our friend, who also thought this book was extremely helpful. The book is written in a format so you don't have to read and memorize everything all at once, and can just read chapters as your child grows. What's most fascinating about this book is that it answers all the common questions we had. Although every baby is unique and don't grow up reading the guidelines, having this book can definitely make new parents feel prepared.

[Darren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whoever formatted the ebook for kindle made some very unhelpful and arbitrary divisions. You can't access the table of contents, for example. Not a big deal in a novel, but in a parent's reference, it's an enormous deal. Can't click links when you manage to find the table of contents, either, nor can you change the font size.

This made it useless to me, and I would recommend against anyone else purchasing the kindle version.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is great after you read the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy.
I wouldn't say this book taught me a ton of new things but it was pretty good. I didn't read the chapters from 1 month to 12 month old as it's irrelevant atm and I'll just forget it. It had many irrelevant chapters like having multiples, preemies, down syndrome, daddys, etc. But the beginning was very good.
I wouldn't say this is one of my favorite baby/parenting books but it was still good.

[Cigdem · Rating 5 out of 5]

A life saver and a source of relief in the first year of parenting.

[Les Abernathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book of helpful advice to new parents who are shitting their pants. If you read it all in one go, you'll likely see how it repeats information, but this is because it's more useful as a reference guide than as a full book. I do wish the information was organized slightly better, but I still learned a great deal. The only piece of advice I would share is to finish the book BEFORE your child is born. Little Malcolm was a month early and there are several bits of advice, especially in the latter chapters, that I wish I had already retained. This book doesn't teach you everything as it can't predict everything, but you're chances of not shitting yourself after your child has just shit themself for the first time are greatly reduced. Because chance favors the prepared mind.

[Alina Corpade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although written by doctors, I think it’s easy to read for everybody. Our baby marked the milestones every month exactly how it was described in the book. I couldn’t wait to read the next chapter for the month to come. Highly recommend for all new moms.

[Maximilian Gerboc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really helpful overview. Makes no judgment about parents' decisions, just lays out some norms without being alarmist at all. Knowing literally nothing about babies and three weeks from our due date, I took a lot of notes (about a dozen pages) from this book and feel much more confident.

[Enica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I briefly went through this book, and as an expectant mother, I believe it will be a great resource during my baby’s first months. It answers many of the questions new and inexperienced parents have, and I’ll definitely use it more than once.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and well laid out. It doesn't drone on and clearly outlines the topics before diving in so you know whether it's something that you can skim or highlight to remember down the road.

[Jerzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty of good advice in manageable chunks. Worth reading (or at least skimming) the full book early on, to get a big picture... Then just keep it on the shelf as a reference, to remember what games your child might enjoy that month or to look up any possible medical concerns.

[Ioana · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a first time parent, I consider this is one important must-have book! I took great advantage of all its pieces of advice, for me it was pure golden. It is written in the language parents understand, because it's, as they put it, written by doctors who are parents, too!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely helpful resource with standard medical opinions. Expect the usual patronizing from doctors with no explanation of nuance (more on that below). But it is definitely a helpful resource for determining when to see a doctor due to concerning conditions, what developmental milestones you should see month to month, ideas for play for each month (the smartphone apps for this often suggest dangerous things like putting blueberries in front of 4-month-olds, so I like this better), and just basically what to expect and what to do. My grandmother said that babies don't come with an owner's manual, but this is it.

A long note on lack of explanation of nuance:
This is clearly not written with the help or approval of medical researchers with good statistics skills. There are sentences clearly meant to mislead on issues such as breastfeeding: they strongly imply that breastfeeding decreases the risks of ailments, while their only evidence is that breastfed babies have fewer of these ailments. But that ignores statistical problems, such as bias toward health and education level of mothers who successfully breastfeed. Even a negative effect of breastfeeding could be covered up by those biases. And research has yet to resolve whether the smaller incidence of ailments is due to breastfeeding itself or due to the differences between mothers who do and don't breastfeed. In fact, it seems to be leaning more toward the latter, if anything, on every issue except severe diarrhea.

It is not possible to discuss such nuances in a book like this. But I personally think it is irresponsible to make statements with such certainty when there are still major questions yet to be resolved by the research. Women are seriously emotionally affected by their capability to breastfeed, and telling them that breastfeeding has a huge effect on their child's well-being induces stress that may very well turn out to be completely unnecessary.

I would have been much more satisfied if writers had hedged their bets on undecided questions, rather than parroting what they learned in med school in an authoritative way. But they did at least do a good job of stating that there was no use feeling guilty about using a bottle if that was what was needed.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Similarly to Mayo Clinic Guide to Healthy Pregnancy, this book is a great bible for things to know and prepare for during your baby's first year. I recommend to use post-it markers for references you may want to go back to in the future!

Table of Contents:
Caring for your baby. Welcome to parenthood! ; Baby's first days ; Feeding baby ; Diapers and all that stuff ; Bathing and skin care ; Clothing baby ; Sleep and sleep issues ; Comforting a crying baby ; Understanding your baby's temperament
Baby's health and safety. Finding the right care provider ; Checkups ; Vaccinations ; Child care ; Traveling with baby ; Home and outdoor safety ; Emergency care
Growth and development, month by month
Common illnesses and concerns
Managing and enjoying parenthood. Adapting to your new lifestyle ; Taking care of yourself ; Dads and partners ; Parenting as a team ; Single parenting ; Siblings and grandparents ; Finding contentment : home or job? ; When to have another child?
Special circumstances. Adoption ; Caring for multiples ; Premature baby ; Delayed development ; Down Syndrome ; Other newborn conditions.

[Laura Burdick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read every word of this book yet, but I've read enough of it to know that it will be a valuable reference to return to when I'm looking for specific information about our child's health and development. The start of the book has sections on the basics of childcare (doctor's appointments, feeding, diapers, bathing, etc.), and then the book goes through each month of a child's first year and talks about the development that happens during that month. I would definitely recommend this as a resource for people who (like me) really don't know a lot about taking care of babies and want to find good, solid medical advice.

Also, the pictures of all the babies in this book are *super cute* :)

[Ian Blaauw · Rating 4 out of 5]

For clarity, I did not actually finish this book, but did make it 90% through. More details below.

Good book, would recommend but definitely not in audiobook form. This has all sorts of good information, but is such a fire hose it's hard to remember it all. This book is most useful as a manual for specific topics or baby milestones that can be turned to actually during the process. This is why I didn't finish, there was so much irrelevance to the current stage of my baby, but I plan to come back regularly and refresh as my baby gets older.

I liked that it had a good set of different options for different medical care, but was very clear on the tradeoffs that were involved in every choice.

[Cyndie Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This and their pregnancy book are my favorites. Whenever we had a concern about a particular symptom and whether something was normal or not, we were able to turn to this first and figure out whether we needed to rush to the ER. It also helps you keep track of basic growth and the kinds of things most kids are learning at each stage. As a veterinarian, I love that this book comes from folks with a solid medical background, though the text is very approachable and I think would be perfect for people even without a medical education. Read a lot while still pregnant and then read the short month by month chapters as we went. A great excuse to get a couple moments to yourself.

[Cristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I feel it's not as insightful as the Guide to Pregnancy, this book still has its uses.
I will definitely keep this on hand for the well-done index at the end that helps me find any interesting topic that I need to freshen upon.
This book does not set out to be very detailed about its subject matter but tries to touch on almost every topic a new parent might need.

Very nice to have on hand if you're ever in doubt about anything regarding the child's development.
I think i was a bit underwhelmed by this book because I was expecting it to go into more detail about the child's psychological development but looking back this was my misconception.

[Beooogn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommend for totally new parents with no experience but it has a lot of flaws. Some chapters could use much much more details and other, much less.

Everything should have been written month by month but instead there is a month by month section as well as individual sections for various topics. So you might miss important topics if your purely reading it month by month...like I did. I'd rather the whole thing read linearly.

Still I don't know of any better, science backed and pediatrician written, book which is why I can still recommend it.

[Quinn Aeryn Huffman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is deceptively large for how little content their actually is.
There's a lot of white space and pictures of predominantly white babies.
Recites the trope "breast is best" and otherwise feeds the stigma around formula fed babies.
Of the 10 faces on the cover (presumably the writers and editors) all of them were white presenting, and weirdly organized by gender in a way that centered the men.
There was a seemingly obsessive use of son or daughter, he or she, and other binary gender pronouns and intentionally invalidating trans identities.
They use the R word.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful. Not too dry and not too sappy.

I like that I can trust the information in this book. When you google your questions you frequently get directed to a mommy blog and who knows where their information came from. I like I can trust this information based on the name of the Mayo Clinic.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very helpful guide with basic information about what to expect each month in the first year. Some of the additional information on common conditions and illnesses was also helpful, although we did not use it much for that. It probably could stand to be updated a bit so hopefully they will put out a new edition in the next couple years.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good reference guide, but I've actually preferred Baby 411. Baby 411 has more coverage and goes more in-depth. I'm specifically thinking of each book's section about circumcision. Both are matter-of-fact and refrain from giving an actual recommendation, but Baby 411 gives more actual data about the pros and cons. This is still a useful tool, though!

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succinct, science-based advice to help parents navigate the first year of life with a baby. Good to have on-hand as a reference to supplement the care you get from your pediatrician. I think the chapters that describe each month were most helpful.

[Divya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kindle version terribly formatted, no access to table of contents. Good to flip though in a topocwise fashion example month one, month two etc. Becomes exhausting to read at a stretch, quite repetitive.

But useful if you feel clueless about babies

[Laura Spinella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously I haven't read this cover to cover, but it's a great resource in a time where a quick Google search yields five different opposing answers. It's not as good as the pregnancy guide but I still reference it pretty frequently.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very informative and is really good about sticking to the facts. Exactly what you would expect here. Lots of wonderful photos and illustrations that will come in handy when my baby comes! Excellent charts in the back for reference on growth, medication, etc.

[Santa Kratule · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that can be used as a reference book, going to relevant chapters as you need/as your kid grows rather than reading all from the beginning to an end in one go. It follows American guidelines, but is generally still very useful even for those living in other countries.