Interview with Roni Jay - author of Babies For Beginners
Why did you decide to write another babycare book? Isn 't it all covered in the baby books and the classes already?
You would have thought so, wouldn 't you? But in fact, I 'd found quite a few gaps in the information when I first started this having babies lark. For example, some books will tell you how to wind a baby, but you 'd be hard pressed to find one that tells you how to know when it needs winding. And everyone tells you it 's good to talk to babies, but what on earth are you supposed to say to them after the first couple of minutes, apart from 'Goo, goo, diddums ' or the equivalent? I wanted to write a book that assumed absolutely no experience at all, which is the case for most new parents. The idea was not to treat them as if they 're stupid; I wrote the book on the assumption that the reader would be intelligent but uninformed.
Why did you feel you needed to strip the exercise back to the bare essentials?
So many new parents are made - unintentionally - to feel that they 're no good as parents if they get all these complicated instructions wrong. You know the kind of thing: you have to wash the baby 's hair before you put it in the bath, or you have to have a proper steriliser or the baby will get dreadful stomach bugs. In fact people across the globe, and back through history, have successfully raised children without any of these sophistications. I wanted to reassure parents that so long as the baby is alive, happy and healthy, they 're doing a good job.
I haven 't said that parents shouldn 't bother with this procedure or that piece of equipment - that 's up to them. I 've simply pointed out that these things are bonuses, not essentials. Yes, you need to sterilise bottles, but a pan of boiling water will do the job fine. And so long as you don 't drown the baby in the bath, you 're doing OK. If it also comes out cleaner than it went in, you can feel proud of yourself.
Why did you decide to make this book humorous?
For two reasons really. First of all, the prospect of looking after a small baby is so daunting that anything which helps relieve the stress for the parents has to be a good thing. The more you can lighten up, the more enjoyable the first few weeks are. And they should be great fun. It 's not easy, but at least I felt I could help a bit by being less serious and overwhelming about it.
And the second reason for putting in the humour was because I felt it would make the book a much more enjoyable read for fathers. They want this information as much as mothers do, but they often find the books harder to plough through. Just because you want to be as involved as you can in looking after your new baby, it doesn 't mean you also want to spend hours reading dry text books about how to do it. And of course, just because most mothers manage to absorb the information more easily, it doesn 't mean they don 't appreciate an enjoyable read at the same time.
Was there anything you wished you 'd been told before your first child was born?
Yes, I really wanted to know what labour would feel like, and how much it would hurt, and no one would tell me. They all said that it was impossible to describe, or that they couldn 't really remember. They just hinted that it would be excruciatingly painful without giving me any actual information. Of course it 's different for everyone, but that doesn 't mean you can 't give people a pretty good idea of what to expect. That 's why the first section of the book is about how to give birth.
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30 Something and the Clock is Ticking
