while Delia tells you how to make the perfect omelette, Gina Ford in her baby-care manual The Contented Little Baby Book, draws on 30 years' experience to tell you how to nurture the perfectly happy baby. Babies who are settled into Gina's gentle routines are happy and contented because their needs for food and sleep are appropriately met and they should sleep for their longest spell at night from an early age. In two recent surveys the Daily Mail listed Gina as one of the most influential women in the field of health in Britain today and The Times listed her as one of the top fifty people who influence the way we eat, exercise and think about ourselves. Her advice and methods have been a godsend to tired, stressed parents throughout the world and have helped a generation of children go to bed on time and sleep soundly through the night.

She worked in many parts of the world with hundreds of different families, from leading lawyers and high-flying bankers to newspaper editors and other media personalities. Using routines that match a growing baby’s innate natural rhythms, Gina believes parents can prevent the hunger, overtiredness and colic that cause excessive crying. It quickly established Gina as an influential new authority on baby and childcare issues and has remained one of the bestselling parenting books in the UK.

It quickly established Gina as an influential new authority on baby and childcare issues and has remained one of the bestselling parenting books in the UK for almost 20 years. Gina believed passionately in not only nurturing the child, for which she had a particular talent, but also ensuring that the mother was well cared for too. Kitty had quite a low birth weight, so I stayed on the regime for a one-week-old baby for some time. For years she was one of the most sought-after maternity nurses, specialising in caring for newborn babies and toddlers with serious sleeping and feeding problems. On the strength of this gift with babies, and her proven practical ability, she was recommended to other families and her reputation escalated.

She would live with families for anything from two weeks to six months, and was on duty 24 hours a day, six days a week. On moving to Edinburgh to study Hotel and Catering, she joined a premier babysitting agency, and was hugely popular with parents of young babies. Contrary to Gina’s wishes, Kitty was often lulled to sleep by the sound of the Eastenders’ theme tune! Gina lays out her weekly and then monthly plans designed for the needs of your developing baby at each stage.In this life-saving new book, she offers exhausted parents clear, step-by-step solutions to resolving a whole range of sleep issues.

In response to criticism levied against her, Ford suggests that the 25% market share of parenting books that her publications enjoy is proof that her methods do not harm children. This completely revised edition of The New Contented Little Baby Book contains the most up-to-date advice available to parents. I found it was best to be at home for her midday sleep, but loved knowing that I would have 2 ½ hours every lunchtime to get on with chores or catch up on sleep. The Independent newspaper, in the feature ‘Power of one’, describes her determination to change attitudes of parenting this century. In 2004 Gina recognised that, despite the wealth of parenting information available, many mothers still felt isolated.

In January 2005, Ford had a meeting with BBC and Outline Productions, and refused to agree to certain reality-style aspects of the format. It was a runaway success, largely due to enthusiastic personal recommendation, its matter-of-fact style and practical approach appealing to fathers and mothers alike. She was a very contented baby, and on the rare occasions when she did cry we could suss out what was wrong as we understood her feeding and sleeping patterns so well. is a British author of childcare books in the United Kingdom and a former maternity nurse who has cared for over 300 babies during her career. I’d heard about Gina Ford from friends who’d been very successful in getting their babies to sleep through the night.