Books

The Pregnancy Book A great month by month resource, much better than the "What to Expect" series.

Gentle Birth Choices: This book helped me to decide on the kind of birth that I wanted to have.

The Continuum Concept The most important book I read as a parent-to-be. "the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution." See also: the Liedloff Continuum Network

Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent -a wonderful cross-cultural comparison of child-raising practices, from feeding to sleeping and everything in between. A wonderful book to read along with The Continuum Concept, providing more data and information to back up the assertations there.

Questioning Circumcision : A Jewish Perspective We made a decision not to circumcise our baby. For us, the medical decision was really clear - what was hard was the religious, cultural & family implications, against the obvious harm and pain done to a non-consenting child. This was a book that helped clarify our thinking, and gave us good material for discussions with our families.
See also: Circumcision Resource Center

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding - If you're having a baby, you should plan to breastfeed (barring major medical complications, of course). Moms planning to breastfeed should find a La Leche League meeting near you to go to before and after your baby is born, and get this book for the best of the best of their advice. Unless you've seen someone nurse up close and personal, you should go to a meeting even if you get the book - positioning is everything, and it's hard to learn from pictures.

Natural Family Living: By the editor of Mothering magazine (which I also highly recommend!)

The Vaccine Guide: Making an Informed Choice - Let me be clear - as far as I am concerned there are NO good resources out there that present information about vaccines in an unbiased and rational way. That said, this book has some helpful information in it and it's been a help in choosing what vaccinations we felt were appropriate for Zach to get, which ones to delay, which ones to skip.
Natural Family Living also has a good chapter on vaccination.

The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two - By the authores of The Pregnancy Book above, this is a great resource book. Sears coined the term "Attachment Parenting" and goes into detail on what it means and why you should do it in this book.

Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child - this is a great resource to have on hand. It talks about all of the common childhood ailments, and gives allopathic (normal western medicine) remedies, homeopathic remedies, herbal and nutrrtional remedies, and then makes a recommendation on which are the best to use in a given case. The only book I've found that does this sort of comparison - I bought the grown-up version as well.

Websites

Assorted Great Sites

• I highly recommend Nancy Wainer Cohen's childbirth classes (Eastern MA)
• The Liedloff Continuum Network:
  If you haven't read The Continuum Concept, you should.
• Attachment Parenting International
• The Natural Child Project, from whom I got my bumper sticker:
  "Treat your child as you like to be treated"
• Mother's Nature, a site oriented around breastfeeding and attachment parenting. Some great resources, discussions, and a nice auction site.

Breastfeeding

• www.breastfeeding.com
• La Leche League
• Promotion of Mother's Milk, Inc., which includes weight and length charts for breastfed babies.

Toys & Diapers & Clothes & Stuff

• Slightly Crunchy
• Wears the baby
• The Natural Baby Catalog
• One Hot Mama - A truly wonderful site with an attitude.
• A wonderful site for non-plastic toys and the like, NaturalToys.com

Carriers, Night Time & Other Stuff

Some quick reviews of baby stuff I found particularly useful: carriers, night time, and other stuff.

Baby carriers

• Sling: I definitely recommend the Maya Wrap sling. I also have one with padded rails, and I found it much less adjustible and harder to manage Zach in. It's also bulkier to carry around.
• Frame Pack: We chose the Tough Traveller "Stallion" because it was the only one we could find that would adjust to fit all of the adults in our extended family, from me (5'5") to Dave (6'6") and everyone in between. They make a great carrier and are helpful wonderful people. Frame packs are great for slightly older babies, for everything from hiking / mountain climbing to doing the grocery shopping.
• The Baby Trekker is a terrific carrier - I liked this much much better than the Baby Bjorn, which we also had, because it has a waist strap. It distributes the weight between your shoulders and your hips, and the baby can ride facing in our out on your front on back (it takes some practice to get the baby on your back yourself!). The only problem we ever had with it is that the waist strap is velcro and makes noise when you take it off, which makes it hard to put down a kidlet that has gone to sleep in the carrier.

Night time

• The Co-sleeper is a three sided crib that attaches to the side of your bed. The baby can sleep in it and be in easy reach for nursing, etc, but not at risk of rolling out of bed, etc. I know people have had a lot of luck with this and speak very highly of it, though in our case Zach wanted to be closer to me and it served the same purpose a bed rail might - to keep him from rolling off the bed - as well as being a great place to put laundry :)
• Bed rails: A bed rail is a necessity if your bed is not on the ground. Also great for traveling. Great because it lets you put the baby on the outside of you, and you can snuggle up to your sweetie, rather than putting the baby between the two of you and both of you having to make sure to give the baby enough room.

Other stuff

• Hylands teething tablets were a life saver for us - this is a super gentle homeopathic remedy, so I didn't feel badly about giving it to him if I wasn't sure if his teeth were the problem or not. We got them at the local health food store, but you can also find them here.
• Nursing shirts! Some moms manage without them, but if it's cold or you don't want to show your belly, they are a necessity. If you are local to it, there is a Motherwear factory outlet in Northhampton, MA, or you can use their online catalog. I also got shirts on the Mother's Nature auction site as well as on ebay.
• A nursing pillow is a very good thing to have. There are some wonderful ones out there - I used a Boppy and liked it very much.
• Breastpumps are, in general, miserable. That said, they are very useful things, and I was very pleased with the two I had. The Pump in Style, by Medela, was great for serious pumping at work. The Avent Isis pump is a great hand pump and is perfect for times when you aren't near a power source and privacy at the same time - I bought mine after trying to deal with pumping in an airport!
• Magick Baby Powder is clay powder rather than a talc powder. There's worry with talc powder that it gets in the air and into babies' lungs, which is a bad thing- this is heavier and doesn't get into the air nearly as much. Mixed with water and made into a slip (paste), this has been the absolute best thing for diaper rash we've found. We got it at Whole Foods, or you can order it on the Magick Botanicals web page.
• My favorite products for the bath were from NaturalBodyBabies - we use their banana shampoo and their honey wash, which are both non-chemical and aloe-based. It looks like they also carry a couple of other nice products, but I haven't tried them. We then moved onto the MOP (Modern Organic Products) Pear Shampoo and Leave-in Conditioner

Kid's Books

Some of my favorite small kid's books:

Click Clack Moo is terrific, and the sequel is great fun as well.

My dad found these wonderful Henry David Thoreau stories..

Anything by David Weisner - some favorites: (The three pigs will be lost on small kids, but had most of the adults laughing out loud)

Some other wonderful books: