I decided to use the long weekend and my imminent arrival at the third trimester to start reading up about what happens once the baby is born. It’s all very well following my journey over these nine months with various tales from a range of celebrities and unknown mothers alike, but soon enough I am going to need to know what to do once I am caring for this child outside of my womb and I can’t rely purely on instinct.

Anyway there appear to be two general schools of thought on early parenting, or at least two that have been thrown into the baby ring for me to educate myself on. In fact it appears to me that most mums in this generation have at least read the theories of Tracy Hogg and Gina Ford and loosely speaking have brought up their baby along one set of premises.

I am roughly 15 pages in to Tracey Hogg’s theories so my ability to tell you much about it is limited to the reasons why she got into “baby whispering” and why she thinks it is the best way to raise a baby.

But it is interesting and I am really enjoying reading it. Most importantly though, it really makes sense. Seriously, everything she says I feel I can relate too, it absolutely feel like a logical way to view bringing up baby and so I feel like this might be the way forward.

Except I know I have Ford to plough through and like any good Philosophy graduate I am well aware that you don’t make up your mind until you appreciate both sides of the coin.

Thing is, I also know from my degree that I am quite prone to seeing the value in each argument and just picking one theory because ultimately you can’t spend your life floating in no-mans land of indifference. Even with my dissertation I’m not sure I believed at least half of the 10,000 words I wrote, but you can’t be a good philosopher if you’re unable to fish out the truth (or at least a truth as far as you can argue it).

But it does lead me to be slightly worried that after doing my duty to pre-parenthood and reading my somewhat opposing manuals I am going to just pick one, because, well, that’s what I ought to do and my baby will be raised on theories plucked from the sky with as much thought as an “ip dip sky blue” kids rhyme.

Anyone have any more compelling arguments as to how to raise this baby?