Learning to love my library

Below street level at the foot of a windswept 60's tower block lurks our local library. Despite my thrifty nature I have to admit I'd deliberately given it a wide berth until I was pregnant - preferring the guilty pleasure of splurging on 3-for-2 offers at the big chain book stores.

Why the change of heart? Indecision. My natural response to any new challenge in life is to research, research, research. I always start online but ultimately I need reference tomes on my bookshelves. Which ones would see me through this baby-rearing business? Would I be a regimented routine Gina Ford-style mother or a go-with-the-flow Baby Whisperer? Rather than buy up the entire baby section at Borders I finally crossed my library threshold and came home with the full spectrum of options to browse.

As I've said in an earlier post, the winner for us was Baby Secrets, which I now thrust upon any new mum-to-be who shows half an interest. Here are a selection of other great baby-raising books we discovered at the library and have since invested in.

As I swelled into a waddling whale, the once shunned library became an essential pit stop when running (ok, trudging) local errands. And once I'd exhausted the shelves of new clues to what parenthood held in store, I discovered a nice line in parenting magazines to leaf through - full of yet more money saving tips and fairly terrifying labour stories.

Fast forward another few months and my life with tiny baby Ginger involved seemingly endless hours of breastfeeding. None of the guidebooks prepared me for just how much it dominated our days (and nights). In low moments I felt my existence was reduced to that of giant milking machine, but the breakthrough came when I learned to balance a book on the guzzling Ginger and enjoy endless novels through all those hours on the sofa. I've never read so much in all my life!

I'm building my own collection of Thrifty Mum book tips on Listmania - watch this space for new additions.

I'll end this library love-in with a tip from my good friend Legal Mum. She scours the weekend papers for new book reviews to whet her appetite then, rather than fork out she goes online and requests her library order a copy in for her. Not a bad way to keep up with the latest releases without spending a penny...

And - hot off the press - here's the Guardian's list of 1000 novels everyone must read, which should keep me going for a while.