Reddit reviews Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five

These are a couple books/resources I found most helpful:

https://www.amazon.com/Heading-Home-Your-Newborn-Reality/dp/1581108931

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Baby-Child-Birth-Five/dp/0375712038

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Baby-Speaking-You-Behaviors/dp/0547242956

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/Pages/default.aspx

https://www.circleofsecurityinternational.com/

https://www.marchofdimes.org/nursing/modnemedia/othermedia/states.pdf (This is a great explanation of newborn states of arousal. However, I think the information at the end about co-sleeping may be out of date at this point.)

This is my favorite breastfeeding resource. If you are formula feeding, the AAP book as well as Penelope Leach's book both have good guidance. Formula fed babies, like breastfed babies, should be fed on cue/demand, and allowed to determine their feeding volume and schedule. https://education.possumsonline.com/programs/gestalt-breastfeeding-online-program

http://www.zerotothree.org is a great reference for normal development and milestones.

This is a great read about co-regulation, or the process of how babies and children learn to self-regulate:

https://fpg.unc.edu/sites/fpg.unc.edu/files/resources/reports-and-policy-briefs/Co-RegulationFromBirthThroughYoungAdulthood.pdf

Lots of people hate on Ferber, but his book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems has good information on sleep cycles. You don't necessarily have to implement all his techniques, although in some circumstances they are useful.

There are a lot of different soothing techniques out there. The Happiest Baby on the Block covers the basics. Most newborns like to be held flexed with firm touch. They like movement. They like to be close to another human. They like access to their hands. A baby who is in a frantic or crying state (see the march of dimes link) often needs help to come back down to a quiet alert or drowsy state, and soothing by an adult caregiver can be the key. You don't necessarily have to soothe them all the way into sleep, though, especially as a newborn. Sometimes just getting them calm and drowsy is enough that they can do the rest. In addition, a baby who is crying too frantically will have a hard time latching on to a breast or bottle so it is a good idea to feed before they become frantic since it can be difficult to soothe them if they are frantic with hunger. However, even offering a pacifier or finger to suck on, gently bouncing, or holding them can help them get calm enough to eat.

The Informed Parent: A Science Based Resource Guide

Your Baby & Child by Penelope Leach

I found Your Baby and Child by Penelope Leach to be a very good read. It's not focussed at the dad, but I found it to be very reassuring. It covers a lot more than just pregnancy, labour and birth.

My absolute favourite parenting book was Your Baby and Child.

This is it: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Baby-Child-Birth-Five/dp/0375712038

She is British, so a few things are different compared to American advice.

A good parenting book- I always loved Penelope Leach: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Baby-Child-Penelope-Leach/dp/0375712038/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

• prep as many meals as your freezer can handle a couple weeks before bebe is due
  
  
• Your Baby and Child is the only book you need to read. And you can just read as the baby ages. Full of practical, grounded and time-tested advice. I read some of the “how to be a dad” books but honestly never learned much...it’s mostly intuitive. Split the labor if you can, be supportive if you can’t do the work (ie breastfeed)...not rocket science
  
  Congrats and good luck

Penelope Leach's Your Baby and Child does a really good job of explaining situations in a way that represents a young child's perspective of them. It can be easier to empathize with your kids if you can understand how they view the world.

With that said, you should be proud of the way you are responding to a situation that really disturbed you as a parent. Putting yourself in timeout, calling your spouse and your therapist, and investigating ways to handle things better in the future are all really positive ways to proceed. You clearly have developed a lot of skills and emotional tools that your parents didn't have, and that's the result of a lot of hard work on your part. Hang in there!

When our kids were little, my wife and I kept referring to Your Baby and Child.

Your Baby and Child by Penelope Leach was my go-to baby development book.

Two fascinating books I read were:

The Emotional Life of a Toddler

and

Nurture Shock This collects a lot of recent research of child development from babies to teenagers.

Not quite baby related, but worth a read sooner than later is this book: Everything you Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex Because even if you think you are progressive and unashamed, your child will do something that weirds you out at some point.