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Children and Childbirth (again)
Jun. 23rd, 2004 07:38 pmOther people suggested these books to me, so here is another fairly random assortment. I 'm working on reading the ocassional book unrelated to pregnancy or childbirth, but these books (for obvious reasons) will probably continue to feature highly here for the next while. Just so you know.
The Unseen by Zylpha Keatley Snyder This is the latest book by an author whom I loved as a child (by which you might surmise that it is a children’s book), and which my mother asked my opinion of. This naturally required that I read it. Twelve-year-old Xandra is running through the forest one afternoon, as a temporary escape from her too-perfect, too-rich family, when she finds a white bird injured by hunters. She takes it home and patches it up – but when she returns in the morning, it’s gone from its cage, leaving only a feather behind. Wearing the feather around her neck, she soon finds herself talking to the social outcast at school – a scholarship girl – who tells her the feather has the power to let her see the Unseen, the things that are always there but usually can’t be seen. It does. The things that Xandra sees are both beautiful and terrifying – and in trying to understand them, she learns a lot about friendship, family and herself. I admit, I wasn’t as stirred as I was by the ones I read as a child – but that may be because I’m not a child anymore. Still, I think, a quite solid choice if one were looking for a realistic-with-a-touch-of-magic book for, say, a ten-year-old.
Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin This is one that Trying to Be Zen said she bought, but I was tired of waiting for a review from her, and so checked it out myself. Especially after reading the last childbirth book, it seemed time for one primarily about natural childbirth. Ina May Gaskin (though I admit I hadn’t heard of her before) is one of country’s leading midwives, and wrote a book called Spiritual Midwifery which was very popular in the 70s and which is still in print. This book, though, just came in 2003, and is aimed at everywoman, rather than midwives. The goal is to convince women that, contrary to common TV-drama fueled belief, the female body is designed to give birth, and does it very well. The first third of the book is birth stories, mostly from her practice on The Farm, as women describe their labors. All the births are natural, with a few exceptions of women who describe their first standard hospital birth and then a second natural birth. Not all the births are what might normally be described as easy or low-risk, but all the women are happy and satisfied with their experiences, and medical interventions are rare and minimal. Following that are chapters that talk about how the body functions during labor, and attitudes towards labor and childbirth in various traditional and modern cultures. Ina May feels that birth doesn’t have to be painful, certainly not as painful as modern American women are taught that it is. She offers practical and inspirational advice on creating a beautiful birth experience anywhere. While she is obviously focused on natural childbirth, she also has advice that would be helpful to any expectant mother. There’s information on current medical techniques, and some angry words for the U.S.’s rising maternal mortality rate and failure to track or attempt to reduce it. Most helpful to me was the confidence throughout, demonstrated in the individual stories as well as the factual information and statistics: women’s bodies were made to give birth without it being a horrific experience. It may sound small, but not feeling afraid of labor feels big. I wouldn’t call it the only book on natural childbirth you’d ever need, if that’s what you want, but I would definitely highly recommend it. And to quote Ina May’s closing words, “Your body is not a lemon.”
The Unseen by Zylpha Keatley Snyder This is the latest book by an author whom I loved as a child (by which you might surmise that it is a children’s book), and which my mother asked my opinion of. This naturally required that I read it. Twelve-year-old Xandra is running through the forest one afternoon, as a temporary escape from her too-perfect, too-rich family, when she finds a white bird injured by hunters. She takes it home and patches it up – but when she returns in the morning, it’s gone from its cage, leaving only a feather behind. Wearing the feather around her neck, she soon finds herself talking to the social outcast at school – a scholarship girl – who tells her the feather has the power to let her see the Unseen, the things that are always there but usually can’t be seen. It does. The things that Xandra sees are both beautiful and terrifying – and in trying to understand them, she learns a lot about friendship, family and herself. I admit, I wasn’t as stirred as I was by the ones I read as a child – but that may be because I’m not a child anymore. Still, I think, a quite solid choice if one were looking for a realistic-with-a-touch-of-magic book for, say, a ten-year-old.
Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin This is one that Trying to Be Zen said she bought, but I was tired of waiting for a review from her, and so checked it out myself. Especially after reading the last childbirth book, it seemed time for one primarily about natural childbirth. Ina May Gaskin (though I admit I hadn’t heard of her before) is one of country’s leading midwives, and wrote a book called Spiritual Midwifery which was very popular in the 70s and which is still in print. This book, though, just came in 2003, and is aimed at everywoman, rather than midwives. The goal is to convince women that, contrary to common TV-drama fueled belief, the female body is designed to give birth, and does it very well. The first third of the book is birth stories, mostly from her practice on The Farm, as women describe their labors. All the births are natural, with a few exceptions of women who describe their first standard hospital birth and then a second natural birth. Not all the births are what might normally be described as easy or low-risk, but all the women are happy and satisfied with their experiences, and medical interventions are rare and minimal. Following that are chapters that talk about how the body functions during labor, and attitudes towards labor and childbirth in various traditional and modern cultures. Ina May feels that birth doesn’t have to be painful, certainly not as painful as modern American women are taught that it is. She offers practical and inspirational advice on creating a beautiful birth experience anywhere. While she is obviously focused on natural childbirth, she also has advice that would be helpful to any expectant mother. There’s information on current medical techniques, and some angry words for the U.S.’s rising maternal mortality rate and failure to track or attempt to reduce it. Most helpful to me was the confidence throughout, demonstrated in the individual stories as well as the factual information and statistics: women’s bodies were made to give birth without it being a horrific experience. It may sound small, but not feeling afraid of labor feels big. I wouldn’t call it the only book on natural childbirth you’d ever need, if that’s what you want, but I would definitely highly recommend it. And to quote Ina May’s closing words, “Your body is not a lemon.”
