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The Blue Jay’s Dance
Apr. 8th, 2011 04:36 pmI am discovering through my work duties that the nonfiction works of popular fiction authors often languish. This one looked too interesting to pass when it came up on my list of long unread books.
The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich In this book, Erdrich, author of several authors focusing on Native Americans and prairie life, writes about the first year of her daughter’s life. Although she says the baby in the book is a composite of all three of her daughters, in the book it sounds like she is writing about the youngest of her three daughters. It’s poetic and reflective, honest about the difficulty of parenting a baby while at the same time stunningly beautiful. It doesn’t hurt that Erdrich lives in a cabin in the woods, and the baby’s stages are mixed in with large doses of the natural life outside their window and the woods through which they walk. She writes, as an example of the tough times, of how hard it is to keep a sense of self apart from the baby, how easy suicide seems after weeks of sleepless nights – only her self is so absorbed in the baby that she feels that she has no self of her own left to kill. On the plus side, she writes about breastfeeding, how many great romantic writers’ deep inarticulate longings were really for that feeling of unity and transcendence that breastfeeding brings. Despite the poetry and deep thoughts, the book is slim enough to get through easily, an important consideration for sleep-deprived new parents. The saddest part for me was knowing that the happy blended family described in this book fell apart just a few years later, giving the already fleeting pleasures of a baby and the changing of the seasons an even more ephemeral feeling.
Crossposted to http://sapphireone.livejournal.com and http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .
The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich In this book, Erdrich, author of several authors focusing on Native Americans and prairie life, writes about the first year of her daughter’s life. Although she says the baby in the book is a composite of all three of her daughters, in the book it sounds like she is writing about the youngest of her three daughters. It’s poetic and reflective, honest about the difficulty of parenting a baby while at the same time stunningly beautiful. It doesn’t hurt that Erdrich lives in a cabin in the woods, and the baby’s stages are mixed in with large doses of the natural life outside their window and the woods through which they walk. She writes, as an example of the tough times, of how hard it is to keep a sense of self apart from the baby, how easy suicide seems after weeks of sleepless nights – only her self is so absorbed in the baby that she feels that she has no self of her own left to kill. On the plus side, she writes about breastfeeding, how many great romantic writers’ deep inarticulate longings were really for that feeling of unity and transcendence that breastfeeding brings. Despite the poetry and deep thoughts, the book is slim enough to get through easily, an important consideration for sleep-deprived new parents. The saddest part for me was knowing that the happy blended family described in this book fell apart just a few years later, giving the already fleeting pleasures of a baby and the changing of the seasons an even more ephemeral feeling. Crossposted to http://sapphireone.livejournal.com and http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .
The Breastfeeding Mother’s Guide to Making More Milk by Diana West and Lisa Marasco While I’m not at all happy that I have personal reason to need this book right now, I am really thrilled to have found it. West and Marasco are both IBLC-certified lactation consultants with personal experience with low milk supply. They are very reassuring and nonjudgmental – you will find neither the idea that problems are all in your head or your fault nor the idea that everyone needs to supplement. First, they go over common things that people think are signs that babies aren’t getting enough but really are not. Then they talk about how to tell if you baby isn’t getting enough. If not, is the problem your baby, your feeding habits or something on your end. They go into quite a few specific situations here, covering many problems that I’ve known people to have. For instance, I hadn’t known that milk production is stimulated most heavily by night nursing, so that the common practice of pumping during the day so that Dad can bottle-feed baby and let Mom sleep is doubly harmful to establishing milk supply. They also go over supply problems caused by PCOS, hormone imbalance, and low breast tissue (either from nature or from breast surgery). Next, solutions, and a whole raft of them: how to best establish a good milk supply; how to optimize with pumping; various pharmaceutical and herbal galactagogues and when to use them. Finally, dealing with the emotions of low milk supply and how to define your own success. It’s also linked with a web site, 
Good Night, Sleep Tight by Kim West What to do with a baby who just will not respond to Elizabeth Pantley’s gentle methods, whose sleeping patterns are resulting in significant sleep loss for both the baby and the caretaker? These were the questions that led me to look for an approach somewhere in between Ferber and other cry-it-out methods, which are very hard on both parents and children, and Pantley’s very gentle suggestions. This was the book that I came up with. I was expecting to have some problems with her approach, and boy, did I. But overall, if one ignores especially her breastfeeding advice except as it bears directly on sleep, the kernel of her method for teaching babies to fall asleep on their own seems straightforward and less traumatic than other popular methods.
Child of Mine by Ellyn Satter This fabulous book covers feeding children from infancy through preschool. Satter has been counseling families with food issues for nearly 30 years now, and the book is full of references to other studies, so this is an authoritative book. If you’ve found yourself engaging in any of the following behaviors with your child, then this book or its sequel, Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family, would be excellent choices: Making separate meals for your child; bribing your child to eat; avoiding eating out of the house; battling with your child to finish rejected food or to eat less. She sets goals for preschoolers such as being able to try new foods, rejecting foods politely, stopping when they are full, and being able to eat out of the house. Feeding and mealtimes should focus on enjoyment for parents and children and on children learning to eat the food of their family and culture. 
How to Photograph Your Baby by Nick Kelsh So you’ve got a baby cute enough to be a model, but not the fortune to spend on a professional to have the model-quality photos taken. In several short lessons, with big text and lots of pictures, Kelsh walks through the basics of taking excellent photographs of your baby with entry-level equipment. The basic technique involves getting up close and using indirect natural light; he also recommends having photo sessions when your baby is in a good mood where you just take a lot of pictures. It’s short, funny (I especially loved the “What Rembrandt would have looked like if he had used a flash” side-by-side comparison), and exceedingly helpful.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
