Library Mama

Your Best Birth by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein Lake and Epstein start this positive and empowering look at birth with explaining how even a woman in love with her Tylenol PM could want to try for a natural birth, and their own birth stories. It’s first and foremost about opening up choices about birth, including choosing your place (hospital, birth center or home), care provider (OB, GP or midwife), and back-up team. (They even suggest finding a doula first, who can help you pinpoint your birth style and direct you to doctors and midwives in the area who share your philosophy.) Though they don’t hesitate to point out that the U.S. is at the bottom of the world charts in terms of maternal and infant safety during birth, they focus more on what women can do than on the depressing statistics. They talk about what interventions are out there, risks, and when they are really appropriate. The C-Section chapter talks about both medically unsound reasons to do them as well as ways to make your c-section as gentle as positive as possible if it turns out that you do need one. They talk about communicating with providers and hospital staff, birth for survivors of sexual abuse, different (and more American-focused) birth class/philosophy options, and postpartum care. They include profiles of “birth goddesses”, including birth activists, celebrity moms who opted for natural births, and regular women with amazing births.

One review I read (Library Journal, I think, but maybe Booklist) said that since the authors seemed to think that hospitals cared more about avoiding litigation and following hospital policies than individuals, this shouldn’t be the only book libraries carry on the topic. I would really like to know where the reviewer gave birth to come up with a different opinion on modern birth. This book reflects the reality of modern birth in America, from my point of view and the many other mothers I’ve talked to. And it does it in a way that will leave you feeling more informed, confident and excited about birth.

The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin When I prepared to give birth, I hired a doula, a professional birth support person. She made a huge difference in making the whole birth experience smoother and more positive, and I recommend hiring a doula to anyone giving birth. But, suppose you can’t hire a doula? Suppose you want your parenting partner or your best friend to come to the birth with you? Or, that such a person wants to educate him or herself to be able to help you even if you have a doula as well. In that case, you want this book. It covers pregnancy, birth and newborn care from the perspective of a partner, rather than the mother or a medical professional. It includes such topics as preparing for labor, helping the mother find an effective labor coping pattern, common medical interventions, their side effects and risks and how to discuss them with hospital staff, what to do if there is a personality conflict between the mother and the assigned nurse or doctor, and how to best support a mother in labor who’s changed her mind about what she wants from her birth plan. I read the old, falling-apart edition that my midwifery still keeps. This edition placed rather more stress on the importance of learning and practicing several breathing patterns than is currently in vogue (my birth class instructor said that practicing breathing before you were in labor was like practicing breathing for a marathon without running); I don’t know if the new edition has changed. Overall, however, the information was extremely helpful. There are even helpful summary pages labeled in white text on darker bars on the sides of pages, so you can fan out the pages and find the part you need in the heat of things. Simkin is the founder of Doulas of North America/DONA, and this book is required reading for many doula training courses as well.

Circle of Magic – the Circle Opens: Sandry’s Book, Tris’s Book, Daja’s Book, Briar’s Book by Tamora Pierce amnachaidh and I listened to this whole series in the car (separately). The four short books go together nicely to form one main story arc. It’s something like an earth magic Hogwarts, with children of different backgrounds – noble, merchant, trader, thief - coming together at the monastery of Winding Circle, finding they have unique magical powers and learning how to use them. The plots are entertaining but fairly predictable – the heart of the books are the four young mages and the circle (formed in book one) that binds their magic together. The recordings are done by Full Cast Audio, each character with a different reader and narrated by the author. It took me a little while to get used to the slightly exaggerated enunciation that the producer apparently prefers, but once over this little hump, the full cast presentation works very well. I’m sad that only one book of the following quartet has been recorded, with no apparent plans to do the other three.

Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent As a teen, in an era when options for women were quite limited, Vincent’s parents told her to become a nurse, because she’d always have a job. And with her first OB rotation, Vincent was hooked on birth. In the era of Twilight Sleep, a patient refuses to lie down or take drugs. “Please lie down! What if the baby falls out?” Peggy pleads. “Well, darlin’, that’s the whole point, ain’t it?” the woman responds between contractions. She chronicles her path to becoming a Certified Nurse Midwife, working at the Bay Area’s most prestigious birth center and doing home births (then covered by insurance.) The meat of the book are the birth stories, beautiful, bizarre, and hilarious. From that first rebellious mother to births in lesbian communes and on board ship, barely-caught births and breech births, births in hospitals and at home, this is a heart-warming tale from a midwife passionate about birth and women’s right to birth choices. If you’re interested in birth, but less in scary medical facts like Born in the USA (or need to recover from reading it), this is the perfect book.

Another cross-section of (mostly) vacation reading – one for the car, one from a friend, and a couple to read to your favorite child. And, ok, every one involving children or childbirth. I'm working on a different kind of book, promise!

Birthing from Within by Pam England A little older than most of the childbirth books I’ve been reading, but still well worth it. This book is about childbirth, specifically from the mother’s point of view, with some attention to the partner. She’s not so much interested in natural vs. assisted birth, as in the parents getting connected with their feelings and fears about childbirth and impending parenthood. You can’t control what will happen, she seems to say, and your experience will not be the medical event your doctor will tell you about. Prepare for what you can, address your fears – and there’s also a lot on natural pain relief techniques. Birth is an important rite of passage, and learning only about the three stages of labor won’t prepare you for this side of things.

Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath Trust Polly Horvath to write a funny and yet touching book about a seemingly depressing subject. Primrose lives in a small fishing village in British Columbia with her parents, until they are lost at sea. Everyone else is convinced that they are dead, but Primrose, narrating, is so convinced that they will come back that the book is saved from being the mournful reflections of a new orphan. Instead, she explores life inside the village as she is passed around from one person to the next. From the old maid she was first left with, to her happy-go-lucky uncle, the stuck-up school counselor and the owner of the town’s one restaurant, the characters are full of vivid and amusing life. I especially enjoyed listening to the young, scrappy-sounding voice of the narrator on the audio version.

Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It by Andrea Buchanan Thanks to garrity for loaning me this one. So, you’re about to become a mother for the first time, talking to mothers you know, reading books on the subject, hanging out with the children of friends. Are you prepared? No, says Buchanan. Motherland is an entirely different country, and you’re reading guidebooks and talking to natives. The shock of adjusting to new parenthood has stages very similar to culture shock, from euphoria to hatred of the new culture to final adjustment. Buchanan shares her own experiences in a series of essays grouped around each of these stages. More important than the stages, though, is her firm conviction that not every part of being a mother is fun. Acknowledging this often taboo fact does not mean that you don’t love your child or are a bad parent. Life is always complex, and we shouldn’t expect parenting to be different. Though the premise may sound academic, the book isn’t, with Buchanan’s essays sharing the nitty-gritty tears, laughter, and exhaustion of the new mother.

Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Susan Guevara
Fairy Tales by Berlie Doherty, illustrated by Jane Ray
These are two lovely collections of fairy tales that I recently shared with the 5-year-old Wild Woman, and which we both greatly enjoyed. Not One Damsel in Distress, as the title indicates, features only stories with strong heroines – not modern-day fantasies, but real, strong folk heroes who have made it through the centuries. I keep a sharp eye out for collections of this nature, and this is one of the best. It’s a few stories common to collections of this nature (though mostly not so well known otherwise), and many that even I had never seen before – crack to the fairy tale collector. More important to the Wild Woman, Yolen is an amazing storyteller, able to tell a compelling story in a multitude of different styles. The illustrations didn’t do much for me, but WW didn’t seem to mind, and you can’t have everything.

The Doherty collection is mostly fairy tale standards – “Snow White”, “Rapunzel” – with a few less common stories like the Russian tale “The Firebird” thrown in. It’s not the addiction of new stories that Yolen had for me, but these are stories that every child should grow up with. Doherty is an award-winning British author and tells the stories lyrically, attentive to their original sources. However, what really makes this book shine are the illustrations. Every page is illustrated in full color with gold accents, with each tale having its own frame. The characters, while much more simply dressed than typical in fairy tales, look beautiful. They are multiethnic without making a big deal about it – just people of fairly indeterminate race but different skin tones interacting in a magical fairy tale world. If you know a child who needs a basic collection of fairy tales to love, this would be my top pick.

Other 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.”