[*Amy*]

I thought it would be nice to share the books and magazines that we each find especially helpful or informative. Since I am a first-time mom (and working from home this summer), I'm reading just about everything!

Spiritual Midwifery (Ina May Gaskin)
I haven't gotten too far into this, but it appeals to me because of the spiritual aspect of childbirth.

The Pregnancy Journal (A. Christine Harris)
It's fun to read the little paragraph or two each night with DH and talk about what the baby is doing.

Conception, Pregnancy and Birth (Miriam Stoppard)
This is a big picture book, which I enjoy. It shows real images of fetal development. Very cool.

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding (LLL)
Of course.

What to Expect When You're Expecting/What to Eat...(Eisenberg & Murkoff)
A close friend who just had a baby told me not to read WTEWYE because it would just freak me out, but I find it very informative in regards to many issues. Any question I have thought of has been addressed, so I am pretty happy with that.

I have also heard about a Dr. Sears book, so I'm hoping to get it this weekend.

How bout y'all?

 

[got_mama_milk?]

I dumped WTE and WTEat in the recycling bin this week. I couldn't bear the thought of someone else reading that garbage. I am glad you are enjoying them.

I will be reading

• The Pregnancy Book by Dr. Sears
• The Birth Book by Dr. Sears
• Birthing from Within by Pam England and Rob Horowitz
• Immaculate Deception II by Suzanne Arms
• The Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth by Henci Goer
• Birth Without Violence by Frederick LeBoyer and
• Silent Knife by Nancy Wainer Cohen.

There are others that I have left out.

I just finished Listening to Your Baby by Dr. Jay Gordon and I think that every pregnant woman, new mom, new dad, mom with any babies, and all family members old enough to help with baby at any time should read that book!!! It's a WONDERFUL book!

My reading list grows with each minute.

edited to add authors

 

[mum5]

mama milk, who are the author's? I am especially interested in reading Listening to your baby. I am currently reading the second Ina May Gaskin book, and am finding it a great read.

 

[mehndi mama]

I pitched the WTEWYE books, AND Spiritual Midwifery when I did my library weeding last month. SM was great for when I was still in the "reassure me that homebirth is good" mindset......but once I got into my "birth is normal, interventions can hinder" mindset, it became very difficult to read without yelling at the book "JUST LET HER DO HER THING, DAMMIT!" :LOL I dug the groovy language, though

I'm reading old books right now, and only one of them is directly related to pregnancy.

Right From the Start by Gail Brewer & some other lady I can't remember right now
Nutrition & Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price
Feed Your Kids Right by Dr. Lendon Smith
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

I'm reading them all for the nutritional info.

Nobody's written a pregnancy book for moms of more than 1-2 kids yet.....and my good ol' Sheila Kitzinger pregnancy book has gone the same way as my Spiritual Midwifery as far as usefulness to me goes - the only thing I need anymore in there is the due date chart & the pregnancy week-by-week thingy. Everything else just doesn't apply.

:

 

[*Amy*]

OK, I'm really curious now why y'all dislike WTE so much. Have I just not gotten to the bullshit yet? That is possible, considering I've only read the first section on just finding out your pregnant. Admittedly though, a lot of it seemed geared for women who don't know much about pregnancy, their rights as women/mothers, etc.

 

[mehndi mama]

For me, it was mainly the whole *attitude* of the book. The tone seemed to be VERY Western-medical-model-is-GOD, KWIM? Anything that says "discuss it with your doctor" every other sentence makes me want to cringe. Not to mention the REALLY bad attitude toward homebirth, or breastfeeding through a pregnancy....GRRR!

As far as the WTEat book, it's based on the lowfat-is-good myth. Very bad for baby development. I mean, you don't want to go overboard, but the whole premise was very faddish nutrition. I can think of a lot better places to find good recipes for real food.

 

[mum5]

hmm, are those pregnancy hormones already affecting my brain??? were those authors alreadt there, or was the e mail edited?? Hope so!!

 

[LianneM]

I'm reading Having a Baby, Naturally, again

I read it BP (before pgcy) but now it means a whole lot more.

I am planning to reread Birthing from Within as well.

I recently ordered a few from Amazon:

Clean House, Clean Planet
How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

 

[Boobs]

I just had to take the books I was reading back to the library. I'll have to recheck them to finish.
Sorry, don't have the authors names on hand.

The VBAC Companion - very, very good!
My Vegetarian Pregnancy - also very good

Tracie (who had another one and can't remember what it was)

 

[wtchyhlr]

I had WTEWYE, and my midwife told me to throw it away (actually she said to burn it) when i mentioned it in a preconception meeting. So i haven't touched it since. I do have the Sears' pregnancy book, and both of Ina Mays' books. Complete Herbal for Pregnancy by Penelope Ody, several others. The Mothering one (havinga baby naturally) is on its way.

 

[*Amy*]

So I took my copies of WTE and WTEat back to Borders and traded them in for The Pregnancy Book and The Birth Book by Dr. Sears. I also looked at Your Pregnancy Week by Week but it didn't seem to be very different than WTE, so I didn't get it. I also got Becoming a Father by Dr. Sears for my husband and it made a very good Father's Day gift.

I'm enjoying Pregnancy but I kind of want to skip ahead to Birth because I'm so curious about that whole process.

One of the books I'm actually using the most is one of my neuroscience texts, which gives day-by-day development for these first few weeks. I love that stuff!

 

[Periwinkle]

OMG thank you for starting this thread!! I went back to look at books I'd saved from my first/previous pregnancy and this is me skimming through them:

uke

(fun with smilies)

Anyway, last go-round I was totally mainstream in my approach to pregnancy, and had, in addition to a few multiples-specific books, What to Expect and Your Pregnancy Week by Week. The only book I'm keeping is Mothering Multiples (a LLL book), which I thought was an amazing book about twin pregnancies/BFing/baby care.

This time, I plan to read:

• Ina May's Guide to Childbirth (Gaskin)
• Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation (England)
• The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth (Goer)
• Active Birth: The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally (Balaskas)
• Having a Baby Naturally (O'Mara)
• Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers (Newman)

and that's just for starters!

Can't wait to check out some of the other recommendations here.

 

[beachrock]

In addition to LOVING Ina May's 2nd book and recommending it to everyone I know, I am reading Adventures in Tandem Nursing by Hilary Flower (LLL publication). However if there is a book that any of you can recommend that is also helpful about nursing through pregnancy, I'd love to hear about it.

Re the Sears Birth Book, I'm not crazy about that one because the tone (like all the Sears books

: ) is one of "I have all the answers and if you just accept that I am great and do as I say, you'll have a great experience too". But that's just my opinion, there is alot of good information in there. As for WTE, I chucked that one half-way through my first PG, it's so alarmist and negative about the birth process.

I

Ina May because she is SOOOOOO empowering!! the opposite of WTE.

Edited to add: When I was pg with my first, the book that really made me excited and inspired about mothering and how wonderful it could be was actually the WAB. Wonderful book!! Hope you're enjoying it Amy!

 

[Krystal323]

If the what to expect pregnancy books are awful (which tey are and I WOULD burn 'em. seriously.), the what to expect toddler books are wretched and disgusting. I followed their advice to a T and succeeded in nearly breaking my precious son's spirit, shaming him, manipulating him, controlling him, ALL for the sake of MY convenience--but masked under the premise that kids are inherently bad and will manipulate you if you let them.

uke

HOW disgusting. If anyone needs to know the first thing about parenting a kid past baby stage, they can go check out www.naturalchild.org for a plethora of information, or dr. sears, or TONS of other resources that don't tell you to treat your kid as if he doesn't matter or is somehow sub-human. I mean, they advocate crying it out in trying to transition a toddler to his own bed. ??!! It makes me ill that clueless pg women all over the nation buy those books in good faith, thinking they're getting all the best childrearing info at their fingertips. Those books are only helpful in creating an emotionally sick and helpless society. Along with public schools, that is.

ok I'm done

Happy reading ladies!!

Do check out wwwnaturalchild.org btw, just for me??

 

[*Amy*]

I'm wondering if any of you have read any water birth books that you'd recommend. It seems like there are a few good choices out there, but I'm reluctant to plunk down my $25 gift certificate just yet.

 

[HelloKitty]

I only have one thing that I read now because, well, I've done this a few times before! :LOL It's a weekly calendar / book that each week shows what developments baby is making and what Momma can expect. At the end of the week I turn to the next page, read that section and I'm good to go til the next week! I'm sorry I can't remember the name of it... I bought it at Motherwear during my last pregnancy. It's very middle of the road - takes about hospital births, home births, water birth, natural pregnancies, pain med pregnancies, etc. So I like it a lot - not preachy either way.

Gotta jump on the anti-WTE soapbox just for a minute... I am glad that someone is enjoying them but I HATED them and I also always recommend against them. The pregnancy one started to annoy me because they go way overboard with all the "best odds diet" talk. You know something - I'm really not evil if I eat a bagel every once in awhile!

Seemed to me that they spent more time trying to get people to buy the What to Eat... book then they did giving solid information. Plus I should also mention I tried making two of the sample recipes in the expecting book and they were just plain NASTY!

But then someone gave me the WTE The First Year book as well as the Toddler one and it really shocked me because they seemed to be almost anti-breastfeeding, and certainly are anti extended breastfeeding. Plus they are very anti-co-sleeping. There was just a whole lot of things in both those books that enraged me - and honestly I'm not easily enraged, I'm usually pretty good about stuff like that!

OK, off the soapbox now.... sorry if I annoyed anyone that likes those books...

 

[Periwinkle]

Hi, just wanted to post an update. I finished reading

* Ina May's Guide to Childbirth (Gaskin)
* The VBAC Companion (?)
* The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth (Goer)
* Having a Baby Naturally (O'Mara)

Ina May's book is fabulous. I actually just ordered her first book (Spiritual Midwifery) from Amazon, and it is so uplifting to read, I'm actually excited about giving birth (and attempting VBAC no less). Henci Goer's Thinking Woman's Guide is hands down my favorite how-to so far - very common sense, evidence-based for research/data junkies like myself. The VBAC Companion is great too, for those reasons. Having a Baby Naturally was so-so for second-time mom like myself, but I would totally recommend it in place of WTEWYE for friends with first pregnancies.

Anyway, my quick $.02!

I am on to read SW and also Active Birth, which I'm hoping gets at techniques for labor, pain relief, etc. that the other ones haven't so much.

 

[LianneM]

I finished Ina May's Guide to Childbirth (LOVED IT!) and now I'm on to Mendelsohn's How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor

 

[Free Thinker]

Hmmm... I don't think I have much time to read :LOL Seriously, I have the WTE, and Dr. Sears PG books. I think I cracked the Dr. Sears one open a few weeks ago, but now I'm focusing on the sleeping books, and trying to get my DD under control :LOL I have Nightime Parenting by Sears, that I have found very informative and an excellent read. My No Cry Sleep Solution is out on loan, but I will be reading it a time or two before new baby gets here. I am starting on the Raising your Spirited child book right now (not sure on the author), and plan to get Sibling w/o Rivalry soon. I guess I'm just not in the whole "birthing" mode yet. I even forget I'm PG sometimes

Oh, and I would HIGHLY recommend get the NCSS, and the NT Parenting books to read before your baby gets here!!! I wish I had them before we had all our sleep problems. I have been sorting them out for months now, and it's just now getting into a routine! We have had sleep issues since DD got home! She would NEVER sleep, not nap, ect. and was staying up 6-8 hours at a time at a few days old! Needless to say, I want to avoid all this if possible w/ #2 :LOL