Synopsis:
A reassuring guide to help parents promote healthy eating habits.
Review:
Superfast Baby has not shown much interest in solid food, so My Child Won’t Eat was really helpful for me. Basically it reassured me that I can trust my instincts that she is getting the nutrition she needs from breastmilk, and that quality (ie, healthy food) is more important than quantity (no force feeding).
Milk, Money, and Madness by Naomi Baumslag and Dia L. Michels
Mother’s Milk by Bernice Hausman
I’m researching an essay on breastfeeding practices and ended up reading these two dense and serious tomes that delve into America’s abysmally low breastfeeding rates. The American Association of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for at least a year, and the World Health Organization recommends at least two. Yet many women opt out of trying, or give up at some point well before a year.
Milk, Money and Madness examines the myriad ways in which formula overtook breastmilk as the food doctors recommended for babies. She also shows the tactics used by formula companies to undermine breastfeeding, practices that can prove deadly for babies born in areas without easy access to clean water and to parents who lack the material resources to finance formula. She also spends a great deal of time explaining why breastmilk is the optimal food for babies and toddlers. It’s a hardcore lactivism advocacy read.
Mother’s Milk is more academic, exploring the discourse of breastfeeding in America. So much food for thought, particularly her insights into race and class. The book reminded me of the wonderful article Watch Your Language.
You may be seeing a lot more breastfeeding books on here because I’m starting the process to become a La Leche League leader–yay!
Synopsis:
An overview of the craze for consumption that has overtaken American parents.
Review:
I would’ve read Parenting, Inc even if I didn’t have a baby, because I find spenders (and hoarders, too) to be endlessly fascinating. I’ve also been interested in child development since I was in high school, and of course as a new mother I was really curious to see what Pamela Paul discovered about the baby industry.
Surprise, surprise–people will say anything to make money! And parents are more than willing to spend it. We are opting out of a lot of this insanity by consciously choosing to be as thrifty, frugal, and natural as possible, mainly because we really want for me to be able to stay at home and homeschool Superfast Baby. However, I will admit that I have an abundance of baby carriers, including a Vatanai Teesta, as well as some Muttaqin Baby diapers, so I am not immune to the lure of the luxury baby item.
I wish she had talked more about the way that formula is marketed, because this is the biggest racket in the parenting industry. Instead, she takes the usual potshots at La Leche League and implies that lactation consultants are in it for the money. But this is just a small nit to pick within a book that does a great job of dissecting the emperor’s new clothes.
I almost sold off the (unwatched) baby DVDs I got as a shower gift, but then found myself in an ethical quandary. If I get rid of them, it’s because I think they are not good for babies to watch, but if I sell them that means some other baby will be watching them. And if I throw them away, I’m adding plastic to a landfill. I decided to keep them for when she is older than two, because we don’t intend to be TV free and they don’t have commercials. Oh, it’s so hard to be the editor-in-chief of Modern Jackass Magazine!
Synopsis:
A practical how-to guide for greening your home.
Review:
I could have done without the celebrity endorsements in Healthy Child, Healthy World. I really don’t care what kind of diapers Brooke Shields uses or that Noah Wyle’s kids are vegetarians. I guess these are good selling points, but to me these sidebars were just a lot of clutter.
I did like the suggestions and recipes for green cleaning, which is something I’ve been working towards for some time, not just for the health of our family but because it’s so much less expensive to make your own cleaning products. But the natural body care section could have used more recipes. I guess I was hoping for something a bit more comprehensive.
Synopsis:
How your birthday tells you who you are.
Review:
Charanavi is a Japanese book in translation and offers a fortune-telling system that relates your birthday to a type of animal. Based on my birthday, 11/4/1973, I am a “potential tanuki.” A tanuki is a sort of raccoon indigenous to Japan. Being a potential tanuki means that I am “genial and rather passive in nature, with a warm and gentle personality that is loved by everyone.”
Um, anyone who knows me in real life is LAUGHING at reading that. I am friendly enough, but I’m not passive about anything, and gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit that doesn’t often manifest in me. (Of course, my enneagram is 4, The Individualist, so I hate to be pigeonholed and if you say I’m one way, I’ll come up with ten reasons why you’re wrong.)
The book is adorably designed and a lot of fun to flip through. I think I’ll actually get a lot of use out of it as I’m crafting characters for my fiction writing. I’m very interested in human behavior and psychology and enjoy reading personality stuff.
Synopsis:
An overview of the recent phenomenon of marriages that end before they reach the five-year mark.
Review:
I hate books that never tell you more than what you read in the title. I generally enjoy books like this, as I’m keenly interested in human behavior and social trends, but this book really didn’t do it for me. I never felt like Paul’s interviewees came alive, and as a result I wasn’t sucked into the drama of their lives. I gave up on it 2/3 of the way through because I just do not have the time to spend with a book I don’t like right now.
Synopsis:
A muck-raking expose of what happens in labor and delivery wards across America.
Review:
Pushed upset me–so much so, that I considered not finishing the book. I have an innate mistrust of doctors and hospitals after some rough treatment I received during a miscarriage last year. where I was not informed of all my options and wound up in the ER with an infection. My quest to find a new care provider ultimately led me to choose home birth with a midwife for my low-risk, healthy pregnancy. It was a wonderful, peaceful experience.
Reading Pushed, you’d think that almost every hospital birth is rife with drama and that almost every OB would rather do a C-section than “allow” a woman to deliver vaginally. Since I don’t have a hospital experience of my own to draw upon, I can’t add to the conversation. However, among my friends, I have heard some horror stories. One woman I know delivered in a closet that was commonly used as a passage, so while she was pushing on her hands and knees there were hospital personnel constantly walking past. Another friend of mine was told at 39 weeks that her baby was “too small” and offered the choice of induction or a C-section–right then and there. Having heard horror stories about Pitocin, and because she had not even begun to dilate, she chose C-section. Her baby was 6lbs and she was unable to breastfeed (she chose to pump for 7 months and is my hero for that). On the flip side, I have several friends who chose the conventional epidural birth and had wonderful, easy experiences with no drama or chaos.
Block makes a convincing case that protocol on labor and delivery wards are driven not by what is best for individual women, but by fear of litigation. The stories that made me the saddest were those about women who expressly declined certain interventions and were given them anyway. The worst was a woman who showed up at the hospital with her baby crowning. Because she had had a previous cesarean, the hospital called in a judge who granted custody of the baby to the hospital and she was forced to have a repeat c-section. The concept of “informed consent” is being eroded day after day by hospitals who view vaginal delivery as a “procedure” to be granted or withheld, rather than as a natural, normal, biological process. Block writes:
What’s best for women is best for babies. And what’s best for women and babies is minimally invasive births that are physically, emotionally, and socially supported. This is not the experience that most women have. In the age of evidence-based medicine, women need to know that standard American maternity care is not primarily driven by their health and well-being or by the health and well-being of their babies. Care is constrained and determined by liability and financial concerns, by a provider’s licensing regulations and malpractice insurer. The evidence often has nothing to do with it.
Today women have unprecedented access to the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves–and therefore the best decisions for their babies. They are in fact in a far better position to make evidence-based decisions than their doctors. They have a right to make those decisions, and they should make those decisions.
The goal is to have a healthy family.
The must-read chapters in this book concern the role of midwifery care in the US, care that is illegal in many states. Whenever I think about a midwife being prosecuted for assisting a birth, the image of a woman being tried as a witch comes to my mind. I love the concept that a midwife doesn’t deliver a baby, she assists at the birth of a family. I really felt that my midwife (and my chiropractor, but that’s another story) shepherded me into motherhood, because the care I got was so personal and intimate.
I am the first to say that I am glad that we have modern medical technology. The friend of mine who was issued the c-section ultimatum was a c-section herself. Her mother’s placenta peeled off, which is a genuine life-or-death situation for the baby. I am beyond glad that my friend is here today, thanks to the doctors who intervened. However, I believe it’s just as important that women who choose to refuse interventions are supported in their decisions, because most births are simply not emergencies.
After reading Pushed, you will never watch “A Baby Story” the same way again.
Touchpoints: Birth to 3 : Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development by T. Berry Brazelton
A good resource for understanding infant and baby behavior and milestones. It’s a bit mainstream for my taste, in that Brazelton never wants you to forget that he is a pediatrician and he knows your baby best. I much prefer the Sears Baby Book, with its emphasis on developing a cue-based bond with your baby. For that reason, I took some issue with his recommendation to put a baby on a schedule by 3 months–not that he advocates ignoring feeding cues, but that he holds it up as possible goal. Superfast Baby is 3 months old and she’s still nursing all the time during the day. I guess if I minded nursing, I’d be more concerned, but I enjoy spending that time with her and she will only be this little once.
The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley
Of course, I do want Superfast Baby to learn to sleep–I am human after all! Since I don’t plan to intentionally nightwean until at least a year, and enjoy nursing her to sleep, the cry-it-out methods are not really right for me. I don’t need to get her on a sleep schedule, time-wise, but now that she’s a little bigger I want to start learning how to shape her sleep. She sleeps well at night, but is still a disorganized napper. I also have the Baby Sleep Book from the Sears Parenting Library.
Note–I know sleep issues are very controversial among parents. I have close friends who are schedule-based and who have used more mainstream methods and they are good parents with wonderful children. We’re all just doing the best we can as parents, and though I am going a different route I support them and their decisions. So–please keep all comments in that spirit and keep this blog a lovely place.
The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers Revised and Updated: The Most Comprehensive Problem-Solving Guide to Breastfeeding from the Foremost Expert in North America by Dr. Jack Newman, MD
My experience with breastfeeding has been a really positive one, and I am looking into becoming either a post-partum doula or a La Leche League leader so that I can help women get off to a good start and solve problems down the road. I really, really loved this book and would consider it a must read for any parents-to-be.
I’m late getting to Gautami’s Non Fiction Meme.
* a) What issues/topic interests you most in non-fiction, i.e, cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that have nothing to do with novels? Books about food, books that explain scientific topics for general readers, biography, memoir, history, travelogues.
I love reading books about my hobbies, particularly knitting and cooking. My library is filled with books of film history, criticism, and theory. I like some books on Christianity by authors like CS Lewis and Dan Allender.
Lately I’ve been reading books on natural family living and breastfeeding because I’m interested in becoming a post-partum doula. I also enjoy reading about natural childbirth and the politics of childbirth and breastfeeding.
I went through a true crime phase in my 20s, but I can’t stomach them now. Small Sacrifices was a particular favorite.
I also like a good muckraking read, like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.
* b) Would you like to review books concerning those?
I’ve been reviewing some crafting books here, and I’d love to review some cookbooks!
* c) Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose.
I have fantasies about reviewing for the New York Times, but right now it’s just a hobby. I’ve done film reviewing professionally, however, and enjoyed it.
* d) Would you recommend those to your friends and how?
I’m the queen of recommending books–it’s a big reason why I blog!
* e) If you have already done something like this, link it to your post.
Browse the tags below-
* f) Please don’t forget to link back here or whoever tags you.
I found it at Shelf Life, A Reader’s Journal, and Framed and Booked.
Synopsis:
A compendium of activities and fun facts for girls.
Review:
Jumprope rhymes, hand-clapping games, the rules of 4-square, and facts about famous female explorers are just a selection from the wonderfully random assortment of Things Girls Should Know. The Daring Book For Girls is a fun piece of nostalgia that I want to share with all the moms of girls I know.
Reading through the book makes me sad that Superfast Baby has inherited a world so unlike the one I grew up in, one where I can’t let her run wild all summer long. I remember staying outside all day, and coming in for dinner with my eyes so sun-blasted that everything was murky green for a few minutes. Not only do we live in a city, but kids just don’t play that way anymore.
I’m looking forward to teach her how to knot friendship bracelets and knit, and hope that she finds a way in our small apartment and scheduled life to go a little crazy. And I adored the list of classic books for girls at the end–couldn’t find anything to disagree with, and much to love.
