Posts
In honor of National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day:
Death of a Dream: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Newborn Loss
This is a great book, aimed primarily at caregivers - doctors, nurses, family members, etc. It has details - written in easy-to-understand language, though - about the medical causes of miscarriage and stillbirth, including genetic factors, placental abnormalities, and so forth. Gives clear suggestions for support people as to what to say and how to act. This book would be helpful for parents, but I would most recommend it to doulas and nurses.
A Woman Doctor's Guide to Miscarriage: Essential Facts and Up-To-The Minute Information on Coping With Pregnancy Loss and Trying Again
, by Lynn Friedman, MD and Irene Daria.Goes into a lot of detail on the causes and prevention of miscarriage, particularly recurring miscarriage, with smaller chapters on grief and trying again. Has a neat section at the back of women's stories.
Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby
by Deborah L. Davis.Explores in detail the grief process and the emotions that parents may be going through. Focuses mostly on the emotional aspects with very little information about the physical process, and focuses primarily on stillbirth rather than miscarriage. Helpful for anyone, though.
Molly's Rosebush
, by Janice Cohn and Gail Owens.This is a really simply, touching book about miscarriage for children from the perspective of the older sister. It makes a great analogy that just as some seeds don't sprout, and some eggs don't hatch, some babies don't get to be born.
Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
This is a very interesting and enjoyable read about really, really rich people and how they live. It stands in sharp contrast to The Millionaire Next Door
As previously mentioned, I am reading through the Jack Ryan novels:
Red Rabbit
The Hunt for Red October
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
My HG-sister Diana of Birth at Home in Arizona writes a review of Managing Morning Sickness: A Survival Guide for Pregnant Women
Your Pregnancy Recovery Guide
It won't harm your baby if you cannot or choose not to breastfeed.
When you decide to discontinue nursing, you can either taper off gradually or stop cold turkey. Each way has its advantages.
So, while this book may be helpful for some moms, I can't recommend it without reservation.
Patriot Games
I think I'm going to read through all of Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, in storyline order. Need something to get me through this long, hot summer.
Read lately:
The Rookie Mom's Handbook: 250 Activities to Do with (and Without!) Your Baby
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
There are lots of books that tackle broad themes, that analyze the world from great remove. This is not one of them. Blink is concerned with the very smallest components of our everyday lives - the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress. When it comes to the task of understanding ourselves and our world, I think we pay too much attention to those grand themes and too little to the particulars of those fleeting moments. But what would happen if we took our instincts seriously?
Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise
, by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. - Written by sisters, this book (along with Suze Ormod's The Courage to Be Rich, and Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston) was one of the inspirations for The Fly Lady's system. I personally find the card file concept to be overwhelming, and not as thoroughly explained as could be, but I do use a tickler file for almost everything and heartily recommend it.The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
, by Alan Greenspan. I thoroughly enjoyed this book - as much as I read of it. At 544 pages, at a certain point I decided that it was just taking too long to read and I had other, more pressing things to do with my time. The first part of the book is an autobiography of Greenspan, but really it reads as a politico-economic history of the last fifty years. The second half of the book is a discussion of the current state of world economics. This book is fascinating, but not for everyone.
Please, somebody send this headline witter a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Girlfriend Accused of Stabbing Man with Scissors
sTORI Telling
Ok, I'm not a fan, but I checked it out because I can't resist a catchy title. Interesting (I read it in less than 24 hours), but not brilliant, much like Tori Spelling's acting.
The Gatecrasher
I was a little disappointed when, while writing the review of "Remember Me?", I wikipedia'ed the author and found that Sophie Kinsella is actually a pseudonym, and the author has a whole other life writing more serious fiction as Madeleine Wickham (which may or may not be her real name either). One has a certain impression of one's authors, a little fantasy of a sweet young lady giving up her day job and plugging away at one slightly-autobiographical novel or so each year, and becoming a surprise success. Only to find out she has been writing longer and much more seriously all along. One does not like to have one's bubble burst.
Fans may be interested to know that The Gatecrasher
Buck Up, Suck Up . . . and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room
I had to read the title to this book three times before I "got it". It rhymes. Duh.
Anyway, in the authors' words:
This book won't change your life.
If you buy this book and read it, you will not make $1 million - at least not because you bought this book. This ain't the New Testament or the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Talmud or the Koran... Here's what you'll get: good, sound advice on how to win. You'll get techniques and tactics that are battle-tested and proven in the white-hot crucible of politics."
and The War Room back-to-back. Now that's a trip.
Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts
From the back cover:
While countless breastfeeding guides crowd bookshelves, not one of them speaks to women with anything approaching bestselling author Fiona Giles's level of intimacy and vitality. In Fresh Milk, through a provocative collection of stories, memories, and personal accounts, Giles uncovers the myths and truths of the lactating breast.
Remember Me?
I loved, loved, loved Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess
Running with Scissors: A Memoir
Mr. Burroughs writes:
Some considered my brother to be a genius. And while it's true that he could program computers the size of deep freezers when he was twelve and had read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A-Z the summer he turned fifteen...
Babies, breastfeeding, and bonding
Out of print and hard to come by (Amazon has only 1 copy available), this 1987 book by midwifery pioneer Ina May Gaskin is a treasure. I was amazed at how much useful and accurate information is in this book, written at a time when so much advice given to women about breastfeeding was just plain wrong. Try to find it at your local library or used-book store.
This looks interesting: The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program: Follow Your Child's Natural Sleep Rhythms for Better Nights and Naps
Dr. Moore was a sleep researcher who got pregnant and thought, "No problem, I'm an expert at sleep." Then her babies showed her who's boss. Her nursery became her sleep lab and she noticed something that wasn't talked about. 90-minute sleep/alertness cycles.
Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, by Alex Harris and Brett Harris.
The authors of Do Hard Things have a novel approach to book marketing. They are asking readers to pledge to order a copy of their forthcoming book - a hardback non-fiction book for teens ("a genre that is about as popular with young people as foreign language math textbooks") - on March 25th. By doing so, they hope to have a one-day bump in their Amazon.com ratings which will spur additional book sales.
Alex and Brett Harris are the younger twin brothers of Joshua Harris of I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame, and the sons of homeschooling pioneers Gregg and Sono Harris, as well as older brothers to thirteen-year-old book blogger Isaac and Fearlessly Feminine's Sarah.
All this reminds me that in five and a half years, I become the mother of a teenage boy.
Metropolitan Mama posts a review of HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method: A natural approach to a safe, easier, more comfortable birthing
Essentially, hypnobirthing stands on the premise that, "when fear is not present, pain is not present. Fear causes the arteries leading to the uterus to contract and become tense, creating pain. In the absence of fear, the muscles relax and become pliable, and the cervix is able to naturally thin and open as the body pulsates rhythmically and expels the baby with ease." This foundation is based in large part on the research and writings of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, a physician and author of Childbirth Without Fear (first published in the mid-fifties). The Hypnobirthing movement officially came on the scene in 1989 and has been slowly growing in popularity since then.
Note: I wrote the following by hand over a year ago. List month seemed like a good time to post it.
I have a stack of eighteen books waiting to be read, all but two from the library. This does not include the three novels (one a 700-pager) on my night stand, nor the four books on Feng Shui and home design on the coffee table. I cannot possibly read even a portion of these in the six weeks (max) I am able to keep them checked out, so here I go to cull some out:
50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America, by Bill Novelli. Interesting, but not relevant to me right now.
Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas, by Tom Callahan. Why did I put this book on hold?
Buffettology: The Previously Unexplained Techniques That Have Made Warren Buffett The World's Most Famous Investor, by Mary Buffett.
You've GOT to Read This Book!: 55 People Tell the Story of the Book That Changed Their Life, by Jack Canfield & Gay Hendricks. No I don't!
The Great Physician's Rx for Health and Wellness, by Jordan Rubin. I would like to give this one a thorough reading, since I liked The Maker's Diet so much.
What Do You Do All Day?: A Novel, by Amy Scheibe. Mommy novel.
Faith and Politics: How the "Moral Values" Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together, by Senator John Danforth. My Mommy Brain is tired of politics.
Profiles in Courageous Manhood, by Edwin Louis Cole. I own this one, so it goes back on the shelf until some night when I am bored.
The ten books left can fit in one pile on the side table. Mission accomplished.