Selected Bibliography

Selected Baby-Related Bibliography

reviews here added and updated 11/11--near the end of my second pregnancy

New (or new to me) Books since my First Pregnancy: A somewhat random assortment of books, some high on my list to recommend to others and some low (quite low).

***Bernice L. Hausman. Viral Mothers: Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/AIDS (U Michigan, 2011).

What a great book! It’s academic, for sure, and not for the casual reader, but it’s a great, perceptive look at so many issues surrounding breastfeeding in our culture. Hausman considers the famous pro-breastfeeding ad campaign of a few years ago, which focused on the risks of not breasftfeeding rather than the advantages of breastfeeding, and which garnered such a critical response; she addresses the way that breastfeeding features in media reports about AIDS and West Nile virus; and she offers perceptive, feminist-based criticism of how our society in general marginalizes breastfeeding because it is actually threatening to what she identifies as our underlying cultural values. Really just a smart, thoughtful, and interesting read!
*Cynthia Gabriel, Natural Hospital Birth: The Best of Both Worlds (Harvard Common Press, 2011).

“Everything goes in cycles in medicine and in health care, just as in life. Cynthia Gabriel’s new book comes at a fortuitous ‘sweet spot’ when obstetric birth practices in the United States are again changing [and]. . . liberalizing” (vi). So writes Timothy Johnson, an Ob-Gyn, in the forward to this volume by medical anthropologist and birth doula Gabriel. Johnson may be a bit overly optimistic, in my personal view, but the perspective is a useful one. Gabriel cites her doula experience as key in helping her articulate her position in this book: “Doulas notice different things about birth than medical care providers do. When I read a book about natural birth authored by a physician, I realized that certain aspects of the hospital experience are invisible to her. . . she has never observed a woman fighting for a natural birth with an unsupportive caregiver,” etc., she notes (xiii).

Gabriel’s book hits a lot of the same cheerleading high-notes as Ricki Lake’s does (“So you want a natural birth. And, by choice or by circumstance, you will give birth in a hospital. You can do it!”) (3). Throughout, though, she emphasizes the enormous responsibility—for education and for advocacy—the women must take for themselves in such a position.

The bulk of the book is fairly blandly written in terms of style, and covers such topics as hiring a doula, deciding on a care provider, choosing who to accompany you to the birth, selecting better birthing positions, and avoiding fear and tension before and during labor. There’s much that’s useful here, though not much that’s new. In fact, a lot of it feels to me in some ways like a less-crunchy version of Penny Simkin’s classic The Birth Partner. Sadly, I’m not sure this book—considerably denser in appearance than What to Expect When You’re Expecting—will reach the full extent of its target audience, but it is certainly a positive addition to the birthing literature out there.
Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Lives: A Holistic Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth, by Deepak Choprea and David Simon (Three Rivers Press, 2005).

Somehow, though I read extensive about pregnancy and birth with my first child, I never came across this volume, so I recently picked it up. It's hard to "review" a book like this, I think. For one thing, some people are simply going to hate it because of the author, the approach, and the style, and that's fine--obviously, don't read this if it's not at all your kind of book, even judging from the title alone. Beyond that, though, it's very much a book that I personally needed to pick and choose from, and take what was useful to me and leave the rest. There are some fascinating anecdotes about how pregnancy and birth are approached in different parts of the world, and those were generally new to me, even though I've read a lot on the subject. Thinking of this book as a combination of Birthing from Within, Hypnobirthing, and some works of birth anthropology really helped me make sense of it, though, and for that I think it was an interesting and worthwhile read.
Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul (Free Press, 2010).

A month or so ago I finished reading this book. It was, overall, a worthwhile read, but I think I had higher expectations than I should have for it.

A few things I'd read, before picking up the book, mentioned that it brought an objective science journalist's eye to the crazy media hype that tells pregnant women--in our particular culture, at this particular moment in time--to avoid foods X, Y, and Z, and to be careful of habits A, B, and C, etc. The author even states her position on this issue: After citing a number of inflammatory headlines, she writes, "Once again we're told that pregnant women are a danger to their fetuses, each bite they take a time bomb on a fork. But there's another way to think about eating during pregnancy: as an act of sharing, even of teaching" (21).

Unfortunately, the book doesn't bear out this initial promise entirely, and I do feel the tension between calmness and caution, a zen approach and a Type A control-freak approach, to the various pregnancy dos and don'ts that Paul reviews. Perhaps also because the book is written with each chapter supposedly accompanying each month of the author's second pregnancy, I found the overall organizing principle hard to discern, and that--combined with her sudden refusal to address the literature on planned c-sections, which she quickly mentions she "had" to have--made me look with skepticism on this as a whole. There were some interesting parts, of course, and most of the literature she reviews is clearly and coherently presented, but overall I'm not quite certain of the intended audience, or effect, of this book: it's obviously not meant for a lowest-common-denominator What to Expect readership, yet I would assume that much of what it says is in fact already known to a more select group of readers.

In any case, this wasn't a terrible read, and I'm glad I made it through to the end, but it wasn't the best book on pregnancy that I've read.
Baby on Board: Becoming a Mother Without Losing Yourself--A Guide for Moms-to-Be (Joelle Jay and Amy Kovarick, Amacom 2007)
Ready: Why Women are Embracing the New Later Motherhood (Elizabeth Gregory, Perseus 2007)

I don't know exactly what accident of fate caused these two books--both published in 2007, but otherwise superficially quite different--to arrive in my house at the same time this month, but here they are. The Jay and Kovarick volume is a friendly paperback with workbook-style visualization and planning activities. The Gregory book is an academic hard cover with a thick section of notes.

They're more alike than you might think, though. Both include quotes from first-person (sometimes pseudonymous) mothers; both are deliberately optimistic and endlessly upbeat in their approach; and both focus mainly on mothers, rather than babies, and at times that focus feels artificial. Yes, both volumes are reacting against a culture that forces women into second-place even as it glorifies babies and young children, but clearly mothers and babies are dyads, and I would think a more balanced view would serve both volumes better.

To read these books, you’d think that there is nothing that a positive outlook cannot conquer about motherhood: need more alone time? Simply plan for it, as Jay and Kovarick would have you do, even before your baby is born, by filling out the handy hour-by-hour chart of "a typical day in the life" of you and your baby six months or a year in the future. Unrealistic? Hardly! As Gregory tells it--and, in fact, as Jay and Kovarick do, too--you can have it all: "stronger family focus," "more financial power," "more flexibility," "greater likelihood of happiness in marriage," even "greater self-confidence" (Gregory 8-9). Of course, to Jay and Kovarick, the key to "having it all" is metacognition, meditation (though they shy away from that word), planning, and other staples of the self-help genre, while to Gregory, the key is waiting to have your first child until you are--in her title word--"ready."

Though one is aimed at women who have not yet given birth, to inspire them, and one is aimed at older mothers, to, er, congratulate them on their good choices, both volumes seem to ignore the reality of motherhood completely. "When do I most want to be with the baby?" expectant mothers are to ask themselves in Baby on Board; "What time of the day do I want to keep for myself?. . . When will I have time with friends?" (94-95).

Frankly, I would not have known how to answer those questions, while pregnant, about my life with baby. Having a baby truly was this giant, dividing event that separated my life before from my life after. No handy, bulleted list would have made me aware of quite how much my life would change, because, after all, it wasn't just life--in the sense of the details of waking time and sleep and chores--that changed. It was Life, my outlook on life, my reason for life, my reason for living. How can any book prepare someone for that?

It is that great divide which Gregory and her subjects are so good at looking back on; possibly because they were "ready" to have children when they did (though she coyly avoids being too specific on what "ready" might look like for others), they look back at their old lives as though watching a rom-com: Now, one subject reports, "I'm real happy to be at home and go to bed at nine. We can still do fun things together, my husband and I, go to parties and go to football games. . . It's just not as much, and I don't feel like I have a big--I don't feel like I've mised anything. Because I've kind of done it all. And so we're real happy just to go to a little restaurant with the kids on a Saturday night and rent a movie. It's nice" (118).

Can Jay and Kovarick's checklists and tables show you this? I doubt it. I'll leave you with these lines from Phyllis Chesler's With Child: An Intimate Account of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering. In beautiful, compelling language, addressiner her newborn baby as "you," Chesler depicts the contradictions of new motherhood that no workbook can prepare for, and no qualitative study quite account for:

I feel an impostor. I am not myself. Is this how it will be: me, pulled apart, existing on at least two opposing levels at the same time? With no one comprehending all the levels? The level of my longing to be alone with you. The level of my longing to be just as I was before you. My being leveled into fatigue.

I'll 'pass' for normal as usual. At what cost?

Can I actually pull it off?

Doesn't everyone see how different I am? Are they just being polite?

Am I permanently split apart? Me in one room? You in another? No longer One?
Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine, edited by Dani Klein Modisett (St. Martin's, 2009)

This is a quick and generally entertaining read. The contributors are a deliberate mix of moms and dads writing about pregnancy, labor, birth, adoption, infancy, toddlerhood, and beyond, all with a self-deprecating sense of humor. If you like Dooce, you'll love this collection. If you don't like Dooce, there's still enough other stuff here that you'll enjoy it anyway.

My problem with this book is that, like much mainstream writing on these topics, its humor can come off as defensive, antognistic, and generally battle-oriented. There are many off-hand comments about needing "drugs" during labor, and plenty of defensiveness about using formula (mixed in, oddly, with defensiveness about having done harder drugs before pregnancy: from now on, one writer notes, "the only white powder you'll find on my kitchen counter will be formula"). For me, I just read more quickly through these essays and instead tried to find the more Anne-Lamott-like essays in the group.

In that latter vein, another writer here concludes her essay by confiding that eventually she came to accept that her child (eight at the time of writing) inherently wakes once a night; by accepting her daughter's sleep and nighttime needs, instead of trying to reshape her for the sake of parental convenience, the writer "walked away from . . . Ferber . . . [and from] the idea that every child can and must be shaped into the same perfect being."

Those common-sense, lightbulb-moment essays are joined by a few amazing gems of essays here: for example, there's a great essay by a father about the joys of the family bed ("Bears don't make their cubs sleep in caves down the hill from their caves"), and a beautiful, heart-breaking essay--written with almost none of the book's general characteristic humor--about reactive attachment disorder.

Overall, a mixed bag, but a nice read. (And yes, I realize I'm almost two years late on the review--that's what having a baby has done to me!)
**Denise Punger's Permission to Mother: Going Beyond the Standard-of-Care to Nurture Our Children (Outskirts Press, 2007)

Somehow I never happened upon this volume when I was pregnant--I'm not sure where I heard of it now, even, but I took it out of the Boston Public Library and had the most enjoyable time reading through it. The author is a doctor and board-certified lactation consultant who practices in the rare field of breastfeeding medicine; much of the book is comprised of her memoirs of her own medical training and her own, early, medicalized birth experiences before realizing there had to be another way. She talks about homebirth, doulas, tandem nursing, breastfeeding amidst obstacles, extended (natural-term) breastfeeding, and the role of partners/fathers in birth and breastfeeding. Here's one great quote to get you interested in the book:

"I often speak to women who opt not to have a homebirth because someone doesn't support that decision--their husbands, mothers, in-laws, you name it. If you are going to wait for everyone's support, you'll wait forever. If having a homebirth is important to you, you have to be the one to make the choice. Don't ask your partner, 'Do you think I should interview a midwife?' Instead, say, 'My appointment with the midwife is on Monday.' Then go on Monday."
Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, by Randi Hutter Epstein.

I finally got to read this book this week, when it came up on my library reserves list. It's an entertaining read, decently written, with all the standard ancecdotes and then a few new ones. From the beginning, I had high hopes for this book:

Get Me Out is not an advice book. It won't tell women what to eat or which test to take. . . but the stories and tragedies of yesteryear will prompt readers to be more inquisitive about health decisions today. The guidance that I hope you glean from this book should pique your curiosity to think about the medical maze in a different sort of way, to ask deeper questions, and to question yourself about the choices you make. Is it because of a new study or a new medical fashion? (xiii)

Still, the author is a doctor, and she is on the side of a medical view of birth. This bias becomes most apparent in her chapter on unassisted birth, in which she's dismissive of freebirthers and other proponents of the current anti-medical childbirth movement: "Their [Freebirthers'] logic is not farfetched. Sometimes doctors or midwives do cause problems. And stress has been shown to shown to tighten muscles and increase pain. But then again, their logic is not completely accurate either. Sometimes doctors save lives. . . . Chances are [if you have an unassisted homebirth] you and your baby will be fine, because birth complications are not the norm. But you are taking a risk" (183-184). Epstein goes on to mention an infamous perinatal death after a freebirth, with the implication that doctors save lives, and birthing without doctors leads to babies who die.

Of course, the entire point of the midwifery model of childbirth--and of freebirthers, even more so--is that everything, every decision, is "taking a risk." Have the doctor strip your membranes a week before your due date? Risk. Have the doctor do vaginal exams during labor? Risk. And so on, and so forth.

In short, Epstein's book is interesting, but don't read it expecting something completely new, different, or unbiased.
**The Wet Nurse's Tale (by Erica Eisdorfer, Putnam 2009)

Last week while my husband was on a business trip I had a bit more time to read than I normally do, and I immediately found myself absorbed in a great historical novel that--in style and feel, if not in content--resembles As Meat Loves Salt and Fingersmith. The great birth, breatfeeding, and mother-related themes just put it over the top, of course!

So I read about the adventures of the wet nurse Susan Rose and her baby, and though readers spend most of the book rooting for Susan and hoping she gets a happy ending with her own child, it's not much of a spoiler to say that yes, things do work out well for them.

Meanwhile the novel covers the oral traditions, superstitions, and community involvement (learning to nurse by watching your mother do it) related to breastfeeding, as well as engorgement, mastitis, hand-expression, cluster-nursing, tandem nursing, co-sleeping, and an understanding of the supply and demand principles of breastfeeding. Susan's first-person narrative is broken up by small inter-chapter segments in the voices of women who put their babies out to nurse, and these segments generally discuss the women's birth experiences. This device lets the novel also cover midwifery, breech births, different positions during labor, and early skin-to-skin contact.

It's a great read—I highly recommend you grab a copy of the novel now for some engrossing pleasure reading.
Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth by Mark Sloan.

Ah, another book on birth. Another—highly hyped—book by another “expert” on the subject—in this case, a male pediatrician who a) was born, b) “delivered” some babies in medical school, c) attended his wife’s births, and d) hypothesized about what it will be like for his daughter to give birth. Yes, I’m talking about Birth Day.

First of all, in case you were in any doubt from his subtitle and from the prominent “M.D.” letters following his name on the cover, Sloan presents a by-the-numbers medical (and weirdly male-centered) model of birth here. I don’t think Sloan actually likes women or babies—his ostensible subjects—but I know he sure does like himself. Whenever possible, he discusses himself. If that’s not possible, he discusses other doctors—almost always male (he covers Virginia Apgar almost reluctantly)—and if that’s not possible, he invents an absurd analogy comparing women or newborn babies to something bizarre and, always, male—a man and a boat, a scuba-diving man, or a horse (he even acknowledges that the horse analogy is unsettling: “I have learned over the years that comparing anyone’s baby to a horse is a losing proposition, but the comparison in this case is useful: a newborn baby at its mother’s breast eats just the way a horse drinks”) (290). I have no idea how his editors let him get away with these analogies; designed to make his medical subject less pretentious and more down-to-earth for his—presumably female—readers, they give him a deliberately folksy quality that matches his use of his family’s photos as chapter dividers.

Sloan’s book covers a wide range of topics and is full of his down-home retellings of history, myth, legend, and science. He first covers standard evolutionary ground when discussing why babies have to rotate to descend through the birth canal and then moves on to a varied and loosely-connected group of subjects: pain in childbirth; Zeus; Caesar; pain in childbirth; Marie Antoinette; Queen Victoria and chloroform; pain in childbirth; Twilight Sleep; Grantly Dick-Read; pain in childbirth; Apgar and Apgar scores; couvade pregnancies; pain in childbirth; elective c-sections (where he fails to acknowledge that this “trend” does not in face exist beyond perhaps a fraction of a percent of all births); circumcisions (he performs them, but states that he doesn’t pressure his patients to have them done if they are against them); and newborn reflexes and early mother-child bonding opportunities (what he calls “scaling Mount Mama”) (247).

Not terribly surprisingly, Sloan spends a lot of time emphasizing how necessary doctors are for birth. He constantly—from the very first scenes of birth, where he is an incompetent medical student and the women are restrained and made to be passive—emphasizes medical intervention rather than the natural process of birth: “I had been lulled by the normalcy of most births into thinking that that’s all there was to it: the lady gets in the bed, you do a few examinations, and then poof—a baby falls in your lap” (31); “[a] relatively easy womb-to-world transition is typical of most modern births. The rarity of things going haywire is striking, giving the complexity of the changes at birth. . . but occasionally it isn’t that easy. For every worrisome delivery I’m called to in which I simply watch and wait and then ride off unnoticed into the hospital sunset, there’s another that puts me at the center of intense, hair-graying action. [This] textbook transition went smoothly, but it just as easily might have gone wrong” (43).

Never fear—Sloan does mention midwives, in a dismissively titled chapter called “The Gang’s All Here,” first as incompetent medieval types who administered harmful herbs (“By the Middle Ages, midwives used a wide variety of herbs, roots, and fungi. The sheer number of remedies testifies both to cultural preference and to the fact that none of them were all that effective. And not all of them were benign”) and then, of course, as drunks themselves and purveyors of alcohol (“By the time of Charles Dickens’s fictional Sarah Gamp (Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844), British midwives were notorious for ‘helping’ their patients through labor by getting them knock-down drunk”) (95). Sloan also mentions doulas, slightly less negatively (but perhaps only because no male writer, to my knowledge, has yet written a famous novel with an unflattering portrayal of a doula for Sloan to draw on), but then has an entire chapter devoted to fathers at birth. (And yes, I do mean fathers—there is no mention made of same-sex partners at all.)

Ultimately, I’m not sure what Sloan’s book really adds to the body of literature out there on birth. Read Robbie Davis-Floyd, read Naomi Wolf, read Leboyer, read Wertz and Wertz, even read Tina Cassidy—but skip Sloan.
Mulhahn, Cara. Labor of Love: A Midwife's Memoir (New York: Kaplan, 2009).

Mulhahn is possibly the most well-known--and controversial--midwife in America today (yes, I'd say possibly even beating out the incomparable Ina May) due to her guts, her style, her featured role in the film The Business of Being Born, and the various articles and features that have appeared about her in the popular press in the past few years. With a foreward by Abby Epstein and Ricki Lake, this book is Mulhahn's side of things--all at once a personal life-journey narrative and a testament to the safety, power, and inspirational qualities of homebirth with a midwife.

I really wanted to like this book, and ultimately, I'm glad I read it. But first things first: Mulhahn is not an elegant or moving writer, and her tone at times feels overly aggressive and self-aggrandizing. Mulhahn describes early experiences--watching a friend get hit by a car as a teenager, for example--as signposts along the way that pointed her toward midwifery and revealed her calling: "For some reason, I instinctively knew how to take care of this girl both physically and emotionally, while everyone else was freaking out" (18). Later, she describes herself at the first birth she ever attended: "I had never attended a birth before, but. . . I found serenity within myself. . . I said to the mother, 'Everything is going to be okay. I've got the water boiling. Johanna [the midwife Mulhahn was apprenticing with]'s on her way You're going to be fine.' Even though I had never attended a birth before, somehow, I found the right words to reassure the birthing mom" (34).

Humble Mulhahn is not. She also seems to take pride in being--for lack of a better way to put it--cool. A single mother of an adolescent son, she boasts that she and her son are best friends; she talks often about what she was wearing at a given moment; she extols her own skills at talking on a phone while driving; and she allows Epstein and Lake's description of her, in the foreward, to stand as the image she projects throughout the book: "downright sexy. . . not the first image that comes to mind when you say 'midwife.' One normally tends to picture a graying, matronly woman with loose batik clothes and Birkenstocks. But Cara not only wore low-rise jeans and high-heeled boots, but also intuitively felt like a person you could really trust and confide in" (ix).

Yes, Mulhahn, Epstein, and Lake, we get it: Midwives are people too. Some wear Birks, some wear heels, some wear sneakers. I dislike, however, this conflating of personal style--which can of course vary--with the qualities of trust and confidence--essential qualities for a midwife.

Mulhahn's book is a fast read, and not altogether an uninteresting one. She talks about her time as a Moonie and her parents' forcible de-programming of her; she discusses her jobs (there have been many) and her hobbies (again, many) and her son, and of course--thankfully, because I think this is why most of her readers are actually here--she discusses births, both the easy ones and one tragic one (not the same tragedy referred to in the recent Today Show segment--that is actually a different family).

The author goes out of her way to depict herself as Everywoman, even to the details in the description of her own birth of her son:

Things seemed dire to me during the labor; I look back now with humor and compassion. I was in quite a state. . . . I remember hiding in the bathtub. . . . I wanted out. I had put some Stadol, an opiate painkiller, in the fridge for just this occasion. . . . At that moment, the idea of a C-section seemed pretty good, or at least an epidural. I promised not to be one of those women whining at an International Cesarean Awareness Network meeting about my unnecessary C-section. No, mine would be justified. There was just too much pain! (104-105)

Ignore, for the moment, Mulhahn's use here of the word "whining" in her characterization of ICAN meetings. She goes on to explain that she suddenly realizes that she actually is going to have her baby and has to keep going, abandoning "any notions of being dainty" and finally saying "Goodbye, vanity!" (106). This is a tough description for me to read: I know that midwives don't always have easy births, but Mulhahn appears more than a little hypocritical here, and honestly, this is not how I would like my midwife to view birth. "Miserable pushing?" A loss of "daintiness"? Birth isn't about misery or vanity--perhaps Mulhahn should reconsider those "high-heeled boots" next time.
In short, read the book--skim over the melodramatic teenage sections, ignore the aggravating tone and the Cool Factor, and focus on the nice descriptions of what it's like to be a midwife (CNM) in New York today, backed up by doctors, moving between the hospital and the home, and caught in the middle of a culture that is undeniably anti-midwifery.

Heather Armstrong's It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita (2009).

Many people already know Heather's name from her blog, dooce.com; I confess that I hadn't at first put two and two together, and I picked up the book blind, cheerfully thinking something like, "Oh, a new book on birth--boy, it sounds pretty negative, but I'll give it a go anyway." Nevertheless, I quickly figured it out.

Here's the bottom line: if you like Heather's scatalogical focus and find her blog charming and amusing, then you'll likely think the same about the book. If not--like me--then you may not be the biggest fan of this book.

Heather is indeed quite negative on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and motherhood; it's hard for me to know how much of what she says is honest and how much is just there to be funny. For example, are we really supposed to believe her when she states that "[o]ne thing no one ever told [her] about was that once [she] became pregnant [she] would experience a constant urge to go pee" (10)? I think an increased urge for urination is one pregnancy effect that even the much-maligned WtEWYE (which, interestingly, this book resembles in places) covers.

This claim of ignorance about bodily, and later emotional, processes--as well as disappointment and horror when her ignorance is finally dispelled--is a recurring theme in Heather's book. She goes on and on about how painful breastfeeding was, claiming that no one prepared her for difficulties on that front either, and constantly making the leap from her own particular experience to generalities: "Everything I'd ever read about breastfeeding had to have been written by a man with no tits, because everything said that as long as the baby was in the right position it wouldn't hurt to breastfeed. THAT WAS A LIE" (82-83).

Of course pregnancy, labor, breastfeeding, and new parenthood vary widely from woman to woman--a good midwife (who Heather never seems to have seen) would work with her client to educate her--and encourage the client to educate herself by referring her to some reliable sources--so that she was informed about all the possible dimensions of this marvelous journey. And yes, pregnancy and all the rest are difficult for some women--clearly no one should gloss over those difficulties or pretend that the post-partum period (which a big portion of Heather's book is devoted to) is easy.

I think that Heather's book has possible value in its (completely and utterly) unvarnished depiction of one woman's particular experiences, but honestly, there are other books around that accomplish this same function while being both more optimistic and better-written. One that comes immediately to mind is Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year;when I read this book a week or so after giving birth, I found it the best, most realistic book I had ever read on motherhood. Another great book (now sadly out of print) is Phyllis Chesler's With Child: A Diary of Motherood--An Intimate Account of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering, which is simply the most insightful, beautiful, poetic text I've ever read on the child-bearing year. Both of these books don't gloss over the messy, painful, difficult times, yet are much better, more informed reads (despite their age) than Heather's.

I'll leave you with a quote from With Child just as a taste of how I think Chesler captures the bliss and paradoxical emotional turmoil that is many women's experience in the early post-partum period. The speaker is of course a mother talking to her new baby:

"I dream of your sudden death. The stopped breath. The violent choking. The mysterious convulsion. My fear paralyzes me. . .
"Only you can comfort me. By remaining alive. I dread your cries. I crave them."
*Your Best Birth: Know All Your Options, Discover the Natural Choices, and Take Back the Birth Experience, by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein (Wellness Central, 2009)

Just published, this book marks the next step in Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein’s collaboration on The Business of Being Born. The basic message here, as Lake and Epstein state, is that “Women have a lot of choices when they consider the births of their children. . . .because this is your baby, it’s up to you to decide what kind of birth is best for you—even if it’s different from the type your sister, cousin, or best friend had. It could even be a type of birth that your own OB-GYN hasn’t initially suggested to you. Your best birth is one where you feel empowered because you know all your options and are confident in the decisions you have made about the birth” (xxvii). After all, the authors continue, “It seems simple and obvious to say that a woman should have the kind of birth that suits her body, her baby, and her level of anxiety” (xxvii). These three variables are interesting ones to consider, and to ask pregnant women to consider; I find it surprising, actually, that the authors place so much emphasis on anxiety instead of consciously working (as in Birthing from Within, for example) to dispel it. On the other hand, Lake and Epstein also argue that women both need “to tak[e] responsibility for. . . labor and birth” and also “to surrender control”; I like this symmetry, and I think it’s a useful distinction to bear in mind (xxviii).

Those predisposed to dislike Ricki Lake or natural birth (or both) will certainly find things to criticize here. For one, there’s a lot of self-congratulating in the book: the foreword is by Dr. Jacques Moritz—whom Lake says later “is. . . known around New York as the ‘hairy midwife,’ so [she] knew [she] would be in good hands” (xx). Moritz also hypes Lake and Epstein’s movie as “a film that became the childbirth equivalent of Al Gore’s environmental exposé, An Inconvenient Truth” (x). For another, there is the complete absence of any footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography. While there are scattered references to New York Times articles, books by Ina May Gaskin, and a handful of other works throughout the text, a bulleted list of “Bad Reasons to Induce,” for example, has absolutely no reference to studies or even to secondary sources (128). This pattern is repeated over and over again in Your Best Birth, and it’s a serious oversight on the part of the book’s authors, leaving them open to accusations that their recommendations are not in fact research-based. There is at least a brief final list of websites, magazines, videos, and books (“Resources for Your Best Birth”); thankfully, this list includes classics by Pam England, Michel Odent, Marsden Wagner, Grantley Dick-Read, Sheila Kitzinger, Barbara Harper, Ina May Gaskin, Henci Goer, Penny Simkin, and Marshall and Phyllis Klaus.

It’s also true that Your Best Birth in general has a bit of the feel of a perky wedding-planning website, or a Glamour article about reorganizing your closet and choosing your spring wardrobe with your personal style in mind. I assume this tone is deliberate, and there are certainly women who will not find it as off-putting as I did. While Your Best Birth doesn’t even come close to The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth—it’s more accurately described as Henci Goer LITE!—it may be widely read by the type of woman who doesn’t venture far beyond What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and it may just make her look beyond the ob-gyn party line on birth.

Ultimately, Your Best Birth is an easy read, with lots of sidebars (“Are You High Risk?”; “The Top Ten Non-Narcotic Pain Relievers to Be Used While in Labor”) and profiles of celebrities who had, or attempted to have, natural births. The text also definitely has its empowering, evocative moments:

Creating life is goddess work. You are stronger, more powerful, and more focused than you’ve ever been. Life force is coursing through your body and you are living life in a heightened state of awareness. You are extremely sensitive to smell and taste and to the people, situations, and changes in the atmosphere that might do you or your baby harm. What might make you feel vulnerable also makes you fierce. People better watch out because you will do almost anything to protect your baby.

In this state, you are amazing. You are going to access parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed. You are going to face your fears. You have decided to face pain and handle it in a way that makes you most comfortable. Dealing with fear and facing pain are the kinds of things that most people run from as fast as they can, but not you. You are the birth goddess and you will do what needs to be done.

When you come out the other side of this experience, you will be a different woman than when you went in. You will know yourself better and have a much broader sense of what you are capable of doing. You will be smarter and stronger than you’ve ever been before. (31)
***Laboring On: Birth in Transition in the United States, by Wendy Simonds, Barbara Katz Rothman, and Bari Meltzer Norman (Routledge, 2007)

Barbara Katz Rothman is a major name among scholars who study birth; she approaches motherhood and birth from a feminist sociological position, and her 1982 book In Labor: Women and Power in the Birthplace is a classic in the field. She’s also written, both movingly and convincingly, about the complicated issues—ethical, feminist, and political in nature—that arise from new technologies, including prenatal tests such as amnios (The Tentative Pregnancy, 1986) and artificial inseminations, especially with surrogates (Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society, 1989). Her newest work, Laboring On, is an updated version of In Labor, with new interviews with caregivers and a greater focus on doulas. Laboring On is fascinating reading for anyone interested in birth, whether from a medical, midwifery, feminist, or personal perspective.

One of Rothman’s points in the book is that birth choices should not be seen as a rigid home vs. hospital, female care provider vs. male care provider, or even midwife vs. nurse/doctor distinction; the two models of care she discusses (the midwifery model and the medical/obstetric model) are not as easily pegged to simple categories as one may think. For example, Rothman and her co-authors cite interviews with some RNs and the very occasional OB who align themselves more on the side of the midwifery model, whereas they also note that some CNMs approach birth in ways more typical of the medical/obstetric model.

For Rothman, the midwifery approach to pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering is the only model that truly empowers women. She is very plain about her own personal slant on this subject, and indeed she writes in the preface about her own experiences with childbirth:

I came to the decision to have a home birth from feminism. . . which made us all critical of the ways that major institutions of our society treated women, and in particular of the way that medicine as a profession treated the bodies of women. . . . Mine was, I guess I’d say now, . . . a highly politicized birth because, as much as anything else that was happening that day, I was making a point, proving something. I, who had never so much as seen a baby born, was showing the doctor and the world that birth did not have to be a medical event. . . .I just knew that the way birth was managed in standard hospitals was not “feminist” enough for me; it did not put the woman enough in charge, and looked awful besides. (xii)

Even from her first birth, before she had begun her study of midwives, nurses, and other caregivers, Rothman’s focus was clear. Her research over the past thirty-plus years has confirmed her in this regard:

Birth is, I learned and I can say with clarity now, about women. That’s what the midwives taught me, and that’s what my own experiences have shown me. Birth is not about babies. Babies get born. But women give birth. Giving birth is awesome. Babies are miracles, and cute besides, but birth is an Event. It is Something. It is a life-shaking, developmental moment that makes you who you are, that teaches you who you are. (xvii)

According to Rothman, women themselves play a passive role in pregnancy and birth when seen through the medical model, but the midwifery model returns power and agency to woman: “In the midwifery model, the [pregnant] woman herself holds the responsibility for her pregnancy and makes her own decisions. The midwife sees herself as a teacher and a guide for the pregnant woman and her family” (54). Rothman makes this point even clearer here, citing Ina May:

Midwifery, as many midwives conceive of it, can be revolutionary feminist practice. As Ina May Gaskin put it: “You know I’ve always been convinced that as a society we’re doing it all wrong and that we need to utterly change it” (cited in Schlinger 1992: 19). In spreading the word about their worldview, that’s what midwives hope for. (138)

So, why should we care about midwives? Rothman would argue that we need no further reason beyond simply caring about women.

reviews below updated 10/08--post (my first) pregnancy and birth

Stage One Reading: Motherhood, Feminism, Gender Roles, Work, and Family (5/07-9/08)

Most Useful Books--These are books that I pored over from the library; most are solid academic and intellectual works, yet highly readable (though there is a novel in the mix). I loved all of them and loved thinking through the issues they raised.

***Wolf--Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood

I think of this book on two levels--on one level, it's a fabulous book, nothing less than I would expect from Wolf, readable and well-researched and provacative. On the other hand, really? How could she have been so naive? I figured all this out on my own--much of it before we got pregnant, and the rest of it in my first trimester!

***Rothman--Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society

Amazing, moving, and inspired work. She manages to be personal and political all at once--this is the Betty Friedan of this era and this subject, I think. Essential.

Rich--Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

Another classic text by a feminist who critically examines motherhood in today's society against the institution of patriarchy. Truly radical and fabulous.

Deutsch--Halving it All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works

Good book, with a strong academic basis, from a sociologist from Mt. Holyoke. Sadly this is not the norm. Sadly we will never do it ourselves.

Crittendon--The Price of Motherhood

Solidly argued, compelling analysis of the problems with "choice" feminism and the economic valuation of woman's work. Great.

Stone--Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home

Very smart book. A sociological study, written up nicely, not pretending to be something it isn't. Kind of Naomi Wolf-like.

Williams--Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It

Great book--good legal mind, good positions on gender--clearly feminist, clearly anti "choice feminisim" even before Hirshman, and a very logical, well-reasoned view.

Bennetts--Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?

Good book. Cori hated it--she thinks it's at least one parent's job to stay home, which one doesn't matter; I think (and Bennetts does) that we should all contribute to society by working.

Hochschild--The Second Shift

Simply a classic--everyone must read this.

Hirshman--Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World

I love this. Smart, excellent book!

Coontz--The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families

Good book. She is so sensible--she essentially says, "here is sociology and here is history, and here is how they can help us with the present and the future."

Interesting Contributions--These are books that are interesting, informative, thought-provoking, but not must-reads on the subject.

Kaylin--Perfect Stranger: The Truth About Mothers and Their Nannies

Not so much a real critical feminist study, but more anecdotal. Still not a horrendous book--the author has some perspective on the issue, so isn't too completely biased.

Wolitzer--The Ten Year Nap

Good book, a novelistic treatment of why women take time out of work for kids and why it's hard to go back given husbands and society.

Hays--The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

Very good, if a bit dated. A nice sociological approach.

Roiphe--Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World

A combination memoir of her own experience as a feminist and a mother, and a treatise on how feminism needs to embrace motherhood, and parenthood (shared with men) in general. Interesting.

Firestone--The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution

Whoa, way out there! I never read this--not on my own when I was reading Margaret Sanger and Betty Friedan, nor at Wellesley in various Women's Studies classes. Definitely a unique perspective on child-bearing, child-rearing, and their relation to the feminist cause.

Ruddick--Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace

This is the classic "women's ways of knowing" text, up there with Carol Gilligan. Some interesting views of how mothering fits into the overall feminist outlook on life.

Douglas and Michaels--The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women

Good book, if a bit basic. Anyone who has a background in feminist philosophy or women's studies (or even recent American history) does not need the historical ground this book covers, but it does cover it well.

Stage Two Reading: Birth Choices (Home vs. Hospital), Pregnancy, and Labor (1/08-5/08)