Some Books We Like...

It’s always difficult to know what to recommend that people read while pregnant.  Everyone has such a different slant on things, and what will inspire one woman will offend or irritate another.  All of the books on this list have the capacity to polarise you. There are often written by strong women, who have a specific set of skills and experiences that lead them to see the world in a certain way.  They are meant to stimulate you and challenge you, so at the end of the process you can settle on the way that feels right for you and your baby.  

So, explore the books that you naturally feel drawn to.  Read other reviews and explanations about the book before you decide to purchase it, as they may be a good indicator of whether the knowledge contained within is in sync with you or not.  Check your local library, many will have these titles or other titles by the same author. Take the information that feels right, and discard the rest, which may be the majority of the book.  The idea is not that you follow another person’s prescribed formula - that would be madness!!! Each pregnancy and birth is vastly different. But that you get access to a whole heap of different ideas, so you have a vast array of experiences to choose from when deciding what is the right path for you.  Your friends and family will provide you with many stories to influence you in a certain direction, some of these texts may provide a different view, so that you have the opportunity to think outside your current paradigm.  

Birth with Confidence by Rhea Dempsey

My favourite review of this book sums up its’ contents beautifully.  “This is the book I wish I’d had before my first baby … a game changer for us women who are neither hippies nor radicals, but simply wish to have a go at normal birth because we know there is a more richly rewarding way.” If you wish to birth in a natural way, without significant intervention or drugs, you are going to come up against a system that is not designed for you to do that.  A fear based model, that doesn’t believe in the power of your body to birth your baby, and a system that believes it needs to intervene to keep you safe. In this text Rhea outlines exactly what you will come up against, how to identify your own responses to pain and reprogram them for birth, and how to make savvy choices that give you the best chance of the outcomes you are looking for.

Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin

A must read! Especially in early pregnancy to set you up for a different version of birth than you might have heard from your family and friends. This woman is a legend in midwifery circles. In the early 70s she and a group of women founded The Farm Midwifery Centre.  The group is world renowned for its incredibly low intervention rate and female focused approach to birth (a caesearan section rate of 1.4% of births, whereas the average rate in New Zealand is approximately 25%). Ina May Gaskin is a force to be reckoned with. She had spoken at TEDx, has a host of Youtube videos, has created a documentary called Birth Matters, and written numerous books about childbirth and midwifery, as well as lectured all over the world.  Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth is focused on giving expectant mothers the information they need to give birth as naturally as possible, whether they birth at home or in a hospital. It is filled with inspiring birth stories and practical information about the choices you will face in birth, as well as connecting the dots between the mind and the body. Check out www.inamay.com.

The First Forty Days:  The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother by Heng Ou

This book is a beautiful guide about what to expect in the 4th trimester (the first three months after birth) and how to set yourself up to thrive at this time.  Heng is an American but of Chinese descent, and has numerous aunties who are traditional chinese medicine practitioners. They have taught her the chinese custom of zuo yuezi, a period of confinement, where the new mother is cooked for and nurtured so she can focus on rest and bonding with her baby.  Heng then went on to set up a business providing families with nutrient rich foods and herbal infusions to nourish the new mother. This guide is intensely practical, introducing a new way of approaching the 4th trimester rather than the “super mom” idea in the west, where we immediately focus on losing weight and being out and about with a new baby.  A fascinating read.