Books (& DVD) to Bring the Baby Home

A whole lot of my friends are either pregnant or have just had babies so I’ve been referring to this list a lot. Thought it was time for a repost of these resources I was grateful for or wish I’d had when we brought the baby home from the hospital. Better yet, I wish I’d at least skimmed through them before the baby arrived so I’d know what resources were available. So here’s my list, in no particular order.

• The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two by Drs. William, James, & Robert Sears, & Martha Sears, R.N. A friend gave me Baby 411 when Cavanaugh was born. it was supposed to be a resource for the baby’s first year. I hated it. It was simplistic, didn’t offer enough explanation, and most of the advice clashed with every instinct I had about how to parent my child. I was so grateful when I found The Baby Book. It’s a comprehensive guide with a great index and detailed table of contents so I could find just about anything I needed to know, whether it was a reminder about how to burp my baby or a question about how to take a rectal temperature.
• The Breastfeeding Book: Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Your Child from Birth Through Weaningby William and Martha Sears was my favorite of the bunch I read. It can be read cover to cover because it’s interesting and written in an engaging easy-to-read tone, but it also works very well as a reference if one just wants to look up certain information. The Breastfeeding Book will help teach you how to breastfeed including diagrams of different feeding positions, troubleshoot any difficulties with breastfeeding, support stay at home or working moms, breastpumping, breastfeeding in public, nursing at night, all the way through weaning. The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding from the La Leche League had such a strong agenda that I felt like it was trying not to admit there were challenges with breastfeeding in a way that would allow mom to feel supported and helped as opposed to blamed or like she was failing. I liked the information in The Ultimate Guide to Breastfeeding by Jack Newman, but the index was horrible so it wasn’t a good reference book. The Breastfeeding Book is definitely my favorite.
• The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child (Sears Parenting Library) by Dr. Robert Sears or any other vaccine book that will explain which shots they’re giving your baby, what’s in the shots, and when they’ll be giving them. When I was a kid, there weren’t so many vaccines. Now, babies are vaccinated 40 – 50 times by the time they’re six years old. That’s a lot of disease for a developing immune system to handle. Maybe you’ll want to give your child all the shots on exactly the schedule the doctor recommends or maybe you’ll decide that you don’t have hepatitis and your child won’t be using needles or having sex for a few years, so you could hold off on this one. Either way, getting a good vaccine book will help you make an informed decision.
• Tummy 2 Tummy The Babywearing Instructional DVD While I was pregnant, lots of friends recommended different kinds of carriers, but all we could find to try were Baby Bjorns and Snuglis. It turned out both of those hurt my shoulders, neither were good for a newborn, and we returned those we’d received as gifts. Luckily, there was a sling library in town where we could check out different kinds of carriers and people would teach us how to tie and wear them. This DVD demonstrates how to use ring slings, pouches, Asian back carriers, and pieces of cloth to carry newborns to toddlers. It will help you make sense of the difference between a Mei Tai and a Moby and help you figure out which will work best for you and your baby.
• Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
  Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott. She is honest about how miraculous and difficult raising a child is, how confused and tired you’ll be, and her humor and humanity will offer a light to guide you.
• The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year by Armit Brott is split up by months and covers what’s happening with your baby physically, intellectually, verbally, and emotionally/socially and what you’re going through as a parent. There’s a trilogy of these covering dads-to-be, the first year, and the toddler years. My husband swears by all of them.
• The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night by Elizabeth Pantley. Most newborns sleep 18 – 20 hours a day. While they’re doing that, learn about all the ways you’re going to teach them to go to sleep so they learn that daddy can put them to sleep too, breastfeeding isn’t the only before-bed cocktail, and that falling asleep in different locations is great stuff.

For all you new parents, congratulations!!! You have just begun one of the most fulfilling journeys I know of. Happy parenting!

Any great books or other resources for new parents that I missed? Please let me know!

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My Inner Athlete

Listening to some of the worst muzak ever in the lobby of an oil change place, I am cooling down from my group cycle class at the gym. I’ve been looking for a low impact cardio class and failing to find anything that fit somewhere on the spectrum between a nice stretch or a heart attack. What I wanted was something to change my body, make me into the athlete I’ve always imagined myself to be. Okay, maybe I should say here that I believe on some other quantum plane I am actually a member of Stomp. I have rhythm. I am strong, a dancer. And I can drum.

On this quantum plane, I have always struggled with my body. When I was a kid, I had colic, then I got ear infections every time I cut a tooth, I had croup. My parents’ memories of  my early childhood paint me unhealthy. When I tried ballet, I was big-boned, uncoordinated. Soccer or flag football and I sprained my ankles so often and badly that I was on crutches and eventually found out I had extra bones in my feet that had to be surgically removed. At 14 I was diagnosed with kidney disease and told I might not ever have children. I spent high school as the designated driver because a couple beers might land me in the hospital. I kept trying to find some way of having a healthy and fit body. I tried cycling and was scared of the cars on the road. Then in college, I got a mountain bike and made the mistake of riding down a mountain in Placitas, NM with my dad. At full speed, I accidentally used a rock as a ramp and the landing was not smooth. I cracked my helmet and broke a bunch of veins in my legs for the largest most colorful bruise I’ve ever seen. Mountain biking lost its appeal.

The irony is I love exercise. I loved jazz and modern dance classes, lifting weights at the gym, running laps with my college roommate, Erin, the best workout buddy I’ve ever had. I love to dance, to sweat, to release all those endorphins that keep me sane. I have spent my life trying to find a form of exercise that makes me look and feel the way I see myself–until I look in the mirror or at photos. There I resemble a stuffed sausage. I want to wear a girdle and suck my cheeks in. But my inner athlete is solid muscle. I am hard-core healthy, glowing. I run marathons, dance as long as I like the songs and never sit down because I’m short of breath.

Overall, I was doing okay though. I weighed about the same amount from the time I was 19 until I was in my early thirties. Then I had two miscarriages. Then I gained 70 pounds while I was pregnant, ten of which came before I even got a positive pregnancy test and were all in my chest. I couldn’t figure out why my shirts were gapping and my bras didn’t fit. Apparently, my hormones react to pregnancy (and breastfeeding) by trying to make me into an Earth mother. I do not want to resemble a goddess statue.

I just haven’t done a great job of figuring out how exercise fits into being a mom. I know a lot of moms do it. I walked through most of my pregnancy and for the first six months of Cavanaugh’s life, but when he learned how to crawl, he didn’t want to be strapped into a carrier or stroller anymore, so I stopped going on walks. I joined the gym and went to Bodyflow classes that are a combination of tai chi, yoga, and pilates. They’re good for my mental health. They keep some of my muscles strong, but they’re not cardio classes and they don’t burn enough calories. I tried Bodyjam, a dance class thats’ a modernized version of jazzercise, and even though I gave myself permission not to jump or kick as high as everyone else and tried to ease myself in, my body sent every message it could that I did not belong in the class. No jumping for my bad feet. My heart needed to get stronger before it pumped that hard. I kept trying to figure out how to get a cardio workout without running or jumping or having to be in a pool–because I hate water in my eyes.

So I tried a spin class. Serendipitously, my first one was on the 4th of July, my inner athlete’s Independence Day. When I’m in there, standing up on the pedals, sprinting, riding up imaginary spin class hills, I sweat into my ears, heart pounding whatever rhythm blasts over the speakers. I don’t feel like screaming at my husband or my kid. I can think clearly to write. Eventually, I’ll get there. My inner athlete is coming out baby. She’s ready.

Natural Cesarean

I just read about “The New ‘Natural’ Caesarean” and sure wish my OB had applied these changes in protocol when I had my c-section. I had preeclampsia and had been on bedrest for five weeks. My blood pressure would jump to 140+ over 90+ any time I was sitting up, so I couldn’t drive, make myself food, or do much besides lie on the couch watching TV, reading, or importing songs from CDs to make a labor playlist  for the labor I never went into. Instead, I went in for OB appointments almost every Tuesday and Friday starting at 35 weeks and each time the doctor would say that the bed rest was working so I could keep the baby until the next time he saw me and then we’d see what my blood pressure looked like.

When I went in for a non-stress at the hospital and my pressure was at 200 over almost 150 just from walking the parking lot, taking the elevator, and going through the wing to get to maternity, we scheduled a c-section. On the way home from the hospital, I realized I would be on bed rest for labor too. I couldn’t walk, get into any laboring positions that would actually help the baby come out, and though my blood pressure kept going up and up, the baby was not dropping, my cervix was not effacing. In short, my body was doing nothing to move towards labor and my risk factors were getting higher and higher.

The doctor wanted us to come in at 6 a.m., but I asked for a later appointment. If I wasn’t going to get to go through labor and bring my baby into the “naturally,” I figured I should at least get to sleep in. We scheduled the c-section for noon and Cavanaugh was born at 12:27. It turned out he had severe jaundice and was at risk of brain damage because he and I had incompatible blood types and the placenta wasn’t breaking down the bilirubin.  They put him in bili-blankets for light therapy before he was twelve hours old.

I am so grateful we scheduled the surgery. I’d had two miscarriages before Cavanaugh was born and though I felt the loss of a more natural birth, the thing I cared most about was having a healthy baby. We got one and he’ll be our only one, so even though I won’t be faced with another c-section, I thought others might want to know about the option for a gentler cesarean.

Post-Childbirth Hospital Presents

My friend Alex just emailed to say his wife had a baby and sent the hospital photos of proud papa, tired mama, and still-adjusting-to-being-out-of-the-womb Nora Rose. I was thinking about being in the hospital with Cavanaugh for five days after his birth because of his jaundice. People came to visit, brought flowers, balloons, and presents. It was a strange world-outside-our-world and I appreciated that limbo state where someone brought meals and changed sheets and we got a little time before we came home to figure out the new rules of our life.

So, I was thinking about some really thoughtful things people brought (besides their love and congratulations) that I especially appreciated and would recommend one take to a new mama post-childbirth. Gifts for the baby and flowers are just more to carry out to the car. Consumables like healthy snack food are great. The two gifts that most stand-out were soft pajamas for me so I wasn’t walking around in a hospital gown with my backside getting cold. I had no emotional attachment to them so it didn’t matter if they got yucky with bodily fluids and it was nice to have more than one pair since we were there a few days. ( Thanks Michelle and Jennifer!) And, our friends Gen and Peter brought us a meal from a local restaurant (because the hospital food is, well, hospital food) and hung out to hold the baby and chat so we could eat at the same time.

Read This: Advice to the Expectant Father

I really liked this poem I found 42opus today.  Check out “Advice to the Expectant Father” by Stephen Neal Weiss. So true that we can’t go back there. We can’t get in.

Read This: Pregnancy Books

When I was pregnant, I ended up reading a lot of the standard books and wishing for something else. Though What to Expect When You’re Expectng is the first book people seem to think of for pregnancy, I hated it. Having sections in each chapter in all caps entitled WHAT YOU MAY BE CONCERNED ABOUT was not the tone I wanted my pregnancy book to take. I wanted to read about how women have had babies for all of time and though there are complications and procedures that can happen, most are unlikely so let’s focus on what 95% of pregnancies look like and have a resource section to look up the hard stuff in the back. I had two miscarriages before my pregnancy with Cavananugh so the last thing I needed was a book that was going to introduce more for me to be anxious about than I was already feeling.

I liked the amusing tone of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy but it didn’t feel substantial enough. While she writes about how to select maternity clothes and what constitutes as exercise during pregnancy, the book is pretty mainstream and includes advice you would get from a very straight and very privileged girlfriend. Not bad advice, just not all that I was looking for.

I finally settled on Your Pregnancy Week by Week, 6th Edition (Your Pregnancy Series), which I liked at first, but by my third trimester, my husband read the chapters out loud to me skipping over the parts about the illness, defect, or other potential pregnancy complication I had a one in a million chance of having happen. I wanted to know how big my baby was, what parts were developing, what physical symptoms I might be experiencing and how to fix them if they were causing me trouble.

I ended up deciding that the weekly email I received from BabyCenter.com offered much more information than any of the books I was reading. I  could choose to click the links for medical procedures my doctor might be recommending and possible pregnancy complications, but it was just as easy to read the information for that week that applied to me and click on the more positive and relevant links like why I had heartburn or why my baby kicked more at certain times of day.

Ultimately, I just didn’t get what I wanted out of the guide books and since I only plan to have one child, I don’t expect to be reading any more pregnancy books. But I have a lot of pregnant friends right now and I keep wishing I could give them some good pregnancy book recommendations, so I asked my already-parent friends for books they’d liked. Here they are:

• The most people recommended Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation by Pam England and Rob Horowitz. Notes from my friend Carrie: “This book offers tons of advice and maintains an open attitude towards all choices a woman can make about delivering her baby. It gives advice and information that runs the gamut from natural childbirth at home to a Cesarean Birth, and makes no judgment about a woman’s choice. It openly explores all options and discusses the benefits and risks associated with all methods and procedures. The best part was the section on Labor Coping.”
• The Pregnancy Book: Month-by-Month, Everything You Need to Know From America’s Baby Experts by Dr. William Sears, Martha Sears, and Linda Hughey Holt was recommended by many friends I started reading it at the bookstore recently. I wish I’d had this one while I was pregnant. Notes from Jaimee: Possibly the most comprehensive month by month guide to pregnancy- far better than the ubiquitous What to Expect. The authors mix medical information and advice with helpful anecdotes. They address both the physical and emotional sides of pregnancy and include a section on labor.” The Sears library is pretty comprehensive. Other books you might want include: The Birth Book:, The Breastfeeding Book, The Baby Book (which is my personal favorite reference for birth to age two), and The Attachment Parenting Book.
• Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin was highly recommended as being helpful for empowering women to believe in their bodies and their ability to give birth naturally.Two friends noted that Ina May, who is a famous and skilled midwife, has a clear agenda that doesn’t include hospital births.
• Gentle Birth Choices by Barbara Harper.
• The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer and Rhonda Wheeler helps women avoid medical interventions during birth.
• Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (Wise Woman Herbal Series, Book 1) (Wise Woman Herbal Series : No. 1) by Susan Weed – Jaimee’s notes: Includes alternative/natural remedies for the many ailments of pregnancy, labor (including some labor induction techniques you may find helpful!), and the post-partum period.

Pregnancy Books Specifically for Dads:

• The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be, Second Editionby Armin Brott. My husband’s notes: “Most of the father books contain the same information, as does this one but Brott’s book is like having a conversation with a very experienced and good dad. He’s credible. If the book tells me I can do something, I believe I can do it.”
• She’s Having a Baby – and I’m Having a Breakdown by James Douglas Barron was full of information and a fun read because of its comedic and informal tone.
• The Birth Partner, Third Edition: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions by Penny Simkin

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Read This: Hillbilly Gothic

Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhoodby Adrienne Martini

This feels like a mission book: I had PPD and if you ever do, here’s some advice, here’s how I got through it, so you can get through it too. When she’s specific, Martini is funny with an ability to casually describe something in conversational language, throw in a pop culture reference and be self deprecating or sarcastic. The history of madness in her family, her work history, and the geographical diary of where she lived and what she did there are all covered in way too much detail and take away from her giving a clear timeline of how long she’s in a mental hospital or real detail about her second post-partum bout of depression. Though the book is uneven, it is a good read and anyone who has struggled with mental health issues surrounding pregnancy and parenting could definitely benefit from reading Hillbilly Gothic .

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Read This: The Big Rumpus

The Big Rumpus: A Mother’s Tale from the Trenches (Live Girls)

Halliday’s depiction of motherhood is far from a three martini playdate. Thank you for that. Her baby-wearing, water-birthing, playdates on East Village playgrounds, and East Village Inky zine are edgy and real. This is what happens when the alternative theater chic grows up and has babies. Big fun.

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I Wish I’d Known: Disability Insurance

People talk a lot about the worry of how they’ll afford children but the focus is often on hospital bills for delivery or on buying things once the baby is born (or being able to pay for college). What I wish someone had told me before I got pregnant is that you should get disability insurance before you even start trying to conceive. Most policies have a pregnancy exclusion if you buy the policy once you’re already pregnant. This means that if you end up on bedrest or have other complications and can’t work because of a condition created by the pregnancy, then your disability won’t cover it for your current pregnancies. It may cover difficulties in future pregnancies. So, here’s the deal: get disability insurance now, start trying to conceive next.

I Wish I’d Known: Magnesium

I got knock-me-down migraine headaches while I was pregnant. I couldn’t take most medicine and Tylenol just wasn’t cutting it. Maybe it was all the extra blood volume needing to be pumped through my body stalling itself out at the base of my skull, but I needed to lie down on a cool pillow in the dark with my eyes closed for hours when I got those things.

Then Mike read in one of his dad pregnancy books about Magnesium supplements helping pregnant women with headaches. It was amazing and healing. My OB had no idea. No one I knew had ever taken magnesium for headaches and none of my pregnancy books said anything about it.

I wish I’d found out before I lost weeks of afternoons to pregnancy head, but I’m so grateful Mike read about magnesium. I’d take one standard dose pill (without calcium) every day to prevent headaches. Usually it worked. If it didn’t or I forgot to take the pill in the morning, I’d take a couple vitamins in the afternoon and it would make the headache go away. As a bonus, it also works on constipation.