Best Baby Bottles

Jake's wife:

I appreciated this book solely for its pictures, and for the fact that, even when I was pregnant with my fourth child, and had read at least 20 pregnancy books, I still liked having something week by week to help me get through the monotony of counting weeks.

I got this book for myyy…second pregnancy, I think. I’ve used it every pregnancy hence for the above stated reasons. My first two births were natural only in that they were vaginal. I had almost every kind of intervention there was–pitocin, epidural, AROM, episiotomy. My third I wanted to try to go natural and have a homebirth but after calling every midwife in Syracuse, resorted to just natural. I stayed home till I felt I had to go to the hospital and got there at 8 1/2 cm…my son was born 45 minutes after arrival. I did it. With my fourth, I dug a little deeper and found a homebirth midwife in Ithaca, an hour and a half away, but loved her. I had my son at home in a birthing pool last November. I am now newly pregnant with my fifth, and will not even glance at this book. Why? Because after I had my last child, I was browsing in Borders, saw the revised edition of this book, and immediately picked it up and went to the index to see what he might have to say now about homebirth. It was as though no one would have a homebirth unless it was an emergency, and by purposely doing so, you may be placing your baby in grave danger. It was totally cold and unaccepting of homebirth, and thereby a whole culture of woman caretakers who seek to empower and BLESS a mother in her finest moment, and thereby a whole culture of women who want to be the ones to birth their baby, not be managed and delivered of the baby.

I am a student of midwifery now, I seek to become one, and it is in large part due to the cultural acceptance of medicalized, managed birth. Women need to know about the growing movement of women who are trying to take back birth from the doctors and hospitals, about what their bodies are really capable of in capable hands, and that the birth of your child can be so different than what we think of as normal. Books like this purport the myth that we need doctors and hospitals to have a healthy normal birth, and that anything else is just foolhardy and dangerous. It isn’t so and I’m proof, I’ve been on both extremes.

Don’t buy this book, unless you like being ignorant. Buy a pregnancy book by Sheila Kitzinger, or Ina May Gaskin, or Henci Goer, and at least be educated about this other realm of pregnancy and birth.

I titled this review as such because a doctor seeks to scare you into thinking that you couldn’t do it without him, you’re helpless and stupid. A midwife seeks to empower you, teach you, support you so that you can be the one in control, so that the sense of pride and accomplishment you feel after delivery, is not just in that beautiful angel in your arms, but in what your body and your will and your spirit was able to endure, and achieve, and triumph.
Rating: 2 / 5

BlessedCP:

Each week starts out explaining physiological changes in the baby, changes you may experience and then describes everything that could possibly go wrong! Who needs that kind-of worry? What a negative way to look at the miracle growing inside you. Pass this one up and find a supportive, celebratory book instead.
Rating: 1 / 5