Baby Books
For the first of hopefully many little posts about the birth and raising of our son Ellison, I thought I'd list a few of the books that we've been finding great.
Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn
(Penny Simkin, Janet Whalley, Ann Keppler)
Aimée:
"This one was generally awesome. It made no assumptions about hospital birth, was inclusively worded in terms of your primary caregiver (Doctor or Midwife), super-informative but not scary. It had really good indices, so you could look up anything you were wondering about and find info on it."
The Pregnancy Bible (Joanne Stone, Keith Eddleman)
Information on every aspect of pregnancy - we went to this book regularly for information on what was going on week by week in terms of the baby's development and what's going on in mom's body.
We found some books (What to Expect when You're Expecting) focused a little more on the negative than we wanted (e.g. "Here's what will be bothering you at this stage..."). The Pregnancy Bible had a much more positive but no less informative approach.
Hypnobirthing (Marie Mongan)
I can't recommend this book too highly! The techniques in this book (combined with some from "Hypno Babies") got us through labour without anesthetic, and in a very positive frame of mind. If this or Hypno Babies appeals, I'd strongly recommend starting early and practicing regularly. Anyone who's interested in having an anesthetic free birth should definitely check it out.
Aimee had quite a few contractions showing up on the monitors before Aimée started mentioning them, and even in transition, she was only feeling the peaks of the contractions which made them much more manageable.
Diaper Free (Ingrid Bauer)
This book opened our eyes to some of the crazy assumptions made in western potty training techniques, and where they come from. It showed us a different way to help our little man relate to his bodily functions without shame, with less mess, and through a method whose main work involves:
- Being willing to get a little poop and pee on you
- Tuning in to your child's rhythms and cues
- Communicating together from birth onwards about needs to poo and pee.
We're finding it exciting to work with so far, and at 5 days old, Ellison is already working with us pretty well.
Also worth mentioning, though it's more of a long term book, rather than being about infancy:
Nurture Shock (Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman)
We first heard about this book through an interview with one of the authors on the CBC. A very cool book which essentially follows this theme: There are lots of things which are generally assumed to be true about raising children but which substantial research provides conclusive evidence are untrue. From talking about race to praise and lying, this book hits a range of interesting and relevant topics, and helps encourage critical thinking when looking at the host of differing advice one gets.
Nurture Shock gives not only gives the most interesting information from these studies, but copious references to do further research for the die-hard nerds like me.
