READING

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Preparing for Birth with Yoga: Empowering and Effective Exercise for Pregnancy and Childbirth

Janet Balaskas

Adopting an approach to yoga which is designed to help the expectant mother to develop confidence in her body, and avoiding complicated jargon, this book explains in detail how to attune to natural energies and how an understanding of gravity can be used beneficially during pregnancy and birth.

The Mother's Almanac

Marguerite Kelly

A national bestseller with more than 750,000 copies in print, now revised for the new mothers of the '90s -- the latest findings on health, advice for working mothers, facts about the influence of TV, and more. B & W illustrations throughout.

Thanks to Alix in Whiterock, BC

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The Attachment Parenting Book : A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby

William Sears, MD and Martha Sears, RN

Is it OK to sleep with your newborn baby? How old is too old for breastfeeding? These questions and more are answered in this latest addition to the Sears Parenting Library. Attachment Parenting encourages early, strong, and sustained attention to the new baby's needs and this book outlines the steps that will create the most lasting bonds between parents and their children. Practical and inspirational, this book, the heart of the Sears parenting creed, is a necessity for every new parents' bookshelf.

Attachment Parenting : Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child

Katie Allison Granju

This practical, comprehensive, and first-ever guide to today's most talked-about nurturing style, Attachment Parenting shows how some conventional childrearing advice can be detrimental, and urges you to trust your instincts on such important matters as:

• Responding attentively to your baby's cries
• Minimizing parent-child separation
• Avoiding “sleep training” for infants
• Breastfeeding according to your baby's cues instead of a schedule
• “Wearing” your baby in a cloth carrier rather than relying on “baby gadgets” such as plastic carriers and carriages.

In addition to expert advice from pediatricians, lactation consultants, and anthropologists—as well as words of wisdom from hundreds of real parents—Attachment Parenting includes an exhaustive list of print, Internet, and support-group resources. It's an indispensable, hands-on reference that allows you to confidently and joyfully develop a secure and loving bond with your young children.

Thanks to Kerstin in Prince George, BC

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Having Faith

Sandra Steingraber

Steingraber (Living Downstream) offers the commonest of stories how she got pregnant, gave birth and fed her baby in a most uncommon way. A cross between the quirkily thorough detail of Natalie Angier's science-writing and the passionate environmental advocacy of Rachel Carson, Steingraber's style would have been insufferably heroic if the pregnancy had been smooth, mind-over-matter. Instead, it's one long tale of everywoman's worst moments from the urge-to-pee problem to the terrible nausea of morning sickness followed by “round ligament pain” (these are “the bungee cords that anchor the uterus in place"), Braxton-Hicks contractions (which "rehearse the body for labor”) and the general nuttiness of each trimester of pregnancy. Readers can identify with being ideologically opposed to, say, episiotomies, but then agreeing to one under the duress of childbirth. The climax, however, is not her daughter Faith's birth, but the dilemma over the safety of breastfeeding. The medical benefits of breast milk are compelling: it provides excellent nutrition and important immunities. But with rising environmental pollution, biomagnification implies that deadly toxins like DDT and dioxin will concentrate in human milk, the top of the food chain. The only answer: fight this pollution and make the world safer for nursing babies. With humor Steingraber compares childbirth to rocking a car out of a snowdrift or angling big furniture through a small doorway to leaven the scientific forays, this is a positively riveting narrative. Parents-to-be or anyone concerned with environmental pollution will want to read and discuss this and act.

Thanks to Lehe in Vancouver, BC

Spiritual Midwifery

Ina May Gaskin

This classic book on home birth is now in it's 4th edition. Includes updated information on the safety of natural childbirth, new birthing stories, and the most recent statistics on births managed by The Farm Midwives. Also presents stories of working with Amish women, showing a different culture with a similar appreciation for natural childbirth.

Thanks to Roz in North Vancouver, BC

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*All descriptions adapted from the publisher's book descriptions.