My Pregnancy Reading List

A few months ago, my sister forwarded me this very interesting article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/magazine/ina-may-gaskin-and-the-battle-for-at-home-births.html?pagewanted=all

Highlights: The interesting tales and facts of home-birthing with a midwife named Ina May Gaskin, who has lived on a commune in rural Tennessee and has been delivering babies for 35 years.

Since reading that article, I cannot get enough information about this fascinating woman and the birth experience.  I have been reading books, articles and watching movies for about 2 months now (please note:  I have more free time to do this than most, because I am a teacher on summer break) and have learned so much.  I am sharing with you some things I have read and seen.  These are not recommendations and are in no way related to an agenda.  As far as I can tell, this experience is so much of a miracle, and ends with a new human life on this planet, that I do not care if a women has a prescheduled-knocked-out-unconscious birth or a pool-full-of-water-with-every-member-her-family-in-there-with-her birth, as long as her birth is her choice.

Ina May Gaskin released the book Spiritual Midwifery in 1977.  It shares the accounts of nearly 100 earth-loving couples who had their babies delivered by Ina May or one of her trainees.  It then explains her practices in detailed accounts, complete with diagrams and statistics. Then gives some advice to new moms.
Highlights:  Very candid talk about labor and delivery-it is not an illness or disease, has a positive relationship with a hospital and medical doctors, and makes the reader feel very peaceful.
Favorite Quotes: "If you make a practice of trying to feed your baby just to quiet her crying, both of you will learn a bad habit.  Remember that you want to raise her so that you'll still like her when she's three and four years old."
Rudolph after seeing his baby arrive, "The second he was out he looked so familiar to me that it was as if I'd already known him; he looked just like himself.  I really loved seeing him; he was beautiful."
Heads Up: Very intimate black and white photos, terrible (really I mean it) verbiage- nouns that have a more icky connotation 35 years later, and very rooted in the trancey/psychedelic.

 Penny Armstrong did not always know that she wanted to be a midwife.  After feeling the call, she completed an intensive course of study, before accepting a job delivering babies for the Amish women in Lancaster County, PA.  A Midwife's Story shares her experiences with birth, loss, and love.
Highlights: This book was really intriguing. It reads like a novel, not a how-to book and gives a lot of insight and recognition in the Amish culture. It felt familiar having lived in central PA. I recognized the names of the towns and could picture it very clearly.

Favorite Quotes: (unfortunately, I don't have this in front of me so I am paraphrasing) 'I vowed to never watch an Amish woman eat again', in response to watching a woman eat a peanut butter, jelly, mayonnaise, and ham sandwich 45 minutes after labor.
Heads Up: This book does not require much of a disclaimer. It is a true account of her adventures and was a pleasant read.

Fun Fact: An Amish man asks a woman to marry him by giving her a beautifully made wooden clock. An Amish girl would never say she is engaged, but may say, "I have gotten my clock."

 Rikki Lake doesn't strike me as a reliable source of information, but her documentary The Business of being Born was interesting and not at all produced in 90's talk show style.  

Highlights: The women that deliver babies in this movie have wonderful birthing experiences and make the viewer feel a hallowed calm about having a baby.  

Heads Up: This is a documentary, like most, is trying to convince viewers of something.  In this case, Ms. Lake is putting down hospital births and promoting home birthing.  It left me feeling a little uneasy, but I have since talked with my physican and learned more about my hospital and am no longer concerned.

Fun Fact: We regularly gave x-rays to women in the 1940's to see the position of the baby.  Yikes!

Side note: The movie closely follows a few women and when they actually deliver, it feels very personal and there was a lot of sobbing (from me).

Other titles that I read include:

The Best Birth by Sarah McMoyler 
-A good first book, health info, promotes the McMoyler Method of labor and delivery, anti-Lamaze

What to Expect when you are Expecting by Heidi Murkoff 
-Gives facts about your pregnancy week by week, answers lots of questions about what is normal or not, and provides good info for partners too

Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding by Ina May Gaskin
-Probably more info than most people need, but great suggestions on how to make breastfeeding the most effective right from the start


I have checked out and thumbed through about a half dozen others, but these are some that I was able to extract something useful from.  There are thousands and thousands of books out there, good luck!