I don’t know what it is about my current social circles, but, gee willikers, everybody is pregnant or just had a baby. Talk about something in the water! But really, it’s awesome, and I’m enjoying all the baby snuggles! Perhaps I’m also feeling a bit sentimental since we just celebrated our son’s second birthday! They told me this would happen, but still I can hardly believe it was just two years ago that he was a little tiny six pound baby burrito, and now he’s running around talking in sentences! Sheesh.
I knew when I got pregnant that I wanted to do things differently because I just thought a lot of pregnancy symptoms and labor/delivery complications seemed to be avoidable. At some point, I’ll share my son’s birth story for all of you, but suffice it to say, it was what some would consider atypical (think five hour labor/home birth with a couple awesome midwives). It’s one of the proudest moments of my life! And while I certainly was not prepared for life with a newborn, I do think I was quite prepared for an uneventful pregnancy and a fast and, relatively, uncomplicated birth.
If you’re the kind of person who enjoys bucking the system when the system just seems flawed (more on that later, too!), and you know that pregnancy does not have to be just the luck of the draw when it comes to how you’ll feel and manage it, plus you’re looking for a birth that isn’t as panicked and scary as it’s portrayed on TV, I recommend a few of my favorite books!
Primal Moms Look Good Naked by Peggy Emch
This book really confirmed my suspicions that a fit and active lifestyle was possible throughout pregnancy. I didn’t agree with every piece of advice this author doled out, but there were a few pieces of advice that I really enjoyed. For example, your body and brain will adjust to compensate for your growing belly. You don’t need to fear that every exercise you used to do will make you fall over! Plus, you don’t need to sit around with your feet up for nine months to protect your baby. In fact, you’ll make many things more challenging for yourself if you do that. The author also touches on some science explaining stretch marks and how we get them, and how the diet we are consuming during pregnancy can really determine how well our skin will handle being stretched (pass the collagen, please!). A quick and easy read.
Expecting Better by Emily Oster
I just flat out didn’t believe a lot of the conventional pregnancy advice! Call me selfish, but I thought that if I couldn’t enjoy all the million and one things they say are off limits during pregnancy, I’d probably never have another baby! This author really digs into the actual research (or lack thereof!) leading to the common pregnancy advice and then lets the reader decide what to choose based on that research. For me? Pass the (small, occasional) glass of wine, the weight lifting, and the sushi, please! Don’t kick me off the internet. Just look at the research.
Active Birth by Janet Balaskas
In my opinion, one of the biggest ways to combat the fear of childbirth is to know what your body is doing and that it was made to work that way! This book taught me how to move with my body during labor and listen for the cues from my own body to help make each contraction a useful tool toward an end goal (I’m an athlete. I like winning. Even at birth.) It taught me how to give in to what I was feeling, work with it, and not fight it (something that I think lots of women do unintentionally which ends up lengthening their labor and beating them up mentally). Never once was I scared of what was happening in labor. I knew exactly what my body was doing and just went with it. A few examples of where I used this book to help me listen to my body include never, ever laying on my back during contractions or to push as well as knowing when it was time to push. This book also suggested some stretches and exercises to do during pregnancy to help prepare for labor and also to ease certain pregnancy symptoms.
Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth
This woman is a bit of a midwifery legend (she’s actually a real person, but she’s just really darn good at her job). You can learn more about her in the resource listed below, but reading her own words was really helpful. I didn’t think I’d love reading all the birth stories that were in the latter half of the book, but actually I found them really interesting and enjoyable. I read this in the last month before Landon was born, and it just really reiterated to me that birth can be a thousand different ways of normal. (I actually prepared for a long, slow labor with Landon and then it turned out to be super fast and wayyy intense, but I recognized that both of these were totally okay and normal!) I was encouraged about my choice to do a home birth, too, as I read and learned from a midwife that has done oodles and oodles of them.
The Business of Being Born by Abby Epstein
Okay, so this is a documentary, not a book, but it’s where it all began for me! I decided years before we decided to start our family that I wanted to do a home birth, and this was the documentary that had me sold (even though I really found it to have some generally unbiased information and even ends with the director have a c-section)! Whether you’re planning a hospital birth, a birth center birth, a home birth, or some hybrid of those choices, I highly recommend this documentary. Take control of your birthing choices, and don’t let anyone scare you into making choices you don’t want to make (a must watch for your birth partner as well!).
A Few Runners Up…
There were a few other books that I’d like to read next time around that just didn’t make the cut for Baby #1. I was reading some other books on parenting at the time as well, so I just couldn’t get to all of them. Here are a few others that I’d like to read down the road:
Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin (I’ve heard it’s very similar to Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, but I’d still like to read it.)
Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding by Ina May Gaskin (I was surprised to find nursing to be quite a challenge at first. I’d love to know what she has to say on this topic.)
Birthing from Within by Pam England
Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth
Did I miss anything? Which books did you find helpful in navigating pregnancy and childbirth? Comment below!
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