Mind-blowing books for birth and breastfeeding.
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, in 1975, I read Suzanne Arms book Immaculate Deception that revealed another side of the story of labor and birth in the US. What I read resonated deeply with my feelings of distrust for authority, a reluctance to believe what was told to me by an authority, “just because.” My first husband, the doctor, got annoyed with me. “Why don’t you just do what your OB tells you, he’s delivered thousands of babies!” The subtle disconnect in that imperative declaration is that a male OB has never delivered a baby, he’s only caught them.
When working as a nurse at the wonderful Booth Maternity Hospital, where women ran the show for women, I read two more mind-blowing books, The Politics of Breastfeeding by Gabrielle Palmer, and Maureen Minchin’s Breastfeeding Matters. Up until that time, I accepted that the product of modern technology, i.e. infant formula, was “okay”. I knew little about the value of breastfeeding. My deep gut sense that women were made to labor and give birth, and that they could be helped to do so without technology if the environment was accepting and nurturing, hadn’t carried over into my views about infant feeding. One of the most profound and enjoyable experiences I had as a student nurse was giving a bottle to the baby girl who was my assignment for the day. I accepted infant formula as part of the landscape. Even breastfeeding my own baby for over 3 years didn’t motivate me to look at infant formula with doubting eyes. . . .until those two books.
This week, I read another book that I classify as a mind-blower: The Big Letdown by Kimberly Seals Allers. After finishing it, I feel that same sense of energetic awakening and mind clearing that I felt decades ago. I want to redesign a breastfeeding class, with the heading “Breastfeeding is Complicated.” I want to prepare women for the environment to which they will return from the hospital, because breastfeeding is not “a onetime decision that occurs in the hospital and then assumes autopilot commitment.” “Breastfeeding is more like trying to diet. Every day is struggle to make the right choice when the less-than healthy options seem so much easier.”
Ms Allers quotes Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Breastfeeding is priceless and valuable; my career-long (over 40 years) commitment to lactivism has been refreshed and reinvigorated.
What books have you found to be mind-blowing? Let me know.
