Book Reviews | Motherworldly

15 Oct

Book Review: Whoosh! by Katie Brooke

This is an appealing little book, chunky and colourful, with some useful informatoin tucked into its bright pages. It might be intended as a way for a woman to tell her partner she’s pregnant, or to share some basic ideas about how the partner might support her in labour. Full of sweet cartoons, this would also be a great format to tell a child about a sibling on the way (or how about one for grandparents; I foresee a whole range of these!).

I liked the spaces for personalisation and can imagine a couple filling it in together; what a nice way to think about birth planning. I felt it could benefit from a little more substance to make it more of a handy pocket guide, but there is no denying its cuteness.

You can get your copy of Whoosh! from the publisher Pinter & Martin, currently priced at £9.99. Disclosure: they sent me a free copy.

12 Oct

Book Review: Baby Sleep Solutions, by Netmums with Hollie Smith

Baby Sleep Solutions is one of several problem-solving books produced by helpful parenting website Netmums. It is packed with information and suggestions, but is largely placed at the non-attachment end of the parenting spectrum, despite its claims to sit within the evidence base.

Its introduction decries the plethora of conflicting advice that new parents receive from friends and family, then introduces its own team of experts. The whole book tries hard to balance a parent-centred approach with some quite directive advice, generally followed by a proviso basically saying “if you don’t want to do it that way, that’s ok.” What I get from this is an understandable but still slightly confusing melange of approaches. Hopefully what a new parent gets is a range of options, and the possibility of picking and choosing the solutions that feel right to them.

Early chapters include a general explanation of sleep cycles and babies’ needs, then chapters for newborn, 6 weeks to 6 months, 6 months plus, older babies and toddlers. It starts from a very baby-centred point of view, with a straightforward and thorough discussion of where babies sleep, safety, and coping with the normal challenges. As the age ranges go up, the advice becomes more parent-centred, very focused on feeding (especially breastfeeding) being only for food, and other comfort needs now described as “wants” or “habits.” If I had read at 6 months “as long as she’s getting loads of love and cuddles from you in the daytime – she should also be emotionally secure enough to cope without you at bedtime and through the night too,” (p103) I would have felt horribly anxious about what terrible mistakes I was making, that my son clearly still needed me at night.

This, for me, is the difficulty in turning towards sleep training. If it doesn’t work, you’ll feel it’s your fault, you’ve done something wrong. If it works, you thank the expert who told you how to do it, and continue to doubt the effectiveness of your own instinctive parenting. We have to be so careful of the tone we use and the way we present “solutions” that try to find quick fixes for normal behaviours, rather than ways to understand, cope with, and support our babies’ needs.

So, from six months, the book advises you to “ditch” the night feeds, missing the point that breastfeeding is a relationship, not just a nutrient-providing process. It recommends cold turkey on the night feeds, and baby in his/her own room; and then goes on to suggest controlled crying, which it describes as “heart rending” but “gets results fast” (p109) What a dilemma.

Responding to your child is seen here as a “reward” – a concept understood by parents but probably not by a 6 month old baby. The book frequently (but inaccurately) refers to a lack of evidence that these levels of stress do harm, but let’s not forget that this does not equate to evidence that they do not harm. I might have been inclined to present the gentler solutions earlier in the chapter, with controlled crying coming as a last resort rather than the go-to plan.

For older babies and toddlers there is a range of behavioural strategies, and these chapters cover maturing sleep patterns, tips for moving the child out of the parents’ bedroom, cot-to-bed tips, sibling situations and separation anxiety. Finally, it looks at more specific problems including teething, illness, and the ubiquitous reflux; and then the typical parenting book dip into alternative therapy. Which, if it worked, would be called “therapy.”

Despite my detailed reservations, I quite liked parts of this book, where clear suggestions are made and there are matter of fact discussions of the challenges of coping with your baby’s sleep. The fact is that parents who are happy to “go with the flow” (p37) would probably not pick up this book in the first place. Parents who need help will find lots of options here, and may also be reassured by the many quotations pulled from the Netmums forums, from mothers experiencing or moving on from similar situations to their own. I would like to have seen more on coping, not just fixing; including gathering effective support, frontloading and daytime coping, and learning to maximise the sleep for as many members of the family as possible, without increasing levels of distress. It’s worth a read to get basic information about infant sleep, but I’d recommend ISIS as a better and more evidence-based source on this.

It’s available in kindle format from Amazon here, though I bought the paperback for a penny.

09 Oct

Book Review: Bare Reality by Laura Dodsworth

I’ve been keeping my copy of Laura Dodsworth’s Bare Reality on the coffee table, just to amuse myself really. It’s a big book with a lot of naked-chested women on the front, and I have had different reactions from various visitors. If they are curious enough to open it, most people are quickly absorbed into the stories of the 100 women who talk candidly to Laura about their breasts.

Just as breasts come in all shapes and sizes, so do our feelings and stories about them. Bare Reality includes a lot of thoughts on breastfeeding, sexuality, and feminism; and a good mixture of people who like their breasts and people who do not. The headless photographs force the reader to see only the breasts, but the accompanying narrative tells a much bigger story, challenging the contradictory social norms of beauty and prohibition.

Bare Reality shows you 100 perfect, beautiful women and gives a completely unique insight into their perspectives.

[Disclosure: I was given a free review copy of Bare Reality by the publishers]
Bare Reality is currently available for £20 from Pinter & Martin.

25 Sep

Book Review: Men, Love & Birth by Mark Harris

I have been waiting to get my hands on this book for some time! Mark is my co-presenter on Sprogcast and the last few months have seen him working hard to get the book finished. I’ve seen and heard snippets of it, and I have been intrigued.

Billed as “The book about being present at birth that your pregnant lover wants you to read,” this book is aimed predominantly at men as fathers-to-be and as birth partners. Mark has filled it with explanations of how we relate to people and the world around us, how hormones work for and against us during birth, and what actually happens during the birthing process. As such, it’s a useful read for anyone working in birth, as it does offer some refreshing perspectives.

Mark is garrulous in person and his chatty style comes across well on the page, successfully combining a grounded and down-to-earth approach with occasional forays into “new age wank” [p109], which some readers might find off-putting. I’d recommend sticking with it, as Mark acknowledges that it is hard to find more grounded language with which to discuss the interplay of hormones and energies between a man and a woman in the birth room. I forgive Mark his occasional generalisations about gender roles in the home, as they do make sense in the context of the book; but I wonder how readers would respond if it was a woman writing that “birth has been hijacked by men.” [p56]

The book sets out to give you “the tools to keep you grounded when adrenaline wants to sweep you off your feet;” [p36] and really does achieve that. Chapter two explains the role of hormones and suggests subtle ways to elevate levels of oxytocin; much of this advice is useful for relationships in general, and not just in this specific context. Chapter three advises men about looking after themselves, and the two chapters of dialogue between Mark and a group of men are packed with information, coping strategies, and advice about how to relate to midwives. Mark himself is an experienced midwife and can be considered an authority on this matter!

Chapter seven on breastfeeding is spot-on in terms of the accurate information offered, and covers a fair bit of political ground too. It is sad that NCT Breastfeeding Counsellors are not mentioned as an excellent source of support, and I felt it would be useful to include the helpline numbers, as in my experience, it is very often new fathers who call the line seeking help on their partners’ behalf.

Men, Love & Birth is humorous, practical, and pitched at just the right level for men who want to figure out what their role is in birth and early parenthood. It’s also rather saucy in places.

Disclosure 1: I was sent a free review copy of Men, Love & Birth by Pinter and Martin Publishers. To order your own copy with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.
Disclosure 2: You can’t not like Mark. I’d recommend going on one of his super workshops.

08 Apr

Book review: The Roar Behind The Silence, edited by Sheena Byrom and Soo Downes

The first impression I had of The Roar Behind The Silence was that it is so densely packed: 50 chapters contributed by midwives, researchers, parents, obstetricians, doulas, antenatal teachers and one eloquent anaesthetist, covering such a huge range of thought: many different perspectives on why kindness, compassion and respect matter in maternity care.

Surely this ought to be a no-brainer. The implication that kindness, compassion and respect matter is right there in the word “care,” but it’s very clear from some of these stories that in our risk-averse culture, mothers are sometimes dehumanised in the baby production system. This is ground that has been covered by many authors, but Roar comes at a time when compassionate care is right in the headlines, a time when it is really important to agree on what this means, and how to make it happen.

The book is divided into three main sections. First, stories and persepctives from maternity care, including Mel Scott’s harrowing stillbirth story, and obstetrician Alison Barrett’s understanding of where the midwife stands from the consultant’s perspective. Next, principles and theories underpinning current practice and possible new ways of working. And finally Making it happen: solutions from around the world – both in terms of global experience, and different approaches to practice. This last section is probably the most useful and informative, setting the bar much higher than a healthy baby as the only valued outcome.

Most of the chapters are short and the book could be read in an ad hoc way; however I found most of the contributions compelling, and read it straight through, making a few notes. I was struck by the prevalence of social media in many of the chapters, as a way to share experience and compassion with colleagues and other interested parties; though it might also be worth acknowledging the downside of potential for kneejerk reactions in such a public space.

I particularly enjoyed the two contributions from anaesthetist Robin Youngson, who perfectly summarises the impact of relationships – good and bad – and the importance of kindness in all aspects of care. Which should, as I said, be a no-brainer.

I’m hoping to talk to co-editor Sheena Byrom for our next episode of Sprogcast, and looking forward to asking her how she chose and organised the contributions.

Disclosure: Mark very kindly sent me a copy of this book!

12 Feb

Book review: Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding, by Madeleine Morris

The stated purpose of the book Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding is to debunk the myth that mothers should feel guilty if they do not breastfeed, and to provide objective, evidence-based information about bottle feeding and formula. It meets this second aim admirably, with clear and detailed sections on different formulas and tried and tested techniques. This final 45 pages of the book would be an extremely useful resource particularly for Breastfeeding Counsellors who are encountering an increasing number of questions and requests for support around formula.

The bulk of the book, however, features an army of straw men, and is written in a hectoring, defensive tone, with many statements about “lactivists” which border on being offensive. For an example of all of the above, see page 137 where the zealous lactivists deliberately manipulate and prey upon mothers’ emotions; page 138 where breastfeeding advocates’ real agenda is “to make formula feeding parents feel like shit;” and the jaw-dropping claim on page 88 that there is money to be made from breastfeeding support.

Morris’ writing is very much embedded in her personal experience of breastfeeding and her feelings about it, supported by her friend Dr Sasha Howard who also shares her own experience of breastfeeding as well as that of supporting families as a paediatrician. They exhort a change in message on feeding choices, asking for more realistic, nuanced antenatal breastfeeding education, to include more detail on formula feeding; and more compassion for mothers who do not breastfeed. If this sounds frustratingly familiar, that’s because this is very much in line with NCT’s current Infant Feeding Message Framework.

Unfortunately the way Morris presents this itself lacks nuance and understanding of how breastfeeding support works. She is deeply opposed to any language of risk, positing that rather than enabling informed choice, this language comes across as bullying and guilt-inducing. Reading this book made me doubt the validity of my own perspective on breastfeeding; could it really be true that the media is completely biased towards breastfeeding (p.90-96), that no celebrity ever makes a negative statement about her own breastfeeding experience (9.108), and that breastfeeding “advocates” wilfully misrepresent the research on breastmilk in order to pressure mothers (p.75)? Could my bias really be so deeply embedded that I don’t see this at all? Then I would definitely have to identify myself with the lactivists.

This book provides a great deal of material upon which to reflect. Morris’ sadness and anger about her own experience of breastfeeding and of not breastfeeding undermine her claims of objectivity. Much of this anger is directed towards breastfeeding supporters. She has had no difficulty in finding case studies: 15 of them, only three of which are about women who had no intention of breastfeeding. The others are women who were – in her words – “forced to bottle-feed.” (p.47). This seems a strong enough argument for not destroying women’s confidence in the people who could help them.

Where ‘Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding’ comes into its own is in the genuinely objective and useful practical section, but the preceding 150 pages are a tough read, and tell us nothing that we do not already know about perceptions of breastfeeding support.

Disclosure: I was given a free review copy of this book.
Views expressed here are my own, and do not represent the views of NCT.

24 Nov

Book Review: Sweet Sleep, from La Leche League

Sweet Sleep is a La Leche League publication, written by some of the well-known names in the LLL world: Diane Wiessinger, Diana West, Linda J. Smith and Teresa Pitman; and as such it sets out a very definitely baby-centred philosophical position, as you might expect. It very nearly does manage to achieve a balanced tone with regard to the fact that not all families breastfeed, and even includes a chapter on how to cope if you don’t have this powerful parenting tool available to you (adoptive families, for instance), but its subtitle clearly states “for the Breastfeeding Family” and this is where its real strength lies.

There is a wealth of advice available online, from health professionals, and among families and friends, for parents who want techniques to “train” their babies to sleep. Sweet Sleep fills a gap for the parents who want to work within their babies’ normal development, with gentle nudges from stage to stage, but allowing for kind and responsive parenting.

Sweet Sleep is packed with practical suggestions, and sensibly begins with a chapter full of immediate ideas for getting more sleep tonight. It focuses straight away on the Safe Sleep Seven, which are rules for emergency bedsharing. Given that statistics show unplanned bedsharing to be far riskier than planned bedsharing, helping parents to plan for it is a really good place to start.

It goes on to explain normal sleep, drawing on anthropology, biology, and worldwide cultural practices. This is followed by safety information, gentle nudges for different ages and stages, and suggestions for different scenarios such as premature babies, twins and so on. The chapter on SIDS and suffocation is comprehensive and well-explained; and finally the book offers suggestions for talking to supportive and non-supportive people about an attachment parenting approach to coping with nights.

This book is well-referenced throughout, and illustrated with quotes from the authors’ own stories and from other families. Once too often I found myself frustrated that the authors touch on a point and promise to explain it more in a later chapter, making me dip about in the book rather than reading it through as I wanted to. I was not particularly surprised that the section on Getting Help/Giving Help only mentions La Leche League, when there are quite a number of other organisations, including NCT, who could also support parents in these situations.

On the whole I found this book useful both in terms of practical help for parents of co-sleeping/breastfeeding babies, and ways of thinking/talking about risk and responsiveness, which I find a lot of new parents and parents-to-be worry about. It’s good to have a book that supports parents to follow their instincts and find their own rhythms.

DISCLOSURE: I was sent a free review copy of this book by Pinter and Martin Publishers. To order your own copy with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.

16 Oct

Book Review: The Birth Partner, by Penny Simkin

Penny Simkin is an author, doula, childbirth educator, and birth counsellor.

I was advised to read this book prior to my first job as a birth doula, and having now read it through, I will probably take it with me when I get the call. Aimed at dads, doulas and other birth companions, and packed with details of what happens before, during and after labour, it is not a small book, but its chapters are easily accessible and logically arranged.

The long section on normal labour is particularly useful. Each stage is broken down into a description, followed by what the mother feels, what a birth partner might feel, what a caregiver would be doing, and what a doula would be doing. There are suggestions for self-care and coping strategies appropriate to the challenges of each stage; it’s a real step-by-step manual.

There is a medical level of detail on pain relief, and this would need to be read and absorbed beforehand rather than at the time, but it remains a book to dip into during the process for an idea of what is happening and how to deal with it.

For when things don’t go to plan, the book covers instrumental and caesarean birth as well as other interventions. Helpfully value-free, Simkin sets out the things to take into consideration, and strategies for decision-making.

A comparatively short section at the end covers the baby’s first few days, and post-partum recovery; again with a what to expect/how to support the mother focus.

My one criticism of the book is its US-centric language, which makes me suspect that some of the procedures described may differ in the UK. But women’s bodies are the same all over the world, and ways of supporting a birthing mother are universal.

This book is a must-read for anyone working in birth, and for birth partners who prefer a lot of detailed information in a format they can refer to both before and during labour.

11 Jul

Book Review: Nurturing new families, by Naomi Kemeny

Naomi Kemeny is an experienced postnatal doula and has written Nurturing New Families for anyone supporting parents of newborn babies. It has useful chapters for grandparents and friends as well as for postnatal doulas, particularly those starting out. It gives a good background on why postnatal support is so important in 21st Century Britain, and a useful overview of the needs of mothers and babies in those challenging early weeks. There are also sections for special situations such as single mothers, twins and multiples, postnatal depression, families with pets, and other circumstances.

All of this is relevant in whatever capacity the reader is supporting new parents, but it is difficult to tell who would buy this book; new grandparents might find that there is too much advice for doulas, and vice versa. It might, however, be very useful for a grandparent to understand the value of a doula.

I was quite surprised that Murkoff et al’s What To Expect The First Year (described by Naomi Wolf with scathing accuracy as “the intellectual equivalent of an epidural” in her book Misconceptions) is Kemeny’s idea of “an excellent reference manual.” (p.33). I can think of about twenty books I would rather have to hand, and actually Nurturing New Families could be one of them.

There are some excellent guidelines on empathic listening, which is hard to do when you’re close to the person you’re supporting, so this of course is useful for grandmothers and friends, but essential for doulas. I strongly agree with Kemeny’s advice to take the opportunity to debrief one’s own breastfeeding experience before trying to support someone else with its particular challenges.

Some of the book is a little repetitive, for example the advice on page 68 for grandparents is repeated on page 136 for doulas, and some of the quotations are pulled from the stories at the back. The book is so full of useful stuff that it does not need this kind of padding, but I feel I am being picky. It’s a useful book, and I would have found it really handy in my early work as a postnatal doula. I would recommend it to someone at the beginning of their doula career, as it covers a good range of different situations and is full of sensible advice.

[Disclosure: I was given a free review copy of Nurturing New Families]

03 Jul

Book Review: Life After Birth, by Kate Figes

Kate Figes seems to make a living writing about how awful things are. According to her, birth is awful, and motherhood is awful, and if you haven’t done either of these things yet, this book is pretty certain to put you right off. Reading it during pregnancy would be an extremely bad idea.

In keeping with the genre, Figes presents her rationale, which is that motherhood is difficult and lonely and nobody tells you that beforehand. Here she is in good company; Rachel Cusk‘s slightly depressing motherhood memoir comes to mind. In fact so many authors have written about how nobody tells you how awful motherhood is, that I’m starting to suspect that it might not be true.

Despite the age (2000) of my edition, Life After Birth sets out the context with an explanation which remains topical today, explaining how birth has become so safe for women, that the focus is now almost exclusively on the wellbeing of the baby (see our review of Optimal Care in Childbirth for the bang-up-to-date, academic version of this). However, in a tone of thin sarcasm, most of the book delves into all the things it is possible for a mother to do wrong, and presents motherhood as unfeminist and slightly idiotic.

On the front cover, a quote from The Times describes Life After Birth as a manual; but it would be disingenuous to describe this as a manual, since nowhere does it contain suggestions, strategies or support for the wide range of unpleasant experiences she describes. What comes across is a series of rather peevish attempts to justify her own feelings and decisions; for example in her attempt to debunk the well-evidenced attachment theory on page 63, and her language when referring to authors with whom she clearly disagrees, namely Deborah Jackson (“Leaving a child to cry himself back to sleep apparently teaches him to be resigned to his impotence” – my emphasis – p.117) and Sheila Kitzinger, who “believes” that certain babies are more likely to have sleep problems (p.119). It’s a shame she doesn’t adopt this same circumspect tone when advocating homeopathy to aid recovery from a Caesarean birth, on page 32.

Each chapter contains enough references to give the impression of academic authority, and these hang together with a long string of generalisations and personal anecdotes, rendering the whole thing fairly meaningless. For example, pregnant women “are unlikely to have close friends who are also pregnant.” (p.143) and “Women on the other hand find themselves suddenly defenceless and dependent on a man they may not altogether trust.” (p.145).

Reading this makes me feel sad for whatever complex awfulness this woman went through in her relationships when she became a mother, but it is hard to identify with much in this book, even having been on my own rollercoaster of motherhood only a few years ago. Naomi Stadlen shows that it is possible to be honest and realistic about motherhood without painting an entirely bleak picture. As for Kate Figes, the positive aspects of motherhood finally get a whole paragraph on the last page, but I’m afraid these fears of “being labelled ‘selfish,’ ‘immature’ or ‘not fit to be a mother,'” (p.245) are far from universal, and if these are your fears, this is not the book to help resolve them.