The Case for Make-Believe by Susan Linn

I heard about this book, The Case for Make-Believe by Susan Linn, via an article about children's play on USAToday.com. Since I have a background in teaching preschool and after school programs, and since I've always believed myself that creative play is important for children's development, I was particularly interested in what Susan Linn had to say about it.

As it happens, Linn's book completely supports my own viewpoints on creative play versus video games and TV. She comes down pretty hard on baby and toddler videos such as Baby Einstein, setting the record straight about its benefits (watching TV that young has a detrimental impact on development) and exposing its misleading marketing (no, listening to Mozart does not make your baby smarter).

She also comes down hard on the state of kids' toys these days. For one thing, most toys aren't very open-ended, as they are often electronic and only have a limited purpose. For instance, a baby doll that cries or asks for Mama is only good for that, and as a result kids end up making it cry and say "Mama" over and over, rather than playing pretend games with it like they would with a regular baby doll. One thing she says that I really like is, "A good toy is 90 percent child and only 10 percent toy."

And of course, she talks about the awful impact that TV, video games, and computer games are having on children's development. Linn takes the position that make-believe gives kids a chance to play out things that might be bothering them — so when you plunk kids down in front of even a mildly violent cartoon, you are giving them more things to be bothered about and less opportunity to play it out and relieve that bother. Linn advocates delaying a young child's first introduction to TV and video games as long as humanly possible, and I totally agree.

This is an excellent book to read if you are expecting a child or planning to start trying for one, because it encourages you to think about your own approach to parenting before you have the child. However, I also recommend it for those who are already parents, because it's never too late to encourage your child to play!

Unassisted Childbirth by Laura Shanley

Recently I ran across an article -- I think it was on WashingtonPost.com -- about "do-it-yourself childbirth." Laura Shanley and her website, Bornfree, were mentioned in the article. As it turns out, Shanley is also the author of a book on the subject, Unassisted Childbirth.

I was immediately interested. As a diabetic woman who is interested in having children someday soon, I have recently become concerned with current medical practices concerning childbirth. Since my women's studies classes in college, I have been interested in natural childbirth, only to find more recently that my diabetes is going to make it hard (if not nearly impossible) to have the type of childbirth I want.

For instance, I don't want an IV, but diabetic mothers are apparently almost always given an insulin/glucose drip -- whether or not they need it. Also, I find the incidence of C-section very alarming -- more than a quarter of babies born in the U.S. are now born by C-section. Unfortunately, as a diabetic woman that apparently makes it even more likely that a doctor will want to perform a C-section on me.

About the time I saw the article on unassisted childbirth (or UC, as it is often referred to), I had recently been told by a midwifery clinic that midwifes were legally prohibited from attending to a diabetic mother at home. While I don't know yet if that is true, I am interested in finding more out about unassisted childbirth as an alternative to having my babies in the hospital.

Being interested in finding out more, I decided to read Laura Shanley's book, Unassisted Childbirth. I found the book highly interesting and extremely readable. Especially informative was the information on how medical intervention can actually endanger the mother and child. In fact, unassisted childbirth is actually just as safe if not safer than hospital birth, because all of the things that doctors and nurses do can actually cause complications. There's so much information that I can't even begin to list it here -- if you are interested in finding out more, I definitely recommend this book!

In addition, the book includes several people's stories of UC. It is also really encouraging to read about people's experiences with it.

All in all, I find the notion of unassisted childbirth intriguing. While I haven't decided yet whether I will go that route, it has definitely impacted what I want out of my childbirth experiences. When it comes time to make a decision, if I do decide to go with a hospital birth it will be armed with information and a fully-constructed birthing plan that will essentially tell the doctors, "I MAKE THE DECISIONS HERE, NOT YOU."

This book has helped to give me the knowledge and the determination to be in charge of my own childbirth. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out more about natural childbirth (whether unassisted or not) and the dangers of medical intervention!

Stay tuned for other books on this subject. I have a whole stack of books to read!

The Milk Memos by Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette

I am currently reading The Milk Memos, by Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette. This book was a total impulse buy: Last week, when Michael and I were at Tattered Cover (a local, independent Barnes and Noble-style bookstore that offers free WiFi), I spotted it on the shelf right next to where we were sitting.

How can you resist a book with the title "The Milk Memos," especially when it has wide baby's eyes and an almost-bald baby's head on the cover? I picked it up and started looking at it, and I very quickly became intrigued.

The Milk Memos is part memoir, part how-to for working moms. Basically, the authors were both working at IBM shortly after giving birth, so they were both using the lactation room -- the room the company provided them in order to pump at work. Along with other nursing/working moms, they started keeping a little notebook, where they would all leave messages to each other while they were pumping.

The Milk Memos includes some of those exchanges, divided into specific topics and accompanied by related commentary and how-to information. The focus of the book is helping working moms continue to breastfeed; despite the dramatic health benefits enjoyed by breastfed babies, the task of pumping throughout the day intimidates many new mothers into switching to forumla.

The biggest reason why I bought the book was that it has a chapter for work-at-home moms. Since I am a writer who works from home, I thought the book might have some good tips for when Michael and I have a baby. I know that many of my fellow writers are also work-at-home moms, so once I finish the book I also plan to review it on one of my other blogs, Reading For Writers.