Books for Moms: All

by Marilyn M. Shannon

This little $3 booklet is the only thing that helped me with my awful morning (er, "all day and night") sickness. It's a must-read for anyone who has morning sickness, but I also highly recommend it for any woman who's pregnant. The nutrition and lifestyle guidelines promote a healthy pregnancy whether you're feeling great or terrible. Available at ccli.org.

by William Sears, MD and Martha Sears, RN

This is an excellent book about childbirth, particularly for women who aren't "hard core" about one particular school of thought (e.g. unmedicated vs. epidural). They cover all different types of births, from homebirth to Cesarean, and Martha Sears writes about her experiences as a mother of eight. There is also a chapter just dedicated to women's birth stories, which was my favorite part. I read those birth stories over and over again in the weeks before I went into labor with my first child. While the tone is somewhat biased in favor of unmedicated birth, they offer a pretty balanced overview of all your choices, and they don't condemn women who choose not to have a "natural" birth.

Also, if you're considering birth outside of a hospital setting (birthing center or homebirth) you may find that it's hard to find unbiased information on the subject; everyone seems to be vehemently for or against it and biases their data and opinions accordingly. This book, however, treats the subject more even-handedly than any other I've read. They're pro-homebirth, but as an MD and an RN, the two authors are comfortable with the hospital setting and don't vilify OB/GYN-assisted births.

by Peggy Vincent

I laughed, I cried, I absolutely loved this book. Vincent lovingly recounts her stories from her years working as a midwife -- everything from the happy to the sad to the miraculous to the bittersweet. It's also probably one of the better birth preparation books I've read. Reading all these stories of women just like me who gave birth naturally made it sink in on some subconscious level that I really am capable of doing this.

by Ina May Gaskin

This is the ultimate book for those who want to get comfortable with the concept of natural childbirth, particularly outside of a hospital setting. Gaskin is often credited for bringing back the popularity of midwives in America, and after reading this book you can see why. The first part is filled with stories written by women who had babies at The Farm, the large rural commune in Tennessee that Gaskin helped found back in the '70s. The second part of the book is a technical manual on the mechanics of birth, a sort of Midwifery 101. Between the countless stories of natural birth and all the technical details, you'll feel ready to give birth in your back yard after reading this book.

[NOTE: If you're looking for data on the safety of birth outside of a hospital setting, check out Appendix A of this book. It's a great collection of data (numbers of emergency transports, fetal deaths, maternal deaths, postpartum depression, etc.) from 2,028 births from the years 1970 - 2000 at The Farm.]

by Meredith Small

I count this book among the top five books I have ever read. I loved it. Meredith Small, at the forefront of the new field of ethnopediatrics, artfully walks the reader through the evolution of childbirth explores how women have been raising babies for thousands of years. She looks at babies' and parents' needs based on what humans have evolved to need and expect -- and somehow makes this all a fascinating, easy read. Anyone with even a passing interest in anthropology or human history should stop what they're doing right now and go get this book.

by Kim West

I can't understand why this book isn't more well known. Most parents have heard of Ferber and Sears and maybe Pantley, but hardly anyone is familiar with the recommendations of Kim West, a.k.a. The Sleep Lady. It's probably because her method is somewhere in between the cry-it-out and no-cry methods, so it doesn't appeal to people who want one extreme or the other.

For my family, this was as good as it gets in terms of sleep training books. Her recommendations are firm and effective, yet she understands the importance of gradually transitioning your child to new ways of sleeping. Also, unlike most other sleep books, she is respectful of parents' needs to make their own decisions and occasionally go against her recommendations. Most of the other authors tell you flatly what you need to do and offer no alteratives. West makes recommendations, but also includes suggestions for how to work it if you're just not comfortable implemeting her recommendation.

I had to modify her recommendations a bit to make the process go more slowly for my child, but I found this to be the perfect balance between being gentle and being effective.

by Marilyn Shannon

I count this among the top five most life-changing books I've ever read, and it's certainly the best book on nutrition I've read. I think every woman would benefit from it, but it's a must-read for those who struggle with intfertility issues. (I bought it after I was diagnosed with PCOS and told that I'd never have children without medical intervention.) Even if your problems can't be helped through diet/nutrition/lifestyle changes, you'll find your newfound knowledge of how different vitamins, minerals and eating habits impact your cycles empowering.

One thing to know about the book is that it is published by the Couple to Couple League International and intended for its members, who are predominantly Catholic, so Shannon makes occasional comments that assume her reader is Catholic. This seemed to be offensive to some of the reviewers on Amazon, but you’re doing yourself a disservice to skip the book because of it.

by Joanne Stone (editor)

I found this to be much more helpful and fun to read than What to Expect When You're Expecting. It has more detail about what's going on with your baby week by week, and I love all the glossy pictures. Don't look to this book to provide much detail on specific issues, but it offers a nice overview of the entire process. Make this the first book you buy after you find out you're pregnant.

by Susan McCutcheon

Don't skip this book just because you're not doing the Bradley Method. It goes into great detail about what goes on with your body during birth and offers suggestions for coping with pain that every mother should be familiar with. After reading this book I felt much more at ease with the birthing process. I personally didn't get a ton of pain relief from this method, but it was comforting to feel like I knew exactly what was going on with my body. Also, my friends who (unlike me) actually practiced the relaxation techniques ahead of time report great results with this method.

by Martha Sears, RN and William Sears, MD

As a woman who breastfed eight children -- including her adopted child -- Martha Sears is exactly the sort of person you want writing books about breastfeeding. Her tone is loving and gentle while still offering a wealth of information and troubleshooting tips. Like most women I know, I found breastfeeding to be much more complicated and difficult at first than I'd anticipated. The first couple weeks were rough for me and I give much credit to this book (as well as my lactation consultant) for getting me through. The only complaint I have is that there are a couple of occasions where they point out a certain symptom that indicates trouble (e.g. a clicking sound when the baby sucks) but don't explain what caused it or what to do about it.

by Tracy Hogg

I didn't want to like this book. I had heard all about how bad Tracy Hogg, a.k.a. the Baby Whisperer, is because she recommends that you get your baby on a (gasp!) schedule at a young age and she's blasé about breastfeeding. But I happened upon her book in a desperate state one day while sleep-walking through a bookstore and decided to give it a try. After five months of hard-headedly clinging to the advice in attachment parenting books despite the fact that it obviously wasn't working for my son and me, I gave in and bought this book and found its contents to be a lifesaver. It's certainly not perfect (e.g. I think her "Pick Up/Put Down" method for soothing babies just upsets them further) but it's the best baby care book I've found. The detailed charts of what quantity and types of foods babies should eat at various stages and sample routines and schedules were invaluable to me.

The Baby Whisperer and her parenting style may or may not be for you, but don't make the mistake I did and blow it off because you've heard some people say she's evil because she's supposedly anti-breastfeeding, pro-scheduling, etc. Flip through it yourself in a bookstore and see if that's the impression you get.

by Harvey Karp, MD

I think new parents are required by law to have this book, so go ahead and buy it. I really enjoyed reading this while pregnant; Karp's theory about the missing "fourth trimester" and the info he provides about the various causes of colic are great. And, of course, knowledge of the "5 S's" for soothing your baby is a must for new parents. I subtracted a half star because I was surprised that there were many, many times that my crying baby couldn't have cared less about my recreating the womb through swaddling and rocking, but overall I found Karp's suggestions to be helpful and effective.

by Andrew Weil, MD

This is the second-best nutrition book I’ve ever read. Weil, a Harvard-trained doctor who advocates for integrating modern medicine with more natural, holistic techniques, manages to make learning about the dangers of trans fats and the benefits of omega-3's interesting. After reading this book you'll be ready to toss out all the processed food in your pantry. All of his other books are great as well but if you only read one, make it this one.

by Hetty Vanderijt and Frans Plooij

This book helped calm my paranoia about my baby's development probably more than any other book. I found Vanderijt and Plooij's descriptions of the type of behavior you can expect at each week to be really accurate. Often when I was worried because my son was cranky and out of sorts for a few days I'd pick up this book and find, to my great relief, that that sort of behavior was expected for his age. My only complaint is that they don't help you translate weeks into months, so once my son was a few months old I had to get out my calendar and manually add up how many weeks old he was.

by Henci Goer

This one should get five stars for the amount of information it covers. It's an excellent source of information about all the different procedures that may be done during birth (forceps, episiotomy, epidural, etc.) and even includes the signs that the procedure is about to be performed so you're not caught off guard. The only reason I don't give it more stars is because it reads like a textbook, so it's difficult to get through. Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way or even The Birth Book by the Sears offer almost as much information in a more palatable format. But if you can get through it, this is an excellent book.

by Marc Weissbluth, MD

Ugh. I suppose I have to give Healthy Sleep Habits at least three stars because it does contain a ton of information about babies' sleep habits. However, I found this book to be mostly irritating. Weissbluth speaks of babies with all the compassion one would expect when discussing lab rats; the book reads like a doctoral thesis and is poorly laid out (the publisher really needs to get a page designer in there for the next version); and I find the fact that he is OK with the "extinction method" for sleep training -- where you put your baby in his room and do not return until morning no matter how much he cries -- appalling.

I actually recommend maybe getting this book to skim through the informational chapters and keep around for a reference, but you'll see as soon as you open it that it is not a "fun read" at all and the author is basically emotionless when discussing what is a very emotional subject for parents.

by Richard Ferber

Richard Ferber's infamous book is the reluctant purchase that so many parents have made out of desperation, their last resort when sleep deprivation threatens to consume their lives. It's a bit out of date and could be organized better (I'd prefer to see issues addressed by age), but overall it's not as horrible as I thought it would be. I found Weissbluth's attitude to be more uncaring and harsh. And, in the vast majority of cases, it works in three days. There is a lot of propaganda out there saying that it causes mothers to become desensitized to their children's cries, that children will become insecure and unbonded to their parents, etc. but I do not know of anyone personally who has experienced this. I suppose it can happen, but it would appear to be the exception rather than the rule. I encourage you to scan through the 300+ comments on Amazon and read some actual parents' firsthand accounts.

That said, as a parent who has tried every method and been chronically sleep deprived for almost two years, I have three recommendations regarding this book and its method: 1) Try one of the gentle, no-cry methods such as Elizabeth Pantley's first. 2) If the gentle methods don't work for your child (as they didn't for mine) consider Kim West's book Good Night, Sleep Tight instead of this one. It's tough-love enough to be effective but not as extreme as Ferber. 3) If you do decide that this method is what you need to do, please actually purchase and read the book first. I know quite a few people who resorted to let their babies cry without educating themselves about what ages it's appropriate for, what the proper technique is, the importance of comforting your child, etc.

by Elizabeth Pantley

The worn, torn, highlighted and dog-eared state of my copy of The No-Cry Sleep Solution attests to how very much I wanted this method to work for us. But, unfortunately, it didn't. I think that Pantley's suggestions for gently teaching your baby how to fall asleep on his own may work for babies with a relaxed temperament, but for my strong-willed, intense son the results were laughable. I suppose her six-phase method for gradually getting your child to sleep in his own crib may have eventually worked for us, but it would have involved a ton of screaming and crying in order to be effective, probably moreso even than Ferber's method.

If you're having sleep problems with your baby I encourage you to make this book your first purchase on the subject. It does work for some people, and obviously a no-cry method is the ideal way to go if that's possible for your child.

by T. Berry Brazelton, MD

With Touchpoints, Brazelton chronicles the various stages of babies' development from pregnancy to toddlerhood, giving the reader an overview of what to expect in terms of behavior, common problems, etc. I enjoyed reading this while pregnant and got some good info from it, but I found that I didn't use it much after my baby was born. I didn't always find that his descriptions of what to expect from your baby at each phase matched what we were experiencing, and there's something offputting about his writing style. He talks about what he commonly sees in his pediatrics office (e.g. "by six months mothers usually display more confidence with their babies...") rather than talking to you, the reader. This is similar in content to What to Expect the First Year and The Baby Book so you don't need all three. Flip through each of them in a bookstore and choose the one that you think best matches your parenting style.

by Heidi E. Murkoff, et al

I didn't actually read this one much, but it was a big hit as a coffee table book. Every time the grandparents were around they'd pick it up and delight in matching my son's abilities to what it talks about in the book and seeing what to expect from him in the coming months. This is similar in content to Touchpoints and The Baby Book so you don't need all three. Flip through each of them in a bookstore and choose the one that you think best matches your parenting style.

by Heidi E. Murkoff, et al

This was the first book I bought after I found out I was pregnant. At first I found it to be very helpful, but after a couple weeks I had gotten pretty much all of the useful information out of it. It does a good job of covering common worries ("What if I drank alcohol before I knew I was pregnant?", "When does the risk of miscarriage decrease?", etc.) so it's probably worth the purchase for that alone. However, it doesn't offer much information about what's going on with your baby at each stage, and I don't like the way it's organized. It's very similar to the The Pregnancy Book by Dr. Sears, so just get one or the other; you don't need both.

CAT: PREG
STARS: 2.5

by William Sears, MD and Martha Sears, RN

My thoughts on this one are the same as my thoughts on What to Expect When You're Expecting: good to have around as a reference but you'll have gotten 90% of the value out of it after the first few times you flip through it. You don't need both this and What to Expect, just get one or the other.

CAT: PREG
STARS: 2.5

by Ina May Gaskin

I am undoubtedly going to get flack for giving this classic tome such a low rating. I do so not because Spiritual Midwifery has little merit, but because Gaskin's other book, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, has much of the same content but is a better read. Spiritual Midwifery is clearly an earlier work, much more rough around the edges than Guide. For example, in the former Gaskin says in the introduction that she resists being told what words she can use to describe the female anatomy: "I just might want to use c**t one day and tw*t the next ...I might decide that pu**y is my favorite word" [censoring mine]. There are plenty of uptight people like me who just aren't up for hearing about babies coming out of people's c**ts. Guide is a bit more glossy and ready-for-primetime, with more efficient information and less, umm, experimentation with words.

by Laurie Boucke

In terms of quality of content this book should have a few more stars. Amazingly, it really is possible to have your baby potty trained by the time he's a couple of months old (I've seen it myself at playgroups) and this book will show you how. The problem is that it's pretty labor-intensive to execute, probably as much so as potty training the average toddler, and you have to be diligent about it starting just a couple of weeks postpartum. If you're up for that, this book is a must-read. But if, like me, you feel like you'll have enough on your plate in the first couple of months focusing on recovering your energy, getting breastfeeding started and getting to know your baby, then you can safely skip this one.

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by Sheila Kippley

This book is similar to others that make the case for extended breastfeeding and attachment parenting, but with a focus on using breastfeeding as birth control. It's not a how-to guide as much as it is a general summary, e.g. there are no sections on proper latch-on, troubleshooting breastfeeding problems, etc. Unless you have a particular interest in using breastfeeding as birth control, you’ll find other breastfeeding books such as The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding or the Sears' Breastfeeding Book to be more comprehensive and useful. However, it's a must-read for anyone who's interested in natural family planning or learning about the many benefits of breastfeeding.

by Martha Sears, RN and William Sears, MD

This massive volume is really a few books in one. It combines the information from the Sears' Breastfeeding Book and their Attachment Parenting Book and adds their own What to Expect-type month-by-month guide to the baby's first year. I like it in theory, but I give it only two stars because I didn't actually use it much at all. I used their Breastfeeding Book as my nursing reference and found that the rest of the information in the book wasn't useful for solving the various problems I encountered.

Like all baby how-to books, their personal parenting philosophy comes into play heavily as they dispense advice. Since their particular school of thought on child-rearing, attachment parenting, was not a good fit for my baby and me, I found that the advice they gave usually fell flat and didn't help with the various problems we encountered in the early months. However, if attachment parenting is a good fit for your baby then you'll probably find this book to be indispensable.

This is similar in content to What to Expect the First Year and Touchpoints so you don't need all three. Flip through each of them in a bookstore and choose the one that you think best matches your parenting style.

by Lise Eliot

I wasn't quite sure how to rate this book. On the one hand, it's an incredible source of information. I was absolutely blown away by all the information about how children's brains develop. In fact, at about the third chapter I almost put the book down to sent out an email insisting that all my friends who are mothers go buy it right now. But I actually couldn't finish the whole thing because of the details she gives in each chapter about the experimentations done on animals that provided scientists with this data.

I'm no PETA zealot or animal rights fanatic, and at first I could sort of mutter to myself that the experiments were sad but, umm, at least we learned some stuff about how the brain processes information. But in the chapter about vision she gives a straightforward account of a horribly cruel experiment that was done on kittens (I'll spare you the details) and I put the book down for good. So, if you have a thick skin for hearing about studies done on lab animals, including some common household pets, you'll find this book to be a fascinating wealth of information. Otherwise, find another book about the subject instead. I've heard that Magic Trees of the Mind is a good alternative, though I've not read it myself.

by Gary Ezzo, MD

A quick Google search on the author's name will show you that this book is controversial, to say the least. I had heard so many bad things about it I was almost offended to receive it as a shower gift. I decided to go ahead and read it to see what all the fuss was about and, indeed, I was disgusted with it. Part of my disgust was that I had brainwashed myself into believing the Sears' claim that getting your baby on a schedule and teaching him to self-soothe is for parents who have the "let's have babies conveniently" mindset. But there's also something about Ezzo's tone that's offputting. You get a feeling of arrogance when he quizzes you on his teachings at the end of each chapter; and when he discusses how long you should let your baby cry you get the feeling that crying babies really don't bother him all that much, that his editor just told him to throw in a few lines about how hard it is to hear your baby cry.

That said, now that I'm actually a mother I don't think that the book is entirely without merit. I wish I had been more open to the idea of getting into a regular routine and establishing good sleep habits my baby was younger. Overall I think it's worth maybe checking out this book from the library to familiarize yourself with the opposite extreme of attachment parenting. Even if there are parts you don't agree with I think you'll find some of his suggestions useful.

by Jean Liedloff

The insights Jean Liedloff gained while spending more than two years living in the jungle with Stone Age Indians are fascinating -- if you can discern them through her diffuse writing style. It's a really difficult book to get through because of the author's "Why use five words when twenty-five will do?" mentality. I opened my copy to a random page and found one sentence with 68 words. It's dense stuff. The good news is that the wonderful book Our Babies, Ourselves has many of the same ideas but is a much more pleasant read.

by Glade B. Curtis, MD

I didn't like this book at all. I doesn't offer any information that isn't in What to Expect or The Pregnancy Bible, and I didn't like the author's tone. I found many parts of the book to be condescending, and when he discusses health care provider options he doesn't even mention midwives. He seems to be very impressed with the fact that he's a doctor.

Interestingly, when I first picked up the book I misread the author's first name as "Gale." After reading it for a few days I was quite surprised that a woman would write such a patronizing book. Her tone and the way she approached her advice made it clear that she had almost certainly never been pregnant herself. I flipped to the author bio to see if I was correct, where I realized that I'd misread the name and that the author was a man. Not that men can't write good books about pregnancy and birth, but in this case I think the author might change his tone a bit if he had actually experienced the process himself.

by Pam England

I know a lot of women loved this book, but it wasn't for me at all. It does have some useful suggestions for managing birth but it was just too "new age-y" for me. Getting in touch with my innermost feelings by creating artwork is just not my thing. Also, the author seems to assume that every woman has deep fears and issues surrounding birth. If you are not planning to do natural childbirth, definitely skip this book. However, if you are planning a natural birth and have fears and issues that you need to work through, or if you enjoy things like working out your emotions through art, you may find this book to be helpful.

CAT: BIRTH
STARS: 1.5

by Martha Sears, RN and William Sears, MD

In this book the Sears make the case for "attachment parenting," the high-touch parenting style that encourages you to be closely in tune with your children's emotional and physical needs and promotes co-sleeping and nursing until your child decides he's ready to wean. I give it a low rating for two reasons: first, the ideas in this book ended up not working for me at all and, in fact, caused a lot of problems in the long run. I know many people who had great success with this parenting method but, unfortunately, I am not one of them.

This brings me to my second problem with the book: like all books that espouse a specific parenting philosophy, the Sears make it seem as if their method is the only sane, humane way to raise a baby and they tell outright lies about the risks of not using their method. For example, they sniff that parents who teach their babies to self-soothe have a "let's have babies conveniently" mindset and that such children will develop "diseases of detachment" later in life, including, "anger, distancing or withdrawal, and discipline problems." Anyone who knows many parents who have taught their babies to self-soothe knows that this is just false. It's a shame that they can't espouse their theories, which have many merits, without being so judgmental and unforgiving of parents for whom their method just does not work.