“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.” |
Fertility Awareness
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Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook
By Katie Singer In clear, everyday language, Honoring Our Cycles describes what happens during a menstrual cycle and how a baby is conceived. It explains how to chart the body's fertility signs to know which days are best for becoming pregnant or avoiding becoming pregnant, without the use of hormonal drugs. Includes dietary advice for successful conception and healthy babies and families. |
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Taking Charge of Your Fertility
By Toni Weschler, MPH Are you unhappy with your current method of birth control? Or are you demoralized by your quest to have a baby? Do you also experience confusing signs and symptoms at various times in your cycle, but are frustrated by a lack of simple explanations? This invaluable resource will help you find the answer to your questions while giving you amazing insights into your own body. Taking Charge of Your Fertility has helped literally hundreds of thousands of women achieve pregnancy, avoid pregnancy naturally, or simply gain better control of their health and lives. This book thoroughly explains the empowering Fertility Awareness Method, which in only a couple of minutes a day allows you to: • Enjoy highly effective and scientifically proven birth control without chemicals or devices • Maximize your chances of conception before you see a doctor, or expedite your fertility treatment by quickly identifying impediments to pregnancy achievement • Increase the likelihood of choosing the gender of your baby • Gain control of your sexual and gynecological health This expanded new edition includes: • A revolutionary new, fully intuitive charting system • Numerous new master charts, including separate ones for birth control, pregnancy achievement, and menopause • The latest on fertility conditions and high-tech treatments • Comprehensive tables that clearly summarize fertility-related drugs and procedures |
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Pregnancy & Childbirth
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Being Born: The Doula's Role
By Jewel Hernandez & R. Michael Mithuna (Illustrator) This children’s picture book with simple text and soft watercolors explains in friendly terms to kids and parents about the role of a doula – a healthcare professional who offers physical and emotional support to a pregnant woman and her family. Research confirms that the support of a doula throughout pregnancy optimizes a woman’s chances of having a healthier birth experience as well as a healthier newborn. This book celebrates birth – as a natural and whole-family experience. Both its text and images present the subject clearly, but in child-appropriate language. Its gentle advocacy of a doula’s role make Being Born an invaluable resource for childbirth educators to use with first pregnancies, teenage mothers, and with families for whom English is a second language. When read to younger siblings, this book will be a source of comfort to those who wonder about all the people involved when mom is “having a baby.” |
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The Pregnant Body Book: The Complete Illustrated Guide from Conception to Birth
By Dr. Sarah Brewer, Shaoni Bhattacharya, Dr. Justine Davies, Dr. Sheena Meredith & Dr. Penny Preston Examining the development of the baby in the womb and the parallel changes in the mother's body and structured to follow the process week by week, The Pregnant Body Book follows every anatomical and physiological change and tracks it in unprecedented detail. Specially commissioned 3D artworks, illustrations, scans, and photography show exactly how a baby changes and grows during pregnancy, and how the female body adapts to carry it. Includes interactive DVD featuring cutting edge animations. |
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Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
By Ina May Gaskin What you need to know to have the best birth experience for you. Drawing upon her thirty-plus years of experience, Ina May Gaskin, the nation’s leading midwife, shares the benefits and joys of natural childbirth by showing women how to trust in the ancient wisdom of their bodies for a healthy and fulfilling birthing experience. Based on the female-centered Midwifery Model of Care, Ina May’s Guide to Natural Childbirth gives expectant mothers comprehensive information on everything from the all-important mind-body connection to how to give birth without technological intervention. Filled with inspiring birth stories and practical advice, this invaluable resource includes: • Reducing the pain of labor without drugs--and the miraculous roles touch and massage play • What really happens during labor • Orgasmic birth--making birth pleasurable • Episiotomy--is it really necessary? • Common methods of inducing labor--and which to avoid at all costs • Tips for maximizing your chances of an unmedicated labor and birth • How to avoid postpartum bleeding--and depression • The risks of anesthesia and cesareans--what your doctor doesn’t necessarily tell you • The best ways to work with doctors and/or birth care providers • How to create a safe, comfortable environment for birth in any setting, including a hospital • And much more Ina May’s Guide to Natural Childbirth takes the fear out of childbirth by restoring women’s faith in their own natural power to give birth with more ease, less pain, and less medical intervention. |
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Birth Matters
By Ina May Gaskin Renowned for her practice's exemplary results and low intervention rates, Ina May Gaskin has gained international notoriety for promoting natural birth. She is a much-beloved leader of a movement that seeks to stop the hyper-medicalization of birth—which has lead to nearly a third of hospital births in America to be cesarean sections—and renew confidence in a woman's natural ability to birth. Upbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women's rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctually human. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species. |
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Spiritual Midwifery Fourth Edition
By Ina May Gaskin The fourth edition of the classic book on home birth that introduced a whole generation of women to the concept of natural childbirth. Back again are even more amazing birthing tales, including those from women who were babies in earlier editions and stories about Old Order Amish women attended by the Farm midwives.Also new is information about the safety of techniques routinely used in hospitals during and after birth, information on postpartum depression and maternal death, and recent statistics on births managed by The Farm Midwives. From the amazing birthing tales to care of the newborn, Spiritual Midwifery is still one of the best books an expectant mother could own. Includes resources for doulas, childbirth educators, birth centers, and other organizations and alliances dedicated to improving maternity care at home and in hospitals. |
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Birth Without Violence: The Book That Revolutionalized the Way We Bring Our Children into the World
By Frederick Leboyer A revised edition of the classic that changed the way children are met when they enter our world • The original book that challenged society’s beliefs about awareness in the newborn • Shows how gentle lighting, a quiet atmosphere, and a warm bath allow a newborn to ease the transition from womb to world without trauma or fear |
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Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Birth Experience
By Elizabeth Davis & Debra Pascali-Bonaro Many women experience birth as nothing more than a routine or painful event. Here is an enlightening program to help women attain the most empowering birth experience possible. While an orgasmic birth can induce feelings of intense, ecstatic pleasure, it is ultimately about taking control of one’s own body and making the best informed decisions to have a safe, memorable, and joyful birthing. “To clarify—orgasmic birth does not necessarily mean you experience orgasm but that you birth connected to your body and your baby with feelings of ecstasy and release, as supported by normal physiology. When women don’t have this experience, it is usually due to environmental factors and/or interventions that disrupt the process. Orgasmic birth is not a performance standard, but it is every woman’s birthright!” Whether choosing to give birth at home, in a hospital, or in a birthing center, Orgasmic Birth provides all the necessary tools and guidance women need to design the birth plan that’s best for them. Featuring amazing stories from mothers and their partners and filled with practical advice and solutions, this one-of-a-kind resource is the next frontier of empowered, intimate childbirth. |
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Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation
By Pam England & Rob Horowitz Here is a holistic approach to childbirth that examines this profound rite-of-passage not as a medical event but as an act of self-discovery. Exercises and activities such as journal writing, meditation, and painting will help mothers analyze their thoughts and face their fears during pregnancy. For use during birth, the book offers proven techniques for coping with labor pain without drugs, a discussion of the doctor or midwife’s role, and a look at the father’s responsibilities. Childbirth education should also include what to expect after the baby is born. Here are baby basics, such as how to bathe a newborn, how to get the little one to sleep, and tips for getting nursing off to a good start. Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is a process of continuous learning and adjustment; Birthing From Within provides the necessary support and education to make each phase of birthing a rewarding experience. |
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Confident Birth
By Susanna Heli Women have an innate ability to give birth, a knowledge that has been acquired through thousands of years of evolution. Yet all too often fear and stress can get in the way and block the natural process of childbirth. Confident Birth was created to help you release your innate ability of giving birth. The knowledge of how to give birth already exists in the female body, it's not something we have to be taught. But feelings like fear and stress often block this ability by triggering powerful survival mechanisms that work against it. Confident Birth gives you theoretical knowledge of how stress and fear can influence the birth process in a negative way and also gives you four simple tools based on physiology to help you avoid a negative experience – breathing, relaxation, use of voice and power of mind. |
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Holistic Health
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The Natural Pregnancy Book: Herbs, Nutrition, and Other Holistic Choices
By Aviva Jill Romm, MD Reading The Natural Pregnancy Book is like having your own personal herbalist and midwife at your side. Expertly written by Aviva Jill Romm, who has been providing family-centered natural health care for almost twenty years, it guides women through treating the common ills and ailments of pregnancy simply with herbs and nutrition. Aviva thoughtfully follows the woman's journey from baby's conception to birth, describing herbs that can promote and maintain a healthy pregnancy, along with those you should avoid during your term. Her herbal remedies cover such familiar concerns as anxiety, fatigue, morning sickness, and stretch marks. She also discusses the components of a healthy diet, with an emphasis on natural foods. With its detailed information and comforting voice, The Natural Pregnancy Book is a complete primer for the woman who envisions a safe pregnancy as nature intended it. |
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Real Food for Mother and Baby
By Nina Planck Nina Planck, one of the great food activists, changed the way we view old-fashioned foods like butter with her groundbreaking Real Food. Then she got pregnant. Never one to accept conventional wisdom blindly, Nina found the usual advice about pregnancy and baby food riddled with myths and misunderstandings. In Real Food for Mother and Baby, Nina explains why many modern ideas about pregnancy and infant nutrition are wrongheaded and why traditional foods are best. While Nina can be controversial-her op-ed in the New York Times on vegan diets for infants was one of the paper's most e-mailed articles- she's no contrarian. Readers applaud her candor; they also trust her research and welcome her advice. Nina's basic premise hasn't changed-whole foods are best-but some of the details are surprising. Pregnant women need meat and salt, not iron supplements. Nursing will be easier if you act like the mammal you are. Delaying the introduction of certain solid foods doesn't prevent allergies. Cereals are not the best foods for tiny eaters; meat and egg yolks are better. From conception to two years, the body's overwhelming needs are for quality fat and protein, not for carrots and low-fat dairy. Even as she casts a skeptical eye on the conventional wisdom, Nina is reassuring. She shows you how to keep your baby healthy on good, simple food. Real Food for Mother and Baby will be the new classic on eating for two. |
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Mother Rising: The Blessingway Journey into Motherhood
By Yana Cortlund, Barb Lucke, & Donna Miller Watelet A resource for planning and hosting a blessingway ceremony-a woman-centered celebration of the journey into motherhood. Different from a baby shower, where gifts are lavished upon the soon-to-be-born child, a blessingway ceremony honors the mother-to-be and creates a circle of support that will cradle her as she prepares to give birth. Surrounded by the most important women in her life, she can explore the challenges and joys that lie before her, gaining a sense of power and confidence that will help her rise to motherhood. MOTHER RISING shows women how to organize and personalize a blessingway for the expecting friends and family-an experience that will give the mother-to-be the best possible gifts of deep happiness, serenity, and abundance of love. |
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Grief & Healing
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Cut, Stapled, and Mended: When One Woman Reclaimed Her Body and Gave Birth on Her Own Terms After Cesarean
by Roanna Rosewood "At least you and the baby are healthy." That's what they said when they handed him to me. And they were right. Why then, so long after my body has healed, do I still feel broken? A whisper inside of me insists: Birth is more than a means to a baby. There was something I was supposed to do, something I was to receive through giving birth. Pregnant again, when the doctor tries to schedule another cesarean, I refuse. I will not submit to being tied down, cut open, and having my uterus extracted again without a fight. That's why I ask a midwife to help me give birth. I tell her that I'm determined and strong. But she sees through my tough-guy armor. She smiles, saying, "Birth isn't a battle to win or lose. It's the result of delving into your vulnerability and finding your true feminine power." In exquisite detail, Roanna holds nothing back in her powerful birth memoir, plunging the reader deep into the intimacy of this universal rite of passage. Part memoir, part manifesto, this is a must read for anyone who has given birth, will give birth, or who loves someone who will give birth. |
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How to Expect What You're Not Expecting: Stories of Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Loss
Edited by Jessica Hiemstra & Lisa Martin-DeMoor One size fits all does not apply to pregnancy and childbirth. Each one is different, unique, and comes with its share of pleasure and pain. But how does one prepare for an unexpected loss of a pregnancy or hoped-for baby? In How to Expect What You're Not Expecting, writers share their true stories of miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, and other, related losses. This literary anthology picks up where some pregnancy books end and offers diverse, honest, and moving essays that can prepare and guide women and their families for when the unforeseen happens. |
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Empty Cradle Paperback
By Deborah L. Davis The heartache of miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death affects thousands of families every year. Empty Cradle, Broken Heart offers reassurance to parents who struggle with anger, guilt, and despair after such tragedy. Deborah Davis encourages grieving and makes suggestions for coping. The book includes information on issues such as the death of one or more babies from a multiple birth, pregnancy interruption, and the questioning of aggressive medical intervention. There is also a special chapter for fathers as well as a chapter on "protective parenting" to help anxious parents enjoy their precious living children. Doctors, nurses, relatives, friends, and other support persons can gain special insight. Most importantly, parents facing the death of a baby will find necessary support in this gentle guide. If reading this book moves you to cry, try to accept this reaction. Your tears merge with those of other grieving parents. You are not alone! |
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Postpartum
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Breastfeeding Solutions: Quick Tips for the Most Common Nursing Challenges by Nancy Mohrbacher IBLC, FILCA (officially recognized by the International Lactation COnultant association)
Even when mothers are highly motivated to breastfeed, when faced with obstacles—like pain, worries about milk production, and difficulty pumping—they may begin to question their good intentions. In situations like these, is weaning the best answer? Or are there simple ways to overcome challenges and meet their breastfeeding goals? Breastfeeding Solutions is the perfect book for any new mother who wants quick, practical solutions to common breastfeeding problems. The book includes illustrations, tables and charts, and other visual aids to make it easy to quickly find the answers without wading through hundreds of pages of text. Breastfeeding is one of the best things a mother can do. This book will help mothers overcome the hurdles so they can start cherishing this special time with their child. Health & Wellness |
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The Women's Guide to Thyroid Health: Comprehensive Solutions for All Your Thyroid Symptoms by Kathryn Simpson
You're already an expert on your thyroid symptoms. Why not become an expert on solutions? Although your doctor is an invaluable resource, taking charge of your health care is the best way to discover treatments that work, make the most of your medical appointments, and restore your thyroid balance. Because hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and other thyroid problems affect every woman differently, The Women's Guide to Thyroid Health takes a personal approach. Together with your doctor, you'll evaluate your symptoms and use that information to create a personal treatment plan. Use this book to help interpret test results, understand your options for hormone therapy medication, manage side effects, and discover simple nutrition and lifestyle strategies that can keep you looking and feeling well. By informing yourself and partnering with your doctor, you'll get the results you are looking for. |
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The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care
by Sally Fallon Morell & Thomas S. Cowan, MD The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care makes the principles of traditional nutrition available to modern parents. The book provides holistic advice for pregnancy and newborn interventions, vaccinations, breastfeeding and child development, as well as a compendium of natural treatments for childhood illnesses, from autism to whooping cough. The work of Rudulf Steiner supports the book's emphasis on the child's spiritual requirement for imaginative play. |
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