What We're Reading: "Happy Baby - The Organic Guide to Baby's First 24 Months"

We've got a new addition to the Lending Library! "Happy Baby - The Organic Guide to Baby's First 24 Months."

This book combines decades of medical expertise from Dr. Robert W. Sears with the nutritional know-how of Amy Marlow, registered dietitian for the popular HappyBaby line of organic baby food. These two answer critically important questions, like:

• What should I eat when nursing my baby to ensure the most nutritional feedings?
• What simple tips can help me manage the inevitable stress that comes with a new baby in the house?
• I'm worried about toxins in my baby's nursery. How can I green the new room?
• When do I introduce my child to solid foods, and how can I do it in a safe and fun way?
• How can I develop healthy eating habits in my children?

"Happy Baby - The Organic Guide to Baby's First 24 Months" offers a proactive, harmonious approach to parenting that's easier, greener, and just plain better for your precious infant or toddler.

So stop by CGB and borrow our copy of this fantastic new book!

What We're Reading: "Birthing From Within"

In case you couldn't tell from the title, "Birthing from Within" by Pam England and Rob Horowitz prepares a mother to birth from within.

England and Horowitz provide insights into what labor and birth will be like and offer guidance through the emotional, spiritual, psychic and social mists which enshroud birth in our culture. They are quick to point out that the book "is not a script or a rigid method," but instead a book of suggestions on how women can become familiar with their bodies and feelings

CGB loves this book because it helps you discover your own wisdom and birth power. Empower yourself with "Birthing from Within!"

Purchase this book at CGB, or borrow it from our Lending Library.

What We're Reading: "Pushed"

Kansas City Star called it "a worthwhile book for anyone who cares about reforming our health-care system--right from the start" and the Kirkus Review said it was "a gripping expose."

"Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care" takes a hard look at healthcare, particularly women's healthcare and pregnancy, in the US. It's intense, stirring and informational. Check out the Publisher's Weekly Review below:

"According to writer and editor Block ("Our Bodies, Ourselves"), 'the United States has the most intense and widespread medical management of birth' in the world, and yet 'ranks near the bottom among industrialized countries in maternal and infant mortality.'

Block shows how, in transforming childbirth into a business, hospitals have turned 'procedures and devices developed for the treatment of abnormality' into routine practice, performed for no reason than 'speeding up and ordering an unpredictable...process'; for instance, the U.S. cesarean section rate tripled in the 1970s, and has doubled since then.

Block looks into a growing contingent of parents-to-be exploring alternatives to the hospital-and the attendant likelihood of medical intervention-by seeking out birthing centers and options for home-birth.

Unfortunately, obstacles to these alternatives remain considerable-laws across the U.S. criminalizing or severely restricting the practice of midwifery have led the trained care providers to practice underground in many states-while tort reform has done next to nothing to lower malpractice insurance rates or improve hospital birthing policies.

This provocative, highly readable expose raises questions of great consequence for anyone planning to have a baby in U.S., as well as those interested or involved in women's health care."

"Pushed" is available as part of CGB's lending library.

Or learn more about "Pushed" here.

What We're Reading: "Raising Baby Green"

"In this illustrated and easy-to-use guide, noted pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, a leading voice of the green baby movement, advises parents how to make healthy green choices for pregnancy, childbirth, and baby care—from feeding your baby the best food available to using medicines wisely. Consumer advocate Jeanette Pavini includes information for making smart choices and applying green principles to a whole new universe of products from zero-VOC paints for the nursery, to pure and gentle lotions for baby's delicate skin, to the eco-friendly diapers now in the marketplace, as well as specific recommendations for hundreds of other products."

Accolades include:

• Winner of the Nautilus Book Awards Gold Medal for “BEST PARENTING BOOK OF THE YEAR”
• Dr. Greene provides a lucid, helpful guide for parenting in the 21st century." —Julius B. Richmond, MD, Harvard Medical School, Founding Director of Project Head Start, and Former U.S. Surgeon-General
• "I found Raising Baby Green a wonderful guide to raising healthy babies and children. The book reflects Alan Greene's evolution as a pediatrician and it brings together science, expert opinion and experiential knowledge in an easy-to-follow book. It is a gem." —Philip Lee, MD, Former United States Assistant Secretary of Health, Chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco, Professor at Stanford University
• "Dr. Alan Greene is the passionate voice for those just born and those not yet born. Listen to him."—Walter Robb, president, Whole Foods Market

"Raising Baby Green" is available as part of CGB's Lending Library. To learn more about Dr. Greene, click here.

What We're Reading: Operating Instructions

"It seems no mother of a newborn has ever been more hilarious, more honest, or more touching than Anne Lamott is in "Operating Instructions." A single parent whose baby's father is out of the picture, Lamott struggles not only to support her little family by her wits and her writing but to stay sober at the same time. Faith in God helps; so does her loyal band of helpers, from her childless best friend Pammy to her mother and "Aunt Dudu" to the folks at the La Leche League hotline. And between colic, wheat-free diets, and the triumph of solid food, Lamott learns that blessings and losses come together, and as our capacity for job increases, so does our capacity for grief."

Available as part of Crunchy Granola Baby's Lending Library.

What We're Reading: "Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife"

"In a joyous, often hilarious ode to the Birkenstock-scuffling, tackle box-toting mobile midwives who flourished in the 1980s, Peggy Vincent chronicles her abundant life as a professional Baby Catcher.

The wild ride begins during her nurse training years in the 1960s, when laboring women were expected to lie down, shut up, and submit to whatever drugs and procedures the doctor ordered. A rebellious patient who chants and dances through her contractions--and the hell that ensues when seasoned hospital staffers intrude--lights a permanent fire under Vincent. Her resolve to serve each laboring woman with compassion and respect carries her from obstetrics nurse to head of an alternative birth center within Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California, and eventually into her own private practice as a licensed midwife.

Like the most courageous home births, this collection of delivery experiences refuses anesthesia: plenty of bellowing, sweating, bleeding, and pushing accompany nearly all of the more than 40 tales. Tough confrontations with stubborn physicians, panicky labor partners, and one particularly nasty calico cat are dabbed with as many keen insights as Vincent's quieter, more heart-rending newborn encounters.

Baby Catcher is an inspirational literary gift suitable for expectant mothers, fellow baby catchers, and anyone who loves reading about nature's greatest magical feat." - From Amazon.com

Interested in other books from our Lending Library? Check them out at our GoodReads Profile.

What We're Reading: "Raising Your Spirited Child"

Check out what we're currently reading!

"Recently, temperament traits have come to the forefront of child development theory. In Raising Your Spirited Child, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's first contribution is to redefine the "difficult child" as the "spirited" child, a child that is, as she says, MORE. Many people are leery about books that are too quick to "type" kids, but Kurcinka, a parent of a spirited child herself and a parent educator for 20 years, doesn't fall into that trap. Instead, she provides tools to understanding your own temperament as well as your child's. When you understand your temperamental matches--and your mismatches--you can better understand, work, live, socialize, and enjoy spirit in your child. By reframing challenging temperamental qualities in a positive way, and by giving readers specific tools to work with these qualities, Kurcinka has provided a book that will help all parents, especially the parents of spirited children, understand and better parent their children." - Amazon.com

Available as part of Crunchy Granola Baby's Lending Library