Well, well! Here we are in November and I’ve blown my yearly reading goals out of the water! This month my reading slowed down a little bit, since I spent most of the first half of the month crying about how miserably pregnant I was, and I’ve spent most of the second half of the month snuggling my sweet baby. I have gotten lots of reading in during my late night nursing sessions, but it’s been just a few minutes here and there. I’ve read four books this month, two of them related to birth preparation.
5 stars// Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is preparing or planning a natural childbirth! Ina May is the mother of all midwives and she writes this book explaining the miracle and magic of childbirth. It’s a very empowering read and one that has helped me wrap my head around how my body will labor and why I can do it. I’ve used a lot of the things I read in her book DURING labor all three times, and that is incredibly powerful to have those tools going into labor instead of being fearful of what might happen.
That being said, this book does have a lot of hippie dippy stuff in it. I’m into natural childbirth, but I’m not quite as extreme as Ina May and some of her patients/clients.
5 stars// Baby Catcher
I love, love love this book! It’s basically a memoir of a midwife who does home births. She writes in a way that makes me feel like I am right there in the room with all these beautiful birthing mothers. Some are loud, some are quiet. Some labors are easy, some are not so. Some are at night and some are during the day. It’s just a fun book that is written more like a story and less like a book of facts. At the same time, it also really helps me prepare for labor as I read about all the women in the book who have given birth.
One caveat here is that Peggy Vincent does include some of the less than ideal births. There is one or two stories of still birth and several stories of home births that have had to be transported to the hospital for scary emergency things. If you feel like that would worry you for your own labor and delivery, then I recommend reading this while not pregnant and about to give birth.
4.5 stars// The Keeper of Lost Things
I thought this was such a cute story! It was clean, and very Hallmarky, but a little less predictable than a Hallmark movie. I found it fast paced and enjoyed getting to know each character without tons of extra characters thrown in. The main character is left with a home that is full of others lost things, and is tasked with returning them to their owners. Through the journey, she befriends (rather begrudgingly) a neighbor girl who has Downs Syndrome. Of course, she also falls in love. There was a little bit of ghost things included in the story, but it didn’t come across as creepy spirits, it came across as cheesy Hallmark ghosts who are helping them on their journey.
3.5 stars// The Lake of Dreams
This book was good, but too much. I think that there could have been at least 100 pages removed from the story and it would have still been just fine. The book was very big on woman’s suffrage, feminism and supporting Native Americans. None of which I’m against, but I just didn’t feel moved or convinced like I felt the author was trying to do. A young woman who works overseas returns home and starts digging around in her attic only to find that some of her ancestors have more of a past (in woman’s suffrage) than anyone realized. She continues to poke around and find out more and more about her family history all while continuing to develop her own relationships (of course her ex-boyfriend from high school comes into the picture) and traipse around with no job (?). Overall, it was a decent story and I enjoyed it, but it dragged a lot.
I’m so excited to round out the year of reading, and to hopefully have a post of my favorite books from this year!