bekahcubed

Categories Pregnancy, Theology

Is Painless Childbirth Possible?

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I think it was Dr. Bradley who stated that pain is not a necessary part of childbirth – and claimed that stating that pain *is* necessary to childbirth is a misapplication of Genesis 3.

But I don’t think a plain reading of Scripture supports that view:

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.”
~Genesis 3:16 (ESV)

In fact, I think a plain reading suggests that pain was likely a part of childbearing even prior to the fall – since this verse refers to multiplication (which implies something pre-existing to multiply – multiplying by 0 doesn’t make anything). And certainly, it clearly states that woman will bring forth children in pain.

Furthermore, plenty of other Scriptures indicate that pain is a normative experience during childbirth. A frequent simile used by the prophets is “pain like a woman in labor” (Psalm 48:6; Isaiah 13:8, 21:3, 42:14; Jeremiah 6:24, 22:23, 49:24, 50:43; Micah 4:9). Jesus spoke of “birth pains” (Matthew 24:8, Mark 13:8) and of the “sorrow” and “anguish” of a woman in labor (John 16:21). The apostle Paul likened his painful toils for the church to the anguish of a woman in labor (Galatians 4:19). Other references that suggest that pain in childbirth is normative include I Samuel 4:19 (her “pains came upon her”), Isaiah 26:17 (“writhes and cries out in her pangs”), Jeremiah 4:31 (“cries” and “anguish” as of a woman in labor), Jeremiah 48:41 and 49:22 (“birth pains”), Jeremiah 13:21 and Hosea 13:13 (the “pangs” of childbirth), Micah 4:10 (“writhe and groan like a woman in labor”), Romans 8:22 (pains of childbirth), and I Thessalonians 5:3 (“labor pains”).

Other Scriptures imply that childbirth is something that requires great strength. The midwives who cared for the Hebrew women in Egypt stated that they weren’t killing the baby boys they were delivering “because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” (Exodus 1:19 ESV) The Hebrew women’s vigor meant that their labors were fast enough (apparently) that the midwife didn’t get there in time to assist. Hezekiah spoke (in 2 Kings 19:3 and Isaiah 37:3) of children coming to the point of birth but mothers not having the strength to deliver them.

From my reading of Scripture, it seems plain that childbirth is indeed labor (work) and that it is generally painful labor.

Yet I am not afraid of childbirth, nor do I wish to blunt the pain of childbirth with drugs. Why is this?

Am I playing martyr, arguing against the umbrella that could guard me from this consequence of the fall?

No. I’m not. I expect pain in childbirth, but I’m not going to shy away from it because I believe two things: I believe that pain in childbirth is purposeful and I believe that it has payoff.

While some pain has no apparent purpose (for instance, in fibromyalgia), most pain does have a purpose. The pain of touching a too-hot stove tells us to withdraw our hand before damage is done. The pain of backache or a strained muscle often tells us to change our posture or our activity patterns. Other times pain simply tells us that our body is working. We feel the “burn” when we’re exercising vigorously. And, when having a baby, we feel pain that lets us know that our uterus is contracting to push baby out. If we know what to look for, pain also tells us when we should be actively working with our bodies’ involuntary impulses to push baby out.

And finally, I believe that the pain of labor has payoff.

“When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.”
~John 16:21 (ESV)

Following the pain of childbirth comes great joy – joy in a new human being. Inasmuch as it depends on me, I want to be fully there and fully aware to experience that joy – even if it means I have to endure additional pain leading up to it.

Categories Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday: Trials may last for a night

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Thankful Thursday banner

It hasn’t been an awful week, but it hasn’t been a wonderful one either. It’s been a weary week, one full of large and small frustrations that tempt me to take my eyes off Christ and place them on myself. But God in His mercy gives that glimmer of light amidst the valleys that reminds me that He’s still in control, still walking alongside me, still gracious and merciful.

This week I’m thankful…

…that water dries
I dutifully took my medicine when Daniel told me to, but my early-morning coordination was lacking and I spilled almost half my water bottle all over the bed. But Daniel let me sleep the rest of the morning on his side of the bed while a towel soaked up the water on my side (Daniel usually wakes me up to take my medicine when he gets up, then lets me sleep another hour before he brings me breakfast – since I have to wait an hour after the medicine to eat anyway.) Between the towel soaking and a fan on the sheets later on, the bed was dry in time for bedtime that evening.

…that the waves and wind – and, with some coaxing, my soul – still know who’s in control
We weren’t arguing, but we were having a spirited discussion about the use of civil courts vs. college judicial boards for allegations of rape on college campuses. We discuss things like that regularly – it’s one of the things I love about my marriage, the intellectual conversations we have about just about anything. But this particular morning, after Daniel left for work, my soul was disquieted within me. I grabbed Daniel’s hymnal from the shelf and opened to “Be Still My Soul.” With coaxing, my soul learned who rules the earth below.

…for an end to work craziness
Since we schedule 3 months out in our WIC clinic, we have a hard time adjusting when we lose staff – so although our site’s supervisor gave notice, that didn’t mean that we didn’t feel the extra busyness after her last day. However, a nurse from another clinic was hired as a new supervisor and she starts next Monday! It’ll still be a while before the craziness in our books sorts itself out, but this is the beginning of the end (of no time to breathe, much less chart in between clients.)

…for a big kick reminding me that dreams are not reality
I dreamt that our baby was stillborn – and even though I know that dreams aren’t reality, it still bothered me. I practiced deep breathing, read some Psalms. And my belly jumped with an undeniable kick, reminding me for real that dreams are not reality.

…for getting through the first few weeks
Bradley classes did not get off to a good start for us (let’s just say that I have some serious issues with the “Brewer Diet” that the Bradley method – and apparently several other natural childbirth methods – promotes.) But after one week in tears and another close to tears (I think I hid them fairly effectively until we got to the car), it was a relief to move on to the actual childbirth material in week 3.

“Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.”
~Psalm 30:4-5 (ESV)

Categories Book Notes, Pregnancy

Everybody do the doula with me…

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When I learned at age fourteen that homebirths were officially illegal in Nebraska (or, at least, that it was illegal for midwives to attend homebirths), I struck midwife from my list of potential careers. I started almost immediately to look for alternatives and was delighted at seventeen to learn of this thing called a doula – a woman who helps women during labor. I looked up all the requirements for being certified with DONA (the doulas of North America) and contemplated becoming a doula many a time.

But when I got pregnant, hiring a doula was the last thing on my mind – it didn’t even cross my mind.

When our midwife and her student midwife mentioned the value of doula care at our meet and greet, I blew it off and wouldn’t have thought about it again except that my husband asked me later if we shouldn’t include doula fees in our pregnancy budget.

I don’t think I need one of those, I told him. Diedre and Cynthia will be there and you’ll be there.

But Diedre sounded like she really encourages women to have doulas, he replied. I promised him I’d think about it. I checked The Doula Advantage by Rachel Gurevich out of the library to help me think through doula care.

What I read did little to convince me. It seemed to me like the biggest advantage of doula care is having someone in between you and the medical staff, someone who can help you ask questions and make informed decisions, someone who is going to know your hopes for the birth and help you have the birth experience you want. That’s all great and I think it’s probably vital if you’re giving birth in a hospital (where protocols are king and the chances that your caregivers know your wishes are slim) – but I’m going to be giving birth at home, with a midwife I’ve been visiting with for my entire pregnancy. I don’t need someone else there.

Then, I started reading birth stories and my sensitive first-trimester belly churned. It wasn’t the birth stories themselves that made me sick to my stomach – few can match my excitement over dilation and amniotic fluid and crowning and women who press through back labor. I love me some birth stories – and have since I discovered my parents’ copy of Special Delivery (a 1970s homebirth manual complete with the birth story and photos of the author’s daughter Mariposa) some fifteen (or more) years ago. No, what was making me sick to my stomach was all the people in these stories. There were doctors and nurses and husbands and doulas and best friends and children, oh my! All I could think was “make all these people leave!”

Diedre asked me at our meet and greet if I’d consider an unassisted homebirth – and I told her no without reservation. (EDIT: On rereading, I realize this requires clarification. My midwife was NOT suggesting that I have an unassisted homebirth; instead, she was trying to clarify what I meant when I spoke of my philosophy that childbirth is a natural process and that intervention is usually unnecessary.) I want to have someone present at my delivery who has experience with birthing women and who can share the wisdom of birthing with me. I want someone there who knows what constitutes an emergency and what to do in an emergency. I want a midwife there.

But that’s not to say that I really even want the midwife intruding much. Really, I just want to give birth on my own terms. I want as much privacy as possible to labor my way – and to cling to my husband as we labor our way. I don’t want an audience. (I may not be the most private person, but I am a very independent one – and having a whole lot of people around during delivery is not my idea of fun.)

Having read The Doula Advantage, I was pretty sure I don’t want a doula. That said, I promised Daniel that I’d discuss it in greater depth with Diedre and Cynthia.

I did and was greatly relieved when Diedre informed me that, while a doula is generally beneficial for most women, I should go with my gut here. (She did, of course, clarify that she and Cynthia may NOT be able to provide doula-like coaching care for the entirety of my delivery – because they need to focus on providing midwife care. And that’s just fine with me!)

Did you have a doula when you delivered? Did you prefer to labor in private or did you want lots of people around? Wanna share your birth story? I’d love to hear it (and I promise I’m getting that gag reflex under control.)

Categories Book Notes

Book Notes: Paranoid Parenting (Part 5)

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I’m mostly writing notes to evaluate Furedi’s arguments and add my own thoughts. If you’re interested, you can check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. This will be the last of these posts since I’ve finally taken the book back to the library.

Chapter 5: Parenting Turned into an Ordeal
Furedi says: More and more parents are complaining that they have insufficient time to parent – despite the fact that today’s parents spend more time with (and actively involved with) their children than any other parents in the previous century spent with theirs. Society has taken off the rose-colored glasses that suggest that parenting is a walk in the park, but they’ve replaced them with “parenting as an ordeal” lenses.

I say: Yep. The expectation of parental involvement has grown and grown – such that parents feel an undeniable pressure for quality *and* quantity time with their children. For the record, my parents spent a lot of time with us kids growing up – but only a small segment of that time was parent-directed. Mom and Dad actually had conversations with one another while we were all sitting in the living room in the evening. Mom read books to herself while we kids played on the floor. She hoed the garden while we kids played in the backyard. She didn’t feel compelled to create sensory bins and learning activities and structured play times (not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but they aren’t a litmus test for good parenting.)

Chapter 6: Why Parents Confuse their Problems with Those of their Children
Furedi argues that now, more than ever, children are a part of their parents’ identity – and parenting advice is more focused than ever on changing adult behavior. Furedi believes the “competitive parenting” is an outgrowth of this confusion of parental identity with childrens’ identities. The most interesting suggestion Furedi makes in this chapter (from my point of view) is that, as adult relationships are increasingly fragile and temporary (due to increased impermanent cohabitation, high divorce rate, etc.), adults are more frequently turning to their children as the most permanent relationship in their lives. Thus, the relative perceived returns of investing in their children versus in a spouse or romantic partner have increased. Parents are now, more than ever, investing in an emotional relationship with their children out of a presumption that this is the one relationship that they can count on for the rest of their lives.

It’s a fascinating hypothesis, although difficult to prove or disprove empirically. Nevertheless, I wonder if some parents’ difficulty in letting their adult children “leave” to cleave to another is in part due to this co-mingling of a parent’s and a child’s identity.

I believe strongly in the permanence of marriage. Daniel and I will be married until one or the other of us dies. He is the one with whom my identity has been mingled (…and the two shall become one…) I will fight to keep my marriage as the central human relationship of my life.

But I still wonder how easily I might fall into the trap that my children’s behavior represents my success or failure at parenting. I have plenty of strong ideas about how things should or shouldn’t be done. I spend my days teaching parents how to alter their own behavior so that their kids won’t be fat (or will be less picky or will gain weight or…) So what happens if I end up with a fat, picky, or underweight child? Will I consider my identity so wrapped up in my child’s that this will devastate me? I don’t know. Or what if I have a child who doesn’t like to read? I don’t know.

I pray God would give me grace to parent well, not in order to bolster my own self-image, but as a faithful steward of the children God gives me.

Categories Books, Pregnancy

Bumps and Books

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My siblings have been bugging me for baby bump photos – and, while I’ve been taking them for a while now, I hadn’t yet gone through them and prepared them for posting.

But when Carrie announced her 8th Blogiversary and invited readers to link up with a picture of them with their favorite book (thereby entering them in a drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card), I knew that I had to get busy. Obviously, this would be a perfect opportunity to please my siblings – and let me participate in Carrie’s fun giveaway (which would be a fun meme even if there weren’t a giveaway attached.)

Week 19’s picture would have to feature both my bump and my favorite book. But first, you’ll have to scroll through the prior weeks. Sorry ’bout that. Gotta please the sibs first, you know :-)

Week 12: In which I don’t look pregnant

Week 12

Which was just fine with me since we weren’t planning on telling the general public for another two weeks.

Week 13: In which I have awful posture

Week 12

Apparently, I need to have my glasses on in order to know how to stand up straight. Who knew?

Week 14: In which the front of my shirt hangs higher than the back
Week 14

Oh wait. That’s the way it has hung since I was twelve.

Week 15: In which I think “Why didn’t her mother tell her to tuck in that pooch?”

Week 15

How often have I complained about how girls these days haven’t learned to tuck their tummies in and their tushes under? Guilty as charged.

Week 16: In which I might just really be pregnant

Week 16

After looking through all these photos today and trying desperately NOT to arch my back for my Week 19 photo, I have decided that this must be my new pregnancy posture. So I can’t tell if this is really a belly or if it’s just the result of this new (and completely weird to me) posture.

Week 17: In which an honest picture (where I’m not arching my back?) shows no bump?

Week 17

How pregnant I look varies widely based on my clothing. If I’m wearing a tightly fitting shirt, you can see the rise of a belly under my chest – if it’s a looser one like this, you can’t see anything.

Week 18: In which I lift my shirt to see if I actually look pregnant or if it’s the billowy shirt

Week 18

I think it’s mostly just the billowy shirt. But my midwife says my uterus is just the right size – and I’ve actually gained a little over the recommended amount at this point (just all on my chest and thighs rather than my belly).

Week 19: In which I show off my favorite book.

Week 19

I know, that’s more than a favorite book. But really, how does one decide?

My favorites include the Bible, The Mysterious Benedict Society, Little Town on the Prairie, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Pride and Prejudice.

Daniel insisted that I also take some photos without the books for continuity’s sake – but I actually think the books do a better job of showing exactly what is bump and what is not (since my dress doesn’t exactly fit my form)!

Categories Health, Pregnancy

Having a Healthy Pregnancy (Part 1.0)

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Having made my way through the first trimester, I have officially decided that the key to having a healthy first trimester is surviving.

If you’d been establishing some healthy habits in preparation for pregnancy, you’re well set up for this first trimester. You don’t need to really focus on adding anything – just on managing symptoms.

The most common first trimester complaints (in my experience as a WIC dietitian) are nausea and vomiting, fatigue, constipation, heartburn, and frequent urination.

I experienced all but heartburn (and help women with all five on a regular basis), so I do have a few tips for you.

Surviving Nausea and Vomiting

One of the most important things you can do to manage nausea is eat. Oftentimes, nausea is worse when blood sugars drop too low (baby is pulling a steady stream of glucose from your blood) – so small frequent snacks that keep your blood sugars up (but not too high) are useful. Try to include as many food groups as you can in these snacks throughout the day, and add a protein food (peanut butter, yogurt, cheese, eggs, nuts, seeds, etc.) if you can stomach it to help modulate your blood sugar response (protein helps your blood sugar rise slowly and not dip low after the rise.) If you generally have nausea first thing in the morning, keeping some crackers or dried fruit beside the bed to eat before you get out of bed might be helpful. If you’re throwing up just about anything, don’t worry too much about the variety, just eat anything you can hold down.

Some women experience nausea and vomiting when taking their prenatal vitamin. If this is you, taking the prenatal with food or at night may help.

Other women find that odors give them problems. Some techniques for managing odors include trying cold foods instead of hot (the odor isn’t as intense that way), opening a window or turning on a fan to get air moving, taking a walk somewhere away from the odors, and having a “masking odor.” Occasionally get a whiff of BO while you’re shopping that sends you running for the bathroom? Carry a handkerchief with a non-nausea-inducing odor (essential oils or even cooking extracts – some women find lemon, vanilla, or mint to be soothing) on it and delicately dab your nose as you walk past.

Surviving Fatigue

Lower your standards. You’re working hard growing a baby – some things are going to slide. Enlist help with dishes, groceries, whatever. Don’t start ambitious projects. Work to establish good sleep habits. Fatigue most likely won’t last through the entirety of pregnancy – although most women do experience it during the first trimester (and many during the last as well.)

Surviving Constipation

Before I got pregnant, I didn’t spend much time discussing this with my clients. They’d check on their diet questionnaires that they were experiencing constipation but I didn’t bring it up in conversation – and neither did they. Now that I’ve experienced constipation during pregnancy (even if only for two weeks), I bring it up if it shows up on their questionnaire. It’s TERRIBLE.

If you’re constipated, your number one priority is getting unstuck. While you might be tempted to spend a lot of time straining on the toilet, this can lead to unexpected and undesirable consequences (like hemorrhoids). For now, go to the bathroom when you feel like you have to but don’t sit there if there’s no urge. When you do get that urge, squatting on the toilet seat is actually a better approach for getting hard stool out (as opposed to sitting on the seat with your feet on the floor.) In between the urges to go, eat fruits and vegetables and whole grains, drink lots of water, and get moving around. Physical activity (taking a walk or dancing a while) can get your bowels moving. Sitting in a squatting position with your feet flat on the ground and your butt hanging near the floor behind you lets gravity help things out. Fiber and water bulk up and soften your stool. If you’ve already been doing these things and they’re not helping, adding in some apple or prune juice or prunes and raisins can serve as natural stool softeners. Other women find that a little coffee works well as a bowel stimulant (keep it at about 1 cup a day – moderation is important here.) If you’ve been taking an iron supplement or a prenatal with iron, talk to your doctor about switching to an iron free prenatal or taking a single iron supplement just a couple times a week instead of iron with your prenatal daily. If none of the above are helping, talk to your doctor about an appropriate over-the-counter stool softener or laxative. Remember, you only want to use medication as a last defense to get you moving – and then you want to rely on diet and activity to keep things moving from there.

Surviving Heartburn

This is the one I haven’t dealt with much, for which I consider myself fortunate.

For those that are struggling with heartburn, it’s valuable to eat small amounts frequently (rather than large meals only occasionally). Find your trigger foods and avoid them. Many women find that spicy or greasy foods trigger heartburn. Avoid caffeine and mint, both of which relax the sphincter (closure) between the stomach and the esophagus. Drink a little milk with your meals to help neutralize the stomach acid. And avoid lying down within a half hour to hour after eating.

Surviving Frequent Urination

Drink lots of water. Does that sound counterintuitive? It is – and it probably won’t really make you go to the bathroom any less. But it’ll help ensure that you don’t end up with something worse: dehydration or a urinary tract infection. Go ahead and go when you have the urge – and contact your doctor if you have burning with urination. Frequent urination is a bother, but it’s not actually a bad thing – just go with the flow on this one.

Does anyone else have any great tips for handling these first trimester woes? I’m always eager for more suggestions to share with my clients!

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

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Put this title among the “movies I didn’t know were based on a book.”

I watched the 101 Dalmatians as a child, but don’t remember anything beyond the basic storyline – so I can’t at all remark on the differences between the book and the movie.

What I can remark on is how very delightful this book is.

The story is told in third person omniscient, primarily following Pongo and Missus, the mother and father dalmatians who go off to search for their fifteen missing pups.

Pongo is a quite intelligent dog, capable of understanding most human speech and of engaging in higher reasoning. It is he who puts two and two together and figures out that it is Cruella de Vil who has stolen the puppies – and that she intends not to sell them but to turn them into furs!

Missus is a simple but loving dog who doesn’t know her right paw from her left and who can be a bit vain; but who valiantly protects her children.

Watching the relationship between Pongo and Missus was definitely my favorite part of the book – Pongo eager to protect his wife, Missus eager to help her husband. Again and again along their journey, one or the other meets a trial of some sort (whether a child that makes them very angry, an injury, or simply the lack of food) and the two rely upon one another to sort through their various emotions, thoughts, and reactions. The two reflect a marriage not often seen in fiction – and especially not in children’s fiction (where many parents seem absent) – a marriage of true partnership and service. It was beautiful.

Of course, I couldn’t help but notice a bit of old-fashioned sexism – not just in Pongo and Missus’s relative levels of intelligence but in the way the girl and boy pups are described as able or not able to tolerate cold and so on. I suppose I could raise a stink about it and let it spoil the story for me – but I don’t feel up to ire, and there are so many strong redeeming values to this story that make that smudge fade into the background. While Missus is not incredibly intelligent, she is not entirely a stereotype – and she has plenty of admirable qualities. So I’m ignoring the occasional chauvinism and choosing to just enjoy this book.

And enjoy it I did. A couple particularly enjoyable notes:

Cruella’s cloak is described (several times) as an “absolutely simple white mink cloak” – in a fascinating and no-longer-common use of the word simple.

When the dogs come up with the splendid idea of disguising themselves with soot, there’s a little wordplay with “soot” and “suit”.

So, should you read The 101 Dalmatians?

Yes, yes you should.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Children’s animal story
Synopsis: The married Pongo and Missus take off on a wild adventure to retrieve their stolen litter of 15 dalmatians – and end up with even more than the handful they expected.
Recommendation: A wonderful book for reading to oneself or aloud.

I read this as a part of Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club Check out what other bloggers are saying about this book at Reading to Know.

Categories Family & Friends, Thankfulness

In which I am thankful for my sister-in-law

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Those who know me know that I’m a touch opinionated opinionated to the point of being obnoxious.

I am generally willing to share many of my opinions here at bekahcubed, since readership is voluntary – but I try to be more circumspect about sharing my opinions in more personal (and therefore inescapable) communication.

I especially try to keep my mouth shut when it comes to how my siblings are raising their families. It’s not my business to inject my opinions into their families. It’s my business to love them and support them in any way I can.

Which is why I consider myself so incredibly blessed to have a sister-in-law who invites my opinions – and even tells me she likes that I have an opinion (and some reasoning behind it) on every conceivable issue.

After I started posting my thoughts on Frank Furedi’s Paranoid Parenting, Debbie sent me a message to let me know that she’d been enjoying my comments – and to ask me if I’d be interested in reading and discussing some parenting books together. We’ve been having a great time reading and discussing Grace-Based Parenting – but Debbie hasn’t limited her invitations of input to that book.

She asked me to read Addie Zierman’s When We Were on Fire because she wanted to hear my thoughts on that (and our shared youth group experiences). She asks me for my thoughts on vaccination schedules. And, yes, she tells me that she likes soliciting my opinion on things because she knows I always have an opinion – and some sort of rationale for why I hold the opinion I do.

As someone who frequently feels like she has to be biting her tongue to keep from being annoying, I can tell you that my sister-in-law has blessed me greatly by inviting me to give my opinions.

I try to bless her in response by giving my opinions in a fair and reasonable way – and by respecting when her opinions and mine differ (because they certainly do in some areas – we are very different people and will undoubtedly raise our children in very different ways.)

But mostly, I am thankful for my sister-in-law – and for her willingness to invite me to share my thoughts and opinions with her. It does this opinionated girl’s heart good to have someone who cares who asks.

Categories What's on Your Nightstand?

Nightstand (July 2014)

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So there’s been all this reading I’d been doing the past couple of months that I couldn’t include on my Nightstand because I was trying to keep mum about becoming a Mom – but now that we’ve announced Baby Garcia’s expected arrival, I can deluge you with the last several months of reading.

Back in May and June, I read:

  • Best Baby Gear by Sandy Jones and Marcie Jones
    Parents: Baby Gear from Birth to Age 3 by Parent’s Magazine with Debra Wise
    Consumer Reports Best Baby Products by Sandra Gordon
    Interesting. Terrifying. I’m a minimalist when it comes to baby stuff and feel like some of the safety stuff is going too far (with some definite exceptions.) Basically, I spent my way groaning through these supposed essentials – and suddenly getting why so many people think they can’t afford to have children.
  • The Smart Mother’s Guide to a Better Pregnancy by Linda Burke-Galloway
    Basically, a guide to second-guessing your doctor. I struggle to come up with what I think about this. I want women to be educated regarding their own care. I want them to know when to ask their doctors to look deeper. There’s nothing wrong (in my mind) with women having a basic understanding of what could go wrong during pregnancy and what to do about it – but Burke-Galloway’s advice almost always leans on the side of more intervention rather than less – which is the exact opposite of my personal stance on childbirth management. I can easily see a woman reading this book and then going out and insisting that her doctor give her every test in the book and every intervention available, never mind the risks of intervening unnecessarily.
  • Homebirth by Shiela Kitzinger
    I can’t help but love Kitzinger, with her strong pro-home-birth stance and her straightforward descriptions of how to set up for a homebirth. Kitzinger is decidedly pro-home-birth, with a similarly decisive dislike of overmedicalized hospital birth. If you’re thinking of a homebirth or a birthing center birth, this is a great resource to help you interview a midwife and set up a strong plan. If you’re pretty sure you’re not interested in a homebirth, you’re likely to get frustrated with the author’s clear bias.
  • Choosing a Nurse-Midwife by Katherine M. Poole and Elizabeth A Parr
    A nice overview of midwifery in America and things to take into consideration when choosing a midwife. While this is definitely written about choosing a nurse-midwife, the many questions included within are worth asking your certified professional midwife if you’re choosing one of those instead (Wichita’s hospitals are very anti-midwife and there is only one practicing nurse-midwife in town. She, unfortunately, only delivers in the hospital – leaving me with CPMs as my only option for a home birth.) I appreciated reading through this book prior to interviewing my midwife.
  • The Essential Homebirth Guide by Jane E. Drichta and Jodilyn Owen
    A very nice guide for women who want to give birth at home. This covers choosing a provider, the distinctives of the midwives model of care, other people you might want to have involved on your home-birth support team, how certain circumstances would be dealt with by homebirth providers, and so on. In general, I think this is a very good book. I do have some quibbles with the authors’ tendencies to represent herbal, nutritional, and other “nontraditional” (in a medical sense, although generally “traditional” in the midwifery world) treatments as truth without showing any substantial evidence to support these (one particular bit about eating a raw cucumber a day to keep preeclampsia away struck me as laughable.)
  • The Doula Advantage by Rachel Gurevich
    A description of the roles of a doula, how to hire a doula, and lots of stories about doula care. It sounds like doula care is a very good thing for a lot of women – but reading this book only cemented my opinion that doula care is not for me.
  • Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta by Ina May Gaskin
    You can’t talk about midwifery in America without talking about Ina May Gaskin. In general, I found myself nodding and mm-hmming through much of this book as Gaskin complains about the high intervention rate and lack of accountability in modern obstetrics and calls for a better model of care (midwife-based care with obstetricians who are committed to doing what’s best for mom and baby) that protects women and babies. That said, some things about this book really creeped me out – specifically, the birth stories of women who delivered at “The Farm”. While these women raved about the care they received and the community they had, the fact that almost every story included some midwife or other women just showing up during labor uninvited did not sit well with me. While these women were able to labor without unnecessary interventions, they weren’t laboring on their own terms. In fact, one woman talked of laboring in the bathroom with the door closed because she really didn’t like having other people around – why didn’t her midwife kick everyone else out so the woman could labor however she wanted without being confined to the bathroom?
  • Liz Lange’s Maternity Style by Liz Lange
    A standard fashion sort of book, complete with photos of disembodied clothes “mixed and matched” for every event, quotes from style celebrities, and tips that make you wonder what sort of world the author thinks you live in. I enjoy this sort of thing and liked browsing through it, but gained next to nothing in practical advice.

Completed Books

Completed Books

This month, I read:

  • Beginning Life by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald
    I mentioned last month that this was an “opposing viewpoints” sort of book – but found that wasn’t the case. Instead, this is an attempt by a single author to fair-mindedly address the various ethical issues surrounding conception. In general, Boleyn-Fitzgerald does a good job at being fair – but she definitely seems to lean towards the interventionist side on stem cells, abortion, etc. – and underrepresents the non-medical arguments against those practices.
  • Husband Coached Childbirth by Robert A Bradley
    Daniel and I are attending a Bradley childbirth class (our first meeting was last night), but that doesn’t mean that I really know that much about the method. In fact, my only familiarity with the method is that it’s husband coached, that it has a good success rate for unmedicated births, and that a family friend told my mom that she and my dad “basically did Bradley” even though they never did it officially. Since my mom is pretty much my childbirth hero (7 natural births, 5 of them at home, 3 of which were unassisted by a midwife), I figured it must be a decent method. But I might as well read up on it before our first class. Thus, reading this book. We’ll see how things go – on first reading, I feel a little rebellious against the “one right way” to do things :-)
  • Buff Moms-to-Be by Sue Fleming
    A good basic guide to fitness during pregnancy. As far as I am familiar with current exercise guidelines during pregnancy (and I have done a fair bit of looking in both the medical literature and in the recommendations of various professional organizations), this book gives tips in line with the latest research and recommendations for exercise in pregnancy.
  • Bumpology: the myth-busting pregnancy book for curious parents by Linda Geddes
    An amusing and informative book set up in Q&A style. I was pleased with the rigorous way in which Geddes looked at the evidence and evaluated it objectively – being careful to describe how the strengths and weaknesses of a study should inform the conclusions we draw based upon that study.
  • Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
    Read for the Chronicles of Narnia Reading challenge because I thought I hadn’t yet covered it – but then I realized I had, so I moved on to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which I have not yet completed.)
  • The Stone Age by Patricia D. Nerzley
    A children’s guide to the various Stone Age hominids. The aspect I found most interesting about this book was how the author took great pains to discuss how difficult it is to interpret artifacts from early hominids – before making bold statements about what these hominids looked like and how they lived. As could be expected, this book has a decidedly evolutionary slant and often confuses hominids with humans (something I have a quibble with – while all humans are hominids, I do not believe that all hominids are humans or “precursors” to humans.)
  • Pregnancy Chic by Cherie Serota and Jody Kozlow Gardner
    This is a book of the nineties, when pregnancy fashion was just emerging (that is, pregnancy fashion that looked like normal people clothes). The authors sold/sell? a “pregnancy survival kit” which contains four fashion essentials – and this book is basically an extended advertisement for their kit (and your husband’s closet.) It had a few tips that I found interesting, but most of it was terribly dated – leggings are considered an essential, your husband’s denim shirt a must, and a sweater tied around the waist always in fashion. Not so much a decade into the new millenium.
  • The Maidenstone Lighthouse by Sally Smith O’Rourke
    Ended up being much to raunchy to recommend – and nowhere near as compelling a story as The Man Who Loved Jane Austen. However, this marks me done with this author.
  • Christmas in Denmark and Christmas in Spain by World Book
    More “research” into Christmas around the world.
  • When We Were on Fire by Addie Zierman
    A memoir of belonging to the 90s Christian subculture, of losing faith, and of finding it again. Very difficult to process the thoughts that went through my mind while reading this. Read my jumbled thoughts here.

Books in Progress

Books in Progress

Books in Progress:

  • Grace-Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel
    I suspect that this book was written in response to popular authoritarian parenting manuals marketed to Christians (the Ezzos’ Growing Kids God’s Way and the Pearls’ To Train up a Child) – and I definitely tend to agree more with its grace-filled approach than with either of those rigid parenting techniques. A lot of the topics addressed in this book are very future-tense for me (since our baby is yet unborn, and this book is more geared toward parents of preschoolers and up), but I have found it to be enjoyable and thought provoking. I do have one beef with this book – and that is that the author doesn’t always extend the same grace to parents that he asks them to extend to their kids. A parent could finish this book and feel even more pressure to perform, not receiving the grace that God gives to imperfect and fallible human parents.
  • The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
    Reading along with the Chronicles of Narnia Reading challenge, also at Reading to Know. So far, I’ve written one post of reflections on how this title is different from the other Narnia tales.
  • What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
    Because every pregnant woman pretty much has to read this one, right? Kinda blah, in my opinion (but maybe that’s because I already have a lot of knowledge when it comes to pregnancy – it’s kinda my job). The author is not an advocate for natural childbirth and kinda reminds me of the hand-out-condoms-in-school crowd – “Yeah, you could be have a natural childbirth (be abstinent), but really, you might as well just get an epidural (use a condom).”
  • Origins by Annie Murphy Paul
    A layman’s look (and NOT a prescriptive formula) at the science of fetal origins.
  • The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
    Reading with the Reading to Know Classics bookclub and enjoying it greatly so far.
  • The Babycenter Essential Guide to Your Baby’s First Year

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

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Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: When We Were on Fire by Addie Zierman

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I can say little of what “the 90s Christian subculture” looked like, except inasmuch as I (and my church’s youth group) was a part of the 90s Christian subculture. Yet reading Addie Zierman’s memoir of her own experience in the 90s Christian subculture suggests that my experience was far more normative than I would have guessed.

You see, we were charismatics – and I’ve long been willing to believe that charismatics were more inclined to tolerate fanaticism and develop extreme subcultures. I assumed that perhaps we were unique in that respect.

The 90s Christian subculture, as I experienced it, was one that declared that “youth aren’t just the future of the church – they are the church”. While the statement, in and of itself, is perfectly reasonable, the outworkings of this worldview was making youth the stars of the church. The youth group was a big deal. The youth sat in the front rows and set the tone for the worship experience during Sunday morning services. At least once a year, there was a youth commissioning sort of service, commissioning either recent high school grads (in May) or current high school students (in August) to the mission field of their schools. Once a year, the youth group was given control of the Sunday morning service, where our worship team led the singing and our students tag-teamed a sermon.

We were all about being “on fire”. We were going to be a Joshua generation, a Jacob generation, a whatever-Biblical-character-you-can-come-up-with generation. One thing was for sure. We weren’t going to be the ordinary Christians of all the generations before us. We were going to be world-changers, earth-shakers, mountain-movers.

That we felt this way as youth is not surprising. Does not every generation of teenagers think that they are unique, that somehow their experience of teenage-hood is completely different than every other generation’s? Does not every generation think, in the hubris of newly surging hormones, that they are more powerful, more passionate, more right than every generation before them?

What seems so odd to me now is that we were encouraged in this train of thought. We were told in youth group on Wednesday nights, from the pulpit on Sunday mornings, in the raft of exciting youth rallies we attended that we truly were the generation that would make a difference, that would break through the steady monotony of Christian history and do something spectacular for the Lord.

Reading When We Were on Fire brought me back to my teenagers years. I read with nostalgia and with regret – but mostly, as I read, I wondered why we were encouraged to such self-importance.

Zeirman dreamed, like many of us, of being different, of changing the world. She would be a missionary’s wife, she figured, make a difference in the world alongside a charismatic missionary husband. She had an on-again-off-again relationship with a fellow dreamer, one who was intensely committed to his dream of being a missionary. Of course, in the wake of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, dating was not something that good-Christian-dreaming-of-being-a-missionary kids did. Thus the on-again-off-again. When conviction hit (generally on the fellow’s part), the relationship was off, not that he didn’t still hold plenty of sway over Addie. Zierman’s someone was heavy on the rules that 90s Christian subculture was heavy on – modesty (which was always a woman’s problem and never a man’s), listening to Christian music (secular stuff is evil), whatever – and Addie needed to be as committed and as inflexible as he on those points.

The relationship ended for real before Zierman went off to college. Addie chose a Christian college because she was tired of the continued pressure of being separate from the world, of being at war. She was ready for a break from the front-lines. In college, Zierman began her process of falling away from the faith.

I, too, got weary of the constant internal pressure to be different, on fire, world changing. I became disillusioned when I discovered that I was ordinary after all.

But my story diverges from Zierman’s in several key ways. While Zierman jumped from the emotional legalism of her high school youth group into the less-emotionally-charged-but-still-legalistic Christian college, I became involved with UNL’s campus Navigators and spent a summer in Jacksonville, Florida. In Jacksonville, God used a sermon by Jerry Bridges to radically change my view of justification. I grew to have a much lower view of myself, and a much higher view of God. I missed the emotionalism of my youth, but I began to build a solid intellectual foundation for my faith – a foundation that has enabled me to keep faith even as emotions have come and gone. I moved to Columbus, Nebraska and joined a local church where I developed a strong ecclesiology.

Zierman didn’t fit in at college, got married to an ordinary Christian guy, grew disillusioned with the church. She and her husband struggled with finding a church, found one her husband liked but that she didn’t. She wanted to leave, he kept up relationships with their old church, she didn’t. She found her own community among the disgruntled, the bitter, the agnostics or atheists. She fell in love with alcohol and almost cheated on her husband.

And then she slowly found her way back.

I don’t know how to review this book, don’t know how to separate Zierman’s experiences from my own, don’t know how to be objective when reading through Addie’s experiences. This book evoked such nostalgia, such nausea, such sorrow. I hated it and loved it. I am thankful for the grace of God in bringing me through the 90s Christian subculture with so much less sorrow than Zieman experienced.

Rating: ?
Category: Memoir – faith
Synopsis: Addie Zierman tells the story of living in the 90s Christian youth subculture, of falling away after its promises didn’t pan out, of slowly returning.
Recommendation: I don’t know