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Book Review: Vaginal Birth after Cesarean by Elizabeth Kaufmann

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What would you do if you had a cesarean with your first child and just happened to get pregnant with your second child when a national push to lower cesarean rates was forefront in everyone’s mind? Your doctor says you’re a good candidate for vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), your HMO wants to pay less money (and is therefore rooting for vaginal birth), and societal pressure pushes you toward VBAC.

In Elizabeth Kaufmann’s case, she reluctantly agreed to a trial of labor with certain stipulations. The VBAC was successful, but the baby was delivered with forceps and Kaufmann experienced significant tearing.

Then, she wrote Vaginal Birth after Cesarean: The Smart Woman’s Guide to VBAC to keep other women from experiencing the horror of vaginal delivery.

Or at least that’s how this book seems. While Kaufmann does share some potentially useful information regarding cesarean sections, VBACs, and repeat cesareans, every page is infused with her experience and subsequent antipathy toward anyone suggesting that a woman who is a good candidate for VBAC should indeed go through a trial of labor.

Who does Congress, who does the HMO, who does the doctor think they are to tell a woman how she should give birth? Since when should medical standards or money be a factor?

But those are political topics that I won’t go into here.

The part that makes Kaufmann’s book most unhelpful to the modern-day mama who wants information about VBAC isn’t her obvious bias, though. It’s that the world Kaufmann is raging against doesn’t exist.

In 1996, when this book was written, VBAC was supported by medical policy and by insurance companies – and doctors were employing the same active management to VBAC as they were (and still are) to other vaginal deliveries. Women were being induced with Cytotec, Cervidil, and pitocin. Labors that weren’t progressing according to Friedman’s curve (an antiquated description of the labor process based on a significantly different population than today’s moms and describing labor under significantly different circumstances than either normal or currently managed labors) were augmented with Pitocin. Surprisingly (can you hear the sarcasm?), these women whose VBAC attempts were managed thus ended up with increased labor and delivery complications.

And, of course, the good people who write policies decided that meant VBAC wasn’t quite as good an idea as they’d originally thought, so they set new policies in place to make it hard to try a VBAC, much less to succeed at it.

And that’s where we’re at now.

Few women are being coerced by doctors or insurance plans into having unwanted vaginal deliveries. Instead, many women who would love to deliver normally and who have a good chance at being able to, were the natural processes allowed to unfold naturally, are being denied the possibility of VBAC.

So Kaufmann’s book is simply unhelpful. It is written to try to give women who were feeling coerced into VBAC an out – but women aren’t being coerced into VBAC these days. The situation is quite the opposite.

For those who are interested in the history of VBAC, the Well-Rounded Mama has an excellent overview

Rating: 1 star
Category: Medical/childbirth
Synopsis: Kaufmann has a chip on her should and rages against VBAC policies that no longer exist.
Recommendation: Singularly unhelpful for the modern woman interested in learning about VBAC.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Isle of Swords by Wayne Thomas Batson

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“It’s an allegory of spiritual warfare,” they told me, when I questioned them about the book on the ledge in front of them.

“Okay,” I nodded. “Is it kinda like Frank Peretti’s stuff? Is there an author I’d recognize that he’s like?”

Their mother interjected, “I don’t know that you kids have read any Frank Peretti.”

I laughed, realizing I was dating myself – I was reading Frank Peretti two decades ago.

They suggested C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia as similar books.

I took their recommendation and checked Isle of Swords out of the church library.

It reminded me of Frank Peretti’s “Cooper Kids Adventure series”, which I read, well, 20 years ago. It did not at all remind me of C.S. Lewis.

Then again, I realized about halfway through that this title wasn’t a part of the trilogy they’d be recommending (Most likely “The Door Within Trilogy”). Reading the descriptions of Batson’s other books, I can see that this is certainly less allegorical than that series, although still a bit supernatural.

Isle of Swords tells the story of Captain Declan Ross, a sailor forced into piracy by a dearth of jobs after his stint in the Irish navy was over. He wants to get out of piracy, especially because his daughter Anne has decided the pirate’s life is the life for her – and he knows his dead wife would not approve. Getting out of piracy might be a hard task though, especially since he managed to raise the ire of Bartholomew Thorne, the most fearsome pirate on the sea. He might be lucky if he gets out with his life.

Nevertheless, he offers shelter to a badly beaten boy and then to a mysterious monk. As it turns out, these two might just hold the key to the treasure Ross needs to break free.

But Bartholomew Thorne wants the treasure – and Ross’s two refugees – too. Will the monk be able to lead Ross to claim the treasure of Constantine before Thorne gets him? Will the boy ever discover his identity? Will Anne be stuck in piracy as well?

I had a difficult time getting into this book at first – the first two chapters are backstory of a sort and served only to confuse me. I would have greatly preferred that the author had started with chapter three, giving the information in the first two chapters as flashbacks if needed (which I rather doubt.) Nevertheless, once I got past those first few chapters, I was pulled into the story and found it to be fun and engaging, even if it isn’t groundbreaking.

Published by Thomas Nelson, this is a clean book although only nominally Christian. Ross is a “noble pirate” who doesn’t kill needlessly or torture or take slaves – but he isn’t a believer (obviously). The story involves the purported treasure of Constantine, stolen from the Catholic church centuries ago, but stolen back by a group of priests who now guard it, using the treasure judiciously to fund mission work. These priests are regarded as holy men and one of them figures prominently in this story – but their Christianity seems merely a backdrop to the adventurous plot.

Nevertheless, parents could feel comfortable letting their early teens read this book, I think. It’s not a bad story and is entertaining.

Now, to find the series my young friends were actually recommending :-)

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Adventure novel
Synopsis: Declan Ross vows to protect a priest, who will give him a share of the legendary treasure of Constantine – but can he escape the dangerous pirate Bartholomew Thorne, who has a grudge against Ross and a hankering for the same treasure?
Recommendation: Clean, engaging, but not particularly groundbreaking. If you’re into adventure stories, it’s a decent one – otherwise, it’s nothing special.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Nesting: It’s a Chick Thing by Ame Mahler Beanland & Emily Miles Terry

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Do you love to decorate, entertain, cook, and garden – all with a half dozen of your best friends in tow? Do you adore coming up with excuses for getting your girlfriends together to paint (nails or walls) and drink (wine or girlie drinks)? Do you like reading about the domestic arts?

Then you might like Nesting: It’s a Chick Thing by Ame Marhler Beanland & Emily Miles Terry.

Apparently, the authors have another book called It’s a Chick Thing: Celebrating the Wild Side of Women’s Friendship, and this is a riff on that.

I didn’t know this when I picked up this book. Didn’t know that a large focus of this book would be girlfriends.

I didn’t particularly enjoy that part.

I’ve had friends over the years, but close friends have been few and far between. I love entertaining “the girls” when I’ve got “the girls” to entertain. I like homemaking – it’s my full-time job just now – but I don’t really do it with anyone else.

Now is a rather solitary season for me, a fact that is melancholy when I think of it – and which is probably why I prefer not to think of it. This book didn’t allow me that luxury.

So, if you’re me, this is probably not the best option for you.

If, on the other hand, you’re eager to hear little anecdotes about a variety of women’s homemaking lives and how they do life along with their friends, or if you’re looking for new party ideas for girlfriend get-togethers, this might be an enjoyable book for you.

It’s an eclectic book in four parts covering four aspects of homemaking: decorating, entertaining, cooking, and gardening. It contains stories from the authors as well as excerpts from dozens of different women on each of the topics. It also contains craft ideas, recipes, suggestions for parties, and little blurbs on finding your gardening style or your man’s entertaining style. Vintage photos with snarky captions are sprinkled throughout.

It’s the sort of thing I generally enjoy, apart from the girlfriend aspect – but, in this case, the girlfriend aspect had it falling flat for me.

Maybe it’ll appeal to you more.

Rating: 2 stars
Category: Women’s Interest: Homemaking
Synopsis: Anecdotes and ideas from homemaking women – all about homemaking with your girlfriends.
Recommendation: Eh. I didn’t particularly care for it, but others might.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Sleep: The Brazelton Way by T. Berry Brazelton and Joshua D. Sparrow

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Sleep is one of those things that I think each family has to figure out for themselves. Hundreds of rigid programs exist, but few (none?) are worth following to the letter. Because every baby is different. Every parent is different. Every situation is different.

I used to think I’d never bring a baby into my own bed. I value the intimacy of sharing a bed with my husband (only) too much.

Then we brought home a preemie who would only sleep on Daniel’s chest or mine. We’d trade off nights, Daniel staying awake on the couch with her on his chest, then me taking a turn. Except we got so exhausted with the routine that we were falling asleep with her on our chests. And whatever your views are on the safety of bed-sharing, there can be no mixed opinions about sofa-sleep sharing. It’s dangerous.

We didn’t feel comfortable with her sharing the same surface. I was pumping and fortifying breastmilk to be fed by bottle at that time – and that thing about exclusively breastfeeding mamas being biologically more in tune with their babies and non-exclusive mamas not as much? There’s good scientific evidence for it – and it held out in our experience. I totally could have rolled over on her. We got a guard rail for the bed and a box for her to sleep in next to me (against the rail). Once we were exclusively at the breast (and Tirzah Mae was growing too large for her box), we tried on the bed directly – and there was never a fear that I’d roll over on her. We were physiologically bound, cycling through sleep together. I was aware of her, yet not losing sleep.

But that didn’t mean I was willing to give up and just be a bed-sharer. At the beginning of March, I made getting her to sleep in her bassinet a goal. It was hard work. No longer right next to each other (I placed the bassinet at the foot of the bed), getting up with her became more disruptive to my sleep. It was easier to nurse and then fall asleep together without having to stay awake to put her back in her bassinet after nighttime feedings.

Then I started reading Sleep: The Brazelton Way. There are plenty of things I’m uncertain about regarding Brazelton’s “method” (he seems to think that spacing out feedings during the day helps a child sleep better at night, which I don’t understand philosophically and don’t really agree with nutritionally), but one thing in the “four month” sleep section ended up being an epiphany to me. Brazelton suggested that parents try “patting” their baby back to sleep during nighttime wakenings, not getting them up to eat. What? I thought. Tirzah Mae might not be hungry, might not need to get out of her bassinet at nighttime? I tested it out, patting her when she awoke during the night.

About three-quarters of the time, patting was enough. She settled back into sleep after minimal fussing – and I could go back to sleep too. The other quarter of the time? If she didn’t settle or started to cry, I got her out and fed her. Sometimes I stayed awake to put her back in the bassinet, sometimes I didn’t. But she was on her way to independent sleep.

**Regular readers will note that Tirzah Mae’s sleep took a turn for the worse at the beginning of April. That was majorly disruptive and she was NOT able to be soothed with patting. Now that she is sleeping better and is in her crib in her own room, she awakens much less frequently but generally needs to be fed at those awakenings.**

I have since finished Brazelton’s short volume (114 pages), in which Brazelton addresses a variety of sleep issues (that we aren’t dealing with).

Do I recommend Brazelton’s sleep program? No, I don’t. But I think I will recommend his book. Because I think that coming up with a sleep program that works for your own family involves collecting ideas and occasionally letting your assumptions be challenged and experimenting to find out what works for you. Brazelton’s book is a generally non-extreme resource for coming up with ideas and challenging assumptions.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Baby Care
Synopsis: Discussion of a baby and young child’s sleep patterns and how parents can deal with common sleep issues.
Recommendation: Useful as a source of ideas, not particularly for a comprehensive “sleep program”.

Categories Book Notes

Book Notes: Christy by Catherine Marshall

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Nineteen year old Christy Huddleston wanted to make a difference, wanted to be someone. Someone beyond the daughter of a well-to-do businessman, that is. And when she heard a missionary speak of the needs among the Appalachians just hours away from her city, she was determined to go.

What she finds in Cutter Gap, Tennessee is even more foreign than she’d ever dreamed. She is full of grand plans for helping – but soon discovers that being “someone” and making a difference doesn’t necessarily mean what she thought it had.

This wasn’t my first reading of Catherine Marshall’s Christy. Anna and I owned a copy when we were teens and I know I read it at least once. I think I saw the TV miniseries too – although I might be getting it mixed up with Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman (I know, not at all similar). Needless to say, by now you probably realize that while I read it I really didn’t remember anything from it. I was glad when Stephanie from Simple Things selected Christy as May’s Reading to Know Classics Bookclub reading.

I enjoyed reading the ambitious Christy’s story, thinking back to my own ambitious teenaged and young adult plans for saving the world. I think the desire to make a difference, to be somebody is a common one. I also think that being disappointed with how your well-intentioned efforts turn out is also a common experience. I remember taking an impoverished middle schooler under my wing, determining to share the gospel with her and to train her into a godly girl. I drove her places, taught her how to do various crafts, studied the Bible with her. And I quickly became disillusioned when she and her family began to expect that I’d drive her places on a moment’s notice, wanted me to buy her things, and generally took advantage of my good intentions. I struggled to know what to do when I wanted so badly to help but it didn’t seem to be working the way I thought it would work.

How I wish I’d had someone like Christy’s Miss Alice to mentor me in the ways of giving myself away. I loved reading Marshall’s descriptions of Miss Alice – a woman whose theology I didn’t particularly agree with, but whose gentleness and devotion are absolutely praiseworthy. Miss Alice is described as pretty much a saint, although she avers that she is not, and even the sordid tale she eventually tells does little to sully her reputation. Yes, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a saint who always knows the right thing to say and to do to mentor one along the way?

Alas, we are much more like Marshall’s other characters – flawed humans with quirks and quibbles and mixed motives.

Christy marvels, in one section, at one woman’s wisdom mixed with superstition. I do too.

Opal went closer to Bird’s-Eye, took his empty plate. “Looky-here, Bird’s-Eye, whilst you was fixin’ that fawn’s leg, you was a real man. You know that? It’s plumb foolish for you not to let more folks in the Cove see a heap more of that Bird’s-Eye. They have the wrong idea ’bout you.”

The man looked at her in genuine astonishment. “That must be woman tease-talk. Are you a-joshin’ me? Fixin’ animals’ legs ain’t no man’s work.”

“Fixin’ onything is man’s work,” came Opal’s firm answer. “Tearin’ down or killin’, that’s easy. Any addlepated fool kin pull the trigger of a rifle-gun or fling a rock. It’s fixin’ that’s hard, takes a heap more doin’.”

Listening to this, I could see again the baby girl’s tiny body lying in the middle of the big bed. How amazing that this homespun mending philosophy and the awful liver-grown superstition could be part of the same woman.

We humans are a mixed lot – with God’s image stamped on world-played clay. Try as she might to smooth the edges and impress them into a new mold, Christy never managed to truly change those she worked with. And neither can we.

The answer, of course, the way to truly make a difference is not in “fixing” or “cleaning up” but in the gospel – as Miss Alice admonished the young pastor David Grantland:

“Clean up a pigsty,” she commented one evening, “and if the creatures in it still have pig-minds and pig-desires, soon it will be the same old pigsty again. Preach the gospel, David, teach it, preach to the hearts of men. That’s your business. Then the fruits, including the reforms in other areas, will follow as fruits. But it’s no good tying apples onto a tree. Soon they’ll be rotting apples….The question at issue, David, is how to get rid of the evil in men. Attacking corruption in the environment won’t do it. That’s like cutting weeds in a field. In a fortnight the weeds will be grown again. And attacking the men themselves won’t work either. Whatever separates men from love can’t be of God.”

Though David was stubborn, at last humbly, he asked the question Miss Alice must have been wanting him to ask, “Well then, how can we deal with evil?”

“By demonstrating to the people a way that’s more powerful than evil. And that’s good news! Let’s get on with living and teaching and preaching that good news with all the verve and enthusiasm we have.”

“Then,” David said, “if that’s the technique, why aren’t people changed more drastically by today’s preaching?”

“Could be because we don’t often have the courage to give the good news to people straight. Most of us are still talking religious theory that we haven’t begun living, and talking in worn-out cliches at that. A watered-down message is as futile as applying rose water to a cancer. When you heart is ablaze with the love of God, when you love other people – especially the ripsnorting sinners – so much that you dare to tell them about Jesus with no apologies, then never fear, there will be results. One of two things will happen. Either there’ll be persecutions, or the fire will leap from your heart to catch and blaze in the depths of other men’s being. I’ve watched the process over and over. And then when the blaze starts, the reforms will follow as surely as the flower follows the bud, or the fruit comes after the blossom on the tree.”

“It’s too slow a way.”

“No David, it isn’t too slow a way. The other is no way at all.”

Amen and amen.

This girl, at nineteen, dreamed of making a difference, of being someone. Life has taught her that her grand dreams don’t necessarily produce grand outcomes. But Miss Alice’s charge echoes in this woman’s heart, reminds her that the gospel is the only way to make a difference, that losing oneself for the gospel is the only way to be someone.

May I have a heart ablaze, a tongue unstopped, a love unfettered – a life that would make a difference.

Check out what other readers are saying about Christy at the May Bookclub wrap-up post

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Who is not familiar with little Laura Ingalls, who lived in a series of little houses? Whose childhood memories don’t include either the series of “Little House” books or the spin-off television series “Little House on the Prairie”?

Our books were blue-clad paperbacks illustrated by Garth Williams. My sister and I adored them, moving the books back and forth through the narrow strip of light shining into our room from the hall light as we read illicitly after bedtime. We loved them so much the spines started breaking and the pages got torn. Occasionally, we’d end up having to wait for the other to finish a volume so we could read it. Eventually, we’d check them out of the library to ensure that there’d always be a copy for both of us. Years later, I’d remember the insufficiency of just one set and would stockpile volumes as I found them at used stores, garage sales, and the library book sale. I left a set at my parents and still have two in my own home.

Laura’s story is a part of my story.

As a child, I was never too much interested in how much of the story was true and how much was invented. I didn’t worry about whether Laura was its true author or whether her daughter Rose wrote her mother’s stories for her. The important thing was that the story was authentic, not that it was true.

Honestly, although I’ve read a fair number of biographies of Wilder and have heard some of the theories, I’ve still never been much concerned with where the Little House books deviate from factual occurences. The books are sold as fiction – I don’t expect them to be completely accurate.

But I was curious when Laura’s heretofore unpublished autobiography Pioneer Girl was published last year. I was eager to hear Laura’s story from an adult perspective, a nonfiction take instead of a fictionalized version, in Laura’s own words instead of mediated by Rose. Having heard that the book was a large one, I figured I’d wait until the holds died down at the library (I don’t relish being forced to finish a book in 14 days, as I would if I requested it while it was new.) But then I read Janet’s review and knew I wanted to read it ASAP. I searched on Amazon, figuring I’d just buy it for myself – but the price put me into shock and I placed a request at my library anyway.

I shouldn’t have been worried about the time. When my request came through, I devoured the 370 pages in 3 days.

If I had been worried that Rose had written the novels for her mother, I wouldn’t be anymore. Laura’s voice is the same. If I had been worried that the novels took liberties with the facts, I wouldn’t be anymore. The story is recognizable from one version to the next. Yes, Laura abbreviated episodes, combined people, and rearranged the timeline somewhat in her novels (as well as leaving out a particularly dark year of the family’s life) – but the episodes are unchanged in essence.

Just the autobiography is worthwhile for fans of the “Little House” series. Reading this adult proto-version of Laura’s story adds depth and flavor to the novels we read as children. But the autobiography isn’t all this volume contains. This was published as an “annotated” autobiography, with at least as many words worth of footnotes as words of autobiography. The editor has commented on the different versions of the stories, on corroborating genealogical and census data, on sources of referenced songs or poems or books.

This is a treasure-trove for Little House fans – a glimpse into how the adult Laura viewed and interpreted her childhood, into how Laura’s authorial voice grew throughout the writing of different editions of Pioneer Girl and into the Little House books, into the reality of pioneer life. Fans should definitely read it.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Autobiography with extensive historical annotations
Synopsis: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiography, written for adults, that she later adapted into the famous “Little House” series for children. This autobiography comes with meticulously researched historical annotations from Pamela Smith Hill of the South Dakota Historical Society.
Recommendation: Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder should definitely read this. If “Little House” didn’t play a role in your childhood, skip this (but get familiar with the Little House books by all means!)

Categories What's on Your Nightstand?

Nightstand (May 2015)

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It’s been another very long month, made up of very short periods of sleep (Although – Tirzah Mae slept a 6 hour stretch last night, at least double as long as she’s slept since Easter. Praise God!) So this is another skeleton post.

Fiction read this month:

  • The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer
    A little hard to get into at first, but I ended up liking this Regency romance quite well.
  • The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
    Read (for the third time) with my real-life bookclub.
  • Christy by Catherine Marshall
    Read with the Reading to Know Classics Bookclub.
  • 3 board books by Sandra Boynton

Nonfiction read this month:

Books about health:

  • Lose that Baby Fat! by La Reine Chabut
    A month-by-month selection of exercises for the post-pregnancy year. The exercises are generally good if you already have the equipment (or were already intending to get it). You have to be proactive about setting up your own schedule and making sure you don’t lose gains you’ve made during previous months working on different body parts. See my full review for more information.
  • Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs
    The author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It All embarks on another giant project – this time, to be the healthiest man alive. Jacobs makes a ginormous list of possibly healthy practices and works his way through them in an entertaining couple of years. As a project memoir (which is what it is), this is fun – as health journalism, this is pretty poor. Since I enjoy project memoirs, I enjoyed this – but since I generally have a hard time with health journalism that tries, I had an even harder time with Jacobs’ lack of even trying to learn whether the health practices he was partaking in were actually legit.

Other nonfiction:

  • The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
    Interesting to compare and contrast with the 70s-style “back to the land” tomes I read as a teen.
  • And Baby Makes Three by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman
    Developing the skills to preserve your marriage as your couple becomes a family. The bulk of the book is on managing conflict well – and it has lots of good recommendations (even couple activities to help you practice good communication and effective argument). Even as I agreed with the value of the things the authors mentioned, I didn’t learn a lot – Daniel and I have been blessed with good communication in our marriage and we naturally (or perhaps I should say more accurately, by the grace of God) do many of the things that make for constructive conflict (instead of marriage-breaking conflict.) The addition of Tirzah Mae has certainly affected our marriage and made time and energy more precious – but it hasn’t brought up all sorts of conflict that drives us apart. Even while I didn’t personally find this useful, I do think it has lots of wisdom for those couples who struggle with constructive conflict (and since most every couple I’ve talked to has mentioned how strange it is that Daniel and I still haven’t fought, I’m guessing we’re in the minority here.) ***Also, please be aware: just because Daniel and I don’t fight and have constructive conflict when we do disagree, this does NOT mean that we’re perfect – by no means. Our struggles are just different than many couples’, not necessarily less than others.***
  • 97 Things to Do Before You Finish High School by Stephen Jenkins
    If it weren’t for the few items encouraging kids to dabble in the occult, this would be a decent list for any high schooler. Like many books targeted at high schoolers, though, this suffers from an overwhelming supply of already-dated cultural references (a lot changes in 8 years if you’re talking social media sites, cool music, and fashion trends.)
  • Create an Oasis with Greywater by Art Ludwig
    The definitive book on greywater systems – read my notes here.
  • Cut, Stapled, and Mended by Roanna Rosewood
    A birth memoir about VBAC. An interesting story, a few good points. A lot of raunch and pagan spirituality. I won’t be recommending it.
  • Prairie Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder
    I absolutely devoured this.
  • A Builder’s Guide to Wells and Septic Systems by R. Dodge Woodson
    Understandably focused on builders, this book gives a basic overview of systems and how to reduce costs while ensuring quality work. Disappointing lack of information about advanced septic systems such as the one we’ll be installing.

Now that the mobile home is empty and Tirzah Mae is (maybe) starting to sleep again, I have high hopes for reviewing many of these in greater depth. For now, I’d encourage you to check out the review I hadn’t posted as of my last nightstand: Stephanie Fast’s She is Mine. It was a tremendously compelling read – and I think you should read it.

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

What's on Your Nightstand?

Categories Book Notes

Going Green with Greywater (or not)

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Greywater. It’s not sewage, but we send gallons of it into our sewers daily. It’s the water we wash our hands with, shower with, bathe in. We can reduce the amount we create but we can’t eliminate it entirely. We’ve got to get clean.

But we don’t have to send it into our sewers. It’s not sewage.

I’ve been doing the most low-tech of greywater recycling for years – dumping my dishwater out the door instead of down the drain – but when we bought ourselves a piece of land and started thinking about building on it, I started thinking about a more elaborate greywater system.

A little bit of research brough me to Art Ludwig’s Create an Oasis with Greywater, the definitive resource on greywater systems. Art describes the value of greywater, helps readers set goals for their greywater system, and helps them design a greywater system that fits their context. It’s a great (if not very pretty) book.

It also made clear that a greywater system is not for us.

Really? You might be asking. How’s it a great book if it convinced you to not go with a greywater system?

That’s the thing. Ludwig (unlike a lot of so-called green gurus) is an environmentalist with his head screwed on straight. He’s not interested in designing or implementing something that seems green but really doesn’t do any good. He spends quite a bit of time helping his readers to scale down their expectations of a greywater system and to evaluate what sort of system makes environmental and economical (he makes the excellent suggestion that economics can be a proxy for environmental soundness, which I wholeheartedly agree with) sense given their individual context.

In our case, our soil demands that we put an advanced septic system on our land. All our wastewater (greywater and the “black” water from our toilets and kitchen sink) will be sent through a dual-chambered system where aerobic fermentation will purify it before it is pumped through a series of tubing to irrigate our lawn from below. So we’ll already be getting one of the primary advantages of a greywater system (without installing separate pipes) – we’ll be irrigating with our water instead of sending it into a sewer. Furthermore, since the “irrigation” step is an important part of the septic process, we cannot add extra irrigation on top of the irrigation field (which will cover most of the area close enough to the house to be feasibly irrigated with greywater). In addition, a septic system requires a certain amount of “dilution” water to work – so it is possible to remove too much water from the septic through a greywater system.

So a greywater system isn’t for us.

Does that mean I won’t be using anything I learned from this book?

Actually, no. Ludwig points out that there are some forms of greywater reuse that can be done without a fancy system. Using your bathwater and a bucket to flush the toilet? Go for it (I fill our low-flow toilet with bathwater to rinse Tirzah Mae’s diapers in – and then flush it with more bathwater.) And throwing my dishwater out the door after I’m done with it? Well, that’s a tricky one. Kitchen sink waste is actually considered blackwater, since it contains organic matter that can feed icky bacteria, causing them to proliferate and make you sick. Even ordinary greywater is not encouraged for vegetable garden use, since it can can contain pathogens. The compromise I make is to discard my dishwater down the drain but to apply the rinse water to my garden. An even better choice would be to use that water on non-edibles, but I currently don’t have any nonedibles that require water.

If you’re at all interested in greywater reuse, I highly recommend Ludwig’s Create an Oasis with Greywater as a resource to help you evaluate a system. Ludwig’s website is also a great resource.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Lose that Baby Fat! by La Reine Chabut

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Despite ending my pregnancy eight weeks early, I gained significantly more than the recommended amount – at least 50 pounds. Much of it was water weight, which means that, after rigorous diuresing, I returned from the hospital only 8 pounds above my prepregnancy weight. Which perfectly explains why I’m now closer to 18 pounds above my prepregnancy weight.

Well, actuallly, there is an explanation for that. Almost three weeks of bedrest meant a rapid loss of muscle mass, leaving me with a still-voracious appetite (from breastfeeding), but nowhere near as much muscle to use up the calories I’m consuming.

Now, I’m not particularly worried about my weight – I’m still in the healthy range and only a bit above my post-high school norm (I was about 5 pounds lighter than this through college). But I am worried about the loss of muscle mass (and gaining fat mass). Which is why I’ve been making a concerted effort to be active – and to include strength training in my routine. And, of course, this gives me opportunity to read some more books!

Lose that Baby Fat! is supposed to be a month-by-month exercise guide for the first year after having a baby – but I didn’t use it as such. Instead, I worked through the various exercises and routines more quickly (about one month per week) in order to allow me to try and review other books as well. This means that I can’t comment on the effectiveness of the program as written except from a theoretical standpoint – but, actually, there is very little guidance as to how often one is supposed to do the monthly exercises (or whether one is supposed to do anything in addition to them), so I suppose it’d be hard to comment on effectiveness anyway – it will be what you put into it.

As I worked my way through the book, I wrote up comments as seen below.

First Six Weeks: Kegels
Very simple version of Kegels.

Month 2: Walking and Stretching
Do stretches REALLY need to use an exercise ball? I had a hard time balancing well enough to get a good stretch – and nearly all of the stretches could just as easily be done without any equipment at all. (In the author’s defense, it’s easier to balance with tennis shoes on – and I frequently exercise without them.)

Month 3: Abdominals
I like the use of the ball for abdominal exercises like the bicycle and the abdominal crunch – I felt like the ball helped me stay focused (or maybe distracted from the monotony?) and made me less likely to hurt my neck than with the traditional floor exercise. This chapter included a nice range of difficulty, from very easy to quite difficult, perfect for ramping up after a life-experience that rather stretches out those abs :-) (Little complaint here: at the beginning of each chapter the author has a “how you may be feeling” blurb, and this month’s is “Thinking twice about continuing with breastfeeding.” My experience as a WIC dietitian is that women who stick it out to three months very rarely have second thoughts – by then they’ve gotten through the most difficult learning curve and can’t imagine having to wait to mix up a bottle and get it warm before feeding their baby.)

Month 4: Arms and Chest
Pretty standard arm exercises (biceps curls, triceps kickbacks, chest presses) done on the exercise ball with a resistance band. We own an exercise ball, so I did the exercises on it – but I didn’t purchase a resistance band to test these out (I know enough of myself to know that buying a piece of exercise equipment will not motivate me to use it.) Instead, I used the 3 pound weights I already have. All the exercises in this chapter happen to have the resistance working in line with gravity, so no postural changes were required to adapt from one to another. I officially like doing arm exercises on the ball (versus standing or on a bench) – it adds a bit of an ab workout and doesn’t take as much space as a weight bench.

Month 5: Butt
A couple of the exercises involved standing with some part of your body against an exercise ball which is positioned against a wall. Obviously, the author is a fitness-lover rather than a book-lover – she has a room with plenty of wide-open walls. All of my walls are jammed full with either bookshelves or windows. Thankfully, the exercises that she does this with (squats and lunges) can be done just as well without a ball or a wall.

Month 6: Shoulders and Upper Back
This includes four ball and band exercises, half of which require postural modifications to do with free weights (of course, the author doesn’t explain how to do that). Disappointing chapter.

Month 7: Legs
Jumping rope in 30 second intervals. I didn’t do this because I couldn’t be bothered to find my jump rope.

Month 8: Full Body
The first workout that is actually a full workout (as opposed to just a few exercises for a target area). Most of the exercises are duplicates from past chapters – making me wonder if one was really supposed to only be working on the butt in Month 5, for example, instead of incorporating each new monthly set of exercises into a weekly rotation (as I would have assumed).

Month 9: Circuit training
A very short (6 minutes total) but very intense (at least for me) workout with 30 second intervals (Daniel uses a HIIT interval timer on his phone for interval training – and I tried it for this workout, which worked well). This workout uses a coffee table for triceps dips and pushups, but since I don’t have a coffee table, I used a footstool for dips and did girlie pushups straight on the floor. I’m definitely going to have to try this again – it was a good FAST workout.

Month 10: Strength training
These are fairly traditional dumbbell exercises using the exercise ball as a bench.

Month 11: Running
Sorry, even if I did decide to purchase a jogging stroller, you’re not going to get me running. I had enough trouble keeping my bosom controlled before baby and breastfeeding – trying to do it now sounds like a major OUCH!

Conclusion!
If you read through my notes so far, you’ve seen that I had numerous comments regarding equipment use. This book assumes that you have 1) an exercise ball, which is used for almost every exercise, 2) a fitness band, 3) a jump rope, and later on 4) dumbbells and 5) a jogging stroller. I do not feel that any of these are necessary for a good post-pregnancy workout (although having some form of resistance for strength training is worthwhile). I did find that I enjoyed many of the exercises using the ball.

If you have this equipment already, I would recommend this book as a good source for a variety of exercises that can be done using them. If I were to use this book as my complete program, I would plan on doing some sort of aerobic activity (probably walking) at least three times a week and do at least two or three exercises from the current month a couple times a week, adding in a couple exercises from each previous month as well. (It seems crazy to me that the author only puts things together into a full-body workout in month 8 – you’d lose any muscle tone you’d gained in your abs, for example, by then if you hadn’t kept on working with them.)

**Side note: The author knows nothing about nutrition. Disregard anything she says (thankfully, she doesn’t say much.)**

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Post-pregnancy exercise
Synopsis: A month-by-month selection of exercises for the post-pregnancy year.
Recommendation: A good selection of exercises if you already have the equipment (or were already intending to get it). You have to be proactive about setting up your own schedule and making sure you don’t lose gains you’ve made during previous months working on different body parts.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: She is Mine by Stephanie Fast

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Written in the third person, Stephanie Fast’s She is Mine reads like a novel. Written in three parts, it unfolds like a play.

It’s the story of the daughter of a Korean woman and an American serviceman. She never knew her father – he didn’t know her mother was pregnant. She was rejected by her mother’s family, said to have brought dishonor on her family. She was abandoned by her mother.

Five year old Yoon Myoung figures that if she travels along the railroad tracks – the railroad tracks that took her away from her mother – she’ll find her way back, back into her mother’s arms. So she walks the tracks, eating roots of grasses then insects and trapped animals. She steals. She is beaten and chased off. She is abused.

I couldn’t put this book down. The story was so compelling, so well-told. As I turned page after page on horror after horror, I almost forgot that this isn’t a story Fast invented. It’s a story she lived.

She is Mine reads like a novel, unfolds like a play – but it’s really an autobiography.

And while it’s the story of an abandoned child, of unspeakable horrors, it’s also the story of hope. It’s the story of a God who sees sparrows and war-orphans, who weeps when the sparrow falls from the sky and who rescues orphans from pits. It’s the story of a God who sees the outcast and declares “She is Mine”.

She is Mine is told in the third person because, the author tells us: “While this is the story of my life, it differs only in cultural details from the stories of the innumerable nameless and faceless orphans around the world today.”

Reading She is Mine pierced my heart. It undid me. I cried practically from the first page to the last.

I cried because life is precious. People are important. Yet there is so much pain, so much injustice, so much horror in the world. She is Mine didn’t shrink back from sharing that pain, that injustice, that horror.

I might have been tempted to close the book. You may be tempted to not pick it up. We don’t like to see pain, injustice, horror. We like happy tears, not anguished ones. We like to read of the human spirit conquering, not being crushed.

But the pain, the injustice, the horror is not reason to close our eyes, to close the book, to tune out the voices of need.

Jesus didn’t. He saw the pain, the injustice, the horror. And he stepped down into it. He bowed under the yoke, was beaten and defiled. Why? So He could lift us, His people, out.

And He calls His people to do the same.

It would be easier to shut our eyes to the plight of the orphan, to busy ourselves with little petty things. But it is not the way God calls His church to live.

If you will let it, Stephanie Fast’s She is Mine could be a tool God uses to open your eyes to the pain of this world, could be a tool God uses to compel you to step into that pain, could be a tool God uses to lift another out.

Will you read this book? Will you let your heart be moved? Will you let your reading compel you to ask God what you can do? Will you listen and obey when He speaks?

I pray that you will.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Autobiography
Synopsis: The story of a Korean war-orphan, abandoned, abused, and ultimately accepted.
Recommendation: Everyone should read this book.

I received this book from the author thanks to Carrie’s generosity and passion for this story. All opinions are my own – including the opinion that you should head to Amazon (I don’t get anything from them) and order this book right away.