The author has generously offered a copy of her book to give away. To enter, leave a comment below by 12/17/08. Be sure to enter a 'real' email address in the appropriate comment field (not in the text of the comment). U.S. addresses only, please.
She is also offering a discount code with $10 off the purchase of copies of the book. Enter mwear10 when buying a book through her website, through 12/20/08.
Every breastfeeding book has a feature that sets it apart. For Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy, by family nurse practitioner Laura Keegan, it's the photos.
Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy (Life Force Family Health Care, 2008) is a photographic guide to breastfeeding, with over 80 images of breastfeeding families. For those of us who are more visual learners, or who just appreciate the power of an image, this book is a welcome addition to the shelf of breastfeeding books available to new mothers.
The photos in this book, both in black and white and color, are the primary voice in this book. The concise text feels secondary. In contrast to every other breastfeeding book I've seen, this one makes a direct appeal to our right brains - the emotional parts of us that usually take over when we have babies. There is a lesson here for people who write books for new mothers.
The book includes detailed information on latch, which of course is critical to breastfeeding success. This I might have guessed from the declaration on the cover: "NO SORE NIPPLES - REALLY!!!" Many of the pictures illustrate a deep, asymmetrical latch. A few look a bit shallow. There is nice emphasis on skin to skin contact, and there are a number of images of twins tandem nursing. The book concludes with a brief gallery of breastfeeding in fine art.
A few things could improve this book. The page on hand expression - a great topic to include - would have benefited from a photo of a mother actually hand expressing. An index would have improved its utility for mothers who need to find information in a hurry at 3:00 am.
On one topic - the introduction of bottles - the author and I agree on the facts but part ways when it comes to the application of them. The author states that, while early introduction of bottles should be avoided, she doesn't see nipple confusion in her practice because babies in her practice return to the breast after weeks on the bottle. I agree that, with good help from someone familiar with self attachment (sometimes called 'baby-led breastfeeding'), effort on the part of the mother, and occasionally some 'contraptions,' it is possible to get many babies who refuse the breast to return to nursing. But this kind of help often isn't available, and sometimes, even under the best of circumstances, it doesn't work. This, in addition to the effort it has taken to get hospitals to shift away from pushing bottles on mothers, make me pretty cautious about the messages I give about bottles. This could easily be a post in itself, so I'll stop here.
But it's the photos, in the end, that make this book. I found a number of them very evocative, particularly one in which a father - who looks completely overcome with emotion - holds his partner while she gazes at their baby. It captures those intense first moments of parenthood with such clarity. Other powerful pictures are of babies satisfied after good feedings, with milk-drunk smiles and arms extended in floppy bliss. If there's a book out there that could double as breastfeeding guide and coffee table book (at least in my house), this is it.
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