How My Breasts Saved the World : Misadventures of a Nursing Mother

Rating:
Summary: The Girlfriend's Guide to Breastfeeding
Review: ......only younger, smarter, and funnier. Lisa Stone Shapiro is not just a mom with keen vision, great advice, and a story to tell; she's a REAL WRITER, and this book reads like the best fiction -- gripping, human, and irresistible. Think Ruth Reichl, only instead of recipes you get breast feeding tips. Shapiro's description of returning to Manhattan after 9/11 gave me chills. Her lacatation consultants and fellow nursing moms come to life like characters out of Ann Tyler.

Most importantly, this is a book I wish I'd had when I started nursing my daughter. It would have made me feel like I had very smart, brutally honest, and totally sympathetic company (and I would have known what was wrong with my wrist!). Though this isn't just a book for nursing moms, it's definitely a book no nursing mom should be without. It's right up there with Nalgene bottles and breast pads: but enjoyable as it is indispensable.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: I couldn't put this book down! I have been scared to death about breastfeeding and my baby is due in 6 weeks. This book has made me feel so much better. It's an honest and funny look at breastfeeding in the US today. Everything I have read before has made breastfeeding seem so effortless, well I knew it couldn't be THAT easy. This book has made me feel okay about being scared of this new thing I'm about to embark on, thanks Lisa Wood Shapiro!

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious-Couldn't Put It Down
Review: I love this book. I'm not a new mother [yet] but I hope to be eventually, and I feel like Shapiro really gave me an amazing heads-up through the sharing of her story. But I also just have to say that she is really funny. I have seen her read from this book and she's as funny in person as she is on the page. I really like her practical approach to both life and storytelling. She includes all the right, most interesting details in each chapter, and is so incredibly honest. And she never forgets about herself-her appearance, her feelings etc.-despite having a child, which seems incredibly healthy and realistic to me. I admire Lisa's style of mothering hugely, not to mention her immense gift for conveying so sharply that intense period after childbirth when women are challenged to do 'what comes naturally.'

Rating:
Summary: A must-have for new and expecting moms!
Review: I read this book while nursing my second child and found it so in touch with all the emotions- up and down- of new (and not so new) moms. I laughed and I cried as I relived those sleepless, challenging and wonderful early days with my first. This book is a must-read for any expecting mom planning on nursing and btdt (been there, done that) moms will greatly enjoy experiencing that first year again through Lisa Wood Shapiro's eyes. I now find myself acting like the author when she discovered the secret of nursing-- I have started approaching pregnant strangers and new moms and telling them to read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Redeamingly humorous, but not much substance.
Review: I selected this title expecting that it would highlight the benefits of nursing balanced against the challenges many women in this country face when learning to nurse. Instead, I found a memoir that doesn't point out true misinformation or distinguish between informed and bogus help. I think many women will appreciate the fact that Lisa was able to provide her daughter with breastmilk despite her ups and downs and efforts to make her baby fit into her picture of what her family should look and feel like. To clarify some things, lactation consultants should not offer out formula as a miracle calming agent at support meetings, gentian violet is a product many mothers find useful to cure trush, although it can be messy, nursing toddlers don't have to lift up their mom's shirts and yell boobie, and her nursing mom's "ass" as she calls it, might have been twice as big were she not nursing since she indulged in chocolate and other foods that would quickly send her past an extra 500 calories. Moreover, she talks of waiting for the "reward period" to come, perhaps forgeting that the real reward in breastfeeding is being able to provide her infant with a superior food and nurturing nursing experience, watching a baby grow sustained on nothing but milk from her body. I also wish she had shared more about her second experience, did it get better, easier? Did she finally enjoy it? Still, for those interested in breastfeeding, it is an interesting and typical account of breastfeeding management in American hospitals and illustrates how birthing choices affect the nursing experience. However, if you like the memoir style and humor, try So That's What They're For! A much more informed and empathetic approach to the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Not even a mom and I dig this book
Review: I'm not a mom, but I loved Lisa Wood Shapiro's take on breast-feeding and the first year of motherhood. She writes genuinely and enthusiastically about her baby's birth, her relationship with her husband and family, her self-image, and rejects the assumption that just because you're a woman, nursing comes "naturally." I've sent this book to a bunch of my mom friends and they love it too. Check it out!

Rating:
Summary: Not funny, just whiny and miserable.
Review: I'm pretty sure Ms. Shapiro fancied herself the next Vicki Iovine (author of the Girlfriend's Guides books) as she wrote this book. However, I found her to be far off the mark.

While Vicki's perspective is down and dirty, her writing is fundamentally infused with a great sense of compassion, generosity, and warm humor. Ms. Shapiro, on the other hand, just comes across as whiny and miserable.

As a new Mother myself, I'm currently dealing with the many ways nursing can be challenging, maddening, and downright weird. I would have gladly laughed along with Ms. Shapiro as she documents her trials. The problem is: I couldn't hear her laughing. Frankly, I just ended up feeling sorry for her. I didn't find this book funny OR inspiring OR hopeful. I'll stick with the Girlfriends Guides in the future.

Rating:
Summary: What to Expect NEXT
Review: My sister gave me this book right before my daughter was born last month, and it has been a LIFESAVER. The author is exactly what you wish your husband and family could be right after the baby is born: completely candid! By the time I finished this book, I felt like I had a new friend who shared in all of my childbirth and nursing trials and tribulations--from the day I realized that, no, I was NOT going to be the only woman who looks gorgeous after giving birth to the day it suddenly dawned on me that yes, I can do this! Even if it takes a few cabbage leaves and a Brest Friend pillow!



Rating:
Summary: Okay, not great
Review: On the good side:

Lisa Shapiro "tells it like it is" about nursing and the struggles that she went through achieving it--something many women out there really want to read. She is great at characterizing the people in her story so that it reads almost like a novel, albeit one with a slow, winding plot. Also, she pokes fun at herself--the scenes in which she stops new mothers on the street and tries to drag them to the breast-feeding group are great.

The book itself not great, though, for the following reasons:

One, why Ms. Shapiro decided to write about breastfeeding isn't that clear, especially as she claims not to love nursing--I thought it would be one of those turned-about stories in which the mom has doubts, struggles, but ends up enjoying breastfeeding?

Two, she is so intensly sensitive to percieved criticism--and criticizes herself constantly--that reading the book becomes a drag. She seems to hate anybody thinner or seemingly more 'put-together' than she is, and in fact obsesses over her weight.

Also, I couldn't help wondering why such a well-educated, intelligent woman refused to read a single book about breastfeeding before having her baby. Everybody at some point has those glowy, 'it's all natural and easy', 'blue lagoon'-type fantasies that she did, but in this hyper-informed age most people read up on stuff like that and get a dose of reality.

Rating:
Summary: new moms NEED this book
Review: Thank god, someone who makes fun of all the crazy things that go on with nursing moms -- I needed the laughs desperately and it kept me going with breastfeeding. Thank you, thank you!!!