pregnancy preps

A list of my favorite natural birth helps:

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth--Ina May Gaskin. This woman is the American natural childbirth mother figure. This book is half Ina's midwife insights, half birth stories gleaned from the Farm Midwifery Center (a birthing compound she founded in 1971). The variety of women's experience here (four decades worth!) "inspires readers to reduce the fear of childbirth by regaining confidence in their bodies and assuring them – your body still works!"

Having a Baby, Naturally--Peggy O'Mara. This book by the editor of Mothering Magazine (another one of my favorite things to read (though recently forced--like so many other great publications--to drop its print form)), goes over both conventional and alternative birthing methods. Some of the books I read advocating homebirth tended to be a bit preachy, but I felt this one was fair and informative without being judgmental.

Birthing From Within--Pam England. This is by far my favorite pregnancy book. The author lives in New Mexico where she hosts pregnancy art classes as a means of emotional preparation for couples. While I'm not so much into the art thing, once you get past that chapter, she has some phenomenal advice for pain management and the like. Definitely the most helpful of my reading.

The Method: Baby & Mom Prenatal Yoga--Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa. This is a nineties video I came across by way of a friend's suggestion. I've tried other pregnancy yoga DVDs, but they all just seem too bouncy. This lady is classic. She focuses on helping pregnant women get in touch with their instincts. As she says: "We delivered babies long before they wrote a book on how to." (Not that that stops her from writing her own book on how to. Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful is bit out there, but still quite interesting and introduced in the foreword by Cindy Crawford, who took this woman's yoga class in L.A. and consequently decided to do a homebirth herself).

The Baby Catcher--Stephanie Fritz. I really do love my midwife! And her blog is full of great healthy-mama tips and "butter" (aka smooth sailing) birth stories.

Some interesting films:
Birth As We Know It-- I blogged about this one last pregnancy, but if you're interested in a water birth, this is full of them!
The Business of Being Born-- This recent documentary (produced by Ricki Lake, no less) goes over the history of childbirth. During the filming process, the director becomes pregnant and we get to see that play out. Fascinating. Plus, you can watch it instantly through Netflix.
Orgasmic Birth-- Saw this at a small birth convention. More of the same, but good stuff.

And that's all I can think of right now. But I'd love hear any of your suggestions to add to the list.