All Things Supercinski

6. Birth & Breastfeeding by Michel Odent–This was another lactation educator training book. I chose it from the reading list after recognizing the author as the French guy with great things to say from “The Business of Being Born”. This book was a lot of philosophy, not the kind of practical book I would recommend to any pregnant woman. He has some great ideas along with some very interesting ones that I don’t agree with.

7. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult – I feel like I am always hearing Jodi Picoult books recommended, but this was the first one I read. It was a page-turner for sure and I shed a few tears over this one. I would recommend it if you were looking for fiction to read. It made me so thankful for my children’s health and was one more reminder to enjoy them and love them today. My favorite quote from this book was, “I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it’s not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still better than never having had those children at all.”
I just realized this was made into a move last year. Who knew? I must live in a cave or something… So I rented it and it stunk. Do not see this movie. Read the book. I cannot believe Jodi Picoult let them butcher her book that way. They completely changed the ending and everything. Boo, hiss, rotten tomatoes…

8. SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner — Thomas and I enjoyed reading Freakonomics a few years ago. It gave me some insight into my good friend and walking buddy, Megan, who now has her doctorate in economics. This book was interesting and a really fast read, but it was a bit disappointing compared to the first book. The last chapter on climate change seemed to drag on forever. The first part of the book was written with a bit more boldness and “in your face” tone than I remember the first book, but I guess that is the story of the sequel.

9. Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot — This was a chick-lit mystery recommended on a friend’s blog. It was cute, entertaining, and a really quick book to read. It was definitely “chick-lit”, but not annoying like some I have read. If this book sounds appealing, you should check out the Spellman Files (and the sequels) by Lisa Lutz. They are hilarious.

10. Size 14 Is Not Fat Either (the sequel to the previous book) by Meg Cabot. It was cute and really fast to read, but definitely a sequel as sequels go–edgier, worse language, etc. to the point that I don’t really care to read the next book in the series.

11. The Coach’s Notebook: Games and Strategies for Lactation Education by Linda Smith — This book was a fabulous resource and I got some really great ideas. I can’t wait to start trying some of them in my latest Bradley class.

Not counting read-alouds of three Happy Hollisters and Charlotte’s Web.

I often wonder how many books I read in a year. I read a lot last year, but our “now reading” part of our blog wasn’t working and I forgot to tell my webmaster for many months. So, I am going to attempt a monthly book review, or at least list of completed books for that month, mostly out of curiosity of how many books I read in a year. One of my goals for this new year is to manage my time better and read more, let’s see how long it lasts.

Breastfeeding and Human Lactation by Jan Riordan – I plowed through this 850+ page textbook in a mere six weeks. I fell asleep many nights with that book in my lap, but I learned so much. I am pursuing certification as a lactation educator, and this was required reading.

The Nursing Mother’s Guide to Weaning by Kathleen Huggins and Linda Ziedrich – another lactation educator book and one that I was interested in reading to gain some encouragement in nursing a toddler, not because I am interested in weaning anytime soon, but for ideas when the time comes. This book met those goals, and could be a good resource to a mother considering weaning at any point in her nursing relationship. I really enjoyed their insight into why Western countries nurse their babies for such a short time compared to the rest of the world. From the authors:

Americans tend to fear their children’s dependence… the same fear provokes questions and warnings from well-meaning people about the wisdom of long breastfeeding, and drives many women to wean before they are ready. We should remind ourselves that American individualism, in many of its forms, is not born of confidence and trust, but of alienation. As Elizabeth Hormann (1982) points out, ‘We are bent on weakening bonds in the name of growth and independence, then spend our adulthoods wondering why we have trouble getting close to other people.’”

Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices by Frank Viola and George Barna
I read half of this book earlier in the fall and finally finished it this month. I found this book to be very interesting, but I read it through the lens of knowing the authors’ agenda–the house church movement. Basically the authors are making three points: 1) A great deal of what we do in church today does not come from the New Testament. 2) Much of what is practiced originated out of Greco-Roman customs and traditions (paganism, not Judaism), and/or human-made inventions. 3) Many of these practices actually hinder the church from being what God designed her to be. The over-arching question the authors seem to be asking is: Do the practices of modern institutional churches reflect a God-ordained/inspired development, or are they a departure from it?

Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
This was my mom’s group February book. It was entertaining, but I’m not sure if I would recommend it. It only took two days to read it, and I just realized this was made into a movie to be released soon… hmmm… it was okay but I’m not sure I want to see a movie about it.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett — I loved this book and could not put it down. I was so sad when it ended as it was one of those books where you feel like you know the characters so well. Based in Jackson Mississippi during the early 1960s, this book is about three main characters–two black maids (“the help”) and a young white woman recently graduated from college who sets out to write the stories of black maids working in white homes during the turbulent beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement. It was thought-provoking and very well-written. I highly recommend it.

January total = 5 (not counting the four Happy Hollister books I read aloud to Josiah… please, let us move on from Happy Hollisters soon, son!)

I have been intrigued by the idea of freezer cooking for a long time and have successfully dabbled in it since we got our garage freezer almost two years ago. The idea of once-a-month freezer cooking sounds fantastic, but the execution of a huge shopping trip and day of cooking is out of reach at this point in my life. For the past two years, I have made a point to cook double of meals that freeze easily (namely soups and casseroles), with one to eat and one to freeze for busy days.

One of my Bradley students told me about the cookbook, Fix, Freeze, Feast, that she was using to stock her freezer in preparation for her birth. I was intrigued and used some birthday money to buy it. It was totally worth it, and I am hooked on freezer cooking.

The authors’ premise is to purchase meat in bulk at Sam’s or other warehouse stores for savings. I just use the quarter of the cow we have in our freezer already, whole chickens from our broiler adventures, and other chicken from Sam’s or the grocery specials. Rather than making a month’s worth of meals, each meal makes 3-6 meals. Some are casseroles or soups, but most are not, which I love. One of my favorites is called Sweet Asian Chicken. It is basically sliced, raw meat in a marinade. Just thaw and add veggies and you have a great stir fry.

Every recipe I have tried is delicious. There are no cream of whatever soups used in the recipes, and all are very made from scratch. Some recipes call for boullion granules, which I have yet to find locally without MSG, but I think you could use broths instead.

Bottom Line: two thumbs up from this cook who enjoys a night off a couple nights a week without eating out.

I had been itching to see Ricki Lake’s documentary, The Business of Being Born, ever since I heard about it months ago, and I finally had a chance to watch it last week. The Women’s Studies department at TAMU was holding a screening, and thankfully, my midwife was telling everyone she knew to come. I highly recommend the film to anyone who is pregnant or thinking about having children anytime soon.

The documentary makes an excellent case for natural childbirth, and a very strong case for giving birth outside of the hospital. With the United States spending more money delivering babies than any other country, but with an infant mortality rate the second worst in the developed world (and a maternal mortality rate that is one of the worst in the developed world), something needs to change. The documentary sites several reasons–the absence of midwives from hospitals, the rising cesarean rate, artificial time limits put on the natural process of birth, insurance/money and more. The film offers a lot of statistics, history, and political explanations for current birth practices that leave little confidence in the current system (especially the historical parts).

Several home births are documented in the film, including Ricki Lake’s own birth. There is quite a bit of nudity, but less than the average birthing video, and much less than the films I show in my classes! These births show the pain, excitement and freedom of birth without hospital restrictions and policies. The film takes an unexpected turn with director Abby Epstein’s pregnancy and birth offering balance as to the role of hospitals and doctors when serious complications arise.

While unmedicated childbirth is a truly miraculous event, and one that I highly recommend experiencing, I tend to disagree with the film’s underlying message that natural birth is the culmination of your existence as a woman. I do believe that, in the majority of cases, God made our bodies fully capable of giving birth without modern technology assisting, though it definitely has a place, as the film shows through Epstein’s birth. Our blind trust and dependence upon surgeons to “treat” the normal has led us to forsake education, preparation, and determination in the natural process. I fully recommend The Business of Being Born. You will be challenged to (re)consider your views on birth. The film is currently available through private screenings and Netflix.

We Supercinskis have been serious readers this summer, and I have read so many great books that I want to recommend them to you, our faithful readers.

Finished
A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. This is one of the most painful memoirs I have ever read. It is about a twelve-year-old boy forced into war where he witnessed and participated in some of the most horrible violence imaginable, but he tells his story honestly and without self-pitying.

Same Kind of Different as Me: A modern day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. I read most of this book this afternoon, and I am thinking about reading it again. My review doesn’t do it justice, so just read this one. Really, I can’t recommend it enough–go get it!

Stepping Heavenward by Elisabeth Prentiss. As Elisabeth Eliot says on the back cover of my book, I recommend this book “to any woman who wants to walk with God.” Not that it is that necessary, but I found it, though fiction, to be such an encouragement to me in growing in Christlikeness.

Currently Reading
Don’t Make Me Count to Three: A Mom’s Look at Heart-Oriented Discipline by Ginger Plowman. Her book is a wonderful compliment to Shepherding a Child’s Heart, but more on the practical side. She offers many suggestions of the “how” to reprove which I have found to be very helpful.

What Jesus Demands from the World by John Piper. I just started this one after getting it for only $2.50–what a deal! I am excited to read more.

Real Food by Nina Plack. Another that I just started, which is similar to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of our favorite food culture books. Another book I can’t wait to get into!

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graaf. This was loaned to us by a friend, who was right on the money in thinking that we would like it. It is a wonderful reminder of why we are told to lay up our treasures in heaven, when the world around us (and our minds) are always wanting to acquire more on earth.

Do you have any recommendations you want to share?

“Curiously, Justus von Liebig, the nineteenth-century German chemist with the spectacularly ironic surname, bears responsibility for science’s overly reductive understanding of both ends of the food chain. It was Liebig, you’ll recall, who thought he had found the chemical key to soil fertility with the discovery of NPK, and it was the same Liebig who thought he had found the key to human nutrition when he identified the macronutrients in food. Liebig wasn’t wrong on either count, yet in both instances he made the fatal mistake of thinking that what we knew about nourishing plants and people was all we needed to know to keep healthy. It’s a mistake we’ll probably keep repeating until we develop a deeper respect for the complexity of food and soil and, perhaps, the links between the two.” The Omnivore’s Dilemna, pg. 180

Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemna after buying an ‘industrial organic’ meal:
“I very much like the fact that the milk in the ice cream I served came from cows that did not receive injections of growth hormone to boost their productivity, or that the corn those cows are fed, like the corn that feeds Rosie [a chicken], contains no residues of atrazine, the herbicide commonly sprayed on American cornfields. Exposure to vanishingly small amounts (0.1 part per billion) of this herbicide has been shown to turn normal male frogs into hermaphrodites. Frogs are not boys, of course. So I can wait for that science to be done, or for our government to ban atrazine (as European governments have done), or I can act now on the presumption that food from which this chemical is absent is better for my son’s health than food that contains it.” The Omnivore’s Dilemna pg. 178

“The problem is that once science has reduced a complex phenomenon to a couple of variables, however important they may be, the natural tendency is to overlook everything else, to assume that what you can measure is all there is, or at least all that really matters. When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one’s ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants make them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.” [emphasis mine] The Omnivore’s Dilemna pg. 147-148

‘So what exactly would an ecological detective set loose in an American supermarket discover, were he to trace the items in his shopping cart all the way back to the soil? The notion began to occupy me a few years ago, I realized that the straightforward question “What should I eat?” could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: “What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?” Not very long ago an eater Read more »

“Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature’s ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast monocultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature’s complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. At either end of any food chain you find a biological system — a patch of soil, a human body — and the health of one is connected — literally — to the health of the other. Many of the problems of health and nutrition we face today trace back to things that happen on the farm, and behind those things stand specific government policies few of us know anything about.” The Omnivore’s Dilemna Introduction, pg. 9