Customer Reviews

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

This book covers just about every situation that could happen in the normal course of breastfeeding (as well as lots of special circumstances). From how to get breastfeeding off to a good start all the way through to starting solids and weaning, you can find just about any information on breastfeeding you need.

Are you a working mom and need information on the mechanics of pumping and storing breastmilk? The answer is here. Are you an at-home mom and need suggestions on how to meet the needs of your baby while still taking care of the house, other children, your husband, and yourself? A myriad of suggestions are offered.

Want to know how various choices in childbirth options can affect getting breastfeeding off to a good start? Look no further. If you're having a problem (thrush, mastitis, overactive letdown, etc.), this book is full of helpful tips and suggestions to help you overcome the problem.

While this is a wonderful book for the breastfeeding mother to read, it's even better for the expectant mother to read---being prepared with knowledge and information ahead of time can help a mother avoid problems and have a wonderful breastfeeding relationship with her baby from the very beginning.

This book should be on the bookshelf of every expectant or breastfeeding mother.

As a first-time expectant mother, I naturally have a zillion questions about everything concerning my unborn baby. Every question I had about breastfeeding was answered in this Bible of Breastfeeding. Not only does this book tell you why, how, and when to breastfeed, but it covers all aspects of breastfeeding (how to overcome difficulties, how to know when your child is getting enough milk, etc...). I must admit that I was VERY anti-La Leche League, but as a result of reading this fabulous book, I am now a LLL member and attend meetings regularly. There ARE some things in the book (and at the meetings) that I disagree with (I plan to schedule my baby and he won't sleep with me at night), but I feel totally at liberty to just take things that make sense to me and to disregard what doesn't. This book is easy to read and a MUST for all expectant mothers! Don't wait until after the baby comes, get it the moment you find out you're pregnant!

What an empowering book! There are a lot of books out there now that talk about breastfeeding, but this one is by far my favorite. Like all the others, it has technical information about the many benefits of breastfeeding, positioning your baby, going back to work, and how to get help if you need it, but it goes so far beyond that! This book shares the incredible joy and sense of physical connection that are unique to the breastfeeding relationship, and is one of the few books I've read that affirms the tremendous importance of mothers to their babies. If you're thinking about breastfeeding and want more information, if you know you want to breastfeed and need to learn more (and PLEASE educate yourself before your baby is born -- breastfeeding is something that both mothers and babies can only learn by doing, and information is your ally!) or whether you're a proud breastfeeding mom who wants to share the experience of others in your mothering community, this book has so much to offer you. Breastfeeding has been a transformative experience for me, despite (or perhaps because of) early breastfeeding difficulties I had to overcome with both of my children. It was because of the wealth of wisdom and information in this book, and because of other help I received from La Leche League, that I was able to breastfeed successfully. I am deeply grateful to this organization, and amazed by what they've accomplished, particularly since I found out they're staffed almost entirely by volunteers.

This book provides some very good information on manual expression and breastfeeding techniques. It also has some good basic information on complications although I think that it needs more. I am fortunate enough to be able to stay home with our baby. However, if I were not I would find some of the information on breastfeeding and working offensive. Many women don't have the luxury of "making the choice" and weighing the pros and cons of going back to work-they can't afford not to go back. The book does educate about pumping for women who do work, but the inference is fairly strong that you shouldn't be. Additionally, if you are not a fan of Dr. Sears you are going to have difficulties with this book. It advocates for the family bed/ shared sleep and is dismissive about concerns like rolling over on the baby. We have a larger, queen-sized bed but I disagree that this alleviates that concern and feel that our baby is fine in her crib in the next room. I referred to this book many times in the first week our baby was home and it had useful information. I think it's good to be well educated about your options so I certainly don't regret buying it, but definitely think the stance of La Leche League is not for me. I have ordered Nursing Mother's Companion for more comprehensive information on specific concerns and nursing and think it will be better for an ongoing nursing relationship.

Is your baby due soon? This book is full of great information on breastfeeding and will help you make an informed decision about how to feed and care for your newborn baby. Or maybe your baby is already born and you are looking for a good book about breastfeeding. Either way, this book is a great resource!

Many mothers come to realize, during the course of their pregnancy, that everyone she knows will offer her "advice" on how to feed and care for her newborn baby. That can be confusing to a new mother because so many women have different ideas about caring for the newborn. Helpful information is what you will find in this book.

"The Womanly Art of Breatfeeding" offers a wonderful opportunity to read from the experts on the health topic of breastfeeding. When reading this book, a woman is offered suggestions about breastfeeding that when followed can ensure success. This book also covers how the father can be fully involved in the care of the baby. Many fathers will find this reassuring that they will not be "left out" because they're not bottle feeding.

I enjoyed reading this during my first pregnancy, and I feel sure you will, too! Actually, I read it more than once because I enjoyed reading it so much. The parenting suggestions included in this book are, in my opinion, meant to be a guide for you. You will know your baby best. After reading this book you can look forward to believing in yourself and your ability to mother your baby. A mother will gain confindence from the information in this book. The Womanly Art gives mothers solid information to start successfully nursing a newborn while touching on less common subjects such as health problems with the newborn or the mother, after the birth and beyond. This book is a great resource for expectant mothers. The "Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" is the best!

This book covers all the wonderful things about breastfeeding - of which there are a lot. For anyone looking for encouragement for breastfeeding, and/or reasons to give friends and family about why you want to breastfeed, it's a great book.

However, if you've already decided to breastfeed, and are looking for something to get you through the tough parts, I can't recommend it. As far a reader could tell from this book, there are no tough parts. My fear is that someone having a difficult time with breastfeeding could decide that something must be really wrong, and quit in discouragement believing that other women don't have such difficulties. Having breastfed my first child to 20 months, and at one year and counting with my second, I can tell you that there are very tough moments in breastfeeding. LLL would be doing women more of a service if they didn't softsoap it, or use the soft-focus filter on all the possible problems.

I finally got around to reading this wonderful book and I am filled with regret that I did not take the time to read it when I was pregnant with my first baby. So many problems could have been avoided. But I am thankful to have read it now and would highly recommend it to anyone hoping/planning to breastfeed their babies. My partner read a lot of information on breastfeeding while I was pregnant and his *informed* support helped me to decide that nursing my babies is the style of parenting I like best! So Dads, this is a good read for you too...

This book is the most well-written, supportive book about how to breastfeed and why that I have ever read. It is written in a style that makes it easy to read, not as a textbook... much more humanly. And it is sectioned off so that if there is a subject you are particularly interested in you can easily access that information. It is well-indexed and I came away from it feeling so enthusiastic about nursing my children.

Also brings home the fact that each and every one of us make a difference. The organization was started because of seven mothers who all had nursed their children and decided they wanted to help other mothers with the dying art of feeding a child at the breast. Very empowering.

Twenty-five or so years ago, there were only a scant handful of breastfeeding books available, and even less support and practical advice from doctors. At that time, a book like "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" was a Godsend to mothers who wanted to breastfeed their babies. It not only offered them emotional support, and the knowlege that they were doing right by their babies, but it gave them some basic, practical advice on how to nurse. (And how to fight a medical and social establishment that would assume formula-feeding at every turn.)The advice wasn't extensive, but it was better than nothing. It let women know that it was ok (indeed, even desirable) to feed babies on demand, and that most babies would want to eat more than every 3-4 hours in the early weeks. It let women know that it was ok to nurse for more than a few weeks or months. It let women know that it was ok to delay solids past 6 weeks... or even 4 months. Oh yes, and the book also introduced readers to LaLeche League, a hands-on, personal, mother-to-mother support group where women could meet other women who were also nursing their babies.

Today, bookstore shelves are overflowing with breastfeeding books. Most general babycare books offer tolerably good breastfeeding advice. Most doctors and hospitals are reasonably supportive and knowlegable about breastfeeding. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for a minimum of one year.

And... unfortunately, as a general breastfeeding book, Womanly Art has outlived its usefulness. Its general breastfeeding advice remains minimal and, sometimes, dated. Its tone has become far too strident for many mothers.

If you are interested in a book about LaLeche League, and are already committed to, or at least very open to, its particular mothering philosophy, the book is worth a read. But it is very much a book about LLL's philosophy (which extends far beyond breastfeeding), NOT a book about how to breastfeed. For breastfeeding books there are many, many better choices available.

Women who just want breastfeeding advice/information are likely to be offended and turned off by the book's tone and, and minimum, will be frustrated at having to wade through the philosophy in order to find the practical advice.

I bought this book at my local LLL meeting. I've read several breastfeeding books and this one was by far the least helpful. I found it to be very negative towards moms who want to return to work, yet this is a group who needs a lot of support to continue breastfeeding! It is also not a good problem solving book. I've been nursing my son for nearly five months now and whenever I've hit stumbing blocks along the way, this book has been of no help. I feel that if you don't have the LLL's ideal arrangement, you might not get the best help from this book.

There is some good information in this book, however not enough for its size. The good information it does have is also contained in pretty much all of the other books I've read on this subject, so if you are on a tight budget, you might get more bang for your buck elsewhere.

Books I found more helpful and more supportive include "Nursing Mother Working Mother" by Gale Pryor and "Breastfeeding: A Mother's Gift" by Pamela Wiggins and Katherine Dettwyler.

I would recommend this book to someone who was unsure about breastfeeding and needed some convincing.

I knew I wanted to breastfeed my child, but I didn't know anything about how to do it. I purchased this book hoping it would fill in the how, but it didn't. I rarely picked it up after the baby was born. I found other books much more informative and helpful.

I respect this book as the classic it is, and I appreciate the efforts to make breastfeeding more acceptable. For those reasons, it is valuable. For breastfeeding information and guidance, I would select another book.