Building a Parenting Library — Recommended Reading

I mentioned awhile ago that I received a $500 grant to start our La Leche League library.  I had a lot of fun thinking about the books I would recommend to local moms and what was helpful to me the first or second time around.  Of course, there were significantly more books that I wanted to buy than budget would allow, so I had to narrow it down and pick the ones that I felt were most important and also most relevant to what I have been learning about the birth, breastfeeding, and parenting culture in this area.  So far meetings have been going well.  We have been meeting twice per month, once during a weekday afternoon and once during an evening.  Day meetings have been having a great turnout — 19 mothers and babies/kids this month — but I may switch the evening meetings to Saturday mornings for the next series.  I’m pleased that La Leche League is going over so well and that I’m able to have an impact in our new community.

Last week, I had a meeting with the Lactation Consultant at the hospital and the new unit manager.  The area of the state that we are in is severely underserved when it comes to breastfeeding support and mother/baby friendly birth practices, but between the three of us we are very excited about starting to positively change the local birth and breastfeeding culture.  I’ll admit that I was very nervous to be moving to an area without even certified nurse midwives and with so little history of progressive maternity and birth care, but it sounds like some newly hired managers at the hospital are willing to turn that around.  Slowly but surely, change will come to northeast Wyoming and I can’t wait to be a part of it.

I thought that some of you might be interested in the books that I chose for our library, so here is a list of what I thought would be most useful and of books that I love.

Books in My La Leche League Library

Breastfeeding

Weaning

Pregnancy & Birth

Babies & Newborn Care

Nighttime Parenting & Infant Sleep

Nutrition & Health

Parenting

A Few Notes About the Library:

If you are not familiar with La Leche League, I would like to point out that LLL only has official stances on its 10 concepts.  The books here are intended to aid mothers and fathers in parenting in a manner which best supports a positive breastfeeding relationship, active participation of the family in their health care, and in providing loving guidance for their children, but they are not intended to mandate how parents should parent, what childbirth should be like, or even how long a mother should breastfeed for.  Not all methods or approaches described in these books will work for every family and that is OK.  As I tell the mothers at the start of each meeting, take what works for your family and leave the rest.   This list of books is not intended to represent LLL or its official opinions, only to provide a possible reading list for interested parents.

I ordered the books for the La Leche League library off of Amazon rather than purchasing locally so that I could save money by buying used (I have a Prime account, so I don’t have to pay shipping).  I also donated a few things from my personal library and was grateful to receive a couple of book donations from a local doula.  I’m pretty pleased with the library that we ended up with, although I’m looking forward to getting more donations and a few group memberships so that the library can continue to grow.  I hope to add some cookbooks, more parenting books, and a bunch of DVDs on breastfeeding, birth, and skin-to-skin, as well as some yoga DVDs.  I’ve already started an Amazon wishlist!

I want to especially note that I have linked these titles to Amazon only as a quick means of providing you with additional information about the book or DVD if you are interested in knowing more about it.  I have made an intentional choice to not use affiliate links in this post.  As such, none of the links in this post are affiliate links.  Should you click on a link and purchase the book/DVD, I will in no way benefit from that purchase.  If you do want to purchase one of these books, you might also consider asking for it at your local bookstore rather than buying it online.

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