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

by Lisa Wood Shapiro

• ISBN13: 9781592287949
• ISBN10: 1592287948
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2006-01-06
• Publisher: Lyons Press

Summary

"How My Breasts Saved the World is mother's milk for any new mama struggling with confounding transformation from woman into human canteen."--"Vanity Fair "Refreshingly hysterical. Any woman can benefit from Shapiro's hard-won education."--"BUST magazine "Shapiro's memoir . . . offers a welcome real-life complement to weightier breastfeeding advice."--"Brain, Child magazine In this hilarious breastfeeding tell-all--the first of its kind-- Lisa Wood Shapiro recounts her misadventures of new motherhood from the delivery of her daughter and her rookie days as a food source to the bittersweet end of weaning. This may be the information age, but so much of nursing still exists in the smart gal's rumor culture. Only after Shapiro shares her own nursing saga, complete with lactation consultants, chocolate binges, and a new use for green cabbage, do her friends and relatives confess to their own travails. Breastfeeding may be natural, but it is not always instinctual, and one doesn't have to go it alone. There are professionals who can make it work without pain, and it does get easier. Whether or not your breasts have been involved in any world-saving activities, you won't be able to put this book down until you've read the last line.

Author Biography

Lisa Wood Shapiro, a writer and Emmy-winning filmmaker whose work has appeared on PBS, A&E, Nickelodeon, Noggin, and elsewhere, studied nonfiction writing with the late Lucy Grealy and the poet Thomas Lux. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.

Table of Contents

Preface The Most Natural Thing in the World and Brooke Shields	xi
Part One
Silly Pregnant Lady	5	(15)
Don't Bite Your Newborn	20	(23)
The Panic and the Pain	43	(14)
They Are Going to Reach Out and Touch You	57	(13)
Get Yourself to a Breast-feeding Support Group	70	(7)
Feed unto Others as You Yourself Would Like to Have Been Fed	77	(8)
Behind Every Successful Nursing Mother	85	(15)
Find Your Own Kind	100	(13)
Red Angry Nipples	113	(9)
The ``Vacation''	122	(19)
Part Two
It Gets Easier	141	(8)
The Other Thing Behind a Nursing Mom	149	(12)
The Purgatory of Part-time Work	161	(12)
The Comfort of Nursing	173	(10)
A Half-hour Late to a Half-hour Class or the Baby Formerly Known as Sophie	183	(14)
Beware of Bake Sales	197	(11)
Weaning	208	(8)
In Sync with the Universe	216	(5)
Epilogue Cranks, Hot Mamas, and Sherpas	221	(4)
Acknowledgments	225	(2)
Bibliography	227	(2)
Resources	229