Pinter & Martin Book Launch Special

This new book in the Why It Matters series aims to support parents who are mixed feeding, with crucial information about breastfeeding, expressing, and using formula milk.

- mixed feeding in the neonatal unit - what if your baby is sick or premature?

- mixed feeding with twins and multiples (by guest author Janet Rimmer)

- not only deals with the practicalities of mixed feeding, but also the emotions and feelings tied up in feeding decisions

- has a chapter especially for health professionals supporting parents

- evidence based and referenced, helps correct misinformation

Grandmothers are coming into their own. There have never been so many of them. As Naomi Stadlen explains, they have always mattered, especially in helping their families to survive. Drawing on grandmothers’ own words, Why Grandmothers Matter describes the experience of having grandchildren across many cultures, and discusses the sometimes delicate relationships between grandmother, parent-child and grandchild.

This warm and thoughtful book has much to teach us about family dynamics and the role grandmothers play in wider society, and will be valuable for parents as well as grandmothers when they enter into a new phase of family life.

Flourish: A practical and emotional guidebook to thriving in midwifery, by Kate Greenstock.

Available from all the usual outlets, and discounted to £12.99 on Pinter & Martin's website: https://pinterandmartin.com/flourish

A top to toe guide to your body after pregnancy and childbirth.

Pregnancy and birth may be everyday occurrences, but they are not easy, and the after-affects can be wide-ranging and sometimes difficult to live with.

This book aims to hold your hand and lift you up as you navigate your new body, giving you information to help you to relish motherhood, not just survive it. It deals comprehensively with the common bodily changes you may experience after birth, explaining what is normal and what may need attention.

Lyanne and Karen chat about what's in the book, and why it's important.

Initially, I planned a straightforward book about maternal feminism and, whilst researching a chapter, stumbled across a piece of information that had a domino effect and led to my turfing the work I'd done and beginning again. The piece of information in question was that scopolamine, one of the two primary ingredients of early obstetric drug cocktail Twilight Sleep, was both an hallucinogen and a sweat retardant. Apple evolved from that point.

For the past 150 years, babies have literally been born tripping.

I was in shock. Cultural movements and related ideologies suddenly fell into place, as did the shift in the maternal paradigm.

Challenging negativity and fear of childbirth, and brimming with everything you need to know about labour, birth and the early weeks of parenting, The Positive Birth Book is the must-have guide for pregnant women. A widely acclaimed bestseller since it was first published, it has empowered hundreds of thousands of women worldwide to make informed, positive choices about their births. In this Book Launch Special, Megan Stephenson of The Breastfeeding Show interviews author Milli Hill about the changes she's made to the book, and why it's such a popular and important manual for anyone approaching their birth. Whether you plan to have your baby in hospital, in a birth centre, at home or by elective caesarean, this essential, non-judgemental guide shows you how to raise your expectations and have the best possible birth experience.

In the early 1980s it was discovered that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, could be passed through a mother’s milk to her baby. Almost overnight in the industrialised countries, and later in the African countries most ravaged by HIV, breastfeeding became an endangered practice. But in the rush to reduce transmission of HIV, everything we already knew about breastfeeding’s life-saving effects was overlooked, with devastating consequences for mothers and babies.

In HIV and Breastfeeding – the untold story, former IBCLC Pamela Morrison, an acknowledged authority on HIV and breastfeeding, reveals how women in the world’s most poverty-stricken areas were persuaded to abandon breastfeeding as part of a short-sighted and deadly policy that led to an humanitarian disaster.

The dilemma that breastfeeding, an act of nurturing which confers food, comfort and love, could be at once life-saving yet lethal, has been called ‘the ultimate paradox’. This critical account reveals how vital breastfeeding is, even in the most difficult of circumstances, and examines the lessons that can be learned from the mistakes of the past – which is particularly relevant as we deal with the consequences for mothers and babies of another global pandemic, Covid-19.

In this Book Launch Special, Karen Hall chats with author Shel Banks about the big question of why formula feeding matters.

Nearly all babies in the UK receive formula milk at some point during their first year of life. Yet finding independent and factual information about formula feeding can be surprisingly difficult, as much of the material available to parents, carers and health professionals is generated by the formula industry for marketing purposes. How can parents make properly informed decisions about which brand to choose, how much to feed and when, and how to prepare products safely?

In Why Formula Feeding Matters infant feeding specialist Shel Banks tackles all these questions and many more, drawing on the evidence and her extensive experience supporting families with infant feeding to communicate essential information for anyone involved in caring for formula feeding babies.

Karen Hall chats with Professor Amy Brown about her tenth book (we counted!) Covid Babies, an important acknowledgement of the experiences of parents and health professionals during the Coivd-19 Pandemic.

As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, pregnancy and maternity services underwent a rapid transformation in an attempt to deal with transmission of the virus and the growing pressure on healthcare services. In a climate of fear, and with many unknowns about the virus and the risks to pregnant women and their babies, restrictions and hastily implemented policies often overrode years of work to improve maternity care, with devastating consequences for new families.

Covid Babies: how pandemic health measures undermined pregnancy, birth and early parenting considers how policies put in place to protect us from the immediate threat of the virus ultimately had the unintended consequence of harming many who needed maternity and postnatal care. It highlights how hard-won gains, even when supported by overwhelming evidence, can be lost at the drop of a hat in a crisis.

By learning the lessons of the pandemic – through close examination of the evidence base that is now emerging – Amy Brown shows how we can begin to move forward and unravel what has gone wrong. This is no easy task when our health services continue to face significant challenges, but one that is necessary to ensure the health and wellbeing of our new families and those who care for them.

Maternal Journal is filled to the brim with ideas, support and inspiration to create your very own journal through your pregnancy, birth and parenthood. This easy-to-use and beautifully illustrated book will help you explore your creative voice and develop a regular journaling practice using artistic tools and techniques that fit in with everyday parenting.

In this Book Launch Special, Karen Hall talks to the authors about how the journal came about, who it's for, and how proud they are to have produced it!