Ina May's Guide to Childbirth: Updated With New Material

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After half a dozen birth stories I found myself stressed, slightly horrified and definitely not (as the author says she intends) empowered. I think she makes traditional clinical medicine and those that work in that field unnecessarily sterile and frightening while painting midwives and homebirth with rose colored glasses. Reading this book gave me the confidence to know that I am capable of a natural and pain- relief free birth if I open my mind to the fact that my body is able to do it.Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. I guess that's not a really bad thing, because it did pump me up for childbirth, but as Gaskin constantly refers to her experience birthing women on "The Farm" (I can't help but think of it in semi-sarcastic quotation marks), I kept thinking how her sample is made up of very naturalistic, in-touch women (read: hippies) and a woman like myself is likely to have a different experience in childbirth, even given the fact that my body really knows what to do. In the end (I had my baby two days ago), I think this hysteria about hospitals did ultimately help me.

I also liked subtle nuances such as helping the baby's head stretch the mother out without tearing, not relying on cold machines such as ultrasound and internal fetal monitors, knowing how to deliver breech babies, and having faith in the universe. This book is not helpful, and it's filled with the kind of biased writing that sets women back and makes them feel bad about making their own choices. Ina May's Guide to Childbirth is skewed toward natural childbirth and can get a little culty, especially all the stories about The Farm, but I found the information in the second part of the book really helpful even when planning for a hospital birth. The benefits of medical tests were skimmed over while the possible harm of these tests was thoroughly covered.I felt like my body had betrayed me by failing at this most basic task of womanhood, which my female relatives have done countless times without issue. She’s such an important voice in the birth world and reading her work will likely make you feel more at ease and (dare I say) even excited about giving birth. For this reason, Part I of this book is largely devoted to stories told by women who planned to have home or birth-center births with me and my midwife partners. However, I think it's a bit out of date, especially in terms of what the hospital will and won't allow (but we'll see).

The collection of honest birth stories and the detailed information about the processes of birth soothe any fears future parents might have.Even though Gaskin is clearly on one side of the childbirth debate, she didn't come off sounding like a crazy. As for birth stories, listen to the podcast “the birth hour” because they birth stories are better AND you’ll learn most of what the rest of the book discusses without the clear bias against hospitals. As the occurrence of vaginal breech births has declined over the last 25 years, the knowledge and skill required for such births have come close to extinction.