Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

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At least where I live, many of the things this book said you would have to fight for, like skin-on-skin and delayed cord cutting, are standard policy. Books like this exist because women have had a variety of birth experiences, all with their pros and cons that deserve to be heard and taken seriously. Overall, I'm glad I read this book and I truly believe that it has better equipped me for my son's upcoming birth. This very lengthy review might suggest that I didn't like this book or that I majorly disagreed with the author. Due to complications, Pelly delivered our older son by emergency c-section four weeks early, without experiencing a single contraction.

Highly recommended, i have stopped attending labor classes in my village cause this book is far more updated and gives a view positive (and not scary or bloody) about having a baby. I think this book really does aim to give women information and strategies for a positive natural childbirth experience, and it is an unintended consequence (perhaps not even stemming from the book itself, but from other media sources and the natural childbirth movement at large) that women like me end up feeling like our non-natural birth experiences are tainted or less-than, or that we have failed as women and mothers, because we needed a little extra help. The best thing about this book is that it describes birth as a completely natural thing for a woman's body to do and that it's not at all scary, which is a relief after our culture's fear-mongering around birth. If the natural childbirth books hadn't made me so insanely fearful of what labor in the hospital would be like, I would've gone in earlier and probably wound up taking drugs, which I really didn't want to do. As a believer, I should accept that there are parts of life that will be painful and not try to eliminate the discomfort outright, but trust God’s providence through it.After half a dozen birth stories I found myself stressed, slightly horrified and definitely not (as the author says she intends) empowered. Based on the female-centered Midwifery Model of Care, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth gives expectant mothers comprehensive information on everything from the all-important mind-body connection to how to give birth without technological intervention. The second half of the book was really helpful with information on what to expect during childbirth, what your options are, and techniques to help you during childbirth. Ina May made me terrified of mainstream medicine's approach to birth, and the book got hard to read at a certain point because I was like, "Yeah, sure, this birth would be wonderful if I were doing it on Ina May's hippie commune, but since I'm doing it in a shitty Miami hospital those doctors are going to cut me up into pieces and mess up my baby with all kinds of unnecessary and frightening interventions. Update three years later: I think of this book's discussion of sphincters every time I try to get 30 seconds of privacy to go to the bathroom.

Going into it with that specific plan is great, but I think women need to realize it doesn't always work out this way. The information about the different types of pain relief available has also been useful and helped me to make up my mind about which option I want when my time comes. The international hospital that I will be giving birth at does routine Rhogam injections at 28 weeks.It took a lot of the mystery away and clarified that labor was more than "hours of the worst pain in your life and very scary" like everyone tells you.