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 historical and worldwide accounts of birth Gaskin provides is comforting to read about as well as the explanation of the process. Drawing on over 40 years' experience, internationally acclaimed midwife Ina May Gaskin shows you how to use the mind-body connection to help labour progress calmly and safely. In Part 2, Ina May covers a variety of helpful topics including why we see birth pain as something to avoid, advice for birthing at a hospital, different models of maternity care, and necessary and unnecessary interventions that may be offered or encouraged. She quells a lot of anxieties women may have about how they are going to birth a baby out of such a small space (not an uncommon concern)… Even if you don’t read the book, it’s at least worth looking into her idea of Sphincter Law and how this affects the laboring process. It was fascinating and explains the ideal environment for birth. If you’re pregnant, I would recommend skipping her chapter on maternal mortality in the US if you think this may increase your anxiety. Ina May Gaskin has been a longtime teacher of midwifery and is the author of ‘Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth,’‘Spiritual Midwifery,’ and ‘Birth Matters,’ among other titles. She is recognized as an authority on mother-led birth who caters to what the mother needs to have a positive and healthy birth. To get a better understanding of giving birth without fear, we recommend reading her books on Childbirth and Breastfeeding!

Another downside of this book was that it was a little too "Rah, rah, rah, women's bodies can do anything!!" for my taste. 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. Don't be scared away by the hippy-dippiness of this book. I'm glad I wasn't. I read this book with a caveat: read the second section first, then the first section. It made so much sense, I'm not sure why the book wasn't organized that way in the first place. A Summary of Articles Published in English about Misoprostol (Cytotec) for Cervical Ripening or Induction of Labor, 2005-09-05 Retrieved: 2010-01-22. PDF / EPUB File Name: Ina_Mays_Guide_to_Childbirth_-_Ina_May_Gaskin.pdf, Ina_Mays_Guide_to_Childbirth_-_Ina_May_Gaskin.epub I believe that pain during childbirth is something that shouldn’t be attempted to be eliminated out of fear or the belief that you cannot handle it, but we should learn to cope with it, something in Gaskin’s book with which I agree. Again, modern medicine’s ability to dull that pain is an incredible achievement that has aided many women who have had difficult, complicated labors, but I don’t think that these methods should be turned to simply because of a dislike of pain. 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.It presents facts, shares real life stories, gives multiple solutions and enlightens so much of what has been hushed or down-played for waaaay too long. t]Ina May's Guide to Childbirth [/t]is a long-needed addition to modern-day natural[kw] childbirthing resources[/kw]. In this easy-to-read text, Ina May Gaskin begins with numerous birth stories as told by women who've experienced the empowering gift of birthing children naturally. The stories illustrate the innate power of women's bodies to gestate and birth human life. In a culture infused with fear about childbirth, these stories offer the reader a different and healing perspective-- that childbirth is not an event to be feared, but rather to be revered and relished and learned from. Key to enabling the birthing women are the [kw]midwives[/kw] who support and encourage them as the births of the babies unfold. The sense one gains as one reads the birthing stories is that[kw] birth[/kw] is sacred and manageable and possible and glorious; indeed, empowering. There is extraordinary psychological benefit in belonging to a group of women who have positive stories to tell about their birth experiences. This phenomenon is exactly what developed within our village. So many horror stories circulate about birth—especially in the United States—that it can be difficult for women to believe that labor and birth can be a beneficial experience. If you have been pregnant for a while, it's probable that you've already heard some scary birth stories from friends or relatives. This is especially true if you live in the United States, where telling pregnant women gory stories has been a national pastime for at least a century. Now that birth has become a favorite subject of television dramas and situation comedies, this trend has been even more pronounced. No one has explained the situation more succinctly than Stephen King in his novella "The Breathing Method."* Commenting on the fear many women have of birth, his fictional character observes, "Believe me: if you are told that some experience is going to hurt, it will hurt. Most pain is in the mind, and when a woman absorbs the idea that the act of giving birth is excruciatingly painful—when she gets this information from her mother, her sisters, her married friends, and her physician—that woman has been mentally prepared to feel great agony." King, you may not know, is the father of several children born at home. In 2013, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. [3] Bibliography [ edit ] Books [ edit ] All right, those griefs being aired, I actually did like this book, and I'm glad I read it. First of all, the birth experiences at the beginning, while somewhat nauseating, were also very encouraging. They were all so different from the birth stories you normally hear, and it made me happy to know that natural childbirth really can be an extremely positive experience. Giving birth is not something women need to be "saved" from by medical intervention.

Solar power pioneer Huang Ming wins 'alternative Nobel' ". BBC News. 29 September 2011 . Retrieved 19 September 2016. Considered a seminal work, it presented pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding from a fresh, natural and spiritual perspective, rather than the standard clinical viewpoint. In homebirth and midwifery circles, it made her a household name, and a widely respected teacher and writer." [9] The Gaskin Maneuver, also called all fours, is a technique to reduce shoulder dystocia, a specific type of obstructed labour which may lead to fetal death. Gaskin introduced it in the U.S. in 1976 after learning it from a Belizean woman who had, in turn, learned the maneuver in Guatemala, where it originated. In this maneuver, the mother supports herself on her hands and knees to resolve shoulder dystocia. [14] Switching to a hands and knees position causes the shape of the pelvis to change, thereby allowing the trapped shoulder to free itself and the baby to be born. Since this maneuver requires a significant movement from the standard lithotomy position, it can be substantially more difficult to perform while under epidural anesthesia, but still possible, [15] and can be performed by an experienced delivery room team. [16] Recognition [ edit ]

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Motherhood is Not a Competition: Why Pressure Moms to Strive for the "Perfect" Natural Childbirth (and make them feel guilty if that isn't in the cards)? Now that my youngest (and probably last, alas) son is a year old, I feel like I have enough distance to be able to write this review. My wife and I have two boys: she carried and birthed the oldest; I carried and birthed the youngest. My wife went first for several reasons, not least of which was that I had have a real and irrational fear of childbirth. The hope was that Pelly's birth experience would be smooth, and having observed it, I'd feel better when my turn came around. Knowledge is power, right? Everything you need to know to have the best birth experience for you, from the world's leading midwife I had a beautiful baby boy, born around 11:50 p.m. with hardly any head molding. He wanted to relax before nursing. We looked him over, then gave him to Joanne to weigh and dress while Deborah and Pamela gave me two stitches for a small tear.