Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

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I read with particular interest her method for dealing with breech babies, which up until recently I had thought were something that required definite medical intervention. The Hebrew word for “pain” in these verses translates closely to “work” and I think that these are two things that are easily confused in our minds since we, for the most part, do not live in a society filled with hardship. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. I do definitely recommend this one, but I also recommend reading other books to fill out a more balanced view, unless you are definitely giving birth under the stars on a hippie commune and your chances of winding up in a hospital are extremely low. My body is capable of giving birth unmedicated without interventions because that's the way it was created.

She shuns prudishness in our culture, and encourages women to make birth (or, rather, allow birth) to be a sexual experience, yet totally respects the fact that most women are too prudish to have a stranger (especially a man) in the birthing room with them, without adverse effects to the progress of labor.

We are under enormous pressure to be the Right kind of parents, get our kids into the Right schools and the Right activities, use the Right methods of feeding, weaning, sleep training, discipline, et cetera. We do everything we can to take pain away through drugs, positive thinking, and through the newest craze of self-care: eliminating everything from our lives that cause us discomfort.

In the case of Ina May, I'm a little embarrassed that the whole thing kind of makes my blood run cold. While she does in many places provide good information, do not be fooled into thinking she is at all, in any way an objective or unbiased resource! The days and weeks following my son's birth should have been the happiest of my life (well, barring the hormones rocking my boat, of course), but instead I had to spend the first year of my baby's life wrestling with guilt and shame and a sense of inadequacy, and that's just stupid.I think this book is well worth reading whether or not you plan to have children and whether you plan to have a hospital birth or a home birth. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. We need to change the view that childbirth is something dangerous and unnatural, and that the only way for women to survive it is to be heavily medicated and close to an emergency room.