She emphasized a few things that focused on self-pleasure; during a time when a woman is delivering a baby into the world, I believe that herself should not be the primary thing on her mind. She has lectured all over the world at midwifery conferences and at medical schools, both to students and to faculty. s. I also would have been interested to learn what percentage of high-risk pregnancies the hospitals have/had and if these were included in the statistics she used to compare to "The Farm". It took me a long time to come around to my wife's way of thinking, and to be honest, I have moments when I'm not totally there yet. It may not be for the squeamish, but if you're going to be popping a baby out of your body one day, it may help to not be too squeamish about these things.

Her new book, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth was released 4 March 2003 by Bantam/Dell, a division of Random House. Another downside of this book was that it was a little too "Rah, rah, rah, women's bodies can do anything! My challenging but beautiful birth experience has apparently become an exception in this country-- but it doesn't have to be. These verses do not say that pain during childbirth begins at the Curse, but only that it is multiplied. There are specific examples given of when, and the author's insights as to why, certain natural methods achieve success in labor.Books by doctors that warn midwives are ill qualified and you will die at home or by using any alternative methods of coping with this life experience. this is a really good book that a patient recommended to me when I told her I was REALLY WORRIED about actually giving 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. After having an antibody scare myself and following women who deal with anti-D antibodies during pregnancy, the few sentences she had on sensitization were not enough to fully understand the risky (and potentially heartbreaking) future pregnancies of those who are sensitized. 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.

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. 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. 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. Founded in 1971, by 1996, the Farm Midwifery Center had handled more than 2200 births, with remarkably good outcomes. So much of what I read just made me more scared (even though I tried to avoid the triggering stuff, the loss stories, the bad outcomes).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)? The second half of the book comprises Gaskin's own views of childbirth, largely based on the argument that there is too much medical intervention for mothers, and not enough control given to the mother during labour. I did not find this book nearly as helpful as I thought I would, but it did help me in developing my own ideas about births. Hate the sin, not the sinner" sort of thinly-veiled shaming that I don't care for from any ideology.

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. 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. Unfortunately, with most natural birth books, there was a lot of new age and evolutionary content in the book.While a lot of her outrage seemed justified to me, it wasn't very helpful in a book that was supposed to be a "guide" to childbirth.

The birth stories in this book, and Gaskin's explanations of the process, gave me a total confidence in my ability to do this crazy-sounding thing. Her promotion of a low-intervention but extremely effective method for dealing with one of the most-feared birth complications, shoulder dystocia, has resulted in that method being adopted by a growing number of practitioners. As a reproductive scientist as well as a medical practitioner, I can assure readers that everything Ina May presents in this book is based on the best scientific evidence.Ina May Gaskin, MA, CPM, is founder and director of the Farm Midwifery Center, located near Summertown, Tennessee. Many women feel so ashamed about things like miscarriages, epidurals, c-sections, breastfeeding difficulties, formula feeding, etc. So instead of promoting dangerous ideas that science shouldn't be used or trusted, let's get science and midwifery to complement each other. Although Ina May may seem hippie dippie to some (she does include some out there ideas), her relationship to OBs in Tennessee, her birth stats from the thousands of births she’s attended, and her balance between respecting ancient wisdom/intuitive, physiologic birthing and scientific data all make her a wonderful person to learn about the beautiful process of birth from. The whole intense experience was deeply invigorating and actually GAVE me the energy I needed to cope with the first couple of difficult weeks with a new baby.