Home > Media > Books > Barbara Harper - Gentle Birth Choices: A Comprehensive Book and Video Guide Making Informed Decisions About Birthing Centers, Birth Attendants, Water Birth, Home Birth, Hospital Birth
Barbara Harper - Gentle Birth Choices: A Comprehensive Book and Video Guide Making Informed Decisions About Birthing Centers, Birth Attendants, Water Birth, Home Birth, Hospital Birth
Barefooter's Full Review: Barbara Harper - Gentle Birth Choices: A Comprehen...
One of my often-told childbirth ditties is something that Erma Bombeck wrote about in one of her books. Erma Bombeck related the experience of subjecting herself to numerous vaginal exams during the birth of her baby at a hospital. All day long, it was a revolving door of doctors and nurses coming in to check her “progress” by measuring the output of her cervix. At one point, she heard the door open and wearily whipped aside the sheets and readied herself for yet another vaginal exam. Suddenly, she found herself face to face with the janitor, who had come in to clean up a mess.
This always gets roars of laughter from the moms that I share this with. But the reason I share it with moms is to take them on the journey of exploring choices in childbirth. One book that I highly recommend is Gentle Birth Choices by Barbara Harper.
One of the keynote points in this book is the idea that women can make informed choices about how and where to birth their babies. For the majority of women, the American way of birth is to accept a doctor that is covered under their insurance plan and enter the nearest hospital. Gentle Birth Choices presents childbirth options that many women may not have considered before, such as birth centers, homebirth and water birth.
Barbara Harper begins by describing gentle birth: “A gentle birth begins by focusing on the mother’s experience and by bring together a woman’s emotional dimensions and her physical and spiritual needs. A gentle birth respects the mother’s pivotal role, acknowledging that she knows how to birth her child in her own time and in her own way, trusting her instincts and intuition. “
The ingredients that Barbara Harper lists for a gentle birth come forth as suggestions, not as a set of rules to be followed to achieve a certain outcome. Every woman has her own values and belief system, and these suggestions serve to help women outline ways to identify how she would like to shape her birth experience.
As its title suggests, Gentle Birth Choices provides a vast array of choices that a woman can consider in birthing her baby. Homebirths and birth centers are explored as alternatives to hospitals. The midwifery model of care is highlighted, and includes any caregiver that provides this model of care, not simply those who label themselves as midwives. Thus, this model of care includes physicians that embrace a non-interventionist approach to providing care.
Gentle Birth Choices dispels some common myths in childbirth—that a woman “needs” to have continuous fetal monitoring, that a woman cannot give birth without an episiotomy, that a woman must give birth in the hospital and so on. An extensive chapter on water birth covers common questions that are frequently asked about laboring and birthing in water, such as “How does the baby breathe underwater?” Gentle Birth Choices also includes information on how to encourage your local hospital to become “birth friendly” and includes a sample letter for those who are seeking to add water births at local hospitals.
Gentle Birth Choices will be coming out with a revised edition at the end of this year that will include an updated resource section, including emails and websites for all the organizations; and reprinting the CIMS Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative.
If you don't want to birth with an IV and your legs sticking up in the air and your partner chanting "Push, one, two, three PUUUUSSSHHHH," then grab this book and check out your options for a gentle birth.
In Gentle Birth Choices, Barbara Harper, a mid-wife, nurse, and mother, outlines the elements of gentle birthing and provides a new model of maternity...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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