By the time I was done, I no longer saw childbirth as a terrifying and improbable medical event akin to removing a highly delicate ship from a design-flawed bottle; instead, I was convinced that childbirth is an awesome natural process, something I was built to do and totally capable of accomplishing. I appreciated the positive attitude toward the body and the amazing things it can do if you just let it. It helped me tap into the ancient intuitive practises that women have been using for centuries to birth their babies. A little like "I have found truth and if this doesn't work for you, it's probably because you're repressed and have been brainwashed by patriarchy and big pharma. 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.

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. I didn't like him because my legs weren't shaved and I was cold and because he had two, pretty, tiny nurses (whose legs probably were shaved) stare at me the whole time (I'm sure for our mutual protection, but still), and because he said "now try to relax" which has to be the most useless, most insensitive thing to say, ever (implication: there's something wrong with you if under these oh-so-pleasant circumstances you can't relax), and I wanted to give him a hard kick, pull down my skirt, and go home. For this reason, Part I of this book is largely devoted to stories told by women who planned to have home or birth-center births with me and my midwife partners.The power of the all-female birthing chamber is not an adequate compensation for the mortality rates which were beyond dismal. No one has explained the situation more succinctly than Stephen King in his novella "The Breathing Method.

She has lectured all over the world at midwifery conferences and at medical schools, both to students and to faculty. Donna asked if I wanted to go see a midwife, but I decided to hold off until I was sure I wasn't getting excited over nothing.Specially if you have grown up believing that birth is gonna be painful and awful no matter what you do. Then I took another star away for the lack of positive information about hospital birth and lack of other statistics, by state, stating what the cesarean rate was vs natural birth, as well as drug use during labor.

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.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. Plus, she used the terms "Much more likely" or "much less likely" a lot, instead of giving the actual statistics as Goer's book did. s are not critical thinkers (or at least haven't been taught this vital skill in medical school) and that they don't have time to read recent studies. I believe that holistic health and modern medicine can complement each other and that both have their faults.