Gentle Birth Choices: Book Review

I’m kicking off a week of book reviews in honor of March being National Reading Month! The first book I’m going to review for the week is Gentle Birth Choices by Barbara Harper.

via sunrisewellness.org

This is not the first, but one of the first books I read on birthing naturally. (The first was The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth.) It is a great book to introduce the concepts of gentle, natural birthing and I highly recommend it for anyone on the fence. It also includes a DVD which is great, too.

If I hadn’t already been convinced that I wanted a water birth, this book definitely would have done the job! There is a whole chapter dedicated to water birth detailing the reasons for choosing one and the history behind water birthing. It was fantastic and probably my favorite part of the book.

There is an important chapter dedicated to discussing the medicalization of childbirth. It was eye-opening for me even though I’d already done some research and reading about this topic. The section on “Twilight Sleep” almost brought me to tears.

The chapter on Dispelling the Medical Myths is fantastic and reminds me of  The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth. This section alone is worth reading the book in my opinion. It is followed up by a lovely chapter on a different way to birth, A Gentle Revolution and then a chapter on Midwifery.

The appendices are full of helpful information including questions to ask a doctor or midwife and a sample birth plan.

I’ll leave you with this quote from the book:

“A gentle birth relies on the understanding that labor is part of a mysterious continuum of physiological events, beginning with conception and continuing well into the first year of life. Mother and baby, inseparable and interdependent, work together as a unit from the fertilization of the egg until weaning from breastfeeding takes place. Mothers the world over know that the physical and psychological connections that bind our children to us last a lifetime.”

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