Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

I love this book and have recommended it to every pregnant woman I know.  My husband also read most of it while I was pregnant.  And we did end up with a smooth natural birth.  

I found two things particularly helpful.  

1.  All of the birth stories in the front of the book are great for getting you into a positive state of mind about birth.  They're not all perfect, blissed out births (though maybe most are), but you will walk away from reading them feeling like you CAN do this.  Ask a random woman on the street about her birth experience and, unfortunately, you're probably going to hear some kind of rough story.  C-section rates are wildly high in most hospitals, births are treated like medical problems, blah blah blah...so OF COURSE most stories you hear are negative.  It is so important to read and hear positive stories and this book can provide them.

2.  The chapter on sphincter law is something every pregnant woman should read.  Ina May has put together some info there that is fascinating and makes sense on an intuitive level even before you give birth and put it into action. 

I was so thrilled to read this book. While I wanted a home birth, I was so afraid that every book I would encounter on the subject would be too hippy-dippy for me... especially one that was written when it was by Ina May (from her hippy-dippy commune started in the seventies - LOL). The whole "don't judge a book by its cover" thing really applied here for me. The whole first half of the book is full of home birth stories and it really managed to shift my mindset away from the fear that had been driven into me since childhood that childbirth is painful and needs to be tended to by a doctor, that women can't do it themselves without help... after reading this I really believed that I could do it, have a home birth... right to my core. Remembering those stories during labor really helped strengthen my resolve and I was able to do it too!!

When I first got this book, I wanted to skip all the birthing stories in the beginning of the book and get to the second half of the book, the "science" of birthing.  But, I forced myself to read all the stories and I am SO SO glad I did!!  It allowed me to have a MOST AMAZING, EMPOWERING birth.  Even my 11 year old daughter wanted to read the book.  We were fighting over the book! It helped her a lot too since she ended up having to assist the birth of her baby brother...  He decided to enter the world in a rush and he beat the mid-wife and my husband so she was the main one who attended me and she did an AWESOME job!

This was the best book I read during pregnancy!  I am a first-time mom, and as I was preparing for my homebirth, it was really important to me to read positive birth stories.  My midwife has several copies of this book, so I decided to borrow one.  I couldn't put it down!  The birth stories are truly inspiring, and reinforced in my mind and heart that a natural birth would be possible for my baby and me.  I am so glad that I was blessed to see just how safe homebirth can be and just how dangerous hospital birth can be and why.  This book showed me that, and I am really grateful for it!