BIRTHING YOUR BABY: the second stage of labour by Nadine Pilley Edwards
BIRTHING YOUR BABY: the second stage of labour by NADINE EDWARDS
Nadine Edwards’ latest book, published December 2019 is Birthing your baby: the second stage of labour.
Meeting her baby for the very first time, is usually one of the most powerful and magical experiences of a woman’s life. If surrounded by love, privacy and calmness, her body takes over and instinctively knows how to birth her baby, even if she hasn’t had a baby before. While obstetric expertise and technology are invaluable for the mothers and babies who need them, too often, routine practices and interventions can make it more difficult for women to birth their babies straight forwardly using their own strengths and instincts. This book describes physiological birthing, looks at current beliefs and practices around birthing, examines some of the relevant research and suggests how women can increase the likelihood of giving birth to their babies using their own efforts without unnecessary interventions.
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Birthing your baby: the second stage of labour is available to purchase online both in paperback and eBook format from here: https://amzn.to/2x1X9x7
Dr Sara Wickham:
The journey of birth is one that has been undertaken by women and babies for millennia, and yet in the last couple of hundred years has been monitored, managed and manipulated because of the advent of the obstetric, medical, technocratic approach to birth.
Has that approach been beneficial? It depends on how you look at it.
Some lives have been saved, but others have been damaged, by over-intervention and from an approach that focuses on short-term physical outcomes and fails to look at the emotional and social aspects of birth, or at the wider, longer-term consequences of the interventions and technologies that are now almost routinely applied.
Many of us are looking at and challenging this area, from different angles and in relation to different aspects of the birth journey. Nadine Edwards’ latest offering – which I am delighted to have commented on while she was writing it – is an updated version of ‘Birthing your baby’; her popular book on the journey of birth itself. In it, she has applied her considerable knowledge and analytical skills to look at physiological birth and the different approaches to the birth journey. One of my favourite aspects of ‘Birthing your baby‘ is how Nadine shows that, unfortunately, there are many things that we cannot clearly know or see, because of the high-tech, standardised, hospital-based approach to birth that has taken root in many countries. It is my hope that her work on this will help more people see the importance of questioning what we are currently offering and consider whether a different approach might better serve us.
‘Birthing your baby‘ will be so useful to those who want to understand how routine interference with labour and birth came about and why our modern approach to ‘managing’ this journey isn’t necessarily the best idea for women and their babies. Even better, Nadine breaks down some of the different aspects of this journey, looking at the evidence and laying out the options for those who will need to make decisions about what they might want to put in place for their own birthing journey. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about this area and consider the evidence from a woman-centred perspective.
Review at: ps://www.sarawickham.com/book-and-resource-reviews/birthing-your-baby/
Becky Reed
Nadine has thoroughly updated this excellent book, which could change the way we all look at birthing our babies. Every aspect of this often misunderstood phase of giving birth is explained and discussed, with exhaustive research quoted at every step of the way to support the information.
Since qualifying as a midwife over 30 years ago I have observed thousands of women birthing their babies. Strict timings, unnatural positions, unnecessary interventions, bright lights and noise have all become part of the modern birth scene for too many women. I hope that women and their birth supporters will read this book, which will help them to make the birth choices that are right for them. But I also hope that Birthing your Baby will become required reading for midwives and doctors, helping them to question their routine practices so that more women are able to give birth ‘instinctively and undisturbed’, and take forward a positive memory of bringing their baby into the world.
Review at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birthing-your-baby-second-labour/dp/1916060617