Gaskin, Ina. Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. New York, NY: Random House, 2003. Print.
This book is fascinating to say the least. It’s structured by stories. So, every two or three pages is a new story by a different woman. I think the major question this book tries to answer is “Is birth as bad as people make it seem?” This is answered by having 100 pages of birth stories that are actually quite positive. The insight of the book so far is that birth is miraculous and wonderful and when done in the right setting, can be almost comfortable. I agree completely with this insight and I think that women everywhere should know that just because some women have terrible birth experiences, it doesn’t mean everyone would.
Some interesting aspects of pregnancies and birth that I believe should be publicized are that hospitalized births are not always horrible and home/center births are not always amazing. There’s good and bad in both. However, the way this book is written, is seems to be insinuating that births involving midwives only or revolving around The Farm (a large village in Alabama dedicated to making the birth process comfortable and carefree), are the best way to go and that hospitals are very uncomforting. Another aspect is that when the water breaks, it's really not necessary to panic or go to the hospital, or even call the midwives. In mast of the stories so far, the women said they took long walks after their water broke and even during labor. They say that they were told by the midwives to rest, take a shower or just go to sleep. For example, in a story by Tracey Sobel, she described how her labor took much longer than usual: "All three midwives had the same opinion: 'you might want to go for a walk.'" Apparently in most of these stories, walking helps to enduce labor so pitossin is actually quite unnecessary.
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