Home Birth is essential reading for all couples considering having their baby at home. Striking a perfect balance of practical information, compelling personal stories and research evidence, leading childbirth educator Nicky Wesson shows how giving birth to your baby in your own home can be the most exciting and fulfilling thing you ever do. 4th completely revised and updated edition.'This guide claims to be "the only book you'll need for planning a birth at home". If anything, this is ...

Women are over four times more likely to have a caesarean birth now than they were thirty years ago and eight times more likely than they were fifty years ago. One of the main reasons that the rate is so high is that women are not encouraged to give birth vaginally once they have had a caesarean despite there being no evidence of the benefit of repeat caesareans for mother or child.Aimed at women who have had a caesarean or repeat caesareans, Vaginal Birth After Caesarean (VBAC) provides s...

In an age where birth has often been overtaken by obstetrics, Dr Dick-Read's philosophy is still as fresh and relevant as it was when he originally wrote this book. He unpicks every possible root cause of western woman's fear and anxiety in pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding and does so with overwhelming heart and empathy. Essential reading for all parents-to-be, childbirth educators, midwives and obstetricians!With a foreword by Michel Odent."A brilliant, courage...

A gripping first-hand account of midwife Penny Armstrongs journey from student midwife in Glasgow to running her own practice among the Amish in rural Pennsylvania, A Midwifes Story never fails to enlighten, inform and surprise.Going far beyond mere biography, Armstrongs journey of self-discovery is ultimately very moving, and it is the honesty with which she describes the world she discovers which makes this book a classic, and essential reading not just for aspiring midwives but to anyon...

For thousands of years women have given birth among people they know in a place they know well. Knowledge is shared and birth is a social event. In northern industrial societies today, when a women gets pregnant she may be presented with various options. Yet if it is her first baby she has only the vaguest idea of how birth feels and how other women cope. Birth is set apart from the rest of women's lives and accepted as a matter of specialist knowledge. To discuss birth only in terms of ou...

Fetus ejection reflex, milk ejection reflex, sperm ejection reflex, orgasmogenic cocktail . . . These are examples of terms used by Michel Odent in his study of the ecstatic/orgasmic states associated with different episodes of human sexual life. This book about male and female orgasms is an opportunity to convince anyone that humanity is at a turning point.Due to the improved technique of medically assisted conceptions and cesareans, the advances in anesthesiology and pharmacology, and th...

What do a Dutch university lecturer, a US Marine, a Scottish artist, and an English engineer have in common? They have all experienced the transformative power of home birth, and their stories - and many others - are told in this groundbreaking book. As hospital-based maternity services become increasingly medicalised, more and more parents are deciding that birth belongs in the home. For many women, this choice may be an easy one, but for their partners, home birth raises some serious questi...

In recent years there have been exciting scientific discoveries about a hormone whose amazing role in the human body has long been neglected. Oxytocin is the powerful hormone involved in bonding, sex, and childbirth, as well as in relaxation and feelings of calm. It is the mirror image of the stress hormone adrenaline, which triggers the 'fight or flight' systems in the body. Much has been written about the latter, but the many-sided importance of oxytocin is at this point only known to th...

What is the ideal way to give birth to your baby? Is it a high-tech delivery, with drugs, and monitors, and surgery? Or is it more naturally, with a midwife and/or birth center? Is it possible today to combine the best of twentieth-century medicine with the human advantages of a natural childbirth? Penny Armstrong and Sheryl Feldman, authors of the acclaimed A Midwife's Story, explore the issues that influence the way women give birth: technology, psychology, culture, medications, history,...

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the development of plastics has been one of the main factors influencing the history of medicine. For example, an anaesthesiologist was formerly an expert in delivering drugs by inhalation. Today, this expert delivers drugs through plastic catheters, in particular via intravenous and epidural routes. Where obstetrics is concerned, a typical modern woman in labour is visualised as having one of her arms connected to a plastic bag through a plastic tub...