Giving Birth With Confidence

On Sunday I was interviewed on television in Baltimore, Md. A three minute gig. And the first question was “Where has Lamaze been? We haven’t heard anything about Lamaze for a long time”. Is this what happens when an idea becomes institutionalized? When everyone thinks they know what it is…breathing and going to classes?
Where has [...]

I received a note this week from my neice Jennifer…she shared her pregnancy and birth stories in the book. She recalled my “giving her just what she needed” when her doctor was pushing her to be induced. I sent her to the “evidence” — web sites and literature that gave her the information she needed [...]

Britney Spears’ choice to have a cesarean birth this fall was sad but no surprise. How many pregnant women today get to hear stories of simple, natural births from confident, informed birthers? It’s unheard of. We live in a world where new mothers speak of their epidurals as though they’re talking about a trusted friend who stood between them and unspeakable pain.

The idea for this book rose out of the ashes of “borderline burn out”. My life as a maternal/child nurse, a childbirth educator, a nursing professor, a birth advocate, and a mother had been dedicated to telling a story quite different from the typical view of birth — the simple story of birth, the real story, not the story of birth fraught with the possibility of things going terribly wrong. As birth became increasingly “intervention intensive” I became increasingly frustrated.