Customer Reviews

The Birth Partner - Revised 3rd Edition: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions (Birth Partner: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas, &)

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For first-time parents, giving birth to your little bundle of joy can be nerve-wracking. There is so much you don't know! And not-knowing can be a nasty breeding ground for fear. My wife and I are first-time parents, and while we weren't scared to death, we certainly wanted to know what we were headed towards. Knowing is half the battle, right? Because of how much there is to know, we even thought about hiring a doula (birth coach). Luckily, we found this book...373 pages of confidence-building.

THE BIRTH PARTNER is broken into 4 parts:

1) Before the Birth

This section is largely just introduction to the concept of pregnancy. It contains some good lists to remind you what to prepare to take to the hospital. Probably the most important stuff was on Kegel exercises and the Perineal massage. Oh yeah, and make sure to compile a list of friends and family to call or have someone call.

2) Labor and Birth

This section has crucial information about the pre-labor process, the signs of labor, the "bag of waters" breaking, false vs. true labor, timing contractions (there's a great chart to make copies of), and breeched babies. Her breakdown of the 3 stages of labor is especially helpful.

For those parents attempting a natural birth, she details the 5-1-1 rule for contractions, so you know when to head to the hospital. She walks you through a ton of strategic labor positions to use to relieve pain and allow gravity to do its work toward birthing the baby (these assume you haven't had an epidural...there's a whole section on epidurals and anesthesia).

She gives advice for the birth partner's role -- from leading her through breathing routines and rituals to knowing how to work with and sometimes against the doctors, depending on what they're saying. Fast labors, slow labors, irregular labors...they're all in here.

3) The Medical Side of Childbirth

Medicine, drugs, shots, tests, interventions and all that good stuff. To epidural or not to epidural? And what about Cesarean sections? It's all in here. Helpful information to keep you sane and in the loop. It's amazing what the doctors won't tell you unless you ask. Remember, it's a business.

4) After the Birth

Cleaning the baby, shots, warming, breastfeeding, postpartum depression and how to deal with it...what happens after the birth is almost nearly as important as the before and the during.

THE FINAL TAKE

This book is a mental lifesaver. Whether you're heading into the birth with complete trust of the doctors and the medical system or with a healthy (or unhealthy) bit of logical skepticism, there is a wealth of essential knowledge in here about what to look for, what to know, and what to ask about. You won't regret reading this book. It's concise and detailed in the all the right places and is clear enough that you know exactly what she's talking about. I'm a first-time, thinking-man's father-to-be, and I sure feel more prepared after reading it. After all, it's just my baby we're talking about here.

--- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

Penny Simkin's first edition of this book was really helpful to me in my last pregnancy, and this edition is even better. Updated with modern information, my husband is finding it a great tool as I prepare for my third birth and he gets ready for his first homebirth... his daughter was born in a horrible hospital birth so he's really having to adjust his thinking.

He was worried that this book was going to be dry and boring but he hasn't put it down yet. :-) It has enough technical information to keep his "science mind" occupied, and the writing tone is friendly and accessible. He is realizing with the help of this book that he can be an active participant in this birth and that he can really help me by protecting me and making conditions ideal for me to do the work of birthing... this is in stark contrast to the very passive role that he was encouraged to take last time, and how helpless he felt in terms of being able to help his ex-wife as she struggled to birth despite lots of hospital-staff-ordered interventions.

We are also using the book together to identify the things I'd like to have for our birth in terms of people who are there, the atmosphere of the room, and procedures we want/don't want our midwife to do.

We're going through the interventions chapter together and identifying the things that would be 100% fine with us if the midwife thought them necessary, the things we'd tolerate after a risk/benefit discussion, and the things I'd never consent to unless my midwife (who I do trust with my life, and who attended my last birth too) says I'll die or the baby will die without.

We'll certainly have this book around with some tape flags in it during our birth.

If you or someone you know is planning to have a baby, and you plan to be there, read this book. It will help you have a birth that is less painful, stressful, and physician-directed than you will have if you do not read it. It covers the normal course of labor and birth, complications in labor, comfort measures for the woman and the role of the birth partner and/or doula, explanations of the many possible interventions and drugs available during labor/birth/postpartum, breastfeeding basics, and care of the mother when she returns home. If you are the partner, this will help you feel that you know what's going on during birth, especially if complications arise, and it will give you lots of ideas for how to help your partner during labor and afterwards.

This book is pretty objective and not biased far towards the "no intervention for any reason/trust birth" camp, nor towards the "birth is a emergency, and babies can DIE!!!!" camp. It will help you clarify YOUR personal preferences and needs for your birth by providing you with knowledge needed to make informed choices based on your medical particulars, pain tolerance, philosophy about childbirth, attitude towards medications and interventions, and your birth setting.

There is a great questionnaire in the book about pain and medication preferences that will really help you decide what medications you might or might not want and at what point in labor you will want them, and a comprehensive list of all the medications, their effects and side-effects on mother and baby, when in the course of labor it is appropriate to receive them, and how they might interact with other drugs offered during labor.

The paper version of the book is incredible. This REALLY is a great resource. But boy does the Kindle version suck. Thank goodness for Amazon customer service I am getting a refund (and lose the kindle book, of course). As the other reviewer say, the book is meant to be a reference, so there are a lot of formatting quirks (including tables and graphics) that got all messed up in the Kindle version. I know that the publishers (instead of Amazon) handle the ebook formatting (in fact, most authors don't proof read the ebook), but Amazon should've done a better job catching these obvious errors. The tables and figures are so low res, to the point where they are unreadable. The book so misses many links that ought to be in the book. I caught at least 8 places in the book where a link is missing, and a sentence will end with "as described on."

Get the physical book.

I bought this book thinking my husband would read, but I ended up doing the reading. This book is incredibly thorough and covered everything I felt I needed to know about the birthing process, labor, possible complications, the choice to involve drugs, the types of tests performed on the baby, and so much more. It supports natural birth, but not overly so and gives you good information from which to make informed decisions. Despite my intentions to have a natural birth, it just didn't work out. But I felt I had the information I needed when things didn't go as planned and I had to change course. I wasn't too into the parts that were addressed specifically to the partner, and what the partner could do, so I just skipped over those. But if you actually were the partner reading the book, I can see how they might be helpful.

My wife just had our first baby boy and I read this book prior to her labor. I didn't remember everything in the book at the time, but I had it close and knew exactly where to find the information I needed. I was able to successfully identify when to call the hospital, identify exactly what to communicate to them and comfort my wife.

It is understated how much your wife/partner will appreciate you reading this book. She wants to know that you "know" what to do because even if she does, her mind is not in a normal spot when going in to labor. She needs someone calm, cool and collected that understands how to help her, comfort her and support her. This book is by far the best of the books I read and we took it to the hospital with us to help.

If there are decisions to be made during the labor, you can refer back to this book for your own interpretation of what your OB is discussing with you.

The book lays out the labor and birth process from beginning to end for the partner and things they need to help mommy through the birth. We will save and re-read for the next one! Highly recommended for anyone having a first time baby-even the mom.

Wonderfully informative. Well arranged. I bought it when it became apparent my son-in-law might not be present for the birth of his first child. Giving birth has really changed since I last gave birth 27 years ago. I assumed the natural child birth movement that began around the time my children were born had continued. I had no idea that it had turned around. My daughter gave birth without any medical interventions and I don't believe she would have been able to do so if I hadn't first read this book. I knew what to expect and ways to respond. I must admit I forgot a great deal of what I read, but remembered enough to help me to help my daughter and son-in-law bring their beautiful daughter into the world. I highly recomend THE BIRTH PARTNER to anyone planning to be present at a birth.

I bought this book for my husband and ended up reading it myself. It was my favorite pregnancy/birth book! It has a *slight* lean towards natural childbirth (it is NOT preachy at all) but fairly covers drugs in depth and even includes a chart with the drug name and it's side effects. It's the only book I have found that does that. It also shows techniques for coping with pain and relaxation techniques...which is what I was looking for my husband and I to both learn. I think this book really prepares you what to expect on the big day. I will recommend this book to all my pregnant friends from now on. If you are a logical, practical person who is looking for tangible techniques and information then this book is for you.

After getting bogged down in several reference-style books about birth, this was exactly what I needed. The book takes you step by step through the birthing process in an accessible and encouraging way, telling specifically you how to help the mother. The fact that the authors base their recommendations not only on physical, but also on emotional needs the partner and the mother is very helpful.

This book is far from complete, so a separate pregnancy reference will probably be useful. Also, as reasonable and reassuring as the advice sounds, I have not yet tested it in practice.

This review is for the Kindle or digital version of the book. I got this for my Kindle 3 (the latest one as of this review) and there's many things that are wrong with it.

First of all, this is meant to be a reference book and it even mentions that certain sections are colored gray on the outer pages for easy later reference while you are at the hospital. Obviously, this is missing in the Kindle version. Second, there are many (what I assume)side-boxes or whatever you would call them that are supposed to be in the middle of the chapters, but in the Kindle version they are at the end. You can click to go to these sideboxes, but getting back to where you left off is a pain if you use the page turning buttons rather than remembering to use the "back" button. Also, there are many sentences in the first few chapters alone that are cut off or make no sense.

I am currently contacting Amazon customer service to see if I can exchange the book for the paperback version and pay the difference. It still seems to be a very good book and I would like to have it as a reference for myself and my husband. The only issue I've had with the content itself is that it REALLY seems to push you towards using a doula. While I understand how a doula can be invaluable, in my relationship with a husband who is extremely intelligent, loving, and involved, I don't think a doula is necessary and the book just really pushes it in my opinion.