Customer Reviews

Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born

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Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born, is a comprehensive tour through the (yes, appropriately titled, sometimes surprising!) history of how we are born. The impetus for the book was the author's mother and grandmother's birth stories, combined with Cassidy's own personal experience of a high-tech, modern-day birth that included all the bells and whistles typical of a modern visit from the stork. After her pitocin-augmented, epiduralized, cesarean birth, Tina Cassidy began asking herself, and others, if what she had just undergone was, really, the best for her and her baby.

It soon became clear to the author that apparently straight-forward questions revealed unforeseen levels of complexity. Using the investigative curiosity of a seasoned newspaper reporter and editor, Cassidy soon found out that childbirth today, and childbirth throughout history, are complex matters involving religious overtones, societal mores, historical reflections, passionate beliefs, economic incentives, medical advances, political agendas, and polarized opinions on all sides. Some of the questions addressed in this book include - Is childbirth really better today than it was a decade, or a century, or a millennia, ago? Are you better off giving birth at home or in a hospital? Are you better off with an obstetrician or a midwife? Is cesarean section really just another "lifestyle choice" or should it be reserved for truly life-threatening circumstances? Should everyone (or anyone) get an epidural? What - really - is the function of pain in labor? Should everyone (or anyone) be induced? And did you know that raw placenta makes a mighty fine cocktail ingredient? (P. 219 has the full recipe. Cheers.)

The answers reflect the remarkably complex nature of maternity, now and historically. However, Birth does not give the answers to these questions - because these are questions for which there is not one correct answer for all women. But Birth does frame the issues so the reader can understand why an essential act that is required for the propagation of our species has become mired in controversy at virtually every turn. Extensively referenced, historically accurate, full of fascinating gems, and drawing on the wisdom and insight of a wide assortment of authoritative figures in today's childbirth arena, Birth is a must-read for those interested in, as the title says - the surprising history of how we are born.

I really enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down. My original intent was to save it for a plane ride, but I finished it before we left for the airport. It is a history of birth in America (primarily, though it does touch on different cultures and parts of the world). I should forewarn though that I am a pregnant woman who works in obstetrics, so I had a pretty strong pre-existing interest in this area. While it is clear that the author has a bias toward the "natural" birth, it was still primarily fact-based, and I found it to be quite interesting. I have recommended it to many of my friends and colleagues.

I think one of the reviewers of this book is confused about this book and the difference between the midwifery model of care for a normal, low risk birth and the medical model of care. The author is not idealizing midwives she is simply biased towards the midwifery model of care because of her experience with the medical model. I know of many women who have had similar experiences with the medical model. There simply isn't enough personal attention and support, especially for a first time mom giving birth with this model of care. From my own experience, (with a midwife and a doula as well as my wonderful partner) my first birth was very similar to many of the stories I hear, except I had the support of a patient midwife and doula who were willing to sit back and wait. After pushing for a few hours my midwife suggested a different position to try and with the help of my partner, doula and midwife I pushed out my 9-pound baby boy without a tear. We discovered that his head was molding off to one side or asynclitic, he was essentially "stuck". I very much believe that if I had been under the medical model of care with a nurse coming in offering an epidural every half an hour my son would have been born by cesarean. Instead I had one of the most empowering experiences of my life. One of the first things I said to my husband was that pushing was so difficult and that I really had to focus my energy on one specific area, which my midwife was kind enough to point out to me. I would not have been able to push him out if I wasn't able to feel that area! So there you go. Yes, perhaps some of us are biased towards the midwifery model of care but for good reason! I'd also just like to say that there's a pretty big difference between a healthy American woman getting regular prenatal care and a woman in the third world. I don't know of any one who doesn't appreciate that hospitals and surgeons are available to us, we just want to use them when they are actually needed!
Any way just read the book for yourself and come to your own conclusions!

After hearing the birth stories of her mother and grandmother and after her own emergency C-section, Tina Cassidy starts contemplating the history of childbearing methods, starting with why it's so much harder for us to bear children than for a rhesus monkey (biped and big brain). She then examines midwives, where we give birth, doctors, pain relief, C-sections, forceps and other tools, and the role of the father.

Some of this book is truely squirm-inducing. She describes the horrific ways women have been forced to give birth-whether that's quietly and all alone in a barn or being strapped to a table and given drugs to lead to amnesia. She details the evolution of C-section techniques. Perhaps most disurbingly, she describes each of the ways a stillborn (or a baby though to be stillborn or stuck in the birth canal) have been removed in hopes of saving the mother's life. However, the only section I had to just skip a page on was her description of how placentas have been served. Because she is a journalist, Cassidy does tend to harp on the sensational, the big stories, and the odd cases.

This is an entertaining read, but it should not be used as an authoritiative source on the history of childbirth-this is intended to be entertaining, not source material. She plays fast an loose with statistics to serve her needs-for instance, to prove her point about maternal death rates, she examines the records kept by a doctor in a town a couple hundred years ago and compares it to well-kept, maticulously documented government reports for entire countries. She also seems to equate the phrase "research shows" or "research suggests" with "the research I did on Lexus (or JSTOR or whatever) shows that someone wrote a newspaper about this-I have no idea what RESEARCHERS have found about this." The most infuriating case of this is her twice mentioned connection between Pitocin and autism. My son's birth was induced by Pitocin and he does have autism, so I was quickly drawn to this and immediatly checked her source to see how strong a correlation there was. Her source was a newspaper report. This is all the reporter says about it: "Over the years, a host of other environmental factors have also been nominated as culprits, including a variety of infections, like German measles in pregnant mothers; the sedative drug thalidomide; the drug Pitocin, used to induce labor; synthetic compounds like plastics and PCB's; and food additives." That's it. Nothing from the CDC, no reports cited, nothing. I bring up these two examples not to discourage people from reading this book; it's an interesting read. But don't believe everything you read in here. If something sounds too incredible to be true, it might be. Check it out for yourself. (But then, that's always good advice.)

I have read some of the reviews for this book and I also have read the book itself. As a childbirth professional, I would like to point out that the research itself if you read it and study it, almost always points in the direction of natural birth unless it is a high risk pregnancy. It is hard not to seem biased when the research points in one direction. I for one found this book interesting and I am happy that there is a mainstream book out like this for the public to read. Readers should take a look at the research that Tracy used to see for themselves.

While I understand why people may not like the "natural birth" slant which makes the book not entirely objective, I think the book is timely. We live in an era where everything is over-medicated....from birth to "restless" legs, to feeling blue. Since meds are pushed on us from all directions and the cesearean rates are what they are, Cassidy couldn't have picked a better time to write this book. No one is saying that medicine is evil or that docs are pointless, but OB's do come across most of the time as over-zealous, over-cautious SURGEONS and not doctors who are supposed to assist women with a very natural thing like birth. Of course being in a hospital during a dangerous birth or difficult pregnancy is very important but birth has become something that is almost always treated as an illness or an inconvenience. Excuse me, but if you are too busy (as a doc or a woman) to fit a birth into your over-busy schedule then maybe you should not be a mom or an OB. Docs are over-worked and over-cautious with the tons of women they are forced to see (thank you insurance companies and a broken health care system), and women just hand themselves over as if they play no role in the whole process. If you need that birth to take place on a certain day with your perfectly arranged cesearean (for no good medical reason) maybe you should re-think motherhood.

Point is that women need real choices and honestly OB's are not that objective either. So before you go attacking midwives and natural birth, look at the docs as well and their lack of objectivity and interest in medicating you (regardless of condition). We live in a world of fear and are constantly bombarded with what can make us feel better with just a quick shot or swallow of a pill (thanks to the wealthy drug companies)so having someone write about a more natural approach (again to something NATURAL like birth) is refreshing. All this book shows is that women are misled about birth and its dangers (most of the time) and that the health care system is broken. Give women real choices, objective on all sides and then maybe we won't need to criticize so much. Medicine and its advancements are good no doubt, but at this point in time much of medicine has gone out of control and people are too stressed to figure out that maybe it is not their bodies that fail them but their society and life. I am no hippie but I think everyone would benefit from going a little more "naturale", birth wise or anything else. I have had quite a few run-ins with docs and their "we can medicate everything" not working so I understand the frustration with Western medicine. For all the hype that modern medicine gets (and little criticism), I thank Ms. Cassidy for writing about the other side of the coin.

This is kind of an unusual book for me to review, seeing as how I am not a mother and have no intention of ever becoming one. However, as I have continued to watch so many of my friends experience the "miracle of birth," curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to read up on the subject.

"Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born" is an incredibly detailed and interesting account of childbirth through the ages. This book covers absolutely everything, from hospitals vs. home deliveries, doctors vs. midwives, various methods of pain relief, the popularity of the cesarean section, and the role of the father during the labor and delivery process.

For obvious reasons, I think that women who are mothers will get much more out of this book than I did. I thought the book was very thorough, but certain aspects of it really grossed me out. However, "Birth" is also incredibly informative, and I learned a lot of interesting tidbits that I never knew before, such as the fact that human babies are the most underdeveloped of all newborn mammals, opium used to be a common treatment for pain relief during labor, and some people consider expelled placenta to be a culinary delicacy. Yikes!

Overall, this is an excellent book. I think that author Tina Cassidy is pretty biased about certain things, such as her view on the role of midwives and the dangers of women who think they are "too posh to push." Also, the book should probably come with some sort of disclaimer for pregnant women, because I think expectant mothers who read this may get very freaked out by some of the horror stories included here (and understandably so). Still, there's a lot of good information in "Birth," even though a lot of the things I learned were pretty disgusting. (I'm sure that mothers will be able to handle this stuff much better than I can!)

This history of childbirth is both a literary and a medical history achievement and belongs in any library strong in either medicine or feminist perspectives. It begins with the author's own family members' birthing experiences and moves to a history of childbirth from ancient ancestors to modern times, providing a concurrent review of changing methods, cultural influences, and childbirth experiences. An outstanding survey, this moves beyond the usual medical focus into the lives and experiences of women giving birth - many a public library will find it a popular acquisition.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Like another reviewer, I became fascinated by birth and birth practices long before I ever had children of my own. I read this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR and it lived up to all my expectations in terms of the depth and detail of the information.

Several reviewers have commented on Tina Cassidy's biases. Just because she tells the reader she was a journalist, doesn't entitle us to an unbiased read. Every piece of non-fiction I've ever read, including supposedly unbiased textbooks and news media, absolutely contains bias. Some biases are just more well disguised than others. On a profoundly emotional topic like birth, it would be strange if the book didn't reflect at least some of the author's biases. I didn't agree with everything she wrote but I still found it to be a very worthwhile read and would recommend it to others. And, sometimes the truth isn't pretty and can't be gussied up. The medical establishment HAS done a lot to interfere with the normal process of birth, sometimes for the good but just as often with horrific results.

I especially enjoyed the photographs and illustrations she included as well as the historical details about birth practices.

Great read, for anyone and everyone who is interested in the history of birth.