Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor's Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices [Paperback]

Sarah Buckley (Author), Ina May Gaskin (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: December 2, 2008

An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children.

Sarah Buckley might be called a third-wave natural birth advocate. A doctor and a mother, she approaches the question of how a woman and baby might have the most fulfilling birth experience with respect for the wisdom of both medical science and the human body. Using current medical and epidemiological research plus women's experiences (including her own), she demonstrates that what she calls "undisturbed birth" is almost always healthier and safer than high-technology approaches to birth. Her wise counsel on issues like breastfeeding and sleeping during postpartum helps extend the gentle birth experience into a gentle parenting relationship.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children. * Speaks to a new generation of parents who are concerned about the medicalization of childbirth and want current and science-based info about alternatives.

About the Author

SARAH BUCKLEY, MD, is an internationally known authority on natural birthing and parenting choices. She has published numerous articles in Mothering magazine and Midwifery Today. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.

 THE AUTHOR SCOOP

How long did it take you to write this book?Around ten years since I wrote the first material, and around 9 months to rewrite and put it all together.What was the hardest thing about writing a book?Combining it with looking after 4 children When did you know you were a writer?When I was 10, I told my class teacher I wanted to be an author! Favorite childhood book?I was a precocious reader, I read Jane Eyre at age 10 and loved Wuthering Heights.If you had to boil your book’s message down to one sentence, what would it be? Trust your body, trust your baby, follow your instincts What are you working on now? A commissioned report on the hormonal orchestration of labor If you had a superpower, what would it be? Sorting things out on every level, which includes a special talent for removing embedded hair ties from Barbie hair. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Celestial Arts; 1 edition (December 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587613220
• ISBN-13: 978-1587613227
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah is a family physician (GP), mother of four homeborn children and currently full-time writer on pregnancy, birth and parenting.

Sarah has lectured on these topics since 1995 to parents and professionals in Australia, US, Canada, New Zealand and, in May 2011 in UK, Italy and Switzerland. Her articles have been published internationally, including in Mothering magazine (US), MIDIRS Midwifery Digest (UK), Wellbeing magazine (Australia), Natural Parenting (Aus) Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (US) and The Compleat Mother (Canada).

Sarah is author of the bestselling book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, initially published in Australia in 2005, with a new international edition published by Celestial Arts/Random House in the US in 2009. She has also contributed to numerous books including: Midwifery Best Practice Volumes 4 and 6 (2004, 2009) ; Mothering Your Nursing Toddler (2000): Pregnancy and Childbirth Secrets (2007): The Wild Feminine (2008) and Essential Midwifery Practice: Intrapartum Care (2010).

Sarah's work critiques current practices in pregnancy, birth and parenting from the widest possible perspectives, including scientific, evolutionary, psychological and personal. Her special interests include:
* Safety of ultrasound
* Prenatal testing for Down syndrome
* Ecstatic hormones of labour and birth
* Impact of epidurals, induction and cesarean on mother and baby
* Cord clamping and cord blood banking
* Science of mother-baby attachment
* Benefits of breastfeeding and long-term breastfeeding
* Safety of co-sleeping

Sarah encourages us all to be well informed, to listen to our hearts and instincts, and to take our rightful place as the real experts in our bodies, our babies and our families.

She lives on 2 1/2 acres in the semi-rural outskirts of Brisbane, Australia with her family, 2 dogs and 7 chickens.

You can read more about Sarah, including her books and articles, at her website www,sarahbuckley.com

"Sarah Buckley is precious, because she is bilingual. She can speak the language of a mother who gave birth to her four children at home. She can also speak like a medical doctor. By intermingling the language of the heart and scientific language she is driving the history of childbirth towards a radical and inspiring new direction." --Michel Odent, MD, surgeon, author, and natural birth pioneer

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 139 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Just a Little Too "Out There" for Most Readers January 7, 2009

By Mama Bee

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Let me start out by saying that I really appreciate Sarah Buckley and the work she's done. I have read some of her articles in various places and was SUPER excited to get this book.

Also, I am a proponent of natural birth and mothering. I have given birth at home (on purpose!), am tandem nursing my infant and toddler, practice sleep sharing via Family Bed, etc., so I was definitely coming to this book with an open, even eager, mind.

That being said, by the time I had read through the author's 4 birth stories, the story of her son's placenta and the narrative of her breastfeeding experiences (all of which are included scattered throughout the book, highlighted in gray), I knew this wasn't the book I was hoping for.

While much of the information Sarah shares in this book is well-researched, informative, and enlightening, there is too much sort of mystical, magical, spiritualism present, as well as an advocacy of practices that are so unconventional as to be considered "fringe", for it to be an all-purpose guide to natural birth and mothering.

I think most readers looking for a basic guide to natural childbirth will be turned off by some a the more bizarre, New-Agey stuff in this book, and might therefor conclude that something like natural birth or homebirth is only for a "certain type" of person, one who draws large pastel mandalas in preparation for birth and during pregnancy uses "Brazilian rhythms and hip swirls to spiral [an] ambivalent baby deeper into [one's] pelvis."

While I respect Ms.... Buckley's decisions regarding her own births, I can't help but feel that someone reading about her decision to give birth without outside assistance and to forgo any prenatal medical care, including blood pressure tests, might not feel too confident about the advice given in this book. Maybe I'm just not "there" yet, but I can't quite head into pregnancy and birth "[trusting] my body and my baby to tell me, through feelings, dreams, and impulses, what was needed." (Of course, it helps that both the author and her husband are M.D.'s, which made the footling breech birth of their baby with a non-pulsating cord somewhat less dangerous.)

I appreciated Sarah's description of all the wonderful things her son's placenta did for him while he was in utero. However, keeping the placenta attached to the baby after birth (tucked into a velvet bag and taken out regularly to be dried and salted) until it fell off naturally (so-called "lotus birth") is, well... gross.

All in all, there are some great parts to this book - I especially love the chapter on "Love, Attachment and Your Baby's Brain" and on safe sleep-sharing. And while a certain select population of pregnant women and mothers will find everything in this book to be up their alley, I can't help but think that most will find it too "out there" to be helpful. I certainly can't see myself loaning it out to pregnant friends the way I have with Henci Goer's "The Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth." I would say try that one instead, or even the Sear's "Birth Book." Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Childbirth Book January 24, 2009

By BNA

Format:Paperback

I love this book. It is my favorite childbirth book for many reasons. I love the fact that it is a collection of articles which makes it super easy to read. Dr. Buckley's wisdom is priceless. I am a childbirth educator and doula and I recommend this book to all of my students and clients. In my opinion there is no better childbirth book! She opens you to a new way of thinking. I know I began to question things that are considered standard in maternity care and made different choices than I would have without the knowledge gained through her book. Her insight into the hormones in labor and breastfeeding is profound! I use her book when I teach my classes and draw on it for doula clients as well as my own pregnancies. It goes beyond childbirth into breastfeeding and parenting as well. You learn on many different levels. Thank you Dr. Buckley a hundred times over for finally getting this amazing book published in the USA so more women can benefit from the wisdom it contains!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative, truthful, compassionate October 7, 2009

By Robin Grille, psychologist, author

Format:Paperback

I love Sarah Buckley's book! It accomplishes a rare feat: combining a compassionate voice with the weighty authority that a practising doctor and meticulous researcher can bring to her subject. Sarah's book is a treasure-trove. For anyone who cares about the critical formative period of child development from conception to early childhood, it delves beyond the sentimental to provide a formidable data-base, as practical as it is touching and inspiring.

As a father I found Sarah's book brilliant and a pleasure to read.
As a psychologist in private practice, parent-educator and author, her book has been one of my most valued and oft-quoted resources.

I doubt that anyone who reads Sarah's book could ever again choose a hospital birth with obstetric intervention (unless there are clear medical complications). Reading left me feeling angry that the many psychological and medical risks presented by today's obstetric excesses have been so heavily downplayed by the industry. Why weren't we told? On the other hand, Sarah has presented clear neurological and endocrinological evidence of the blissful beginnings that natural and gentle birth, and gentle parenting, can bring about. Her book paves the way to a far more loving world.

The great gift of Buckley's book is that she relieves parents of a century of needless and baseless iatrogenic fears: fear of pregnancy, fear of birth, fear of babies, fear of the body. The reward is a font of natural, undisturbed hormonal bliss; for mothers, newborns, and even for fathers. Buckely's extraordinary book midwives the birth of a new, healthier, and more loving culture.

Robin Grille, psychologist, author

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars heart and head March 4, 2009

By Unmani

Format:Paperback

REVIEW FOR

GENTLE BIRTH, GENTLE MOTHERING

I need to declare a bias in reviewing this book.

I am a grandmother of 3 little boys whose mothers have felt reassured and validated by reading and rereading `Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering' .
And I am a co-journeyer with Sarah Buckley in the Melbourne based `Women's Mysteries Advanced Circle' led by Shivam Rachana..

As I opened the covers of this book and moved from the foreword and introduction to the initial pages, I was inexorably drawn to skip to the moving stories of Sarah's birthings of Emma, Zoe, Jacob and Maia, to her piece on breastfeeding `The Gift of a Lifetime', to her celebration of the intelligence of Jacob's placenta and her other gentle family practices. Then my brain wanted to know more about the science behind the `overdue baby', `Gestational Diabetes', and the practice of ultrasound etc. And then more finding out about the `nocebo' effect (constantly reminding the pregnant woman about potential problems and the stress that this places on a pregnancy). And after that I flipped to the exhaustive 41 pages of notes, book references and studies which back up the scientific aspect of the book. And then to Ch 6- the groundbreaking work on the `ecstatic birthing hormones '.(To my knowledge Sarah is unique in gathering for the scientific world an understanding of this `hormonal orchestration of the birth process').
The gift of this book is exactly as has been so often said - a marriage of the deeply authentic and personal with the best of our scientific heritage - the data, the tests, the studies.

The brain and the heart dancing together.

I reflect, as someone who did the best I knew how with my own births in the 70's - a book like this would have been gold.... I would have devoured it. I would have found it readable, thought-provoking, gentle and poetic.
I would have felt looked after emotionally, and as a thinking person.
And I would feel stronger in listening to the ancient echoes of my own mammalian instincts. Read more ›