Product Details

• Actors: Suzanne Arms
• Directors: Christiane Northrup, Suzanne Arms
• Format: Color, Full length, Full Screen, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• VHS Release Date: December 1, 1998
• Run Time: 35 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0966799119
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,078 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes normal birth the goal, March 12, 2001

By 

"jasmynnight" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Birth : Challenges & Choices, Professional Version with Teaching Guide [VHS] (VHS Tape)

There is so much I found informative in this video. I did not find fear or distrust of the medical model. What I heard was a challenge. Look at what is typical today in births around the US. Why are interventions that have been shown to have no positive results and sometimes harmful results still what's considered normal? Why does this nation spend so much on birth, with such sad results? We have one of the highest perinatal mortality rates in industrialized countries. There is an answer, look at what a normal birth is. Now we can integrate this model into hospitals. Birth is not a complication waiting to happen. It's normal process. I appreciated that most of the professionals Ms. Arms interviewed were OBs and Delivery Nurses. It let me see some of their frustration and made me feel good to know that they recognized a problem. They know how it could be. The educator's manual was very helpful. I think that if the father below had watched the movie in a class, and had some direction and an avenue to look at his feelings that he might have come to a different final verdict. It is disturbing to have our beliefs held before us. But the real focus was on change. We can make it better. We have the model to follow. I'd also like to recommend "Born in the USA". It has been shown on PBS. Let's change typical intervention laden births to beautiful normal births.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, May 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Giving Birth : Challenges & Choices [VHS] (VHS Tape)

As a childbirth educator, I have found that this video, although at times very challenging due to the medical myths it topples, is well received by my couples. It is weighted firmly in the experience of the mother, but the birth scenes clearly depict the intimate involvement of fathers in the birth process. This video provides an excellent balance to the overly medicalized nature of birth in this country, and brings the spirit, power, and joy back into childbirth.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Giving Birth, Challenges and Choices, September 28, 2000

By 

Krista Armstrong - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Birth : Challenges & Choices, Professional Version with Teaching Guide [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Unlike the previous reviewer I love this video. Birth is political! Educating yourself about birth will reveal that. If anyone finds this video produces fear for the medical model than they are now becoming educated. There is reason to fear what takes place in the hospital environment, more than one procedure in a hospital endangers mother and babe. I feel for the last reviewer if he could not see that this video produces a sense of normalacy for the birthing process and enlightens us to the realities of medical and medicated births. Mothers and Babies (and Fathers deserve to be transformed by birth, to experience birth in a natural normal setting, to see the awe in the normal birthing process. This video will lead the viewer down a path that once traveled will bring a magical and inspiring birth experience. I know of many who have viewed this and have changed many aspects of their health care, be it hospital or home birth, they now have learned about and practiced true INFORMED consent.