Customer Reviews

Reclaiming the Spirituality of Birth: Healing for Mothers and Babies

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After having a traumatic birth with my first daughter I was in search of resources that would help me heal. Unfortunately, this book is not one of those resources.

Yes, the author supports holistic birth, and looks to the current setup of the medical establishment as problematic in supporting women and children during birth. But the book is overly couched in intimidating psychiatric language; and in some places she even points fingers at women themselves. For instance, one troubling chapter bluntly states that women who struggle with depression or feelings of non-acceptance during their pregnancies are causing their children to experience everything from colic and food intolerances to lifelong emotional problems. As a non-depressed mother of a very wanted child who suffers severe food intolerance, I found this quite offensive.

She also focuses almost single-mindedly on forceps births as the source of trauma, neglecting to mention the many other ways in which birth can be traumatic. This got annoying quite quickly and I found myself wondering if she even realized other types of birth could cause maternal or infant trauma.

If you're looking to heal from a traumatic birth, I recommend instead "An Easier Childbirth" by Gayle Peterson. It provides concrete paths to recovery without placing undue blame on mothers, and an accompanying workbook is available to help you sort through your feelings.

This book is a must for anyone who has experienced a traumatic birth experience, or has a fear of birthing. I have had three hospital births that were complete medical managed experiences, very traumatic. I am planning a homebirth with my fourth child (due any day), and found this book to be a godsend for helping me heal that part of me that was so traumatized with my previous births. I cannot wait for the experience at home with my family and a Midwife!

I had thought that this book would be about how to enhance the spirituality of birth (as the title suggests) and how to help heal from wounding birth experiences. Instead, the author basically makes every problem her clients have relate back to birthing somehow and catalogs the many ways in which she feels that bad birthing experiences can negatively affect the kid as s/he grows up. The LAST thing a woman about to give birth needs to hear is how any intervention that might be necessary in her particular situation WILL necessarily traumatize both her and her child for the indefinite future. Even women who plan to give birth naturally occasionally need help, and this book plays on their fears of how interventions can mess them up for life.

In addition to the highly irresponsible fear-mongering, much of the book is repetitive in tone if not exact wording. To read this book, one would think the only emotionally and physically "safe" way to give birth is outside the setting of one of those oh-so-horrible hospitals where all they want to do is cut you and inject you. I'm all for midwifery; but it IS possible to have a safe, happy hospital birth, and not all hospital personnel are as callous and insensitive as she makes them out to be.

I would definitely NOT recommend this book for people wanting to heal from bad birthing experiences either. She goes through plenty of horror stories (some of which are highly suspect of having been made up by her clients based on knowledge of ther own births from their mothers), but never actually gets around to talking about how to heal other than that her clients seemed to make progress after being in therapy with her for a while. Save your money and buy something less reactionary and more helpful.

This book values pregnancy and birth as processes which have life-long impact on woman's self esteem, her health, her ability to nurtutre, and her personal growth. For women who had none satisfactory birth expereinces and carry deep "soul-wounds" from painful birth experiences, this book is a must read.