Customer Reviews

Spiritual Midwifery

5 star:		(103)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book gave me so much confidence in my abilities to give birth naturally! I was a nervous first-time mother-to-be, but wanted to make a serious attempt at natural childbirth due to all the complications associated with epidurals and the like. I read my mother's copy from cover to cover and filed all the wonderful details away for use during my own labor. I was born in the 70's, and found the hippy langauge a little amusing, but brightly descriptive and calming. I like being talked to as a person who has a mind of her own, not someone who cannot make decisions of her own free will, as some other birthing books tend to do. I recommend this book highly to all new mothers that I meet. The message that you are completely capable of giving birth to the child living inside you with little or no intervention, aside from real emergencies, is an invaluable one, and all the actual recounts put you in this frame of mind. Ina May and the midwives in this book create a loving voice in your head that stays with you when you need it the most. With no fear tactics, either! What a novel idea... And I also have to add that I used tons of the information given to aid my labor, and it all worked, at various levels. It gave me the confidence to labor at home for the majority of the first day, and by the time I went into the hospital I was already 7 centimeters dialated, much to my surprise. I gave natural birth to a healthy baby boy the next day. Everyone's labor experience is different- I just wanted to share my real-life labor that was made significantly better by this book.

I think I'm the first _man_ to review this book. In a way that's kind of sad, but hey, I don't mind going first, fellas. Besides, I've reviewed just about everything of Stephen Gaskin's I could find, and it's about time I reviewed Ina May's book.

And here in Ohio we've got a Mennonite midwife named Freida Miller who's doing time in prison. Why? Because she saved the life of a birthing mother by giving her prescription medication without a license. Worse, she's not even in prison for dispensing the meds; she's in prison because she refuses to reveal the name of the doctor who _gave_ her the meds in the first place. This displeases me and causes me to question the legal and pharmaceutical establishments even more than I already did, which is a lot. So consider this review my little blow for the revolution.

Ina May Gaskin wrote the book on midwifery -- four times, in fact, as the fourth edition of the book was published in 2002 and it gets longer every time. The new edition is updated with the usual stuff, including yet more stories from the parents and midwives at the Farm (including some stories from the babies, now all grown up, who were the subjects of the _original_ stories) and a new preface by Ina May. And if you're reading this page, you don't need me to tell you that it's the bible of practical midwifery.

What you may _not_ already know is what a spiritual book it is. Of course the title is _Spiritual Midwifery_, but some readers may be inclined to write that off as hippie jargon. As other reviewers have noted, there is some hippie jargon in the book, but I don't think you should read "around" it or "past" it. You should read _through_ it; it's part of the point. The medium really is sometimes the message, and this is the appropriate language for the concepts Ina May wants to lay on you.

What Ina May wants you to know, what she and the midwives at the Farm have successfully shown for thirty years and counting, is that birthing really is (or can be) a sacrament and that _how we be_ has a profound effect on _how we birth_. As Stephen remarks somewhere, the Farm midwives have successfully demonstrated that _vibes are real_. This is good news and it's important to more than birthing mothers -- even to more than women.

I don't mean to minimize the importance of the practical midwifing aspects of the book, either; it's just that I didn't read the book for that reason myself. (I was present at the births of both of my children, but they were born in the hospital as my wife preferred.)

The thing is, Ina May and Stephen are good people. In fact they manage to be both kind _and_ competent -- a difficult trick and one that I certainly haven't mastered myself. And there are lots of other good people represented in this book, in the stories and in the pictures. (The folks in the photos look like folks you'd want to meet. If you look at them right, you can actually see their souls.)

So this review is partly to help spread the word about midwifery and partly to help spread the word about these good people. Vibes _are_ real, it _does_ matter how we be, and don't let anybody tell you any different.

When I first read this book, I must admit I was put off by the hippie language, and the way they referred to contractions as "rushes", which are an interesting sensation that requires all of your attention. I thought, who are they trying to kid? Despite my initial reaction, I have grown to love this book. If you can ignore the groovy hippie language (if it bothers you), this is a super book, chock full of consise information for both pregnant families and midwives. The language is plain, no "medicalese", and the information is sound. The book was written about The Farm, an intentional community started in Tennessee in the 1970's. When the women of the Farm started having babies, some women became midwives to serve them. Learning from experience and some helpful doctors and texts, they have had excellent results with maternal and infant health. Their statistics are better than any hospital I know of, as far as maternal and perinatal mortality. The book is half birth stories, and half information for parents and midwives. I recommend it for both consumers and midwives.

I bought this book in 1975 and have read it many times since. To the Florida reviewer: Being "stoned" during labor is not about drugs, it's about being divinely, serenely aware of the life force! This book is so much more than a book about having babies. It's about living life moment by moment; it's about loving your children; it's about being here now. I wish every man and woman in America would have to read this book before they had a child. It's life changing!

This is true!!! I read this book when I was pregnant with my first child in 1991, and it changed my life. I am now a doula with an BS in nursing on track to be a midwife by 2001. The 3 people, 3 fellow nursing students, who I have given copies of this book to, to help them with their birth experiences, are also persuing careers in the OB-GYN 'field'. The 10 women that I have loaned this book to have all come back to me to confide that they too believe that there are purely physical totally sacred things that we humans must acknowledge. During their birth experience they trusted them selves because they 'just knew, the same as the women at the farm just knew'. Every woman I have ever spoken to who had a powerful, positive birthing experience admits that they read this book before the birth and now have this book in their permanent library. Please understand that there are many people who have never read, seen or heard of 'Spritual Midwifery'. The majority of mothers that I know have not read this book,BUT the ones who have are deeply empowered and committed to empowering more birthing mothers. OH, and get used to over coming the language-generation-gap while reading this book, it will be good practice for when you have teenagers!

When I was pregnant with my first baby, what I hungered for were real stories of birth, and especially positive stories, because these are so rare in our medicalised birth culture. My copy of Spiritual Midwifery is a dog-eared third edition, but it's been a great companion to me through the homebirths of my four babies, reassuring and reminding me how simple and ecstatic birth can be.

One reviewer could not believe that all the stories in Spiritual Midwifery could be so positive; I refer her to my article on Ecstatic Birth, which details the scientific evidence for birth ecstasy as our hormonal blueprint for labour, first published by Mothering and expanded for my book "Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: a Doctor's Guide to Natural Birth and Early Parenting Choices". (Read the article on my website www.sarahjbuckley.com) It's the plethora of interventions that make birth unpleasant- and not necessarily safer, as I document

Another reviewer response- Ina May recommends drinking vodka to delay an early labour: IV alcohol was previously widely used in hospital for women going into premature labour, followed by 3 days of whisky 60 ml (2 oz) every 8 hours.

As a family physician, I also have to mention the excellent section, "Instructions to midwives" at the back, with easy to understand explanations and diagrams that I would recommend for any birth attendant; midwife, physician or parents. I also appreciate the sections on stillbirth and difficult births, and of course the gorgeous photos.

Spiritual Midwifery is a book that has stood the test of time, and continues to inspire and inform women and their carers (including myself) about how amazing and ecstatic birth can be, and the respect that we owe birthing families and newborn babies.

PS If you don't like the hippy language, buy Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, which has more contemporary stories and excellent information about modern birth care. Even better, buy them both!

I devoured an earlier edition of this book more than a decade before I actually had children, and am enjoying the new "birthing tales" added to the fourth edition. Since my husband was extremely uncomfortable with the prospect of home birth, I gave birth to our three children in hospital, with a wonderful female OB/GYN guiding me through one uncomplicated vaginal delivery; one surprise breech resulting in a C-section; one induced, successful VBAC. The hospital was the right place for me, it turned out. I really believe that the joy of these "birth days" was enhanced by having learned so much from the wisdom of all of the "ladies"--Ina May's down-home term--their husbands, and midwives who contributed their first-person stories to this fine book.

From "Spiritual Midwifery," you'll learn a great deal about your body, your newborn baby, and about the many, many things that can and do comprise pregnancy, labor, delivery, and the postpartum period. Even the very few sad outcomes inspire, and in the least smarmy way possible. I also would call this book appropriate to give to a teenager who is curious about the process of birth.

In retrospect, this fine book beats the unduly jumpy "What To Expect When You're Expecting" by a country mile.

I loved this book. Yes, it is on the hippy side of things; yes, the photos look kind of funny; and yes, the language can sound kind of silly. However, I've never read such a beautiful and spiritual description of childbirth. The mindset descriped in this book is wonderful, and it also contains lots of very valuable information as well. I just adore it! I'll be reading it again and again. Wonderful book!

Yes, the birth stories in this book ARE real. Real women birthing real babies. Listening to their stories can help prepare you for birth whether this is your first child or your tenth.

One of the things I appreciate most about this book is that it discusses in detail aspects of childbirth that no medically-oriented, mainstream childbirth manual will touch, e.g. what it's like when your baby dies. Play-by-play descriptions.
Children with birth defects. These are things I want to know about.

If you are one of those women who doesn't want to hear about any pain, plans on checking yourself into the hospital at the first contraction, and putting your doctor in charge, then you REALLY need to read this book! I especially recommend this book to women who don't know many other women who have birthed a child naturally, because you're not going to get this information anywhere else. If you only hear stories from the point of view of women who are drugged, you're not getting the whole story.

I'll admit it took me a while to get over the way that Ina May and others in this book speak. At first I found it distracting, but once I got into the mentality of The Farm, I found this book very inspiring. It contains a lot of very detailed information on anatomy and the practice of midwifery, but the best part is the stories. This book is packed full of real-life accounts of natural births- some good, some bad, but all amazing. When I finished, I felt empowered to give birth naturally and able to take control of my own pregnancy and labor. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is considering natural childbirth.