Choices in Pregnancy and Childbirth

This is a comprehensive and empowering guide to facilitating a positive pregnancy and birth experience and ensuring lasting emotional and physical health for mother and baby.

Countering increasingly medicalized attitudes towards pregnancy and birth among many healthcare providers this research-based book discusses the benefits of a more natural approach. It reveals the often undisclosed effects on a child's long-term development of accepted medical practices such as induction C-section surgical interventions and pain-relief medications. It offers advice on how these practices can be avoided for example with techniques to encourage optimal fetal positioning by optimising the birth environment and through drug-free pain management methods. Ultimately it enables practitioners to support parents in informed confident decision-making by giving a balanced account of the complex array of options available throughout pregnancy and birth.

With invaluable contributions from midwives doulas mothers and doctors and tried-and-tested advice on sleep exercise diet and therapies this will a very useful reference for anyone working with women and babies. The information will also be relevant to prospective and new parents.