Hate the sin, not the sinner" sort of thinly-veiled shaming that I don't care for from any ideology. I do definitely recommend this one, but I also recommend reading other books to fill out a more balanced view, unless you are definitely giving birth under the stars on a hippie commune and your chances of winding up in a hospital are extremely low. Another downside of this book was that it was a little too "Rah, rah, rah, women's bodies can do anything!

For example, Rhogham does not have any mercury whatsoever any more, and the danger from amniocentesis is vastly overstated.While I agree that it is best to have an uncomplicated, natural vaginal birth, it doesn't always happen that way.

When my turn came around, I still felt woefully unprepared and not a little bit terrified of childbirth. For this reason, Part I of this book is largely devoted to stories told by women who planned to have home or birth-center births with me and my midwife partners. We do everything we can to take pain away through drugs, positive thinking, and through the newest craze of self-care: eliminating everything from our lives that cause us discomfort.This very lengthy review might suggest that I didn't like this book or that I majorly disagreed with the author. As with any discussion about a debatable topic, the experts are not likely to be very open-minded, but she impressed me with her logical and tempered, if not unaggresive, presentation.

So much of what I read just made me more scared (even though I tried to avoid the triggering stuff, the loss stories, the bad outcomes).One of the very few stipulations my wife made after we learned we were going to have a child is that I read this book by the doyenne of natural childbirth in the U.