Giving Birth: A Journey Into the World of Mothers and Midwives

by Catherine Taylor

This book is a comprehensive and updated review of fundamental studies on inhibition of soil urease activity and of applied studies on improving efficiency of urea fertilizers by inhibition of soil urease activity. The general literature on these topics covers 65 years and the patent literature comprises a period of nearly 40 years. The potential of food production to meet the growing needs related to population increase is largely conditioned by...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399527885
• ISBN13: 9780399527883
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Length: 325 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

One of the best childbirth books

I read this book when I was about 4 months pregnant for the first time. Before I became pregnant I had been very interested in birthing and I knew I wanted a natural birth. During my early weeks of pregnancy, while I was overcome by intense nausea and vomiting, I had so much difficulty setting up appointments and birthplaces between my insurance and medical groups that I ended up settling with an OB that was not my first choice. I spent the next months of my pregnancy researching what my options were in my area and my insurance options. After reading this book I had a much better idea of what I was looking for and within a month my search was complete and the changes had been made. I went to a midwife/OB practice that ran a natural, free-standing birth center, I took Bradley natural childbirth classes along with my husband, and I hired a wonderful doula who worked at the birth center. I chose, for insurance reasons, to labor at home for as long as possible with my doula and then continued my natural birth in a birthing room with the OB that supports natural birthing. Because I arrived at the hospital (with my birthing ball) far along in labor, coping beautifully and had such a supportive doctor, the nurses read my birth plan and immediately respected all my wishes. I labored, moving about the room, and occasionally a nurse would put a dopp-tone to my belly to hear my baby's heart beat while I stayed in focus. Pain medication was never offered and I was asked before even being touched. I felt that I was laboring in a room full of friends. This book was wonderful to read, helped me really examine what I wanted for my own pregnancy and birth, and gave me insight if I ever decide to go into the childbirth field as a doula or childbirth educator. I had a beautiful, empowering, healing first birth that I will cherish for the rest of my life. For my second birth I gave birth at home and it was a life changing experience. I would definitely recommend finding a way to have a home birth with a trained midwife. I recommend this thoughtful, empowering book to all women and people working in pregnancy, labor and childbirth. I also highly recommend natural birth if that is what you desire. Giving birth was a deeply spiritual experience, and no one can take that from you.

behind-the-scenes look at the practice of midwifery

If you are part of the 99% of American women who choose to give birth in a hospital, attended by a physician, because you think that is the safest way to go, this book may well change your mind, or at least get you thinking about the possible benefits of a more natural, midwife-attended delivery. The author is decidedly pro-midwife; she weaves numerous statistics and stories into the text that underscore the decline of healthy delivery commensurate with the "medicalization" of delivery. For example, the US has the highest rate of hospital/medical deliveries but ranks 22nd in the world in maternal health / infant mortality -- well behind other countries, primarily western European, where home delivery and birth center deliveries are much more common. Other surprises -- according to the author, the World Health Organization recommends home deliveries and birthing center deliveries over hospital deliveries. The rates of C-sections and episiotomies are much, much lower for midwife-attended deliveries. Midwifes generally treat childbirth as something the female body is fully capable of doing on its own, rather than as a medical condition or disability to be treated. And the midwifes interviewed for the book seem to be very respectful of their clients -- assisting the client in her own birth experience rather than making the birth something the midwife choreographs & directs. The author writes about the history of childbirth & delivery and the practice of midwifery, interviews numerous midwifes, and even participates in home births attended by midwifes. At the same time, she discusses her own pregnancy (that is progressing while she is conducting the research for the book) and she trains to become a doula, or birth assistant. The book is gripping and easy to read; it reads fast like a novel -- and the discussions of home births she has attended are page-turners -- but it is also full of factual information and would serve to help prepare a woman for childbirth. In her interviews with midwifes, she discusses the risks to the profession -- insurance company's reluctance to cover home births and midwife fees, even though they're statisfically safer and less expensive than OB-attended hospital births, midwife's difficulty in getting insurance coverage for their practices, pressure on midwifes working in hospital settings to spend less & less time with their clients and to introduce more medications (Pitocin) -- to conform more to the medical model.

Essential Reading on Childbirth!

Reviewed by Susan Hodges, President, Citizens for Midwifery, a national grassroots organization advocating for the Midwives Model of Care.Review first appeared in the Citizens for Midwifery News, Fall, 2002. Catherine Taylor has beautifully crafted a tapestry of birth stories, birth facts, midwives and midwifery, the needs of mothers, and maternity care realities. I highly recommend this eminently readable book to anyone who wants to learn more about pregnancy, the realities of maternity care in the U.S. and the midwife/birth setting choices that may be available.Like several other recent autobiographical books about pregnancy and birth, Catherine Taylor's Giving Birth is organized around the sequence of pregnancy and giving birth, but there the resemblance stops. This book is a wonderfully readable narration of the author's research and learning about birth and midwifery over the time of her own second pregnancy and birth, at the same time personal and informative, but neither didactic nor judgmental.A writer and editor, Catherine Taylor undertook to write about childbirth and midwifery, "for both personal and professional reasons." Already a mother of a seven-year-old, and wanting another child, she set out to explore and understand midwives and midwifery, not by just reading or through interviews alone, but by actually spending days with a variety of individual midwives as they went about their work. The process eventually led her to undertake doula training, and to spend time with both hospital-based nurse-midwives and direct entry midwives. In addition, the author researched her topic thoroughly, and her factual statements are referenced in "Notes" at the end of the book.Written in the first person (and sometimes in the present tense), she reports her observations and experiences with an intimate and conversational style. In a very natural way, she has interwoven research and facts, related to the narrative by her own observations or subsequent knowledge: "At the time, I knew nothing about..." or "I later learned...." or "Now I know that...." Taylor started out following midwives that were part of an HMO hospital where 80% of deliveries were with nurse-midwives. Along with her, we discover how individual each midwife is and their differences in practice, as she observes the midwives at work with women who permitted Taylor's presence. We learn about the frustrations, politics, pressures and compromises involved with practicing midwifery in the hospital. And Taylor is not passive in her thoughts. "I am a bit surprised by...." Or "I don't understand why..." pop up frequently. In addition, Taylor draws the midwives out with questions, getting them to talk about how they practice and about the political/professional aspects of their work. The result is a broad-spectrum picture of "nurse-midwives," including their relationships with their "patients" and with each other, and their vulnerability in the hospital system. In addition, the rea

This book tells the TRUTH!

Finally a book that tells the truth about what really happens when a woman has her baby in the hospital with a certified nurse-midwife, CNM. Ivy-league-educated author Catherine Taylor, writes about her own experience as a nurse-midwifery patient as well as stories of many births she attended as an observer or doula. What is most amazing about the stories of birth that are retold is the author's realization that the certified nurse-midwives that the pregnant women trust are agents of the medical institutions. In story after story, the CNM patients are mislead about what to expect of their birth experiences. Taylor shadowed a number of CNM's during their usual workdays at their hospitals. The CNM care frequently mirrored physician-nurse care as busy CNMs left their clients in very active labor. Claims one CNM, "We try to compensate by having a nurse attend them." Yet while a number of CNMs expressed a longing to be more actively involved with the women they care for, none actually provided the women with hands-on, continuous care during their labors and births. Taylor points out hospital-based CNMs frequently provide inadequate midwifery care, failing to provide even a modicum of "human presence" which is a core competency of the ACNM (American College of Nurse Midwives). In birth story after birth story the reader is made aware of the inability of the CNM to prepare women for a drug-free, empowering birth. Woman after woman believed the slick hospital promotions that shows the beaming new mom and dad holding their little one with the ever-present staff hovering nearby. The rude reality is that for most of the women, this was a fantasy. The midwifery clients were unprepared for the pain of labor and what to do about it. The midwives were too busy running from patient to patient to do more than stick their head in a room long enough to don a glove and check dilation and make lame suggestions for dealing with pain. The nurses also had no time to provide one on one support--that left the women and their partners to go it alone, without having been educated about what to do. One theme that is played out in many of these stories is the power the hospital has over the CNMs. Whatever their personal beliefs may have been, they inevitably acquiesced to the hospital administration or physicians if there was friction between what a client/patient wanted. A few of the examples given include handing out "goodie" bags loaded with formula while theoretically promoting breastfeeding; telling a woman she needs pitocin when it is actually being given to speed up labor for the staff's benefit; and breaking a water bag for the physician's convenience. Many CNMs seem to relish their role as mini physicians. IVs, rupturing membranes, ordering antibiotics, pitocin and epidurals, cutting episiotomies and dragging babies out by suction vacuum are daily activities for hospital-based CNMs. Yet the ACNM claims that one of the primary characteristics of a midwife is as an adv

Real information in a very readable story

I'm a practicing homebirth midwife, so went right to the 'homebirth' chapter, thinking, "I'll just read this one chapter and then go the beginning of the book and read it 'properly'".Well, I just kept on reading-did not put the book down! Read to the end and then started at the beginning and read thru to where I started in the middle! Loved the insight, the attention to detail, introduced accurate statistical information in a way that didn't make my brain glaze over and included all the other issues that face a pregnant woman today. Catherine Taylor covers a lot of the concerns, real and fleeting, that most woman have, but never really get to verbalize or talk to anyone about, or at least anyone with unbiased answers! This book helps balance all the fear-mongering, mis-communications and half-truths that surround birthing, will change your presective on how birth is now and what is truly possible; for yourself and in the 'bigger picture'.Get a copy for yourself and one to give away-you'll grin and nod throughout the whole book.