Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices
An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children.
Sarah Buckley might be called a third-wave natural birth advocate. A doctor and a mother, she approaches the question of how a woman and baby might have the most fulfilling birth experience with respect for the wisdom of both medical science and the human body. Using current medical and epidemiological research plus women’s experiences (including her own), she demonstrates that what she calls “undisturbed birth” is almost always healthier and safer than high-technology approaches to birth. Her wise counsel on issues like breastfeeding and sleeping during postpartum helps extend the gentle birth experience into a gentle parenting relationship.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars A Natural Approach To Child Birth and Parenting
/Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering/ was inspired by Dr. Sarah Buckley’s home birth of her third child. In an era where pregnancy and birth are considered to be a medical condition, rather than a natural process that women’s bodies were designed for, this book challenges such topics as testing for gestational diabetes, antibiotics for group B strep, and induction for being “overdue.” Buckley discusses the cycle of intervention during labor–induction, epidurals, and hurrying along the third stage of birth. The book continues with topics on long-term breast-feeding, bed-sharing, and discusses cultural disapproval. /Gentle Birth/ includes the stories of Buckley’s four births at home.
Being a proponent of natural childbirth and allowing one’s body to labor sans intervention, I was excited to find this wonderfully written book on all the topics I’ve come to believe in and embrace. While this book won’t send someone who looks at birth as “something is about to go wrong,” running to set up the kiddie pool for a home birth, for those who already lean towards the natural side of birth, it’ll be a wonderful addition to your pregnancy, birth, and baby-rearing collection.
5 Stars Authoritative, truthful, compassionate
I love Sarah Buckley’s book! It accomplishes a rare feat: combining a compassionate voice with the weighty authority that a practising doctor and meticulous researcher can bring to her subject. Sarah’s book is a treasure-trove. For anyone who cares about the critical formative period of child development from conception to early childhood, it delves beyond the sentimental to provide a formidable data-base, as practical as it is touching and inspiring.
As a father I found Sarah’s book brilliant and a pleasure to read.
As a psychologist in private practice, parent-educator and author, her book has been one of my most valued and oft-quoted resources.
I doubt that anyone who reads Sarah’s book could ever again choose a hospital birth with obstetric intervention (unless there are clear medical complications). Reading left me feeling angry that the many psychological and medical risks presented by today’s obstetric excesses have been so heavily downplayed by the industry. Why weren’t we told? On the other hand, Sarah has presented clear neurological and endocrinological evidence of the blissful beginnings that natural and gentle birth, and gentle parenting, can bring about. Her book paves the way to a far more loving world.
The great gift of Buckley’s book is that she relieves parents of a century of needless and baseless iatrogenic fears: fear of pregnancy, fear of birth, fear of babies, fear of the body. The reward is a font of natural, undisturbed hormonal bliss; for mothers, newborns, and even for fathers. Buckely’s extraordinary book midwives the birth of a new, healthier, and more loving culture.
Robin Grille, psychologist, author
5 Stars heart and head
REVIEW FOR
GENTLE BIRTH, GENTLE MOTHERING
I need to declare a bias in reviewing this book.
I am a grandmother of 3 little boys whose mothers have felt reassured and validated by reading and rereading `Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering’ .
And I am a co-journeyer with Sarah Buckley in the Melbourne based `Women’s Mysteries Advanced Circle’ led by Shivam Rachana..
As I opened the covers of this book and moved from the foreword and introduction to the initial pages, I was inexorably drawn to skip to the moving stories of Sarah’s birthings of Emma, Zoe, Jacob and Maia, to her piece on breastfeeding `The Gift of a Lifetime’, to her celebration of the intelligence of Jacob’s placenta and her other gentle family practices. Then my brain wanted to know more about the science behind the `overdue baby’, `Gestational Diabetes’, and the practice of ultrasound etc. And then more finding out about the `nocebo’ effect (constantly reminding the pregnant woman about potential problems and the stress that this places on a pregnancy). And after that I flipped to the exhaustive 41 pages of notes, book references and studies which back up the scientific aspect of the book. And then to Ch 6- the groundbreaking work on the `ecstatic birthing hormones ‘.(To my knowledge Sarah is unique in gathering for the scientific world an understanding of this `hormonal orchestration of the birth process’).
The gift of this book is exactly as has been so often said - a marriage of the deeply authentic and personal with the best of our scientific heritage - the data, the tests, the studies.
The brain and the heart dancing together.
I reflect, as someone who did the best I knew how with my own births in the 70’s - a book like this would have been gold. I would have devoured it. I would have found it readable, thought-provoking, gentle and poetic.
I would have felt looked after emotionally, and as a thinking person.
And I would feel stronger in listening to the ancient echoes of my own mammalian instincts.
2 Stars Easy enough to sum up
Don’t have an ultrasound, don’t have an epidural, don’t have a C-section, do give birth at home, don’t cut the cord, do breastfeed, and do sleep with your baby. These are the choices you will make if you love your baby.
There–I’ve spared you some time–you’ve read the entire book.
I’m speaking as someone who did give birth naturally and nurse for two years, so I’m not just being sour grapes that someone else did something I couldn’t. But “gentle birth” and “gentle mothering” are simply not the be-all and end-all of life. Mothers who do the opposite of all these things love their babies just as much. Women who don’t have children have just as fulfilling lives as mothers–if not more so, given Buckley’s dismissal of sleep as a physiological need, preferring to define it instead as an unrealistic Western cultural expectation. I happen to think Western culture isn’t as awful as Buckley makes it out to be. Especially if it means I’m allowed to sleep alone and have my breasts to myself every now and then while still loving my baby.
2 Stars Truely gentle? Choose Ina Mae.
I approached this book with an open mind, knowing that I was going to give birth in a hospital but wanting to do it drug-free…I first read Ina Mae’s Guide to Natural Childbirth which was a tremendous resource and inspiration for my own birth experience last June. Since it was mentioned on the website that Ina Mae wrote the forward for “Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering” I assumed that this would be similarly inspirational. I, however, found this book to be rather punitive in it’s approach to traditional medical interventions and felt berated if I had resorted to any kind medical assistance in the anticipated birth of my child. The author struck me as more of a militant, hostile protestor rather then an uplifting, supportive guide like Ina Mae. I recommend skipping this book and purchasing one written by a true pioneer - Ina Mae.
Filed under: Parenting Advice Book Reviews