Towards the Humanisation of Birth

Towards the Humanisation of Birth
Author: Elizabeth Newnham
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-02-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319699628
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This book examines the future of birthing practices, particularly by focusing on epidural analgesia in childbirth. It describes historical and cultural trajectories that have shaped the way in which birth is understood in Western, developed nations. In setting out the nature of epidural history, knowledge and practice, the book delves into related birth practices within the hospital setting. By critically examining these practices, which are embedded in a scientific discourse that rationalises and relies upon technology use, the authors argue that epidural analgesia has been positioned as a safe technology in contemporary maternity culture, despite it carrying particular risks. In examining alternative research the book proposes that increasing epidural rates are not only due to greater pain relief requirements or access but are influenced by technocratic values and a fragmented maternity system. The authors outline the way in which this epidural discourse influences how information is presented to women and how this affects their choices around the use of pain relief in labour.

Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier

Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier
Author: Betty-Anne Daviss
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000335534
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This book addresses the politics of global health and social justice issues around birth, focusing on dynamic communities that have chosen to speak truth to power by reforming dysfunctional health care systems or creating new ones outside the box. The chapters present models of childbirth at extreme ends of a spectrum—from the conflict zones and disaster areas of Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and Indonesia, to high-risk tertiary care settings in China, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. Debunking notions about best care, the volume illustrates how human rights in health care are on a collision course with global capitalism and offers a number of specific solutions to this ever-increasing problem. This volume will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in anthropology, sociology, health, and midwifery, as well as for practitioners, policy makers, and organizations focused on birth or on social activism in any arena.

Birthing Outside the System

Birthing Outside the System
Author: Hannah G. Dahlen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2021-06-30
Genre: Maternal health services
ISBN: 9780367506605
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This book investigates why women choose 'birth outside the system' and makes connections between women's right to choose where they birth and violations of human rights within maternity care systems. Choosing to birth at home can force women out of mainstream maternity care, despite research supporting the safety of this option for low-risk women attended by midwives. When homebirth is not supported as a birthplace option, women will defy mainstream medical advice, and if a midwife is not available, choose either an unregulated careprovider or birth without assistance. This book examines the circumstances and drivers behind why women nevertheless choose homebirth by bringing legal and ethical perspectives together with the latest research on high-risk homebirth (breech and twin births), freebirth, birth with unregulated careproviders and the oppression of midwives who support unorthodox choices. Stories from women who have pursued alternatives in Australia, Europe, Russia, the UK, the US, Canada, the Middle East and India are woven through the research. Insight and practical strategies are shared by doctors, midwives, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists on how to manage the tension between professional obligations and women's right to bodily autonomy. This book, the first of its kind, is an important contribution to considerations of place of birth and human rights in childbirth.

Gentle Birth Choices

Gentle Birth Choices
Author: Barbara Harper
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 586
Release: 2005-08-09
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1594778639
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Birth as every woman would like it to be • Recommended by Lamaze International as one of the top ten books for pregnant women and their families • Includes a 45-minute DVD of six live gentle births • More than 32,000 copies sold of the original edition New parents are faced with a myriad of choices about pregnancy, labor, and birth. In Gentle Birth Choices Barbara Harper, renowned childbirth advocate, nurse, former midwife, and mother of three, helps to clarify these choices and shows how to plan a meaningful, family-centered birth experience. She dispels medical myths and reimagines birth without fear, pain, or violence. Harper explains the numerous gentle birth choices available, including giving birth in an independent birth center, at home, or in a hospital birthing room; finding a primary caregiver who shares your philosophy of birth; and deciding how to best use current technologies. She also provides practical advice for couples wishing to explore the option of using a doula or water during labor and birth to avoid the unwanted effects of drugs and epidurals. The Gentle Birth Choices DVD blends interviews with midwives and physicians and six actual births that illustrate the options of water birth, home birth, and vaginal birth after a prior Cesarean section. The DVD clearly reveals the strength of women during childbirth and the healthy and happy outcome of women exercising gentle birth choices. It is a powerful instructional tool, not only for expectant parents, but also for midwives, hospitals, birth centers, and doctors.

Birthing Work

Birthing Work
Author: Katharine McKinnon
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 981150010X
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This book traces the assemblage that comes into being in the spaces and experiences of childbirth. Charting the contributions of the multiple human and non-human actors that contribute to the birth experience, it offers a new perspective on childbirth that cuts across the often emotional debates about natural versus medicalised birth. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with mothers, midwives and obstetricians, it provides an insight into the collective endeavours that shape birth. In doing so, it also explores who does the work of childbirth, expanding the boundaries for who (and what) is responsible for this collective labour and highlighting the interdependencies that characterise it. Structured around eight chapters that each focus on a different actor in the birth space, the volume argues that pregnancy and childbearing brings us into new relationships: with ourselves, with the child to be born, our partners and families, those who care for us, and with more-than-human others.

Anthropologies of Global Maternal and Reproductive Health

Anthropologies of Global Maternal and Reproductive Health
Author: Lauren J. Wallace
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030845141
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This open access edited book brings together new research on the mechanisms by which maternal and reproductive health policies are formed and implemented in diverse locales around the world, from global policy spaces to sites of practice. The authors – both internationally respected anthropologists and new voices – demonstrate the value of ethnography and the utility of reproduction as a lens through which to generate rich insights into professionals’ and lay people’s intimate encounters with policy. Authors look closely at core policy debates in the history of global maternal health across six different continents, including: Women’s use of misoprostol for abortion in Burkina Faso The place of traditional birth attendants in global maternal health Donor-driven maternal health programs in Tanzania Efforts to integrate qualitative evidence in WHO maternal and child health policy-making Anthropologies of Global Maternal and Reproductive Health will engage readers interested in critical conversations about global health policy today. The broad range of foci makes it a valuable resource for teaching in medical anthropology, anthropology of reproduction, and interdisciplinary global health programs. The book will also find readership amongst critical public health scholars, health policy and systems researchers, and global public health practitioners.

Natural Science of Childbirth

Natural Science of Childbirth
Author: Margaret Jowitt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9781780662503
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Leading childbirth activist and campaigner Margaret Jowitt's new book explores the biological science of pregnancy and childbirth - as opposed to the clinical science of medicalised childbirth.The book addresses many aspects of the birth experience, from the specifically human difficulties giving birth that arise from our bodies being made for upright walking, to the effects on our psychology of the hormones of stress, pregnancy and childbirth.The book considers both the physical and psychological effects of birth, and the biomechanics that can be employed to make birth easier. The concluding chapters offer a model for creating the optimum physical and psychosocial environment for birth.Authoritatively written, thoroughly researched and illustrated in detail, this is crucial reading for student midwives, NCT teachers, childbirth educators and women preparing for childbirth.

Home Birth

Home Birth
Author: Alice Gilgoff
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1989
Genre: Childbirth at home
ISBN:
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Gilgoff's acclaimed book has been completely revised, with the personal stories, historical perspective, practical advice, and warm style of the first edition updated to meet the challenges of the 90's. Through careful review of current research and personal accounts, this competent and reassuring book covers all the issues: the advantages and disadvantages of home birth and the circumstances that make hospital birth advisable; the most commonly used methods of natural childbirth; the use of drugs, episiotomy, surgical intervention; breastfeeding upon demand, and family participation; how to arrange for a home birth attendant, how to prepare the house and family, and how to plan a contingency trip to a hospital. This [book] is a friendly, gently persuasive invitation to look at the benefits of home birth, now seen from [Gilgoff's] vantage point of a decade-plus of experience. Sue LaLeike, CCE Now that home birth has established itself as a viable alternative to hospital birth, Alice Gilgoff's acclaimed book has been completely revised, with the personal stories, historical perspective, practical advice, and warm style of the first edition updated to meet the challenges of the 90's. Through careful review of current research and personal accounts this competent and reassuring book covers all the issues: the advantages and disadvantages of home birth and the circumstances that make hospital birth advisable; the most commonly used methods of natural childbirth; the use of drugs, episiotomy, surgical intervention; breastfeeding upon demand, and family participation; how to arrange for a home birth attendant, how to prepare the house and family, and how to plan a contingency trip to a hospital; the services offered by organizations promoting home delivery; siblings at birth; pros and cons of amniocentesis, vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), postpartum depression, medical malpractice suits, and more.