1/20: The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From Goodreads: The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth helps you compare and contrast your various options and shows you how to avoid unnecessary procedures, drugs, restrictions, and tests. The book covers: Cesareans, breech babies, inducing labor, IVs, electronic fetal monitoring, rupturing membranes, coping with slow labor, pain medication, episiotomy, vaginal birth after a cesarean, doulas, deciding on a doctor or midwife, choosing where to have your baby, and much more

This book was amazing. I loved how there were studies cited, data to back things up and a nice overview of all the interventions that could be offered for birth. Listing the pros and cons for each intervention, whether that be for a vacuum delivery, saline injections or a TENS machine, it was very thorough.
It was biased towards natural childbirth, which for me is perfect because that's what we are aiming for. It was nice to read a book that showed all of the options to consider so that my husband or I have more information to make an informed decision. I feel it's important to go into birth (this being my first one) knowing what options are available and decide beforehand which ones we would consider, and which ones would be an absolute no.
This book really made me more grounded in my decisions for our birth plan, but also gave me the information I may need in order to adjust and be flexible. Birth doesn't happen as you plan it, so I think it's important to know the alternatives and which ones are most closely related to your plan and which ones you may or may not be ok with using.

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