Customer Reviews

Gentle Birth Choices Set

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Awsome service quick and timely.bthank you fo clearly stating the use of text book/ book I got exactly what you described.
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Connie Wakaluk
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I have always been really scared of the birthing process. After reading this book, I felt much more empowered and confident about the whole process. Now I am really looking forward to it and feel like I understand so much more about how our bodies naturally can help us through birthing. This book sparked my interest and now I have learned a lot more about natural, drug-free birthing options. I am excited instead of scared. As with anything, we still need to make our own personal decisions about how we want to do things, but I really feel like reading this book opened me up to many options that I wasn't aware of or hadn't considered. It amazes me how many people go through being pregnant and birthing with a very limited view of how it "should be done". When I was reading the book, there were so many times where I thought, "yeah, that makes a lot of sense", even though I had never thought about it myself.
I highly recommend this book!

As a doula, I have not only watched and enjoyed this video, but also shared it with many of my clients. It gives a wonderful view of several different types of births, helping the future parent make educated decisions about the type of birth they want. It also is very realistic in terms of what to expect during labor. I look forward to reading the book after enjoying the video for so long!

Gentle Birth Choices is an excellent book for all expectant parents, regardless of their birthing intentions (i.e. birth center, home birth, hospital birth, natural birth or water birth). Moreover, childbirth educators of any affiliation will benefit from the information covered in the text and on video.

Gentle Birth Choices is riveting, yet powerful. Barbara Harper guides the reader through a history of birth and birthing procedures, dispels the myths perpetuated by the medical establishment and presents alternatives to hospital birth. However, for those who are unable to birth outside of a hospital, Ms. Harper provides guidance so that the reader may obtain the best, "gentle" birth possible. The book benefits expectant parents in that it presents them with options, some of which they may have not previously considered. Moreover, childbirth educators will not only find the book informative for teaching purposes, but also useful for influencing the medical establishment in a tactful manner.

Like the book, the video is an asset for both expectant parents and educators. Whether you have never seen a birth before or have witnessed thousands, the births contained in the video tape are absolutely beautiful and refreshing, relaxing yet empowering. After watching the video you will want to share it with everyone you know!

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend both book and video! In fact, I've already gone one further -- I purchased it for my cousin who is expecting in April.

When I was pregnant with my first child I read, believd, and greatly enjoyed this book. I felt so prepared for my home birth attended by a midwife, and was so sure everything would work out....

To make a long story short, everything doesn't always work out great with home birth like the beautiful stories tell. I had to transfer to the hospital, and had a miserable birth experience with my first child. After reading this book I was so built up for a wonderful experience. I still had a healthy baby, and no major complications.

I think this is a good book to read, if taken with a grain of salt. A home birth would be a wonderfull thing, as would a birth center, or an OB who was behind natural birth(the choices which are given the most credit). Unfourtunatly, in practice there are people who have difficulties with birthing, and I feel this book failed to address that, and went overboard on the 'woman-power'/have faith in your body/you can do it aspect. If you choose a home birth, this can be a wonderfull thing to do. But it is best to have a back up plan, just in case.

but don't read this if you are only going to read one book.

A bit dated in regards to what hospitals offer, but that may be because we live in a progressive major metro area with lots of different cultures so the hospitals around us tend to allow more choices than the book suggests. Of course, you must be informed and take control no matter what.

The book has some good suggestions and ideas for those who don't want to be a part of the "baby factory" of many large hospitals.

This is an excellent book. The pictures are gorgeous, as usual Suzanne Arms has done terrific photography, and the descriptions of childbirth are pretty acurate. I must state though that every woman's experience of childbirth will be her own and be different so just because someone's childbirth was one way as described in this book it does not mean it will happen the same way for you. Technocratic birth is still the norm throughout the country and it is important to read books like this to prepare yourself should you be considering a hospital birth. The writer has obviously had a bad experience in the hospital, but many people have and I admire her wanting to share her experience as a warning to others. In my last hospital birth in 1999 I too was subjected to many of the interventions I did not want, for the third and final time I gave birth in the hospital. Never again. I wish I had read this back in 1995 before I had my first son and maybe things would have been different. Hospitals are for sick people, not pregnant women who are low risk. Also, someone else who reviewed here made some mention of a baby having an umbilical cord wrapped around its neck as a reason for c-sec, but that is not necessarily true. It is a small matter to unwrap a cord from around an infants neck as it is being born...I know as this happened with my son at his birth at home this past spring. If I had been in the hospital...would they have cut me open? Who knows?

This is a GREAT book for any expecting mom or doula. I have it in my lending library and suggest it to any prospective clients. I also have the video with the same name--IT's wonderful as well!!

This book has changed my life, 10,000-fold, for the better. It was loaned to me in the beginning of my first trimester, and I devoured it -- I gulped it down like a drowning person desperate for air. (I am due in about 5-6 weeks.) It helped me to return -- on a straight and narrow path -- to my original hopes of having a midwife attended homebirth.
Barbara Harper introduces us to the fact that modern medicine has "medicalized" childbirth, which is a normal bodily function, a natural process. She goes on to dispel myths, such as once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean; childbirth for women over 35 is difficult, and high risk (!); pain killers won't harm the baby; and a number of other myths, which most of us have been taught by our obstetricians to believe. She offers us further information that many of us have likely been unaware of, such as the non-necessity of cutting the cord immediately, and the fact that it is in fact likely to be harmful to the newborn to have the cord cut immediately.
When writing about the electronic fetal monitor, Barbara Harper says that "Dr. Robert Hon, inventor of the EFM [electronic fetal monitor], asked his colleagues to consider the causes of the rising cesarean rate in the United States. He stated that he never intended the EFM to be used in routine obstetric management. 'If you mess around with a process [birth] that works well 98 percent of the time, there is a potential for much harm.'"
This book has been, for me, a comforting, lifesaving, safety net in which to fall at a time when I was newly pregnant at 37, and frantic with miserable discomfort at the care I had been receiving at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
And of the seven Appendices offered in this book, Appendix F: Resources, provides a wealth of references to other groups.
I must also add that this book changed my husband's life just as much as it did mine, if only because it brought me to my search for a homebirth midwife. And in that search, we were introduced to another fabulous book called Silent Knife (find it under Nancy Wainer Cohen), which my husband has told me has changed his life, and which is a must-read for any woman trying to avoid a C-section, or a repeat C-section.
Barbara Harper has has also introduced me to a vast collection of other authors, whose books I have begun to acquire at a steady pace. To note just a few: Michel Odent, Sheila Kitzinger, Nancy Wainer (Cohen), Frederick Leboyer, Ida May Gaskin, Marsden Wagner, David Stewart, Henci Goer, Penny Simkin, and many others.
Barbara Harper founded Global Maternal/Child Health Association (GMCHA) and Waterbirth International in 1989. I called GMCHA and left a message on their machine looking for some information, and I was thrilled to be able to personally thank Barbara Harper, and to tell her that SHE changed my life, when she called me back herself. So I was doubly happy to see that she remains fully a part of the organization she established.
I have come to two conclusions through my recent reading, thanks to my introduction to Gentle Birth Choices, and all of my reading since then: 1) To rely so fully as Americans do, on advice from the medical profession, is a tremendous abdication of responsibility. Though the search for the right care is not easy, good things do not come easily, and we must take back responsibility for our own health care, rather than blindly relying on doctors; and 2) Those of us who continue to insist that doctors MUST know what they're doing, are not behaving with respect toward their God. I happen to be Atheist, and my view is that Nature has designed the human body. For many believers, the human body has been designed by God. Either way, the human body is a finely honed machine, designed by something or someone greater than any of us. For humanity to behave the way that we do toward the birth process shows a profound lack of respect for Nature/God. Do we really think that a system designed by God or Nature is so faulty that C-sections are required approximately 25% of the time? Those who will simultaneously prefer an obstetrician-attended birth in a hospital, and who will allow the numerous interventions likely to attend their birth in a hospital, and who also claim to love their God may want to re-evaluate both their understanding of medical practices in America, as well as their understanding of God.
This book, and ALL of the others to which it has led me, will provide readers with information from an endless supply of studies, all of which have been published in the most highly respected medical journals (JAMA, British Lancet, Am. Coll. of Obstet. & Gyn., etc.), every one of which show results that prove that ALL medical interventions only contribute to difficulties in labor. Why do our doctors continue to practice this way? Read up -- educate yourself -- you'll be glad that you did. And you'll want to thank Barbara Harper profusely, as I still want to!!!