Birthing Normally: A Personal Growth Approach to Childbirth

Effective communication and belief exploration are the central themes of Birthing Normally. If you're a midwife or childbirth educator looking for ways to better serve your clients, Gayle Peterson, with her expertise in the field of birth therapy, points the way. She reminds us that how information is communicated affects learning. She stresses the importance of presenting information congruently, for we do women a grave disservice by focusing on what can go wrong in labor before doing a thorough study of what goes right and why rightness should be expected!Birthing Normally reminds us that confidence building should be the first order of business in effective childbirth preparation. Not until an educator has facilitated a thorough understanding of normal birth should she address deviations from the norm. Educators who fall into the trap of using statistics as the primary references for teaching take on the medical model's myopic view of birth and contribute to birthing women having a depersonalized view of themselves. "It is a distortion of communication to present medical statistics as fact" Peterson states. (page 152).Birthing Normally explores how our emotions affect our physiology and how our beliefs create our reality. A woman who distrusts her body and who believes her body will fail is likely to manifest those beliefs with a problematic labor. Helping women explore what they truly believe prior to giving birth (especially those transparent beliefs which are so deeply ingrained as to be unexamined) is one of the most vital roles of the birth professional. It is also important to distinguish between healthy, normal fear and pathological fear. The author gives us a thorough understanding of the difference.I love this quote (page 3): "As a woman lives, so shall she give birth, so shall she die; in like manner and style to her own individual approach to life." I believe that pregnancy and birth are a microcosm of life, and this book challenged me to clarify my personal beliefs about the spiritual nature of birth. Birth represents profound change. Through birth, we women have a unique opportunity to learn a better way of being in the world, and perhaps beyond this world, by taking responsibility for our experiences. I wonder if women have a unique opportunity in childbirth--specifically that moment of total surrender when we open and release our precious offspring from the safety of our wombs; as we experience the metaphorical death of our pregnant selves and are reborn as mothers--to glimpse and gracefully prepare for the experience of old age and death, when we will release our souls, like babies, and surrender to the unknown.Birthing Normally is an exceptionally well-written resource for all birth professionals who want to improve their understanding of how to help birthing women, and for anyone who wants to explore the psychological and metaphysical aspects of birth.

Your thoughts, feelings, and past history / trauma will affect your birth. This book is a good exploration of that. I am an unassisted birther (caught 3 babies on my own, with no help)and I found this book helpful even though I had no real trauma to over come. This books aids in the teaching that birth is normal. You can let go, birthing safe and natural without problems.~Shauna Schoenborn

I don't know what the "Reader from Maryland" read, but doubt that it was this book. The author, Gayle Peterson MSSW, PhD is a family therapist specializing in prenatal and family development, and an expert in the field of birth therapy. Therefore her "opinions" are indeed valid and a result of decades of experience with expectant women. This book is primarily intended for those working in the childbirth field: midwives, birth educators, nurses and physicians, who seek to provide a holistic method of care. Dr. Peterson demonstrates the value of hypnotic suggestions and guided birth visualizations to help women become aware of their innate power to birth normally, and to decrease the fear of birth that our society has been burdened with.I read this book in it's first edition twenty years ago, and came back to it again recently; it is even better than I remembered. I encourage all birth professionals to learn and incorporate Dr. Peterson's teachings into their own practices, for the benefit of all families in our society.

This is a lovely book! The author is NOT a midwife or a doctor, but a child bith educator which is why the book deals mainly with the psychological aspects of pregnancy and birth. In my opinion it is very well written, and there is some relevant information for anyone who is in the birthing community!

This book is refreshing of the psychological aspects of birth