“The book to read before deciding on home or hospital delivery.”
Heart & Hands: A Midwife’s Guide to Pregnancy and Birth: Newly Revised 5th Edition (2019) by Elizabeth Davis
About the 2019 edition
Excerpts
Table of Contents
About midwifery & home birth
Reviews
Order
For more than three decades, Heart & Hands has been a trustworthy and beloved resource for parents and professionals alike, delivering invaluable information on what to expect during each stage of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery.
The 2019 edition has been edited page-by-page for accuracy. It includes new research on the microbiome, updated lab tests, a dedicated section on fetal heart rate patterns in labor, benefits of laid-back nursing, screening for postpartum depression, guidelines for vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), and help for trauma survivors.
The 2019 edition also features updates on breech assisting, the fetal effects of ultrasound, electronic charting and informed choice documents, Group B-strep treatments, postdates pregnancy screening, and long-term effects of cesarean birth on mother and baby.
Aspiring and veteran midwives alike will appreciate the emphasis on physiologic, client-centered birthing, and expectant parents will find comprehensive answers to questions about natural approaches to issues in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Parents will also learn about the home birth process, allowing them to plan their own unique birth experience to be more personalized and intimate.
Combining time-honored teachings with the most current midwifery science and techniques, this essential reference empowers birth helpers and parents alike to embrace the full childbearing experience.
This comprehensive guide also includes sections on: Choosing a Midwife, Self-Care in Pregnancy, Herbs and Homeopathy for the Childbearing Cycle, Setting up a Practice, Complications in Labor, What to Do When the Baby Cries, and much more!
Excerpts:
From Chapter One:
“What makes midwifery so desirable to expectant mothers? Simply put, midwifery promotes well-being. It is an art of service, in that the midwife recognizes, responds to and cooperates with natural forces. In this sense, midwifery is ecologically attuned, involving the wise utilization of resources and respect for the balance of nature.
“Midwifery care is personalized care. Despite parameters of safety that must be upheld, the midwife knows that wellness is an amorphous state with periodic deviations from normal. The task is to decipher the unique and fluid patterns of each client’s health status. The more thorough and continuous the care, the more likely complications will be detected at their inception. And the better midwife and client communicate, the more readily will they develop and implement a solution.”
Enjoy highly technical material presented in a clear and entertaining fashion:
“Sometimes you get the feeling that active labor is knocking at the door, but the mother/birthing person is not ready to get up and answer. Up to 4 or 5 cm dilation, most women/persons can control the ebb and flow of contractions and, unless labor is precipitous, must deliberately let the forces of labor take over. This is the point of realizing that we don’t ‘do’ birth, it ‘does’ us! To move into active labor, we must give up notions of how we thought labor would be; in other words, we must surrender.
“The endorphins are just one ingredient in the ‘cocktail of hormones’ released by the primitive brain to ease and facilitate the birth process. To benefit from this physiologic boost, we must first turn off the neocortex, our thinking and reasoning aspect. And how is this to be done? Consider factors that stimulate the neocortex: speech, bright light, and a sense of being observed (by others, by oneself, or by technology). When in labor, we need a quiet, peaceful, private and intimate environment. With this, another critical ingredient in the cocktail, oxytocin, increases to help labor advance. Perhaps the best way to frame this is to say that an environment suited for lovemaking is also perfect for giving birth.”
Heart & Hands Newly Revised 5th edition: Table of Contents
| Chapter One | The Midwife: A Profile |
| Chapter Two | Prenatal Care |
| Chapter Three | Problems in Pregnancy |
| Chapter Four | Assisting at Births |
| Chapter Five | Complications in Labor |
| Chapter Six | Postpartum Care |
| Chapter Seven | Becoming a Midwife |
| Chapter Eight | The Midwife’s Practice |
| Chapter Nine | The Long Run |
Important facts about midwifery:
- In the European countries of Denmark, Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands, birthing with midwives is the popular norm.
- In the six countries in the world that lose the fewest babies, the majority of births are assisted by midwives.
- In the US, where the midwife has been marginalized, infant mortality is alarmingly high—we rank number 30 worldwide.
- Complication rates for hospital birth have been shown repeatedly to be about six times greater than for birth at home.
- The physician lobby has repeatedly funded anti-midwifery acts of legal harassment and negative media campaigns.
- Midwives today ascribe to high standards of professional practice.
Rave reviews for Heart & Hands:
“Here is a book of great beauty, that uniquely combines traditional midwifery teachings with the most up-to-date obstetrical theories and techniques.”
–Don Creevy, M.D. FACOG, Clinical Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Stanford University School of Medicine
“An impressive and deeply caring book…reveals a shrewd and compassionate sensitivity to women’s needs in pregnancy and birth.”
–Sheila Kitzinger, author, The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Birth, The Midwife Challenge
To Order
Heart & Hands: A Midwife’s Guide to Pregnancy and Birth, Newly Revised 5th Edition (2019) by Elizabeth Davis, Ten Speed Press
Find it on: Amazon
