If you or your female partner plans to give birth, The Doula Guide to Birth: Secrets Every Pregnant Woman Should Know from Bantam Books is the most comprehensive book you will find on doulas and preparing for birth in the 21st century.
If you are a doula or healthcare professional, you'll find techniques that even experienced practitioners say are new to them.
Well-known doulas and birth professionals whose input helped shape this book include Penny Simkin, Ilana Stein, Debra Pascali-Bonaro, Kate MacLellan, Gina Forbes, Gloria Lemay, Dr. William Camann, Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, Dr. John Kennell, Elizabeth Davis, and others.
Topics include:
- Doulas as a form of pain relief
- Doulas and the prevention of prematurity
- Information for mothers and their loved ones in all family structures (married, single, partnered, heterosexual, LGBTQ, and mothers whose baby will be adopted by another family)
- Labor, the hardest work you'll ever love
- New ways to push out a baby
- Can doulas prevent all interventions?
- Back labor: the good news
- Using belly dance for birth
- How to use a "walking" epidural
- Supporting teens: a talk with Jane Fonda
- A list of doula groups around the world
- When should you really go to the hospital in labor?
- Labor is not about dilation
- 12 alternatives to a vaginal exam in labor
- Are vaginal exams medically necessary?
- What is fetal distress? A guide to the baby's heart rate
- How to have a great Pitocin experience
- Labor techniques anyone can use!
- Laboring with disabilities or chronic illness
- How to use sexuality in labor
- Eating normally in labor
- How to sleep in labor
- How to "prepare" for unplanned epidurals and cesareans
- When healing from unplanned interventions is needed
- Birth plans and birth essays
- How to have an empowering birth of twins
- Paying for your doula using a baby gift registry
- How to ask your heath insurance to pay for your doula
- Celebrities who've used doulas
- Get ready now: what really happens postpartum
- Self-evaluation survey about your birth