A Good Birth: Finding the Positive and Profound in Your Childbirth Experience - Hardcover

Lyerly, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158333498X ISBN 13: 9781583334980

Publisher: Avery, 2013

Synopsis

Drawing on a landmark study involving more than one hundred pregnant women and mothers, a renowned OB/GYN synthesizes the secrets to a good birth—medically and emotionally.

Most doctors are trained to think of a “good” birth only in terms of its medical success. But Dr. Anne Lyerly knows firsthand that there are many other important elements that often get overlooked. Her three-year study of a diverse group of over one hundred expectant moms asked what matters most to women during childbirth. The results, presented to the public for the first time in A Good Birth, show what really matters goes beyond the clinical outcome or even the usual questions of hospital versus birthing center, and reveal universal needs of women, like the importance of feeling connected, safe, and respected.

Bringing a new perspective to childbirth, the book’s wisdom is drawn from in-depth interviews with women with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, and whose birth stories range from quick and simple to complicated and frightening. Describing what went well, what didn’t, and what they’d do differently next time, these mothers give voice to the complete experience of childbirth, helping both women and their healthcare providers develop strategies to address the emotional needs of the mother, going beyond the standard birth plans and conversations. Transcending the “medical” versus “natural” childbirth debate, A Good Birth paves the entryway to motherhood, turning our attention to the deeper and more important question of what truly makes for the best birth possible.

About this title

About the Author

Anne Drapkin Lyerly, M.D., M.A., is Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics and an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the departments of Social Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology. As an obstetrician, she has attended women’s deliveries for over a decade. Widely featured in the media as a women’s health expert, she lives in Chapel Hill with her husband and their four sons.

Reviews

In 2006, Lyerly began the Good Birth Project, a landmark research study that asks the question: What constitutes a good birth in the eyes of the childbearing women? Her research team conducted interviews with 101 mothers about their birth experiences, and the results of that study serve as the basis for this insightful book: an effort to craft a notion of the good birth that turns... on what women say is deeply at issue for them. While the book is aimed at mothers and soon-to-be-mothers, Lyerly also has an important message for the medical community, midwives, and other birth advocates who are in the middle of an important but polarizing debate (medical vs. natural childbirth), in which women lose. Lyerly admits that no doubt there is and will likely continue to be some degree of tension between obstetrics and midwifery, but she attempts to make a place in the conversation for women's voices. Those on the side of midwifery may yet dismiss Lyerly as a medically trained and practicing obstetrician and the mother of four children who were all born by cesarean. But she also notes that every women does deserves a midwife, or rather, the kind of care that treats childbirth as a profoundly emotional and transitional experience, and that respectfully fosters a mother's agency, personal security, and connectedness. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Aug.)

Ob/gyn Lyerly kept an open mind when she worked at Duke and then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on her Good Birth Project—in-depth talks with 101 mothers about their experiences delivering 196 infants in homes, hospitals, and birth centers. When it comes to the “birth wars” over where and how babies should be born, she doesn’t take sides. Doctors and midwives should connect with their patients, put moms and babies together quickly, speak with care, avoid treating birth as just a medical event, and make sure women who need C-sections don’t feel they’re failures. “Birthing is birthing however you do it,” writes the empathetic Lyerly, who “experienced four such surgeries, four births, as a patient and mother.” No “mama guilt” allowed! Some women may feel more “present” at a birth if they get epidurals to relieve the pain; others want a completely natural birth. And both are OK. Lyerly aims to make doctors, moms, and moms-to-be feel less judgmental about other people’s choices and more empowered when it comes to their own. --Karen Springen

Edition details

• Publisher: Avery
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 158333498X
• ISBN 13: 9781583334980
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288