Mind over Labor: A Breakthrough Guide to Giving Birth (Penguin Handbooks)

The fear and pain most women expect from pregnancy can at last be overcome. Carl Jones, a certified childbirth educator, tells how using mental imagery can help you reduce the pain of labor by controlling the fear beforehand. His easy-to-follow, eight-step method, which teaches your mind to cooperate with your body, will help make your childbirth less stressful and more natural. Whether you plan to give birth at home, in a childbearing center, or in a hospital, Carl Jones's simple exercises will put you in touch with the best instrument of birth there is—yourself.

"This book will show you how to create the kind of birth you want," writes Jones, author of After the Baby Is Born, etc. He compares childbirth to lovemaking in terms of the potential joy for the woman and claims that the key to a "safe, happy birth" is mental imagerythe art of creating vivid pictures in the mind to help the woman "surrender" to the "pleasure" of childbirth. Mental-imagery exercises include thinking of a "Special Place," such as a favorite beach, or envisioning the child in the womb and asking "what he or she needs." Jones stresses the importance of a mellow labor environment and subtly promotes the idea of delivery at home or in a childbearing center, but he fails to spell out the risks of a nonhospital delivery. His goal of a well-informed, positive-thinking pregnant couple is admirable, but his insistence that attitude can overcome virtually any problem is questionable.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.