We asked parents who had done our course which books they would recommend, so here they are. So chuck away ‘What to expect when you are expecting’ and delve into this lot.
Books
Sophie Fletcher – Mindful Hypnobirthing, Vermilion
Dick-Read, Grantly – Childbirth Without Fear : Explains the physiology of natural birth, and how fear affects it.
Gaskin, Ina May – Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth: Lots and lots of natural birthing stories
LeBoyer, Frederick – Birth Without Violence: a heart warming book, helping youtowards an understanding of the baby’s perspective
Yeheudi, Gordon – Birth to 9 Months: a very good general birth and parenting book that tells you what is happening to your body and your baby through your pregnancy and the 9 months after.
Harris, Mark – Men, Love and Birth: a book for dads on how to be great birthing partners
Scotland, Mia – Why Perinatal Depresssion Matters: packed full of tips and techniques for self-care after your baby is born.
Mongan, Marie – HypnoBirthing®A Celebration of Life: Different techniques, but same philosophy
Michel Odent – Birth Reborn: Inspiring, written by the world’s leading natural birth advocate
Sarah J Buckley – Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: Simply lovely, and all backed up by research
Pam England – Birth from Within: A lovely book that looks at birth in healthy and positive way with lots of different techniques.
Desmond Morris – Babywatching: is a classic that has just been reprinted. A must have with chapters you can read in 10 minutes before you go to sleep!
Sears and Sears – The Baby Book
Sarah Ockwell-Smith – BabyCalm: a must have for new parents, refreshing approach to attachment parenting.
Naomi Stadlen – What Mothers do
Janet Balaska – Active Birth
Amali Lokugamage – The heart in the womb: written by a consultant obstetrician about her birth experience which was far from what she expected! Her instinct moved her to a home birth even though every medical bone in her body thought she should be in hospital.
Sue Gerhard – Why Love Matters
Sophie FLetcher – Mindful Mamma (best read later in pregnancy)
Online
One World Birth has a series of great videos on world experts that will really open your eyes to what a wonderful experience birth can be, and how women are being robbed of that experience.
Mindful Mamma obviously a fantastic website! Plenty of our birth stories
Homebirth Reference Site brilliant for information about natural birth (not necessarily home birth)
Birth Choice UK good for information about different hospitals and birth centres
NCT great for everything – pre and post pregnancy, and for networking
Sarah Buckley great resource for all natural birth information
www.facebook.com/mindfulmamma
DVDs
You can google these, and watch the trailers:
What babies want
Birth Into Being
On the other side of the glass
Orgasmic birth
