Heart & Hands: A Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy & Birth

Rating:
Summary: A lovely book for midwives and women!
Review: Within the first few lines of this book, it is clear that this has a very different feel from your `average' midwifery textbook: Elizabeth begins by talking about how women have helped each other give birth since the dawn of time and her words throughout the book focus on the social ~ rather than the medical ~ context of birth and midwifery. In fact, throughout the book, the woman remains the focus of the whole experience, something which might sound obvious but isn't always achieved in reality. The text is interspersed with quotes from women, practical suggestions and stories from her own experience, beautiful photographs and drawings which clearly show the positions of relevant organs while acknowledging that women and babies come in three dimensions (as opposed to the cross-sectional pictures which tend to characterise the more medically-focused textbooks).

Heart and Hands intersperses the clinical with the practical, social, psychological and spiritual, and key terms are in bold, which makes it easy to find what you are looking for and to scan a whole page for relevant information. There are fourteen appendices including suggestions for records / notes for different stages of childbearing, a birthkit list and a "postnatal instructions" handout.

It is noticeable that some aspects of this book have changed over time, so it is well worth taking a look at the new edition even if you have one of the older versions. For example, the book now incorporates more reference to research on key clinical topics (while managing to retain both the practical flavour and the emphasis on women's ways of knowing that have always made it popular with midwives) and Elizabeth herself reflects on how practice has moved on from the days when midwives tended to `overinvolve' themselves in labour. All in all, this is a lovely book which I am sure would soon become well loved (and probably quite tatty from repeated use!) in the hands of any midwife, doula, childbirth educator or pregnant woman!

Sara Wickham, author of "Midwifery: Best Practice"