Heart & Hands | Women's Sexual Passages | The Circle of Life

"The book to read before deciding on home or hospital delivery."       --Patricia Holt, The San Francisco Chronicle
Heart & Hands: A Midwife's Guide to  Pregnancy and Birth 4th Edition By Elizabeth Davis About the latest edition Excerpts Table of Contents About midwifery & home birth Reviews Order

Now in it's seventeenth printing with over 180,000 copies sold, Heart & Hands has become both a classic text for both aspiring midwives and parents interested in the benefits of midwifery care.

This comprehensive guide includes sections on: Schools and Institutes, Choosing a Midwife, Self-Care in Pregnancy, Birth-Assisting, Herbs and Homeopathy for the Childbearing Cycle, Setting up a Practice, Complications in Labor, and much more!

The 4th edition features updates on Group B-strep, postdates pregnancy, VBAC, and postpartum depression, plus new diagrams and photographs, updated midwifery forms, a current list of schools, and an expanded resource list for parents.

EXCERPTS from Heart & Hands, 4th Edition

From Chapter One--The Midwife, A Profile

“What makes midwifery so desirable to women? Simply put, midwifery promotes well-being. It is an art of service, in that the midwife recognizes, responds to and cooperates with natural forces. In this sense, midwifery is ecologically attuned, involving the wise utilization of resources and respect for the balance of nature. 

Midwifery care is personalized care. Despite parameters of safety the midwife upholds, she recognizes wellness as an amorphous state with periodic deviations from normal; her task is to decipher the unique and fluid patterns of each mother’s well-being. The more thorough and continuous her care, the more likely she will be to detect a complication at its inception. And the better she and the mother communicate, the more readily will they develop and implement a solution. She and the mother are a team, but the locus of responsibility is always with the latter. As the MANA Statement of Values and Ethics states, the mother is “the only direct care provider for her unborn child.” 

The birth itself is merely the culmination of a deeply intimate relationship between the midwife, the mother and her supporters. Every birth has some potential for complications and the midwife is trained to deal with these—but her ability to do so is greatly enhanced by foreknowledge of the mother’s physical and emotional nature, and by the mother’s trust in her competence.”

Enjoy highly technical material presented in a clear and entertaining fashion: 

“Sometimes you get the feeling that active labor is knocking at the door, but the mother is not ready to get up and answer. Up to four or five centimeters dilation (and sometimes beyond), women have the power to control the ebb and flow of contractions and, unless labor is precipitous, must deliberately let the forces of birth take over. To move into active labor, the mother must give up notions of how labor is “supposed to be.” 

“As Michel Odent reminds us, the act of giving birth is seated in the primitive brain, which releases of a “cocktail of hormones” to ease the way. To benefit from this and tune into our instinctual birthing wisdom, we must first turn off the neocortex, our thinking/reasoning aspect. And how is this to be done? Consider factors that stimulate the neocortex: speech, bright light, and a sense of being observed (by others, by technology, or by oneself). Laboring women need a quiet, peaceful, private and intimate environment—with their birth attendant knitting quietly in the corner, or in the other room! This is not sentimentalism; this is physiology. 

“Thus, once the mother has moved to active labor, your role is to do all you can not to disturb her, and to make certain that no one else does. If all of the above conditions are met re: privacy, quiet, dimmed lights, and she is having difficulties, of course you should offer help. But rather than ask questions, use gentle touch and quiet encouragement. If she is restless, offer to rub her shoulders or lower back. Transmit reassurance through your hands; it will ground her and give her focus.

“If the mother complains of nausea, try stimulating the acupressure point known as PC-6, found on the inner wrist. Pressure on this point can also curtail vomiting—apply until she feels better, which may take several minutes. See that she has fresh air, and an environment free from distractions.”

Facts about Midwifery and Home Birth
Did you know that: 

•	In the European countries of Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, birthing with midwives is the popular norm.
•	In the six countries in the world that lose the fewest babies, the majority of births are assisted by midwives.
•	In the US, where the midwife has been marginalized, infant mortality is alarmingly high--we rank number 26 worldwide.
•	Complication rates for hospital birth have been shown repeatedly to be about six times greater than for birth at home.
•	The physician lobby has repeatedly funded anti-midwifery acts of legal harassment and negative media campaigns.
•	Midwives today ascribe to high standards of professional practice.