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Book Reviews

Nurturing Birth Book Review: Labour of Love: The Ultimate Guide to being a Birth Partner

Book Review by Rahima Ahmed

Front cover of Labour of Love: The Ultimate Guide to being a Birth Partner shows a photo of a white woman's chest and bump. She has long brown hair and is wearing a white strappy top, and blue jeans. The background is light blue with the book's title printed on the background.

The Labour of Love: The ultimate guide to being a birth partner by Sallyann Beresford is published by Dandelion Publishing and is available from good book outlets.

With over twenty years’ worth of experience supporting pregnancies in a variety of capacities including working as Doula, Antenatal Yoga Teacher, Sleep Consultant and a Hypnobirthing teacher; Sallyann Beresford has created an ultimate guide essentially written by an experienced birth partner for birth partners to be. Whether you’re supporting a birth for the very first time or you’re an experienced Doula you will benefit from taking some time out to read this book.

From my experience, I’ve found that electronic libraries and bookshop shelves seem to be flooded with resources dedicated to expectant mothers, but there is limited material in comparison for birth partners. Sallyann’s aim behind this guide was to create a resource that supported couples in the labour room.

By providing birth partners with the right preparation and knowledge, Sallyann noticed that the support she offered resulted in more positive pregnancy, birth and post natal experiences. Sallyann effortlessly breaks down the journey of birth, covering topics such as birth locations, hormones, safety words, dilations, positions, birth plans, birth management and preparing for the postnatal period. The book provides expectant parents and partners with the confidence and up to date knowledge needed to achieve a positive birth, not only for the mother or birth parent but for everyone involved.

Sallyann manages to inform her readers of all the options available to them, whilst covering multiple scenarios and how to handle changes that may arise. Her ability to pair each chapter with real-life personal experiences and stories bring the chapters to life, as well as supplying very useful bite sized recap points which are great for birth partners to easily access.

As a Doula, reading this book made me reflect on the ways in which I currently support my clients and how I can improve on this to ensure that they feel as safe and as comfortable as can be. Sallyann developed an acronym ‘P.R.O.T.E.C.T.S’ which stands for Positions, Refreshments, Oxytocin, Timing, Environment, Calm, Touch and SIlence. Each word highlighted in this acronym is a quick way to somewhat checklist that you’ve covered every aspect of your role as a birth partner and it remains relevant in all types of birth.

Sally Ann dedicated an entire chapter to ‘The Birth Partner’. Whilst specifically reading through this chapter I was reminded of the power of just being present which can be so easily overlooked; sometimes words are not needed, just simply being present is enough. I find myself encouraging my clients to believe in themselves and believe in their bodies. As birth partners we need to remind them of this, whether that’s in the language that we use, or by confidently encouraging them to allow their bodies to naturally go with the flow.  Sallyann also reminded me of the importance of trusting a mother or pregnant person’s instinct as it’s very rarely wrong.

Overall, I would highly recommend The Labour of Love. It’s an easy read that I didn’t want to put down. The book itself has the perfect balance of antenatal education combined with birthing reality. The mixture of diagrams, acronyms and charts were very informative too.  By truly understanding the needs of a woman or birthing person, whether those needs are emotional or physical, we can all work together to create the most beautiful and positive birthing experience possible. By reading this book I believe this even more.

Book Review by Rahima Ahmed (Riri The Doula) www.ririthedoula.com

Read a (birth) book day!

Enjoy some of Nurturing Birth’s top doula book recommendations!

Fancy settling yourself down with a good read? Wanting to know what pregnancy or birth book to treat yourself with? Thinking of expanding your doula library? Look no further – Nurturing Birth has gathered a list of some utterly gorgeous books that every doula and doula client deserves to enjoy.

Illustrated books

Loads of people find wordy books hard to access, so having some fun and informative illustrative options in your collection can be a brilliant way to help to share those vital birth messages.

The Food of Love and Bump

Front covers and The Food of Love, Bump and an inside page.

Cartoonist and author Kate Evans has created two wonderful books, “Bump”, about pregnancy and birth, and “The Food of Love”, a book about breastfeeding. Both are delightfully drawn and packed with excellent, high quality and detailed information. Kate Evans manages to really delve into the physiology of birth and breastfeeding, explaining how we can best support our bodies, and how birth and breastfeeding really work, while remaining judgement-free and supportive of everyone’s individual decisions.

“Bump” and “The Food of Love” are books for adults, but they’re also a lovely way to teach children and teenagers about birth and breastfeeding. Plus they make amazing coffee table books to just casually leave there when someone who needs to know more pops round!

Kate’s books are available from her website, cartoonkate.co.uk.

The Princess and the Poo

Princess and the Poo front cover and inside image.

We also love the delightful cartoon book, “The Princess and the Poo” by Lara FairyLove, and published by AIMS. This attractive little book is written for children, helping them to understand the normality of birth and the importance of undisturbed birth. If every boy and girl read “The Princess and the Poo” in their childhood, they’d be introduced to the understanding that birth is a process that they don’t need to be afraid of. Perhaps it would start to counter some of the negative media images that they’re all exposed to as they grow.

Birth In Focus

Three-photo montage from Birth IN Focus. First photo, woman in homebirth pool having a back massage from a girl of around 10 years. Second photo, baby's head just emerging. Third photo, new parents look at their newborn baby.

During Becky Reed’s lifetime as a midwife she collected hundreds of inspiring photographs, some of which (with permission!) she has collated into her book, “Birth in Focus”.  The book illustrates many different types of birth, home, caesarean, water, twin, breech. As well as the beautiful photos, “Birth in Focus” shares the birth story that went with the picture, from the perspective of the mother and the midwife. “Birth in Focus” can be purchased from Pinter and Martin or you can contact Becky directly on 07843282951 for a signed copy.

Books about birth

Labour of Love

We particularly love “Labour of Love – The ultimate guide to being a birth partner” by Sallyann Beresford. This is a wonderful book to share with the birth partners of doula clients, as well as being invaluable for all doulas, too. Sallyann’s unique and wonderful angle is to help birth partners to understand what they need to know. There really isn’t another book like this!

Parenting books

Kiss Me and My Child Won’t Eat

Two books by the same author, Carlos Gonzalez, are spectacularly helpful parenting books. “Kiss Me” is a book that honours the child, supporting parents to move away from the authoritarian styles that they’re likely to have been raised with themselves, and shares vital tools to successfully break the mould.

His other book, “My Child Won’t Eat” is the book every parent of a picky toddler or child needs to read. He points out that the health benefits of eating broccoli through one’s life is well proven, so our job as a parent is to ensure that our children are not put off eating broccoli, rather than forcing them to eat it and ensuring they won’t touch it in adulthood!

“My Child Won’t Eat” provides helpful tools and ideas to help parents to feel confident in their children’s diet, and can be a wonderful book for doulas to share with clients who are starting to prepare for weaning.

Books for delving deeper

The Politics of Breastfeeding and Complimentary Feeding

“The Politics of Breastfeeding” by Gabrielle Palmer is one of those life-changing books that you can’t un-see. If you have any inclination to better understand the history, politics and current reality of how businesses undermine breastfeeding, “The Politics of Breastfeeding” is the book for you. Gabrielle also wrote the must-read book, “Complimentary Feeding: Nutrition, Culture and Politics”, which extends the discussion past breastfeeding and into the ways that the manufacturers of baby foods and foods marketed at young children have influenced our understanding of the needs of this group – in ways which are far more beneficial to their pockets than our babies.

Why Human Rights in Childbirth Matter

“Why Human Rights in Childbirth Matter” by Rebecca Schiller is another must-read for those wishing to understand who is running this most intimate part of our lives, and why. This small book, from the “Why it Matters” range by Pinter and Martin, helps us to understand why our rights in pregnancy and birth may be taken from us if we don’t know we have them, and what still needs to be done to make birth better.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think? Do let us know how you enjoyed them, and what you love that’s on your bookshelf on our social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nurturingbirthdoulas

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurturing_birth/

Nurturing Birth Book Review: The AIMS Guide to Twin Pregnancy and Birth

Book review by Lucy Bennett

Front cover of The AIMS Guide to Twin Pregnancy and Birth

The AIMS Guide to Twin Pregnancy and Birth by Rebecca Freckleton is available from AIMS for £8.

The AIMS Guide to Twin Pregnancy and Birth should be a go-to read for those who are expecting multiples as well as for maternity professionals who seek to support multiple births. I went into this book with a fairly thorough understanding of the anatomy and physiology of singleton birth but a ridiculously basic understanding of twin pregnancy and birth. I understood the difference between identical and non identical twin pregnancies, however I never knew that you could have more than one amniotic sac or placentas. This is just one of the many things that I learnt that we should all know!

From what I have seen so far during my doula journey, the language around, attitude to and view of the pregnancy and birth of multiples is extremely negative and scaremongering. This includes people’s expectations of twin birth as well as how parents will cope with the prospect of raising multiples. The AIMS Guide to Twin Pregnancy and Birth doesn’t do this. It provides information in a non-biased, non-scaremongering, non-judgemental way which I would like to not only applaud but encourage more in further maternal texts, especially those surrounding multiple births. This is even discussed in the book as a topic of conversation: The concept that people can be intentionally and non-intentionally scaremongering in their language or approach. Faults in the system are addressed, not ignored!

The way that the information is presented is so accessible in so many ways, and supports different learning styles. The author, Rebecca Freckleton, translates complex medical jargon into bite-sized, digestible, simple language, including statistics that are there to state facts in a way that is straight talking and to the point. There are accessible visual resources like tables, graphs and diagrams to clearly display statistics, the positioning of the babies, internal anatomy and so on.

An example of when these various formats have been beneficial to my learning is that the different types of twin pregnancies are colour coordinated. Therefore, if the reader only needs information on a certain situation it is easily picked out of a longer piece of prose.

These different options for consuming information means that people who struggle with large academic texts can find what they need with ease, referring to this book as a quick reference guide to answer burning questions. At the end of each chapter, and as a huge list at the end of the book, there is a myriad of reliable, evidence based resources and sign posts with information, contacts, support systems and further research. There is also an appendix which includes definitions of birth professionals’ roles and responsibilities as well as specialist hospitals that support multiple births.

I have noticed that a lot of maternity books are quick to lay out all of the symptoms you may experience but then not address how they can be supported or eased. The AIMS Guide to Twin Pregnancy and Birth doesn’t just lay out symptoms and compare it to that of ‘singletons’ but also clearly shows solutions or remedies for the pregnant woman or person to try.

Another key thought that stuck out in my mind in terms of what I know about twins is that I know of incidences where one of the babies is stillborn and I wondered if and how the book would address the topic of baby loss. Thankfully, the book has a whole section on this topic, addressed with the greatest sensitivity but also acknowledging that there are other books and resources that would have a deeper, more thorough conversation and I greatly respected AIMS for that.

Overall, I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone, but especially birth professionals! I have read thirteen books from AIMS and will continue to buy anything they publish. It is great knowing that by buying from their website, it is going directly to a great cause as well!

Lucy Bennett is a Nurturing Birth doula. Her Nurturing Birth Directory profile is here.

www.lucybennett.info

@informedbodies on Instagram

Email: [email protected]

Nurturing Birth Book Review: Why Baby Loss Matters

Book Review by Michelle Every

Front cover of Why Baby Loss Matters. The cover is light blue, and has the title in a white box. Underneath are images of people within teardrops.

“Why baby loss matters”, by Kay King, is available from Pinter and Martin for £8.99

I had a personal interest in reading this book as Kay was my mentee a long time ago and someone who supported families locally to me. She attended my workshop ‘Supporting Every Birth’ which explores supporting clients through loss. I am so grateful to Kay for writing this book and adding this subject to the “Why It Matters” series.

The title was one that I wholeheartedly agree with. Baby loss matters. Each individual story matters.

I have been supporting families through baby loss for 18 years. I volunteered with The Miscarriage Association for 15 years and as a doula I offered my services to those experiencing loss and to those who were pregnant after a previous loss.

Supporting loss has been a huge part of my life.

So it was with these years of experience and compassion that I read Kay’s book.

I read the book intentionally in one sitting. I carved out a day and mindfully read each chapter. I am glad I did it this way as I appreciated the flow from one chapter to the next. The topics were in a helpful order and the content deeply meaningful. The choice of the chapter headings were useful and made sense to me. You could choose to dip in and out of the book as there is a helpful index at the back but it is not a quick or light read. This book deserves attention, commitment and time.

I appreciated Kay’s bio with her photo. She shares that she is a doula and birth activist and Grief Recovery Method specialist. She adds an author’s note sharing the choices she made around using inclusive language and incorporating all types of loss. This may make this book difficult to read for some bereaved families so it is appropriate to have such an explanation before the book begins.

This leads nicely into her introduction where she shares her hopes for the book. Her passion to put loss into conversations, to validate people’s loss stories, for excellent care, support and respectful exchange sings out. This book was written after Kay listened to 190 bereaved families. Their stories helped to shape the content and message.

In her introduction, Kay addresses the bereaved parent, saying, “I hope this book offers you the chance to remember your child, to reconnect to the hopes and expectations that you had for the life ahead of them….I hope you feel recognised and less alone”

She addresses birth workers saying “I hope that this book acts to remind us, as birth workers, that loss is part of what we sign up to when we come to this precious and priviledged work of holding space for women.”

And she expresses a third hope for the book “I hope this book amplifies the incredible work of organisations and services that strive every day to support the needs of those living with loss.”

As the book unfolds Kay speaks to the bereaved (“I see you”) and at other times to the birth worker (“What matters is that we keep showing up.”) As I read through the book I wondered if two books would have been helpful – “Why baby loss matters” for the families and “Why baby loss matters to birth workers”. The interchanging focus on parent and birth worker could become a distraction or hindrance to the message being conveyed. I would be interested to hear the views of those who have suffered loss or birth workers. Would they appreciate a book dedicated to them?

The chapters contain information, explanations, advice and case studies where parents share their own stories. This format works well.

The different types of loss are explored, the support that can be accessed is shared and the message of you matter and your baby loss matters threads throughout each page. 

I was delighted to see that Kay speaks about the 4th trimester as many who experience baby loss do not feel permission to consider it. Kay addresses this beautifully. Personally I found the ‘What to do’ lists in this chapter a little too directive but the compassion with which it is shared is evident.

There is a useful list of resources and organisations at the back of the book for further support and learning.

I am glad I invested time in reading this book. The content was familiar but it was written in a refreshing way that focused on the importance of seeing, hearing and supporting those who experience baby loss. My own story was validated.

Michelle Every is the mentor facilitator for Nurturing Birth. She wrote and facilitates Supporting Every Birth, a workshop exploring baby loss. She is married, has five kids and is looking forward to becoming a Nonna early next year.
Her favourite place is swimming in the sea.

Nurturing Birth Book Review: Understanding Babies: How engaging with your baby’s movement development helps build a loving relationship

Book Review by Ruth Patel

Understanding Babies: How engaging with your baby’s movement development helps build a loving relationship by Ania Witkowska is available from Pinter and Martin for £9.99

I am a mum to three very different kids, who had three very different birth experiences and grew up with their own varying temperaments and needs. Therefore I was interested to come to this book and to see through what lens the author gazed upon the early days. The book was published in 2021, sadly after the death of its author, Ania. The term ‘mother’ is used throughout this book to refer to the birthing parent.

What is woven within the pages of this book is a tender narrative of baby’s attachment, development, observations, play, links to you and their surroundings, what you can do as a parent to nurture and encourage their sense of self and how you as a parent can feel confident and equipped to navigate the early days.

Ania Witkowska is a movement specialist whose work has looked at what a baby needs in order to thrive, as well as how parents you can tune into their baby’s needs and development so they can ‘feel more joy and less anxiety.’

The book covers five key areas including emotional regulation, love, movement, play and day to day. Throughout each chapter, she details how you and your baby may feel and your needs in this particular area.

Each chapter has an accompanying mp3 guided session which can be downloaded at www.pinterandmartin.com/understanding-babies.  These are somatic awareness exercises and movements to help you notice what is going on in your body and thoughts. Going through these guided sessions made me feel supported, created a restorative space in my busy day and gave me permission to feel and notice what was going in on in my body.

I feel she touches on almost every part of the first few months and how you might feel postpartum as a mother. Beginning with “before she can fully engage with the world, your baby has to feel safe and happy simply being in it”, touching on their movements as they pass through their developmental milestones, and ending in when things are a little more difficult. The author gives the reader permission to feel all the feelings that a new mother can experience.

I particularly enjoyed the part on how your baby notices their surroundings and the permission it gives to parents to let their babe be mindful of simple experiences such as looking around, the attention on a certain object, the tight squeezing of a finger. Ania asserts that all these things develop their brain, development and attachment to the caregiver. My own babies used to fixate on certain objects in a room, picture frames, wall lights, the wind outside, and I would always think “I wonder what they’re thinking?”

This book began by looking at baby’s emotional regulation and ends with emotional regulation of the mother. I love that. In order to regulate our babies, we need to regulate ourselves. Understanding oneself and our emotions and how to regulate our emotions, is a huge life skill that is invaluable.

 The emotional resource checklist that Ania includes asks such important questions about emotional regulation. A far cry from the form the midwife gives you asking questions such as “have you felt overwhelmed…depressed… unable to cope” and then leaves you in that place saying oh your score is ok, I’ll leave you to it. How about asking some of these questions, “what usually helps you feel better when you feel stressed or overwhelmed?” “Do you know what specific help to ask for when you’re feeling X” (rather than just a general ‘I need help’). One reads Ania’s book and feels supported and gently encouraged; validated as a mother with all the feelings that come with the role.

Throughout Ania’s book her aim is to guide you and give you confidence through the early days of parenting, helping you trust your instincts and connect with them.   If you would like to be gently reassured about parenting, then this book is for you. My only criticism is that the chapters are rather long, but well worth making some time to go through! Remember, as Ania says:

“The journey is as much about us as it is about our babies”

Ruth Patel is a doula based in Shropshire and was trained by Nurturing Birth. She has a special interest in maternal wellbeing and alongside her doula work, runs a post natal support group locally. She can be found @yourbirthmaid and www.yourbirthmaid.co.uk

Nurturing Birth Book Review: When Breastfeeding Sucks

Book review by Leia Basko

Front cover image of When Breastfeeding Sucks by Zainab Yate. The cover is bright pink. It has the image of a crying eye next to the image of a breast dripping milk.

When Breastfeeding Sucks, by Zainab Yate, is available from Pinter and Martin as a printed book for £12.99, or on Kindle for £7.99: https://www.pinterandmartin.com/when-breastfeeding-sucks

I chose this book because I’ve become a very passionate advocate for breastfeeding and breastfeeding support and wanted to better understand some issues women face. This was a really interesting book about breastfeeding aversion centred around a woman’s experience; an issue that has not been widely discussed or studied.  Whilst reading this book I recognised some patterns of moderate aversion in my own breastfeeding journey which has helped me to understand and process what I have found challenging.

The beginning of the book describes aversion as a multilayered issue that affects women in many different ways.  She writes about the different symptoms and the spectrum of aversion, as well as how hormones, specifically oxytocin and others related to a woman’s menses, and sleep deprivation can contribute to aversion.  She introduces the word ‘skinship’ which is a mix of the words ‘skin’ and ‘friendship’ and describes the “interaction through skin contact that builds love or closeness”. (pg. 18) This word appears quite frequently in the book and is quite useful in explaining the dynamic relationship that is breastfeeding.  It also was used to describe the ways in which it can contribute to aversion and feelings of being ‘touched-out’ or trapped in motherhood.

The chapters are organised in a way that makes it easy to understand aversion from various different angles. What resonates is the third part of the book where she dives into greater detail around biology and society. She elaborates on a common theme in modern day mothering which is that expectations rarely meet our realities and as a consequence we suffer from a wide range of mental health problems. Throughout the 20th century there was a lot of conditioning away from the biological norm of mothering and breastfeeding, which has set the tone for subsequent generations of unrealistic expectations and normal infant behaviours. A confusion that commercial marketing has capitalised on.  She touches upon the loss of community, the prevailing attitude of individualism and self-sovereignty in today’s western society that doesn’t value the role of being a mother.  This contributes to the pressure we feel to be ‘someone’, that being a mother isn’t enough, and in turn leaves us feeling disillusioned and ill prepared for the restrictions of breastfeeding. 

Another concept she introduces, that I’d never come across before, is the polyvagal theory of the social nervous system which suggests that our behaviour and health are impacted by our social circumstances (pg.127).  Basically, we are affected by other peoples’ perception of the situation; we look to other people to help assess the situation and if they are similar to what we are feeling we feel a sense of relief.  This can be beneficial, for instance when one is in a breastfeeding support group and we can receive reassurance from other women.  But it can also have adverse effects when our babies start mirroring the emotions of our aversion. They become more needy and clingy, therefore leading to a positive feedback loop that exacerbates aversion. 

In the fourth and final part of the book, Yate writes about the psychology behind aversion and how a lot of time post natal depression and anxiety are often misdiagnosed and confused with breastfeeding aversion.  She notes the importance of fully understanding your symptoms before devising a treatment plan. What I liked most in this part of the book was her chapter on ways to alleviate aversion which focuses on preventative care.  She provides a chart on ‘Navigating Aversion’ which first helps you to understand where your aversion is coming from. It then goes on to discuss elements to alleviate your feeling of aversion, exploring concepts such as expectations, diet and hydration, mindfulness and sleep hygiene. She even mentions the importance of a healthy microbiome with more research indicating the large role it plays in our behaviours.

Yate states that “Aversion itself isn’t necessarily the problem: it can be an indicator of other problems, though what these are will vary” (pg. 174).  I think this was an interesting concept after discussing the symptoms of aversion, that aversion could actually be the symptom. Taking a look at your mind, body and lifestyle in a holistic way can help you not only alleviate breastfeeding aversion but help with your overall health and wellbeing.  Of course, she recognises that this isn’t always possible or that simple and some people have traumas they have to work through which can make finding solutions to aversion more difficult. 

One small part of the book that I found could potentially cause confusion was where she parallels breastfeeding toddlers with addictive behaviours.  Whilst I understand her argument of breastfeeding being more than just milk, and babies can have a dependency of sorts, I think that it could be an unhelpful and slightly confusing parallel without going deeper into the psychology of addiction.  I think there is a large majority of people, and cultures,  that don’t understand the complexities of addictive behaviours and this misunderstanding could potentially contribute to the idea that toddlers can become addicted to breastfeeding. This could lead to the discontinuation of breastfeeding past a certain age when we know that natural weaning happens anywhere between the ages of 2 to 7 years.

Overall, I found this book to be very insightful with a lot of really good information and tips that I can apply to my own life and to those that I will help in the future.  I think this book went beyond breastfeeding aversion and asked us to be honest with ourselves and attempt to strip away the decades of conditioning that tells us who we should be and how we should mother.  Furthermore, with the ever increasing studies looking at human lactation, we will hopefully one day have a better understanding of the issues faced not only by women but by everyone who chooses to embark on this journey. I would definitely recommend this book to a client that was experiencing aversion and I think it could also be useful in helping women prepare for breastfeeding and ultimately avoiding aversion.

Leia Basko is a Nurturing Birth doula and trainee breastfeeding counsellor