Kategoria BISAC: Health & Fitness >> Pregnancy & Childbirth

As prenatal tests proliferate, the medical and broader communities perceive that such testing is a logical extension of good prenatal care--it helps parents have healthy babies. But prenatal tests have been criticized by the disability rights community, which contends that advances in science should be directed at improving their lives, not preventing them. Used primarily to decide to abort a fetus that would have been born with mental or physical impairments, prenatal tests arguably reinforce discrimination against and misconceptions about people with disabilities.

In these essays,...

In this practical, easy-to-follow guide, obstetrician and fertility expert F. Renee Van DeCarr and Dr. Marc Lehrer M.D. show moms and dads-to-be how to:

-Reduce stress and prepare an optimal prenatal environment

-Follow the stages in a baby s physical and mental growth

-Learn interactive exercises to prepare for your infant s birth

While You are Expecting offers the simple path expectant parents can take that will result in the birth of a calm, intelligent child who already has bonded with the two people who love him most.

Featured on Oprah, Donahue, in Newsweek, Reader...

The bible of cesarean prevention. Wall Street Journal A landmark event, which will change the course of obstetric care by giving parents the informtion they need to make the decisions that are best for their own families. Comprehensive, highly readable, sensitive . . . should be read by everyone who cares about someone. Marian Tompson Director, Alternative Birth Crisis Coalition American Academy of Medicine Required reading for all childbirth professionals and prospective parents. Journal of Gynecological Nursing

As women increasingly seek more humanistic birthing methods than the hospital-based delivery, certified midwife Susanna Napierala suggests that water birth offers mother and infant the ideal circumstances for beginning their lives together. Warm water, explains the author, reduces the hours and stress of labor, offers bodily support and relaxes blood flow, helping to ease the baby's journey. The baby makes its transition to breathing air in a familiar, gentle medium. Avoiding the didactics of ideology, Napierala infuses her eloquent text with answers to commonly-asked questions: How does...

It astounds the western world that such a highly industrialized nation as the Netherlands, with all the resources of modern medicine and technology, has a marked preference for home birth assisted by midwives. Van der Mark examines Dutch attitudes and practices surrounding birth from a sociohistorical point of view, explaining the importance of ideological consensus, the private nature of the Dutch family, the high regard for comfort and well being, and the professional development of midwives as trained and licensed practitioners. This volume will be welcomed by those convinced of the...

Jane Dwinell has written an important book using real-life scenarios to illustrate her unique philosophy of childbirth, one that can only inspire women to take greater control over how and where they give birth. From her vantage point as a birth attendant, Dwinell recounts the moving birth experiences of twenty different women. Thus the reader learns that there are no right or wrong ways to give birth. In fact, the author shows how satisfying it can be for women to exercise their own strength, power and choice in the birth process instead of yielding to unnecessary technological and...

Never mind what you've been through. The baby's here, he's healthy. That's the most important thing, isn't it? Few women planning a pregnancy or anticipating childbirth would dispute that the safe birth of a healthy child is their primary concern. Even when this happy outcome is achieved, however, the process of childbirth itself can wreak havoc on a woman's emotional and physiological well-being--especially when unforeseen medical complications change the expected course of labor and delivery. Rebounding From Childbirth--the first book to focus exclusively on the mother's feelings about a...

Despite our country's affluence and high-tech advances in neonatal intensive care, in 1994 the U.S. ranked twenty-first in infant mortality rates among developed countries with populations over 2.5 million. Women with low-risk pregnancies are frequently failed by the traditional obstetrical system, either because they cannot afford proper prenatal care--and therefore often give birth to babies who need to be assisted by expensive neonatal intensive care--or because the system fosters an attitude of dependency on doctors, surgery and drugs, rather than a sense of empowerment during the...

Each year a new group of couples decides they're ready to have a baby. One thing they all share: the desire to have a healthy baby as quickly as possible. They've done their thinking, they've made their plans, and they want to get pregnant NOW. Fortunately for them, renowned fertility specialist Christopher Williams, M.D., has updated his popular guide, The Fastest Way to Get Pregnant Naturally (nearly 43,000 copies sold), to include all the later findings. Since the first...