Based on the hit documentary that inspired a vibrant online community, this innovative approach to birthing shows women how to maximize childbirth's emotional and physical rewards. With more than 4 million babies born in the United States each year, too many women experience birth as nothing more than a routine or painful event. In her much-praised film Orgasmic Birth, acclaimed filmmaker Debra Pascali-Bonaro showed that in fact childbirth is a natural process to be enjoyed and cherished. Now she joins forces with renowned author and activist Elizabeth Davis to offer an enlightening program to help women attain the most empowering and satisfying birth experience possible. While an orgasmic birth can, for some, induce feelings of intense, ecstatic pleasure, it is ultimately about taking control of one's own body and making the most informed decisions to have a safe, memorable, and joyful birth day. Whether women choose to give birth at home, in a hospital, or in a birthing center, Orgasmic Birth provides all the necessary tools and guidance to design the birth plan that's best for them. Featuring inspiring stories from mothers and their partners and filled with practical advice and solutions, this one-of-a-kind resource is the next frontier of natural, intimate childbirth.

Nurturing Beginnings takes you through a new mother's journey and into your own as you explore what it means to be "in service of a postpartum woman and her family." It is a step by step instruction manual for postpartum doulas in their work with new families. Nurturing Beginnings was one of the first comprehensive postpartum training manuals and is on the current DONA International Reading List for Postpartum Doulas. Chapters include: The Role of The Doula, Home Visiting, Providing Care with Caution: Protecting Health & Safety in The Home & Car, Honoring Postpartum Women and Teaching Self-Care, Easing Postpartum Adjustment, Appreciating Your Clients' Cultural Diversity by Karen Salt, Supporting The Breastfeeding Mother (Donna Williams & Opal Horvat Advisors) Newborn Basics: Appearance, Behavior, and Care, Offering Support to Partners and Siblings, Unexpected Outcomes: Caring for The Family at a Time of Loss, Nurturing Yourself by Carlita Reyes, Pursuing Professional Development and Building Your Practice plus poems by Maureen Cannon and "A Doula Speaks" writings from the authors adding insights to the chapters. Revisions and contributions to the updated version were made by Leah DeCesare and contributions by leaders in the field who permitted us to reprint their previously published work include Penny Simkin, Marshall Klaus, John H. Kennell, Cathy Romeo, and William Sears. Nurturing Beginnings has a tremendous amount of links and resources valuable to birthworkers of varying levels of experience. We hope you enjoy reading Nurturing Beginnings and making it a valuable tool amongst your birth resources.

Experienced doula, Linsey Bliss, shows you how to prepare physically and mentally for every element of having a child, from pregnancy to fourth trimester in The Doula's Guide to Empowering Your Birth. Lindsey Bliss, who has assisted as a doula at hundreds of births and is herself a mother of seven, reveals here all the wisdom and advice that doulas share with the new mothers who hire them. The Doula's Guide to Empowering Your Birth covers the period from pregnancy through labor and birth to fourth trimester healing. The focus, however, is on preparing for birth--including topics like how to pick the right childbirth class and the right birthing method. You’ll also see how to assemble the team of professionals, family members, and friends who will support you through labor and birth, and how to approach last-minute decisions about pain medications and cesarean sections. Bliss's tone throughout is at once authoritative and confident as well as warm and encouraging. Her concern in her practice as well as in these pages is to listen to and help secure each new mom's own personal vision of a birthing experience that is safe, fulfilling, and meaningful.

The classic book on home birth. Stories of the experiences of parents and midwives during the birth process plus a technical manual for midwives, nurses, and doctors. Includes information on prenatal care and nutrition, labor, delivery techniques, care of the new baby, and breast-feeding.

Since the first edition went to press in 1989, there have been many important developments concerning different aspects of maternity care. To take account of these, much needs to be added to this history. Late 1989 saw the publication of the double volume set of studies, Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, in which all the then existing evidence on all the associated procedures was considered and evaluated by well-informed and impartial authors representing many countries. This informative collection has since been followed by a flow of single reports of new research findings about specific subjects within the field. To incorporate the new material has involved, in particular, a consider able enlargement and rearrangement of the text and reference lists for Chapters 3 and 4, which deal with antenatal and intranatal care. Then in 1990-1 the House of Commons Health Committee, under its chairman Nicholas Winterton, undertook a further enquiry into the maternity services in Britain. A wide range of people concerned as pro viders or users of the service, as well as researchers concerned to find out how well the service was meeting needs, chose to submit testi monies, written and oral. These testimonies were all later published in six volumes which offered a most valuable depiction of the maternity service from many points of view.

The authors bring pregnant women and their partners this potent brew of tips and techniques for intimacy and great sex.

'Fetus ejection reflex, 'milk ejection reflex, 'Sperm ejection reflex, 'Orgasmogenic cocktail'... These are examples of terms used by Michel Odent in his study of the ecstatic/orgasmic states associated with different episodes of human sexual life.

An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children. Sarah Buckley might be called a third-wave natural birth advocate. A doctor and a mother, she approaches the question of how a woman and baby might have the most fulfilling birth experience with respect for the wisdom of both medical science and the human body. Using current medical and epidemiological research plus women's experiences (including her own), she demonstrates that what she calls "undisturbed birth" is almost always healthier and safer than high-technology approaches to birth. Her wise counsel on issues like breastfeeding and sleeping during postpartum helps extend the gentle birth experience into a gentle parenting relationship.

Sex and birth are often talked about as contrasting experiences. In fact, when birth is physiological, not medical or surgical, and a woman is free to be spontaneous, endorphins surge into her blood stream in the same way as during sexual excitement. Sheila Kitzinger discusses the sexuality of birth.

Sacred Birthing, Birthing A New Humanity book is my journey as a midwife, and how I was shown that there was more to birthing babies than just that tiny beautiful baby. It is really all about consciousness, not only for the baby, but also for the parents. In the first edition, published in 2003, I just had to write down all the stories, realizations and understanding that was inside me. Then I had to grow up and come of age.As I grew, "What about the baby?" was always my question as I heard birth becoming more and more about medical procedures, technology, drugs and pain. But I kept thinking, what must it feel like to the baby? We need to think about the pristine, delicate, sensitive baby who is experiencing her out-of-the-belly-life for the first time. And so, Soul-Needs, that which upholds a baby's radiance, were honored and highlighted to enunciate this. Babies' Soul-Needs turned everything around and placed the priorities correctly. This makes it clear, for its the baby's birth. Not the moms. We had our own birth. This is our baby's birth, and we are here to do all we can for their birth to be its best. Sacred Birthing Insights are the principles for parent's actions to support their baby's highest birth. These bring parents into coherence with their baby's needs.If we wish to go into a new direction, new choices must be made in order to turn the corner away from the old loop and into new possibilities. This can only be created when we jump out of the box of, birth as it is. Are we able to let go of all its outdated stories? If it is true that there is "a new kind of birth for the Master Souls coming," then we wish to do all we can to implement the softest birth for our baby. By refining our understanding of what each soul needs from us to anchor rightly into life, we can offer what they need by the way we give birth. Our goal is to honor and protect a baby's energetic excellence, so that each is "well-born," and a pristine newborn is received. This is a stepping stone into that new paradigm of birth. Instead of being birthed into pain, what if a baby were born into rushes of bliss? What if joy and gratitude were the feelings mom authentically expresses? What if mom could 'sing out her baby' as a gift to the Earth? There are so many options of love that can cradle your baby on her journey. What it takes is for us to shift the way we think and feel. Our baby's highest birth will take our willingness, and the absolute strength of intention. Are we ready to trust that there is a delicious way to give birth that better supports this baby's life? Are we willing to be in the place of "not knowing how it will happen," but trusting it will? Our Wise-Self and Guardians have been waiting for our request to determine our own higher paradigm of birth. Then as we stand back expectantly, nature will lead the way. And when one of us, and then another, and another creates this higher paradigm of birth, then the hundredth monkey jumps in, and it's real for everyone. It's already happening.