This book documents the emergence of doulas as care professionals in Italy, considers their training, practices, and representation, and analyses their role in national and international context. Doulas offer emotional, informational and practical support to women and their families during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. Pamela Pasian explores the development of this ‘new’ profession and how doulas are defining their space in the Italian maternity care system. Whilst doulas are gaining recognition they are also facing opposition. The book reflects on the conflicts and collaborations between doulas and midwives, as well as relations between different doula associations. Interweaving ethnography and autoethnography, it will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and those working in health and maternity care.

This cross-disciplinary collection considers the intersection of affect and mothering, with the aim of expanding both the experiential and theoretical frameworks that guide our understanding of mothering and of theories of affect. It brings together creative, reflective, poetic, and theoretical pieces to question, challenge, and re-conceptualize mothering through the lens of affect, and affect through the lens of mothering. The collection also aims to explore less examined mothering experiences such as failure, disgust, and ambivalence in order to challenge normative paradigms and narratives surrounding mothers and mothering. The authors in this collection demonstrate the theoretical and practical possibilities opened up by a simultaneous consideration of affect and mothering, thereby broadening our understanding of the complexities and nuances of the always changing experiences of world-making.

This book is the first major ethnography of Baloch midwives in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Balochistan province, it shows how dhīnabogs/dheenabogs (Baloch midwives ranging in age from about 30 to 80) and their dhīnabogirī (midwifery) aid women and their kin through labor and postpartum recovery. Its chapters show how Baloch midwives’ forms and ethics of care have persisted, despite nearly two centuries of British colonial policies and the subsequent disparaging official views regarding South Asian Indigenous midwives, commonly known as dāīs, in both postcolonial India and Pakistan. Through their continued presence and effective uses of their traditional medicine, Baloch midwives contain, mediate, and offer a powerful critique of women’s iatrogenic suffering caused by unnecessary biomedical interventions. Through a nuanced analysis of Baloch midwives' ethical approach to caring for women, and their responses to the exigencies of women’s health, this book demonstrates why over a century of state efforts to modernize and biomedicalize childbirth practices have failed to convince the majority of Baloch women in Balochistan to give birth in hospitals. They instead prefer home births and the midwifery care from the dhīnabogs whom they trust. This book will not only be of interest to scholars and students in anthropology, medical humanities, public health, sociology, gender and women’s studies, gender and medical history, South Asia studies, and global health studies, but also to those in the midwifery and the nursing profession. It will also be of interest to non-academic readers wishing to learn about midwives in South Asia and anyone interested in reading about traditional medicine and midwives who practice outside of European and North American cultural contexts.

This classic book, first published in 1992 and again in 2003, has inspired three generations of childbearing people, birth activists and researchers, and birth practitioners—midwives, doulas, nurses, and obstetricians—to take a fresh look at the "standard procedures" that are routinely used to "manage" American childbirth. It was the first book to identify these non-evidence-based obstetric interventions as rituals that enact and transmit the core values of the American technocracy, thereby answering the pressing question of why these interventions continue to be performed despite all evidence to the contrary. This third edition brings together Davis-Floyd's insights into the intense ritualization of labor and birth and the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic models of birth with new data collected in recent years.

This book provides a theoretically and empirically grounded examination of the struggle for maternity care in contemporary Russia, framed by changes to the healthcare system and the roles of its participants after socialism. The chapters consider multiple perspectives and interactions between women and professionals and the structural and institutional pressures they face when striving for better conditions and treatment. Russian maternity care is characterized by the vivid mix of legacy of Soviet paternalism and medicalization, bureaucratic principles of state regulation (with high level of centralization and lack of professional autonomy) and global neoliberal tendencies. Maternity care professionals have to satisfy not only the growing needs and demands of women, but also deal with increasing state regulative control, market demands and new professional standards of care. Navigating these multiple and various challenges, maternity providers have to perform in multiple roles, bridge the organizational gaps and inconsistencies. Thus, the field of struggle for good care becomes not only professional, but political one. Highlighting the opportunities and barriers for good care in the context of post-socialist Russia, this book will be of particular interest to medical anthropologists and sociologists as well as midwives and other health professionals.

What happens when people are reduced to products? By pulling back the clinical curtain on the multi-billion-dollar per year global egg industry, that is the central question Eggonomics seeks to address. Tracing the emotional and physical journeys egg donors embark upon as suppliers of valuable commodities, this book reveals uncomfortable realities at the heart of the industry. Donors — and the eggs they provide — are absolutely essential to helping others create the families of their dreams. But not all clinics treat their donors as well as their paying patients, and many donors suffer as a result. Technological innovations allow the egg donation industry to expand, fueling the private equity incursion into fertility medicine, turning once-private clinics into highly profitable, multinational conglomerates. Drawing upon international anthropological fieldwork, Eggonomics reveals the clinical spaces where egg donor’s bodies are tested, prodded, and poked for ever-increasing sums of profit, eugenic forces drive donor selection, and the unrelenting pressures of global capitalism threaten medicine’s prime directive of ‘do no harm.’ Timely, meticulously researched, and written with surgical precision, Eggonomics is a crucial read for researchers, medical professionals, policymakers, and anyone considering becoming or using an egg donor.

This book contextualizes how having a doula, or labor-support woman, present during childbirth results in lower rates of medical interventions. American women are inundated with views that childbirth is inherently risky, their bodies deficient, and therefore encouraged to accept the medicalized nature of childbirth resulting in high rates of unwarranted interventions that can pose significant risk in a normal pregnancy. Why is birthing with a doula different? The narratives in this book support the belief that doulas often question the high rates of medical interventions in childbirth, fundamentally lodging a critique about the medicalization of childbirth to the women they serve. These stories share a very different philosophy about childbirth; one where the female body is capable, resilient, and not normally requiring external medical intervention. Doulas enter into a care-provider relationship that focuses on the experience of the birth as something transformative, to be honored and centered on the woman’s body in an active role in the process. Lastly, doulas model to their clients both love and advocacy because doulas believe that modeling these behaviors will translate as women become mothers through the process of childbirth.

This book presents the contemporary history and dynamics of Mexican midwifery - professional, (post)modern or autonomous, traditional and Indigenous - as profoundly political and embedded in differing societal stratifications. By situated politics, the authors refer to various networks, spaces and territories, which are also constructed by the midwives. By politically situated, the authors refer to various intersections, unsettled relations and contexts in which Mexican midwives are positioned. Examining Mexican midwiferies in depth, the volume sharpens the focus on the worlds in which midwives are profoundly immersed as agents in generating and participating in movements, alliances, health professions, communities, homes, territories and knowledges. The chapters provide a complex panorama of midwives in Mexico with an array of insights into their professional and political autonomy, (post)coloniality, body-territoriality, the challenges of defining midwifery, and above all, into the ways in which contemporary Mexican midwiferies relate to a complex set of human rights. The book will be of interest to a range of scholars from anthropology, sociology, politics, global health, gender studies, development studies, and Latin American studies, as well as to midwives and other professionals involved in childbirth policy and practice.

With Mindful Birthing, Nancy Bardacke, nurse-midwife and mindfulness teacher, lays out her innovative program for pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond. Drawing on groundbreaking research in neuroscience, mindfulness meditation, and mind/body medicine, Bardacke offers practices that will help you find calm and ease during this life-changing time, providing lifelong skills for healthy living and wise parenting. SOME OF THE BENEFITS OF MINDFUL BIRTHING: Increases confidence and decreases fear of childbirth Taps into deep inner resources for working with pain Improves couple communication, connection, and cooperation Provides stress-reducing skills for greater joy and wellbeing