A - Z For a Healthy Pregnancy and Natural Childbirth

by Jacky Bloemraad de-Boer, AuthorHouse Publishing, November 13, 2007.

GIVE YOUR BABY THE BEST START IN LIFEIn my years of experience, I have developed a holistic way of assisting couples with their pregnancies. My treatments and advice combine Eastern and Western medical knowledge as well as traditional and complementary health techniques. With this in mind, I have formulated an 'A to Z' with solutions for common pregnancy complaints and some fundamental pregnancy and childbirth information. This book will help you make informed choices, allowing you to play an active role in your pregnancy and labour. It is packed with wonderful self-help advice, is easy to use, and is a vital resource for both pregnant women and their caregivers.Proceeds from this book are going towards financing a clinic for pregnant mothers and young babies in rural South Africa. This will create a place where rural women can receive essential advice and support for healthier pregnancies and safer childbirth.

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Aqua Yoga

By Carol. Beck; (Drake Publishers, 1976.)

A new, modern approach for those who know, or want to know, the delights of the water and the gentle, easy, health-giving movements of water yoga. The natural stretching and holding movements of hatha yoga bring glowing health and youthful suppleness to your body and peace and serenity to your mind. The exercises contained here have been modified so that most of them can be done in shallow water by swimmers, young and old alike.

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Birth & Sex: The Power and the Passion

by Sheila Kitzinger, Pinter & Martin Ltd. Publishers, January 16, 2013.

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 sex during and after pregnancy, during motherhood and the sexuality of birth.

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Birth Crisis

by Sheila Kitzinger. (Routledge; 1st edition, July 27, 2006)

When a woman is denied all choice - feels as if she has been swallowed up by a vast machine and spat out at the other end with a baby - how can she come to terms with that ordeal? One new mother in twenty is diagnosed with traumatic stress after childbirth. In Birth Crisis, Sheila Kitzinger explores the disempowerment and anxiety experienced by these women.

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Birth Reborn. How Childbirth Can Be What Women Want It to Be - and How Mothers and Babies Both Benefit

By Michel Odent (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1984.)

Dr. Odent, a practicing surgeon as well as the head of Pithiviers Maternity Unit for the past twenty years, is an internationally famous childbirth pioneer. This essential and inspiring book for parents and professionals shows the future care of mothers and babies.

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Birth Without Violence, The Book that Revolutionized the Way We Bring Our Children into the World

By Frederick Legoyer, (Ballentine Books, 1990.)

This book examines what birth FEELS like for the baby. Scientific explanations are kept to a minimum, so Leboyer really brings home why it is that babies cry in agony. It's because they are in agony, and Leboyer was one of the first to say it doesn't have to be like that. Indirectly, he may have saved thousands of babies from a life time of unhappiness. In this book one gets to realise what it is like for the baby, he really puts you into their shoes (so to speak). This is a must read. Buy extra copies and give them to your friends who are expecting a baby.

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Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born

By Tina Cassidy

From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we’re born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia but that’s about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why do all cultures--and generations--have their own ideas about childbirth? Cassidy looks at why birth can be so difficult, where women deliver, how the perceptions of midwives and doctors have changed, and the fads of childbirth.

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Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation

By Pam England

This is the book that is electrifying the birth world! The Birthing From Within approach prepares a mother to birth from within. She needs insights into what labor and birth will be like from her perspective, and preparation to be in labor and give birth as a mother. Birthing From Within offers guidance through the emotional, spiritual, psychic and social mists which enshroud birth in our culture. Highlights include: proven pain-coping techniques, inner exploration through journaling and birth art, birth from the father's perspective, how to ask questions and get information, compassionate use of drugs, and spiritual cesarean birth. Discover your own wisdom and birth power: Read Birthing From Within!

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Birthing in the Spirit

by Cathy Daub, Birth Works Press, July 2, 2007.

Many books have been written about the mind and body aspects of birth, but little has been written about the spiritual side of birth. This book is unique in the childbirth literature and introduces a philosophy that can help anyone, including women in birth, to come closer to realizing their full human potential through the practice of human values. An infallible truth about birth is that the knowledge about how to give birth is born within every woman. This means that birth is instinctive and what is instinctive does not need to be taught. Rather, women need to be encouraged to have more trust and faith in their body knowledge that already knows how to give birth. Birthing in the spirit was written to empower birthing women, showing how connecting with the spirit helps birth to become a peak experience, serving as a source of strength during the years of parenting. It was written to help birthing women not be afraid of their own power in labor. It was written for caregivers, doctors, midwives, nurses, and doulas to be more sensitive to the physiological and spiritual needs of a birthing woman. it was written for fathers/partners and anyone in contact with a pregnant woman to realize the importance of keeping her happy during pregnancy, labor, and birth, so she will produce hormones of joy. And finally, it was written so that these hormones of joy can become the first experience of a growing baby.

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Birthwork: A Compassionate Guide to Being With Birth

by Jenny Blyth

‘Birthwork' is an important holistic complement to existing bodies of knowledge about caring for the birthing mother. It is for the professional and non-professional birth worker alike, detailing how we can care compassionately with both a 'thinking mind' and 'feeling heart', through:

• attunement to intuition and instinct


• effective communication


• negotiating relationship


• finding balance in times of stress


• working with labour


• honouring the mother and child


• above all, acknowledging the power of spirit and the ultimate mystery of birth.