my beautiful girl Jarni just turned 3. I have just got home late tonight after a farewell dinner so will get the books on here soon.

Very glad to hear someone esel went from chocolate to 95% during first trimester - my turn now!!

I would like to recommend any book by Franchesca Naish.

She is a well known Australian naturopath and natural fertility expert.

Her books include - "Natural Fertility', "The Natural Way to Better Babies", "The Natural Way to Better Pregnancy and Birth", and "The Natural Way to Better Breastfeeding".

Her work isnt necessarily about 'raw' pregnancy, but more just natural pregnancy methods, nathuropathic advice on pregnancy, nutritional suggestions, and natural methods for both contraception or conception. In "Natural Fertility" she details various methods such as temperature, mucus and lunar cycles for contraception/conception.  In the other 3 books she delves more into acupressure points, birthing positions, pregnancy exercises, herbs, supplements, foods, lifestyle advice, birth plans etc.

In terms of "raw" pregnancy,..  the books by Hygea Halfmoon are said to be good, but I havent personally read them (but want to!).

x  x

I too Sheryl are at the same stage as you!!

My Husband Adam and I are looking at getting pregnant next year and I am looking all over the internet for best nutrtion and birthing programmes.

I have come across are birthing programme called hypnobirth and its a course designed to help you get bubby out easily and peacefully as possible with the least amount of pain. It teaches you how your muscles work and how you and the baby can work together to get him/her out.

Apparently all the women who do this course have wonderful labor/birth experiences and about 90% of women are able to have natural birth.

There is also a great book out called "The mind of your new born baby" by David Chamberlain. It is a fabolous book that looks at the way we have been birthing our children and what effect it has on them. It is an absolute must read. You will never look at birth or pregnancy the same way again

Kimba

We currently have an epidemic of women being told their bodies are not built for birth. Yes they are! 800 million years of evolution has not gone wrong in the last 25 years! The ONLY reasons you would have trouble with your pelvis are:
chronic illness/disability (e.g. rickets)
massive trauma like a car accident - but it would have to be massive trauma and unmended

Twenty years ago, physicians were known to tell women that the reason they had a cesarean was that the child's head was just too big for the size of the pelvis. The trouble began when these same women would stay at home for their next child's birth and give birth to a bigger baby through that same pelvis. This became very embarrassing, and it curtailed this reason being put forward for doing cesareans. What replaced this reason was the post-cesarean statement: "Well, it's a good thing we did the cesarean because the cord was twice around the baby's neck." This is what I've heard a lot of in the past ten years. Doctors must come up with a very good reason for every operation because the family will have such a dreadful time with the new baby and mother when they get home that, without a convincing reason, the fathers would be on the warpath. Just imagine if the doctor said honestly, "Well, Joe, this was one of those times when we jumped the gun—there was actually not a thing wrong with either your baby or your wife. I'm sorry she'll have a six week recovery to go through for nothing." We do know that at least 15 percent of cesareans are unnecessary but the parents are never told. There is a conspiracy among hospital staff to keep this information from families for obvious reasons.

In the 1920s and 1930s the x-ray offered new possibilities directly to measure internal diameters of the pelvis in living, pregnant women (Hiddinga and Blume, 1992). Radiologists began to offer prognoses for labour. Some obstetricians started to view every primigravid woman as an 'untried pelvis'. This attitude led to the introduction of the 'trial of labour', which included close monitoring of progress; a practice that is still being used today. Recently a systematic review of randomised controlled trials suggested that pelvimetry is not justified because the only significant effect is a rise in the caesarean section rate (Pattinson, 1999). No beneficial effect has been shown.

And this quote from a friend "I've lost count of how many women I know that've had caesareans for failure to progress (due to having long labours) or to having large babies or small pelvises, only to go on to give birth to subsequent babies at home with no problems. One woman was told her pelvis was too small as indicated by the pelvimetry, her csection baby was SO tiny and her homebirthed baby was HUGE, 11.5 pounds! Really shattered the "pelvis is too small" belief that her previous ob insisted upon."

Out of 42,793 women who had primary c/s between 1975 and 1990, only *84* of them met the criteria for "true" CPD! Of those 84, 40 underwent a trial of labor with the next pregnancy - 27 delivered vaginally (68%) and 7 (47%) of them actually had bigger babies the second time!

My mother was a tiny little slip of girl and she easily gave birth to me at *lbs(ozs in a small country hospital in 1941.

Today she would have been hard pressed to have a C section.


Joss

Naomi - and anyone else out there planning for a VBAC!

The essential VBAC book is Nancy Wainer Cohen's "Silent Knife" which is on VBAC promotion and caesarean prevention. Also, Henci Goer's "Thinking woman's guide to a better birth" and Diana Korte's "VBAC Companion"

  Meg

Oh and "Birthing from Within" by Pam England - this is very inspirational for VBAC and HBAC (Homebirth after Caesarian) mamas, but is probably one of THE most inspirational reads for anyone who will ever birth!

On that note - would anyone be interested in me compiling a list of useful books for pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, parenting? I am happy to do it, although I warn that it could take some days to put together! I am certainly no expert but I am an avid reader and devourer of information, and I have been passionately supporting women through empowered pregnancy and birth since 1998...