CianeWiki -> PortailNaissance -> Bibliographie

Books in English

  • Birthing Autonomy: Women's Experiences of Planning Home Births''' (Nadine Pilley Edwards)\\London: Routeledge, 2005. ( More info)
As the rate of home births continues to increase, health policymakers are considering the best ways to deliver community-based midwifery services and training in home births for new midwives and obstetricians. In this first qualitative exploration of home births in the UK, Nadine Edwards focuses on women's experiences of planning home births on a hospital birth culture. She looks at how differently the pros and cons of home births are constructed and considered by expectant mothers and by the medical profession. Key questions explored by Edwards are: What do we know? What does she know? How have we got here? What's safe and what's risky? This academically outstanding work is solidly based in feminist theories, and looks at topical issues surrounding empowerment and technomedical culture. A perfect reference for midwives and obstetricians.
  • How to Make Maternal Health Services More Women-friendly: A Pratical Guide''' (Lusaka Women-friendly Services Project, 2001)\\ PDF file (1.1 Mo)
  • A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth''' (Enkin, Murray; Keirse, Marc J.N.C.; Neilson, James; Crowther, Caroline; Duley, Lelia; Hodnett, Ellen; Hofmeyr, Justus)\\Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Achat en ligne\\ Online free version / Version en ligne gratuite
Synthesizes into a single handy volume the conclusions reached by larger publications for use by anyone involved in the care of childbearing women. The first edition was published in 1989; the 1995 second won the British Medical Association's Medical Book Competition for primary care. The third incorporates new findings resulting from continuing research and observation. It covers basic care, screening, pregnancy problems, childbirth, problems during childbirth, techniques of induction and operative delivery, and care after childbirth. References are to the larger works rather than to the primary literature. Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR
  • The Farmer and the Obstetrician''' (Michel Odent)\\London: Free Association Books Limited, 2002. Achat en ligne
Farming and childbirth have been industrialised side by side during the twentieth century - with dramatic and disturbing consequences for the natural world. Drawing on data from a multitude of scientific disciplines, Odent considers the effects of the medicalisation of birth and suggests that the recent disasters seen in the farming world, such as Mad Cow Disease, may hold lessons for our manipulation of birth.
  • Safer Childbirth? A Critical History of Maternity Care' \\L'accouchement plus sécurisé ? Etude historique critique des soins dans les maternités'' (Marjorie Tew)\\London: Chapman & Hall, 1998. Achat en ligne
Addressing the reasons for the dramatic decline (over the last 50 years, in all developed countries) in the deaths of mothers and babies in childbirth, Tew, a medical research statistician, persuasively discredits the medical profession's claims of its own central role via obstetrical management of in-hospital care, and provides evidence that safety in childbirth is primarily a function of the good health of mothers, made possible by rising standards of living and nutrition. (Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.)\\En s'intéressant aux raisons de la diminution spectaculaire de la mortalité maternelle et infantile pendant l'accouchement au cours des cinquante dernières années dans tous les pays industrialisés, Tew, une statiticienne spécialisée en recherche médicale, discrédite de façon convaincante un mythe entretenu par les professions médicales - celui de l'attribution de ces progrès à la gestion obstétricale des naissances en hôpital - et fournit les preuves que la sécurité de l'accouchement dépend en premier lieu de la bonne santé des mères, résultant de meilleures conditions de vie et de nutrition.\\( Résumé en français... et extrait)
  • Obstetric Myths Versus Research Realities - A Guide to the Medical Literature''' (Henci Goer)\\London: Bergin & Garvey, 1995. Achat en ligne
  • The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth''' (Henci Goer)\\New York: Perigee, The Berkley Publishing Group, 1999. Buy it on line!
Read more about this book, including the entire chapter on "Slow Labor" at http://www.efn.org/djz/birth/betterbirth/
  • Homebirth''' (Sheila Kitzinger)\\London: Dorling Kindersley, 1991. Achat en ligne
The essential guide for every woman who wants to choose carefully between birth in hospital, a small GP unit, a birthing room or her own home, written by the leading campaigner for women's rights in childbirth. Sheila Kitzinger's highly informative and sensitively written text is supported by specially commissioned photographs, and quotations and first-hand accounts of women's personal experiences of birth in and out hospital.\\Sheila Kitzinger is a leading authority on women's experiences of pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Over a period of 25 years she has carried out in-depth research into homebirth, antenatal care, birth plans and midwifery. In 1982 she was honoured with the MBE for her service in education for chidbirth. Her many other books in this field include "Pregnancy and childbirth", "The good Birth Guide", "Being born", "Breasfeeding your baby" and "Pregnancy day-by-day".
  • Expecting Trouble: The Myth of Prenatal Care in America''' (Thomas H. Strong)\\New York University Press, 2000. Achat en ligne
Prenatal care in America does not work and much of it lacks a solid scientific base. We spend more for it and provide more of it than any other nation on earth. Yet in return our prematurity and low birthweight rates are among the worst in the world.\\So argues Thomas H. Strong, Jr., a second generation obstetrician whose entire professional career has centered around prenatal care. Expecting Trouble calls into question many of the prevailing assumptions which have driven our country's maternity healthcare for decades.\\While the general understanding of prenatal care as crucial to the wellbeing of mothers and their babies is now enshrined in American culture, Strong draws upon scientific research to show that few procedures are actually as helpful as we imagine. Much of what passes for prenatal care is unduly expensive, unnecessarily high-tech, and surprisingly unsupported by medical research. New - and unproven - technologies are adopted by obstetricians seeking to appear "cutting-edge" in order to attract patients while procedures which could potentially detect problems, such as ultrasound, have taken on the status of fads, becoming virtually ubiquitous in obstetricians' offices rather than remaining in the hands of those specialists who have extensive and proper training.
  • The Scientification of Love''' (Michel Odent)\\London: Free Association Books, 1999. Achat en ligne
The title of this book might have been: "How the capacity to love develops?" Such a simple yet vital question is paradoxically new. Today convincing answers emerge from a combination of data provided by multiple scientific perspectives: it appears that the capacity to love develops early in life and that the period surrounding birth is critical. (Michel Odent)\\( Lire un extrait en français)
  • The Nature of Birth and Breastfeeding''' (Michel Odent)\\Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 1992. Achat en ligne
A pioneer in the chirlbirth movement for 30 years, Odent focuses on birth and breastfeeding and suggests some startling conclusions. His premise is that in order to gain a truer understanding of the human experience, we must examine the way other mammals function during birth, breastfeeding and parenting.
  • Paths to Becoming a Midwife: Getting an Education (Jan Tritten & Joel Southern, eds.)\\Eugene OR: Midwifery Today''', 1998 (2nd edition). Achat en ligne
This book is unique because it does not insist that one path to midwifery is inherently superior. This is a book of many voices, many philosophies...
  • Making Midwives Legal - Childbirth, Medicine, and the Law''' (Raymond DeVries)\\Columbus: Ohio State University, 1996. Achat en ligne
"Cultural analysis" of birth is at once liberating and depressing. Liberating because it offers the knowledge we need to transform birth practices, depressing because the transformation requires changing deeply held values. (...)\\More and more the wisdom of midwifery is confirmed by epidemiology, and, more important, social and historical research is providing new understandings of the forces that prevent the wisdom of midwifery from being realized. (pp.180-1)
  • Birth Traditions & Modern Pregnancy Care''' (Jacqueline Vincent Priya)\\Shaftesbury: Element, 1994. Achat en ligne
(...) a fascinating exploration of women's knowledge and beliefs about pregnancy, labour and birth in traditional cultures around the world. [...] the author also highlights the contrast between the experience of women in a traditional setting with that of women receiving modern obstetric care. This book is a celebration of the spiritual, social and emotional as well as the physical world of birth.
  • Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives''' (Robbie Davis-Floyd & Carolyn Fishel Sargent, eds.).\\University of California Press, 1997. Achat en ligne
This benchmark collection of cross-cultural essays on reproduction and childbirth extends and enriches the work of Brigitte Jordan, who helped generate and define the field of the anthropology of birth. The authors' focus on authoritative knowledge-the knowledge that counts, on the basis of which decisions are made and actions taken-highlights the vast differences between birthing systems that give authority of knowing to women and their communities and those that invest it in experts and machines. Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge offers first-hand ethnographic research conducted by anthropologists in sixteen different societies and cultures and includes the interdisciplinary perspectives of a social psychologist, a sociologist, an epidemiologist, a staff member of the World Health Organization, and a community midwife. Exciting directions for further research as well as pressing needs for policy guidance emerge from these illuminating explorations of authoritative knowledge about birth. This book is certain to follow Jordan's Birth in Four Cultures as the definitive volume in a rapidly expanding field.