|| 4.5 ⭐️ ||

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of learning about natural birth and God’s design for it! He thought of everything when creating a mother’s body and the child growing within it, as well as the incredible process of birth itself. It’s so fascinating. Reading Ina May’s wisdom makes me even more excited to give birth someday (Lord willing), and confident in my body’s ability to do so. It also solidified a little more (if ‘more’ is even possible) my desire to avoid a hospital birth and all the usually unnecessary medical interventions that come with it.

Ina May’s approach to prenatal care and birth is a little more hands-on than I would probably want, but she really has a deep understanding of the kinds of support and environment a woman needs to safely give birth with little to no interventions. I especially appreciated her thoughts on the mind-body connection in birth and the Sphincter Law, since that’s one of the most missed aspects in the context of mainstream/medicalized birth. Her thorough analysis of various complications in birth and interventions commonly used to resolve them was also interesting and helpful. It’s a great way to weigh the pros and cons of certain interventions in preparation for birth.

I just read this for fun, but I’m sure I’ll be reading it again someday if I’m ever expecting.