Babies Are Not Pizzas: They're Born, Not Delivered

All medical professionals should read this, in the hopes of not perpetuating a culture of disrespect towards pregnant women.<br /><br />I had thought at first that this would be a bit like <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/25923717.The_Science_of_Mom_A_Research_Based_Guide_to_Your_Baby_s_First_Year" title="The Science of Mom A Research-Based Guide to Your Baby's First Year by Alice Callahan" rel="noopener">The Science of Mom: A Research-Based Guide to Your Baby's First Year</a> but for pregnancy/labor, and I had hopes it could replace <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/16158576.Expecting_Better_Why_the_Conventional_Pregnancy_Wisdom_is_Wrong___and_What_You_Really_Need_to_Know" title="Expecting Better Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster" rel="noopener">Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know</a> with more credible analysis. However, this is more the story of how the website EvidenceBasedBirth.com came to be. If you just want the information on different pregnancy/labor conditions and interventions, just read about it on the website directly instead.<br /><br />As for parents, this could be either validating to your own experiences or it could be a little bit too frightening, especially if you are a first-time mom planning to deliver in a hospital. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I'd read it then, but it certainly would have provided a very strong answer to "why do people not want to see OBs/give birth in a hospital?" which I understand now through personal experience.

I so badly wanted to like this book because there is sooooo much I agree with the author on. However, she leaves so much of the evidence out. Towards the end, she admits that it sounds like she wrote the book I would've preferred but a single friend told her some criticism on it and told her to include more of her story and to "weave the evidence" in with that. However, I think she really missed the mark on doing that. While there may have been some evidence nuggets hidden in there, they were grossly overshadowed with horror stories. While yes, there are issues in the maternal healthcare system that need to be addressed and changed, it was a portrayed in a way that was mortifying even to me, someone who is pregnant with baby #3 and considers themselves to be rather educated in childbirth. <br /><br />I was so excited to start. The title of the book really grabbed me, and the first few chapters excited me. I have friends who are pregnant with their first baby and I suggested they read it with me when I was only a few chapters in because I wanted them to be hopeful. I wanted them to feel like they could learn what choices they could make and how to feel really empowered and involved in their delivery...but the further I got in the book, I had to tell them to stop! First time mom's already have a fear of the unknown and I can't see how any first time mom could read this and not have that fear insanely amplified by knowing what hospitals could do to them. <br /><br />Besides the hospital horror stories though, a lot of the authors personal story didn't resonate in a manner that felt like it fit with the book. Had I wanted a book about starting a business or entrepreneurship or something, the story would've fit. But in this context, it did feel rather out of place hearing about her inner personal conflict with her place of employment getting in the way of her passion. And then especially as a mom who is still in a place where she needs to work to help provide for her family, it just felt awful. Like even with talking about how her husband was the one who stayed home at first and how it made their lives soooo much better and was so great. It was like "yeah, I get it! Wouldn't it be soooo nice". And typically I'm not bitter hearing that kind of thing, but here I am, an expectant mother wanting some encouragement and tips as I'm trying for the 3rd time for my ideal birth, and then I didn't get that at all but instead got the sting of the reality I face knowing I'll have to work. <br /><br />I do suppose maybe that this book was just written for a different audience...people actually in healthcare maybe? With me, i was just left hugely overwhelmed and discouraged. Though I will admit, I did enjoy the first few chapters and a few morsels after here and there. I would only recommend this book to a very specific person. Maybe a burned out L&amp;D nurse? Don't know any of those though. I never in a million years would recommend this to an expecting friend unfortunately. Which is really too bad, because it just seems like such a missed opportunity to get out there. There are so many books on childbirth, but they seem to be such opposite ends of the spectrum. A book with the evidence and thoughtful ways to feel empowered to get an evidence based birth in any setting would've been so great for the countless women who don't have the opportunity for home birth or to drive to Tennessee to birth on a farming community brimming with midwives. <br /><br />Maybe next the next one.

Not exactly what I expected. But I enjoyed it. I thought it would be a nonfiction piece of work (which it kind of is). It turned out to be more of a memoir. The author tells her story of childbirth and the practices in our hospitals that are not evidence based but traditional, "cover your butt" practices, and many are harmful. She empowers her readers to speak up and help change our birthing practice in hospitals to be more patient focused and evidence based. I learned a lot and was shocked and enlightened by the stories shared of women and their birth experience.

Slapped, mostly

A good book with some very good information. I wish the focus had been more on data and less on her personal story. I think the thing I disliked most about the book was that it somewhat encouraged fear as a motivation for driving change. I would have liked more data and fewer stories about all the abuses that can and do happen during birth. <br /><br />That being said, I did find her chapter on hospital hierarchy informative and helpful, though not really surprising. As a physicist, through and after grad school myself and other physicists would talk to each other about our TA/tutoring experiences. It was largely agreed that the pre-med students were the worst to deal with. Not because they got bad grades (though many did) but because as a group they had such little true interest in understanding concepts or developing independent thought and problem solving skills. They just wanted to memorize stuff and work the system to get a good grade. They weren’t all like that, but as a group a lot of them were. Our conclusion was “Physics saves lives. It keeps some people out of med school.” It does seem, however, that this kind of personality would be particularly good at propagating the bad system that Dekker describes.

You'd think this book would give practical evidence based information that would help guide a pregnant woman to birth. You'd be wrong. It's a biography of why the author started her website and how she left academia to pursue that goal. It's honestly hard to get through, because at a certain point you keep asking "how is this supposed to be helping me?" This would be better as lifetime movie than a book she is trying to sell to pregnant women. If you are a non-pregnant healthcare professional or a businessperson interested in why she started her company, then you will like this book. If you are pregnant, avoid it until after birth because it has nothing that can help you for before birth. Spend your time on more clear and helpful resources for now, you look only have nine months to prepare and you don't want to waste a chunk on this!

I’m just not persuaded a website needs a memoir.

When Rebecca Dekker had her first baby, it was a difficult, slow labor which led to the use of several interventions like Pitocin to speed up labor and an epidural to manage the pain. She avoided a c-section, but even after successfully delivering her baby, she endured several hours of being separated from her newborn daughter for unclear reasons. It would be a long time before she could properly process her birth, and when she did, she realized she was one of the 1 in 3 women who will experience a traumatic birth. Her experience lead her to study the interventions that the medical staff used on her to see if they could be supported by research. She discovered that many of the interventions were not based on recent research findings and seemed to come out of tradition and long-held practices. This eventually lead her to create the website, Evidence Based Birth, where she would use her academic experience to publish articles examining different birth practices. <br /><br /><i>Babies are Not Pizzas</i> is not primarily a book meant to educated and inform you about best birth practices, but rather, it's Dekker's personal story--how she came to create her website, and why she fights for birth practices based on evidence. As a nurse herself, she has strong compassion for those working in the healthcare industry. She offers an inside look at why nurses and doctors will often choose to enforce out-dated practices when there are other options better supported by research. She also doesn't shy away from sharing the real stories of women who have been impacted by these practices. <br /><br />While this isn't a research book, Dekker does talk about some of the topics that she has researched, and she also goes into the history of childbirth and how practices from 50 years ago are still influencing hospital policies today. I appreciated her story and her desire to put important information in the hands of women so they can be better informed when talking with their doctors and healthcare professionals. I also appreciated that she explained how women can be involved in changing their local hospital policies as they advocate for their rights in giving birth. <br /><br />This is a must-read for anyone who has either witnessed or experienced the brokenness of the medical system when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth. I hope that this will continue to lead to change and reform in hospitals across the country as women are educated and informed about childbirth.

I can tell you that when I put this on my TBR list I did not expect to read a book about obstetric violence and abuse, but that's what I got. This book was eye opening! I found myself in constant awe and horror as a learned about current practices in hospital labor and delivery wings and how most of them are at least 15 years out of date with current research! What the heck! Anyway, I'm here to review a book not give a summary. The book was organized in a simple enough way to understand and included many references to evidence-based knowledge about pregnancy and birth that, should I ever have children, I would refer to as well as doing some of my own research. It made me want to go straight hippy and read a book by Ina May Gaskin. Some of the knowledge was beyond me, just because I have never been pregnant and might never be. But it was simple enough to understand while simultaneously disheartening. But I did learn at the very end that if you don't want to read the book, like I did, you can go to the associated website for any questions you may have from vitamin K to racism to lithotomy.  It was certainly an interesting read, very emotional. I do not get anything from posting this link, but if you want an unopinionated version of this book I'd recommend reading the research articles posted on the Evidence Based Birth Blog @ evidencebasedbirth.com.

As a CNM and new mother who has turned to EBB both professionally and personally this was a great, quick read. It’s an excellent resource for those of us in birth work who could use a little inspiration to keep striving for evidence-based, compassionate, family centered care. I really appreciated how Rebecca broke down how difficult it can be to elicit change in the healthcare system and how trauma impacts provider decision making and unit culture. For birthing people this is still a great resource though it’s not written as a pregnancy and birth guide. It goes beyond that and focuses more on patient rights (you would be surprised how many patients don’t know they can decline care, after all, they know their bodies best), how to be a good advocate for yourself in the healthcare system, highlights evidence surrounding common maternity care topics, and makes a case for the midwifery model of care. Overall a great read to learn about the origins of EBB and current challenges in US maternity care.