Book Review - Your Best Birth

Your Best Birth: Know All Your Options, Discover the Natural Choices, and Take Back the Birth Experience
by Ricki Lake, Abby Epstein, Jacques Moritz

While Ina May Gaskin certainly was the leader in bringing midwifery back into American homes, Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein are grabbing the baton and making midwifery better known today. Your Best Birth is a down to earth, no nonsense approach to describing the female body during labor and birth and describing medical interventions that are prevalent in the United States. Lake and Epstein are the makers of the documentary film The Business of Being Born (which if you haven't seen you must Netflix immediately and move to the top of your queue). Their documentary is what convinced me I want a home birth (though, I have to go to Tennessee to get one) and has enlightened many, many women throughout the U.S. on unnecessary interventions in the obstetrical community.

What I enjoyed most about this book was their chapter on the female body and the cascades of hormones that release when an unmedicated woman is in labor. They beautifully describe the hormones that trigger labor, dilation, and contractions. That one hormone release results in another hormone release to start the most amazing process of all human life. The book also outlines the many synthetic drugs that try to mimic these natural hormones, but each can not compare to the natural wisdom, and each comes with its own set of side effects that creates a cascade of interventions because the drugs can not work in harmony and force the body into an unnatural rhythm that often does not work according to plans, as opposed to letting the body do what it knows how to do. They also describe the uterus as an amazing muscle that stretches to the size of a watermelon at full term and within minutes is down to the size of a grapefruit. There is no other muscle or organ in the human body with such ability. This organ should be celebrated! The entire process leaves me in absolute awe of our Lord.

The book doesn't carry the same home birth centered tone that Business of Being Born carries. Instead, it carries a more natural-minded birth whether in the hospital, at home, with an OB, or with a midwife. They do outline all of a woman's choices, and I think this book would be excellent in preparation for ANY birth, whether a woman wants to be knocked out dead for her birth, or have no interventions, this book in the very least educates women on their body's abilities and empowers them to make a decision for their birth on their own terms, as opposed to just doing whatever their OB tells them to do. This book helps women to think about their birth as an experience that each woman gets to personally design, as opposed to just going through the motions.

I got the sense in this book that they really want you to feel as though you are sitting down with them to have a cup of coffee and chat about birth, with their modern voice and personal tone that sets this book from the beginning. I found that much of Lake and Epstein's research came from Ina May Gaskin's Ina May's Guide to Childbirth (will review later). Much of the information is the same in the two books, except that Your Best Birth does not include the personal research or years of hands on experience that comes from being a midwife. Instead, YBB is from a mother's and a woman's perspective, also having a fresh modern tone, that many young women and mothers might appreciate. I personally like Ina May's book better, and would recommend that book above any other childbirth book, but if you read a 2nd, take a look at YBB.