Pushed By Jennifer Block

I first picked up this book several years ago when I was pregnant with my second child and planning my own underground homebirth. This book has long sense become very near and dear to my heart. I believe it is imperative for every pregnant woman to read the words contained within these pages. There is no other book as such revealing and explorative of the issues women are facing when we go to have our babies.

First, let me start by saying don't skip the introduction. I know it's easy to do, but you simply must read about "The Blonsky." I'll leave it at that.

Within the very first chapter alone, the author eloquently outlines the exact problems facing our modern maternity care system. This chapter addresses the use of medical management to control labor out of convenience and ignorance. This chapter is very thorough, covering all the various medical techniques to "manage" labor, and there is also some discussion on the business of birthing. It is a business after all.

The second chapter highlights information regarding Cesarean sections "the short cut." A story of a couple delivering via Cesearean is shared. There were several quotes in this chapter that I particularly enjoyed. One physician says, "There's no reason not to do Pitocin." Another called expectant management (allowing a woman's labor to unfold in its own time) "babysitting." "I don't do the expectant management thing," she said. One charge nurse said, "Beds need to be kept free. This is not the place you come if you want to sit in a bathtub or roll on a ball. We have a high volume of deliveries. We can't just have people lying around, taking up labor beds, and walking the halls. We're very pro-epidural." So, if women are trained they need to birth in the hospital because that's the safest place for them, but the hospital is not the place to have a normal birth, then where are women supposed to go? Without the availability in many states of access to alternative care, women don't have choices, which is precisely the issue this book explores.

Some may know that I am a labor and delivery nurse by trade. I identify so clearly with the above quotes because I too have experienced this same phenomenon in a different hospital in a different state than where these quotes came from, and yet the issues are the same. I recall a meeting with my managers in which they felt I did not move my newly delivered patients quickly enough to postpartum. "It's just not safe for the other patients," they said, though the event in which they were referring to hadn't taken place at a time when that particular hospital room was needed. It didn't matter to them that the new mother was trying to breastfeed or still numb from the epidural and couldn't walk or for Heaven's sake was starving from not eating her whole labor and wanted to have a proper meal or Heaven forbid, bond with her baby. Nope. Get her delivered and move her out. It should come as no surprise that after having my own transformative homebirth, I could no longer settle for working at a job so disrespectful of women's needs and rights.

Chapter 3 addresses breech birth. In the U.S., most women are outrighted denied the option. Physicians are no longer trained in the art of breech birth, and while, breech does pose additional risks, a baby can still be delivered vaginally. Are the risks of vaginal breech greater than the risks of a Cesarean? Block states, "Ironically, it is independent homebirth midwives, some of who practice llegally, who are left to attend these higher risk vaginal births, and they are surpassing physicians in experience and expertise in the delicate matter of vaginal breech delivery." Go midwives!

The rest of the chapters are also not to be missed as they cover the consequences of medicalized birth, midwives, the underground movement, and womens' reproductive rights.

I could spend all day on this topic as it's my passion, but instead of continuing to read my review of this book, don't waste any more time. Go out and get yourself a copy because this is one every women should read. It's a rights issue, and it simply cannot be ignored any longer. Jennifer Block's writing is delicious, the information is sound, and you'll want to proclaim to the world after you've finished that we will take back our births!