Deliver This!: Make the Childbirth Choice That's Right for You . . . No Matter What Everyone Else Thinks

by Marisa Cohen

A woman's decision about what kind of childbirth experience she wants to have is central to her politics, identity, and personality. Today's moms and moms-to-be are better informed about their options than ever before, but, perhaps not surprisingly, they confront rigid judgment from women who choose a different path. Women who opt for home birth are criticized for being reckless—what if there's a medical emergency? Women who opt for elective C-sections are considered selfish—their life is so busy they have to schedule an appointment to give birth?

Deliver This! provides a thorough overview of today's home birth; birthing centers; vaginal birth in a hospital (with or without anesthetics); elective and medically necessary C-sections. Author Marisa Cohen, who delivered both her daughters in a high-tech hospital, is both engaging and curious in her quest to understand why women make alternative choices—and why they feel fiercely defensive about them. In interviews with over one hundred women, Cohen listened to the debates over the best birthing experience, and explored creative solutions that bridge seemingly conflicting goals.

Smart, appealing, and personable, Deliver This! is equally valuable for first-time moms and those who are pregnant with their second or third child.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was super helpful in giving me a framework for childbirth and the options I have, though some of the information is a bit outdated at this point.

[Traci · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to scream every time I heard 'granola', 'yoga' and 'hippie' to describe moms making the choice to home birth and how much mothers were putting themselves and babies at risk having this type of birth. Not very helpful to moms looking for unbiased information like this book indicates by the title that it will give .

[Gytha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, rubbish. This book claims to be an unbiased exploration of all birth options available so a pregnant woman can draw her own conclusions and make her own choice. Bullshit. So much colored and loaded language--much as I love the repetitive implications that I am an anti-vaxxer "crunchy granola" superstition-loving technology rejecting smug hippy for wanting a natural birth, the ridiculous mischaracterisation and falseness of it pretty much destroys any credibility I might bestow upon her when she "explores" the more medicated options.

I do appreciate that she has bothered to footnote her work.
It's interesting how dismissive she is of studies that support natural birth tenets, and how she downplays the side effects of the medications. But at least they are mentioned and footnoted, so it's not quite as steaming a pile of useless garbage as _It Gets Better: and Other Lies..._. Not quite. But her bias clearly skews the work, so it's pretty unacceptable in something marketed toward being an objective source of information to help women "make the childbirth choice that's right for YOU."

It's ironic, because I fully support the idea of women choosing whatever birth they want--I think if you have a lot of fear of pain/childbirth then you probably will do better with medical intervention. But I disagree with her portrait of women who want a home-birth/birth center birth/natural childbirth as being the control freaks. A natural labor is all about letting go--the control is the medication. And that's fine; there's room to feel empowered on both sides of the unmedicated/medicated issue when the woman takes the time to learn as much as she can about each process and finds a practitioner they can trust. It's not like childbirth is an unexpected event (for most of us).

Informed consent is a bit of a myth, but the long delay between discovering one is pregnant and giving birth at least gives us a more than fair amount of time to educate ourselves as much as possible on all possible aspects. It's just a pity when something purporting to be unbiased and factual is so unhelpfully laden with the author's own misconceptions or ignorances. It reinforces the negative stereotype of the woman who chooses a standard hospital birth as someone who just hasn't bothered to have any intellectual curiosity regarding the process at all. It's worse than a waste of time when it slides me backwards on the good ol' empathy scale.

Her "willful blindness" also extends to including a lot of fear imagery when talking about childbirth, so if anyone reading this is fairly sure they'd like a natural childbirth, this book is definitely unhelpful in that respect and isn't an objective source for information on the topic anyway, so better to skip it and spend your time reading Penny Simkin's _Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn_ as a starting point for decision making, since she actually does have objective information on birthing methods and interventions. The Mayo Clinic Guide also does a better job of objectively informing the reader of the options, techniques and processes involved with the various methods and is just all around awesome--facts, not feelings and each topic is well-covered.

[Shana · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I went to my local library to find some books about childbirth. You would think this would be an easy errand, but no. Preferably, I wanted something that wasn't going to completely freak me out. Good luck with that! First I picked up one with pictures from the 70's of a fully naked woman pushing a baby out of her untrimmed (okay, it WAS the 70's...) nether regions while, inexplicably, talking on the phone. Then I found one that seemed to be more of a really long poem then a book about childbirth..that did not seem helpful. Nothing about the contemplation of this process was stirring my inner poet...Then I picked up a book called "Birth Without Fear" thinking "okay, this one sounds good" until I looked at the cover, which had a picture so horrifying I screamed and put it back. (Seriously people...just put a cute baby on the cover! Everyone likes cute babies!) I then picked up this book and thought it sounded good. After all, the author seemed to have a "birth plan" that is similar to mine: "drugs, lots of them." Preach on, sister! I was hooked.

This isn't a book so much about the process of childbirth itself as it is about different options for childbirth, all the way from doing it at home, possibly in your very own bathtub, to saying "screw this" and having an elective C section, and all of the options in between. As an added bonus, it even has parts that are funny. Because when you are contemplating how the hell this baby is going to get out of you, some comic relief is certainly welcome. The author accepts all choices as valid, which is nice. Because let's face it, once the baby is here, we all just want to forget the process anyway. (That means stop telling your graphic birth story to pregnant women! We don't want to hear it! Seriously!)

[Danielle Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some very mixed reviews on Goodreads, but I really liked it and found it helpful. It is written to be a guide to different childbirth options, ranging from unmedicated homebirth to planned C-section. After having medicated hospital births with her two kids, the author interviewed a wide variety of women who'd had different kinds of births and tries to present the basics of what each option is like, why it might be the best option for certain people, or not a good option for others. It's not unbiased, and it's also not based solely on statistics; she's really just trying to figure out what a range of people think about the best ways to give birth. I think she's very upfront about her biases, and I don't think she's particularly trying to push her point of view on everyone else.

If you are very well-educated on different birth options already, then you probably don't need this book, but if you're someone who has no idea what they want to do and just wants an overview, this is probably a good place to start. It at least gives you a sense of the perceived pros and cons of each option, and then you can do more serious research on your own.

My copy of the book had a bunch of editorial issues - extra words, occasionally a word missing, improper use of "whom", that sort of thing. It wasn't unreadable by any means, but it was somewhat distracting.

[Marisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I can't say that I learned too much from this book. I didn't feel the author was particularly unbiased -- she clearly had a preference for a medicated hospital birth. I don't have a problem with that, but if you're writing a book intending to educate people on different birth options and why they're right for the women that choose them, you might want to leave your personal opinion out of it. I felt like her handling of anything outside of the current mainstream of the medicated hospital birth was very, "you may think this is crazy (and I sort of do, too), but here's what these people think and how they accomplish what they want."

The other thing that really ticked me off, was that she dedicated an entire chapter to the unmedicated hospital birth, but whenever she talked about unmedicated births elsewhere in the book she exclusively referred to birthing centers and home births. Hello -- lots of people actually WANT an unmedicated hospital birth, let's not leave them out thank you very much.

My personal opinions aside, this book might be a good primer for anyone who's pregnant (or thinking of becoming pregnant or just interested in the birthing process for some reason) who has absolutely no clue what their birthing options are.

[Régine Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

My girlfriend Jasmine recommended this to me, and I am SO GLAD to have read it before going into labor. Although I find the writing style annoying and can imagine the author s exactly the type of person from whom I would not take advice, the way she lays out the different birth options with pros, cons, and testimonials by women who have opted for them is extremely helpful. I appreciate the book's explicit mission to present the various options in an objective fashion that empowers women to CHOOSE whats right for them. Although you can definitely see where Cohen falls short of that goal (for example the most optimistically titled chapter "Epidural Bliss" happens to be what she did. In the end I think that the most important lesson of the book is laid out in "expect the Unexpected" which basically encourages women to educate themselves on all the procedures no matter what they choose so that they can take deviations from the plan in stride.

[LINDA · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading the book Pushed (see my bookshelf), I saw this book at the library and decided to read it. The author explains the rationale that a woman might have for selecting their birth plan, ranging from one end of the spectrum with homebirth all the way to the other end with planned c-sections and everything in-between.

I don't think that this book is helpful in providing the facts and information that one would need in order to intelligently select a birth plan.

Once you have selected your plan, this book would make it easier for you to validate your choice, whatever that choice may be.

I think that the most valuable lesson of this book was that a woman should familiarize herself with all of the options. In the event that something unexpected happens forcing you to go with a birth plan that deviates from you original plan, you need to be as prepared as possible for what is going to go on.

[elita · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book one star because I thought from the title that it would be about how to advocate on your own behalf during your birth experience, whether that be in a traditional hospital setting or with a nurse midwife. In fact, the book was just a happy pat-on-the-back to all women, saying whatever choice you make is just fine. The author went into her own delivery experience blindly accepting whatever the doctors and nurses told her to do and she doesn't even attempt to hide her distaste for natural childbirth. If you read this book you will at least come away with the idea that you DO have a choice, unlike the author who never spent a moment pondering the question or educating herself on her options before the birth of her child.

[Kendal]

Perhaps not the best primary source of information on different birth choices, but I really appreciated her overall messages that everyone just making the best decision for *themselves*, and judging each other or getting angry isn't useful. Nobody is setting out to make bad decisions, and every choice has its pros and cons. I also got a lot out of the chapter on media representations--I think that's an important but underexamined source of information for many of us, and looking at the depictions of childbirth in the media is a fantastic, necessary discussion.

[Elizabeth Abney · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’re reasonably well-informed about different birthing options, then there isn’t much new information in this book. It is mostly unbiased and does a good job of explaining why some choices may be better for some women. The birth stories were nice and the author stresses being open-minded and educated about other possibilities if things don’t go as you have planned.

Borrowed from the public library.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good read for women who are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or who have already gone through childbirth (no matter how you went through it). It covers quite a bit of ground, every type of birth you can imagine, plus real stories from women who have been there, done that, and have the strength to tell others how it was. I'm glad I picked this up as it helped me deal with some unresolved emotional issues from my first birth and lent plenty of insight for my next.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked that this book urges mothers to be less judgmental. She really seems to try to understand all of the possible birth plans mothers have. However, I didn't really find the writing that appealing, and didn't feel like it was really backed up by any science. She seems to have just interviewed a bunch of moms without looking into scientific studies.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

An overview of the current birthing options (everything from home-births to elective c-sections) presented in as unbiased a manner as possible. Funny and a page turner, I wish I'd picked this up earlier in the pregnancy.

[Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this book isn't unbiased. Let's get that out of the way. However, if you are headed for a more medicalized birth, and have a lot of mixed feelings about it, this book will give you some reassuring information about the pros and cons of putting your delivery into the hands of doctors.

[Michelle Sisneros · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was extremely biased towards medicated childbirth, but still worth reading. It gives a nice overview of the different types of birthing options including pros/cons and birth stories. This is my first pregnancy and I now feel I have a better understanding of what options are available.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is biased, I still thought it did a good job of describing how different birth situations play out. It's helpful in that way because we don't all get the birth experience we're hoping for, and it's nice to have an idea of other ways it might go.

[Laura Stiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty basic overview of various labor/delivery options. She says her goal is to present a non-judgmental view, but her opinion flavors the entire book. It's a little to sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek of a writing style for me.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book was quite imformative. it presents a variety of childbirth options without judgement which i found quite refreshing

[Flavia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book is well written but I find it a little overwhelming personally. It could just be me and the fact that I'm pregnant with my first.

[Mary Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am really enjoying this book. It does attmept to give an unbiased overview of all types of delviery methods, ranging from the homebirth to the planned c-section.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh.