Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth

by Mark Sloan

Birth Day takes the reader on a remarkable journey, from the dawn of human history to the quiet efficiency of a modern operating room; from Aristotle and Julius Caesar to a trailblazing, cross-dressing British army surgeon; from a recent past filled with the horrors of childbirth gone wrong to a present day, in which every pregnancy is expected to end happily. Some of Birth Day’s many topics include

• The evolution of human childbirth—or, why do gorillas have it so easy?
• The first five minutes of life—scuba divers, astronauts, and the amazing adaptations that transform a fetus into an air-breathing, out-in-the-world baby
• Cesarean section—a look at its origins, its future, and how it came to be the most frequently performed operation in American hospitals
• Pain and politics—the age-old quest for painless childbirth, starring Adam and Eve, Queen Victoria, a nineteenth-century medical brawl, and the rise of today’s “epidural monoculture”
• Daddies—raging paternal hormones, hidden anxieties, and the emotional evolution of men (including the author, his father, and grandfather) as they approach fatherhood
• The five senses at birth—does light enter the womb? how loud is it in there? what is a newborn baby searching for with those first anxious glances?
• A tour of the newborn body—springy skulls, hairy ears, innies and outies, the advantages (and disadvantages) of looking like your father, and why the United States is one of the world’s most circumcised nations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Science, Medicine, Health, Medical, History

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Nelleke Plouffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating! I think my favourite part was the explanation of the process a baby goes through to begin to breathe after it’s born.

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating. Before James was born I must have read almost fifty books on pregnancy, babies, and the like. I found them informative and some, alarming. Not one of them touched on the interesting topics of the changes that a fetus undergoes to become a baby, the why's of how the mother and baby change, the ways that pregnancy can affect an involved father, and the history behind the practices of childbirth methods and philosophies of today. This book did. It was an absorbing read for me and made me want to dig out my medical reference book for more study and my history book to find out more about the historical figures depicted.

[Edan]

This book was very informative and well-balanced regarding the different types of maternity and labor care for women. A lot of fun facts about fetuses and such. Someone MUST write a historical novel about the first doctor to perform c-sections!

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Full of incredibly fascinating information, although also containing some comments in bad taste.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erin, this is my go-to book recommendation for expectant moms although it's not written for the parent-to-be. In fact, this was even more fascinating AFTER giving birth than it was before. I think I read it early in my first pregnancy, so some of it went over my head. It answered some of my questions in a not-too-sciencey way (What happens to the umbilical cord once it goes into the baby?) and I loved the "how cool is that" tone about birth! Also, it's funny. I didn't read too many birth or parenting books that made me laugh. Anyway, most of it would probably be old hat to you, but I really enjoyed it!

[Elizabeth McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for expectant parents of a scientific bent - but equally interesting to nerds without imminent children. After all, all of us were born ourselves at some point in time, so it's a relevant topic! Sloan explains the biology of the process of giving birth, along with walking the reader through the ways in which humans have treated the process differently as modern medicine passed through different trends. He explores pain management during childbirth, cesarean sections, and the infant's reflexes, among other topics. His writing style is approachable and easy to understand without background knowledge.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completed the audio version of this book read by the author. 👍🏽👍🏽

Full disclosure: I used to work with Dr. Sloan. His deadpan, dry, sarcastic sense of humor made him one of my favorite people in the department. Thus, I read his book out of curiosity.

Mostly educational with a sprinkling of personal stories, I feel much more enlightened and simultaneously terrified about pregnancy and childbirth.

I know much more about the cervix than I ever thought I would and am now fascinated by couvade. I'm both intrigued and a little grossed out that the amniotic fluid at birth can smell like whatever meal was last eaten and relieved that some forms of neonatal resuscitation are no longer practiced. (No more putting mustard up a baby's nose!... among other methods.)

There's a great history about epidurals and other methods of pain relief and c-sections, and even a chapter about what babies experience while in the womb.

As for my final thought -- I feel it was a missed opportunity to begin the history of circumcision as "the tip."

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this!! So many interesting tidbits about the history of childbirth, with a focus on how it's been considered in Western medicine. A lot has changed even in just the last few decades and this book gives you the context for that, if you've been confused between what you're learning in modern childbirth prep classes vs. what even recent generations experienced in American hospitals or has been portrayed in TV/movies. Great for science nerds, with a conversational tone interspersing the history and personal anecdotes, such that even a slow non-fiction reader such as myself got through it very quickly.

If it is also not obvious to you, OBs have as their patient the pregnant woman and once the baby is born, it goes to the pediatrician. So that's where Dr. Sloan observed and participated in thousands of deliveries, on the receiving-the-newborn side, but it looks like he then went and did a fair amount of research.

[Emir Akel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book explores the wonders of birth and the evolution of childbirth throughout human history. The author, a practicing pediatrician, briefly shares his memories as a junior doctor followed by his later cases. The books goes on exploring the evolutionary characterestics of human childbirth by comparing the process with other primates as well. Additionally, the following chapters mention the great advancments in medicine that eases the process of childbirth both from the mother's and doctor's point of view. These advancments include the invention of simple types anaesthetic agents, followed by more advanced epidurals and general anaesthesia. Moreover, the case between midwives vs doctors is also in the book covering it throughout obstetric history. I believe this is a wonderful book not only for future mothers but doctors as well. I would also recommend Under The Knife by Dr. Arnold Van De Laar to get a wider view into the history of surgery.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Birth Day is an amazing book. One of the best I've read on childbirth. It's a book I'd recommend to every mother-to-be, father-to-be and parent. Dr. Mark Sloan writes from his own experiences as a pediatrician, interspersing stories of his patients with medical information, quirky medical history and advice to new parents. If you're wondering what a fetus sees and hears inside the womb, Dr. Sloan will tell you. If you'd like to know what the shocking transition from womb to world might be like for a baby, Dr. Sloan goes into that as well. One of my favorite chapters is on the baby body. Starting at the head and working down to the toes, Dr. Sloan tells new parents what to expect. This is his first book and it is outstanding. I can't wait for more!

[Rosemarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book - written by a pediatrician. He really takes you on a tour of what childbirth was like throughout the ages and how we got where we are today (good and bad). And I especially like that he has his opinions, but is also very diplomatic about how he presents his facts. For example, he's not anti-cesearean, but you can tell that he doesn't agree that many people choose it because they don't want the pain of labor. He'd prefer to see more pain relief choices in the US (as they do in other countries), but is not toward the extreme of "every woman should refuse an epidural." In other words, it's like my birthing classes -- working toward an unmedicated birth but grateful that we have the technology and skills to intervene when necessary.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

First 2 confessions - 1) I partially got this book from the library because it amused me that it was written by a Mark Sloan, and 2) I skipped the last chapter because it wasn't related to pregnancy or labour.

I enjoyed reading this. It had a lot of good historical information presented with a mix of personal experiences of the author. It was interesting learning about how things have changed from ancient times, especially within the last couple hundred years. I appreciated the fairly unbiased presentation as well. There is very little input from the author about current birthing methods, instead he presents it more as being up to the women and what they are comfortable with while promoting education of options.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book with lots of fascinating information. I gave it 3 stars because, though I enjoyed it, it wasn't the kind of book that I couldn't put down. I would definitely recommend this to anyone. Whether you are expecting or done having babies, it gives a fascinating look at the evolution of having babies covering such topics as c-sections, painless births, doulas, circumcision, the senses of a fetus and how this knowledge all came to be and more.

[Annaliese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a nicely written tour of birth. It includes everything from evolution of the primate pelvis, the author's experience as an obstetric intern, a historical tour of medical interventions and anaesthesia, and the author's take on the modern hospital birth scenario including doulas (pro), epidurals (mixed), and postnatal testing. None of it is overbearing, and it's well written.

[Charissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great exploration of labor, birth, and the newborn baby. A pretty objective discussion that includes some controversial topics like unmedicated birth versus having an epidural and whether to circumcize baby boys or not. Lots of cool tidbits of information on unique subjects like what goes on inside the newborn baby's body on the other side of the belly button once the umbilical cord is cut.

[Catherine McNiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! What more can I say? I recommend this book to parents equally as to those who have no children, never want children, don't even like children. I learned SO MUCH FASCINATING STUFF in this book and it was a very enjoyable and easy read.

[Natalie Miller-Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting how this book is set up -- and I love how it goes in depth on several topics surrounding pregnancy, birth and infancy...especially the chapters on pain relief and birth attendants historically.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only pregnancy-related book I've found worth reading so far. Some cool evolutionary discussion and lots of interesting facts about what goes on with the baby in the womb.

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Some kindle quotes:


One in every thirty or so babies fractures a collarbone (or two) during birth. - location 382


In some monkey species, the newborn actually assists at its own birth. Once its arms are free of the birth canal, the half-born baby uses its hands to push the rest of its body out of its mother—a feat that would earn a human baby a year’s worth of tabloid front pages. - location 397


two hundred years ago, in my ancestral Irish village, I’d have been faced with disaster: Elisabeth would likely have bled to death from her ruptured placenta, taking John with her. A cesarean, if it was done at all, would have been performed only as Elisabeth and John lay near death, so that John could be baptized while still barely alive, and the two of them buried in separate graves. - location 904


according to one account, not a single woman survived a cesarean delivery in Paris between 1787 and 1876. - location 978


However she managed to pull off her forty-year masquerade, the fact remains: in the virtually all-male world of early-nineteenth-century Western medicine, the first man to perform a successful cesarean delivery was a woman. - location 1013


Puerperal fever was no respecter of wealth or class: among its many high- and low-born victims were the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died in 1797 after giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein; - location 1135


After making his case, Holmes spelled out eight rules of puerperal fever prevention for obstetricians. Frequent hand washing and changes of clothing were critical, as was not performing autopsies while also caring for live, laboring patients. To break the spread of the disease once it had started, he recommended that physicians associated with more than one case of puerperal fever in a short period of time refrain from delivering babies for up to a month. Amazingly, his well-researched findings and recommendations were ridiculed by his peers. Their reaction is best summed up by Charles Delucina Meigs, the influential chair of obstetrics at Philadelphia’s Jefferson College of Medicine. “Doctors are gentlemen,” Meigs proclaimed, “and gentlemen’s hands are clean.” - location 1165


Semmelweis immediately ordered all doctors and students in the First Division to wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution before attending to patients. The results were startling: mortality rates from puerperal fever fell from 18 percent in the first half of 1847 to less than 3 percent by that November. But like Holmes’s in America, Semmelweis’s breakthrough was dismissed by his colleagues, including Friedrich Scanzoni, the most prominent obstetrician in Vienna. - location 1182


Lister, a general surgeon on the marvelously named Male Accident Ward at the Royal Glasgow Infirmary, - location 1193


Cesarean deliveries accounted for 22 percent of all American births in 1991, a proportion thought to be a high-water mark at the time. The cesarean rate had hovered at that level since the mid-1980s, and with the trend toward vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) gaining steam, most physicians figured that rates would gradually drift down to the 10 to 15 percent of all births endorsed by the World Health Organization. That didn’t happen. After a modest decline in the 1990s, the 2000s have seen dramatic increases in cesarean deliveries. In 2003, 26.1 percent of all births were cesareans; by 2006, 31.1 percent of all American babies— more than 1.2 million of them—were born in operating rooms. It’s a trend that shows no sign of letting up. If that sounds like an awful lot of surgery, it is. Cesareans are now the most common hospital-based operation performed in the United States. And if it sounds as though it happened awfully fast, it did. In 1971, the year I graduated from high school, only 6 percent of American births were cesareans. - location 1207


In 1970, only 6 percent of first-time mothers were more than thirty years old; by 1990, the proportion had risen to 25 percent. - location 1261


Between 1990 and 1999 the number of cesareans actually decreased by 5 percent; in the following six years, however, cesareans have increased by nearly 50 percent. The modest decrease in the 1990s and the explosion of cesareans in the 2000s can nearly all be attributed to the rise and sudden fall of the VBAC, or vaginal birth after cesarean. - location 1272


As the mid-’90s dawned, studies found that complications such as uterine rupture and the subsequent need for hysterectomy were twice as common in women with previous cesareans who were allowed to labor than for women who had an elective, scheduled repeat cesarean. Though the absolute numbers were low—less than 1 percent of all attempted VBACs—in 1998 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommended attempting a VBAC only in a hospital equipped to do an immediate cesarean. Since the vast majority of hospitals do not have the 24-hour obstetric anesthesia coverage this would require, many obstetricians and their patients began to shy away from VBACs. By 2004, only 45,000 American women had a successful vaginal birth after a previous cesarean, and the number of VBACs continues to fall. - location 1291


Britney Spears. In the fall of 2005, the ex-Mouseketeer turned tabloid star became a kind of poster girl for the small but growing number of women who choose to avoid labor altogether, opting instead for an elective primary cesarean (EPC)—in other words, a cesarean without medical need for one. Spears’s rationale for choosing a cesarean was straightforward. In an interview just before she gave birth, she said, “I don’t want to go through the pain [of a vaginal birth].” - location 1297


defenses, severe damage to fetal tissues, known as oxidative stress, can occur. But nature plans for this. A healthy laboring mother floods her vaginally born fetus with glutathione, an antioxidant chemical that counteracts oxidative stress. A baby born by a relatively stress-free elective cesarean receives a much smaller dose of glutathione. At this point it isn’t known if the difference in antioxidant delivery between vaginal and elective cesarean birth has any lasting effects, but since oxidative stress causes tissue damage throughout life—it plays a role in atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease, among other disorders—perhaps the cascade of chemicals that comes with the onset of labor is important to the fine-tuning of a child’s biochemical makeup. - location 1336


*Note the dropped a. British and Australian writers still use the “caesarean” spelling; Americans, averse to the “ae” combination (as in the original spellings of “paediatrics” and “gynaecology”), chose the shorter “cesarean.” And since I’m in a clarifying mood, the word “cesarean” and “section” both refer to the same thing—the act of cutting. I will avoid that particular redundancy from here on out by using the terms “cesarean delivery” or “cesarean birth,” either of which will make the world’s etymologists much happier. - location 1419


Take up the battle for painless childbirth[!] Fight not only for yourselves, but fight for your…sex!” —HANNA RION, feminist and journalist, 1915 Childbirth is ecstasy. —ALLEN COHEN, poet, midwife, and natural childbirth advocate, 1970 “Give me drugs!” —NINA SHAPIRO, Slate, 1999 - location 1433


Childbirth is perhaps the only human condition in which pain is considered by many to be an unqualified good. It’s also the only one in which the decision to reduce or eliminate pain is the subject of sometimes ferocious debate. In the past, those on the propain side were often not the same people who actually experienced the pain—the all-male medical experts and religious leaders of nineteenth-century Europe and America, for example—resulting in a “blind-leading-the-pregnant” situation. But in modern times, even among many who have actually borne babies, the “ideal” childbirth is often a tough-it-out, medication-free pain marathon. - location 1452


Anesthesia opponents nearly trampled one another in their overheated theorizing. Dr. G. T. Gream of London topped them all when he described the presence of the fetal head in the vagina of a chloroformed woman as behaving more or less like a giant penis, triggering dreams that should “only occur in prostitutes.” A wise physician should think twice, he wrote, before anesthetizing upstanding, “less depraved” women. Gream then one-upped the French doctor’s warning, concluding that the obliteration of pain not only put a woman at risk of later debauchery and prostitution, but even placed the physician himself in danger of being sexually assaulted by his laboring patient. - location 1566


In Genesis, God returns to the Garden to find that Adam and Eve, with the serpent’s help, have ruined Paradise. Furious, he sentences Adam to a life of working for his food and then heaps special woe upon the head of poor Eve: “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to your children.” Armed solely with those seventeen words, some physicians and clergy denounced the relief of that pain, even in an obstetric emergency, as frankly blasphemous. That argument - location 1576


Despite legend to the contrary, Victoria’s decision to take chloroform did not lead to an overnight clamor for obstetric anesthesia. No public announcement of her chloroform use was even made until 1859. John Snow, though well known for his work with chloroform, anesthetized only seventy-seven women in his career, and his casebooks show no increase in the demand for his services after he treated Victoria. What Her Majesty’s acceptance of chloroform did accomplish, though, was to make it impossible for anyone again to argue against the relief of labor pains on biblical or moral grounds. - location 1610


Kronig and Gauss found that scopolamine, when given carefully with a single small dose of the painkiller morphine, produced a “clouded consciousness, with complete forgetfulness”—Twilight Sleep. Women who gave birth under Twilight Sleep’s effects awoke with no memories of the birth whatsoever. With pain and fear removed by the two drugs, they had fewer complications of childbirth than women who gave birth more conventionally, and they recovered far more quickly. Rather than the two weeks a new mother usually spent in bed, Twilight Sleep mothers were typically up and around by the second postpartum day. The Frauenklinik soon had the lowest maternal and neonatal death rates in the state of Baden. - location 1707


Twilight Sleep helped doctors accomplish something they had sought for a long time: control of the birthing suite. One doctor wrote that Twilight Sleep gave “absolute control over your patient at all stages of the game … You are ‘boss.’ ” Twilight Sleep had accelerated the trend toward hospital births; as the 1920s approached, fewer and fewer babies were home-born. Hospital birth also allowed a doctor to separate his patient from her sometimes meddlesome family members, sending them home at the onset of labor, allegedly so that the hospital staff could focus on delivering her baby. When Twilight Sleep worked well, the family-free doctor was treated to something that he and his professional forebears had rarely encountered in attending childbirth: silence. “I catch up on my reading and writing,” wrote one happy physician. “I am never harassed by relatives who want me to tell them things.” - location 1845


Despite the crash of 1915, Twilight Sleep never really disappeared. It just morphed into different forms and other drugs, gradually transforming “painless childbirth” into an assembly line, more or less, a hospital-based program of heavy sedation and amnesia. Well into the 1970s, when, as we’ll see, the drive toward conscious childbirth finally ended the practice, most American women had their babies in a haze of anesthetic medications and tranquilizers. - location 1852


James Simpson would recognize the modern debate because, in a very real way, he started it. Simpson was a pioneer in “direct-to-consumer” marketing; we’ve grown so accustomed to seeing television commercials for everything from allergy pills to erectile dysfunction treatments that it’s hard to remember there was a time when deciding which medicine a patient received was entirely up to the doctor. Simpson’s decision to take the chloroform debate public with his pamphlets and forums let the consumer genie out of the bottle. Never again would the debate over labor pain be strictly medical. By the end of the 1850s women were clamoring for pain-free childbirth, and doctors, despite some misgivings, were providing it. - location 1904


It is ironic, Lowe writes, that “a society that celebrates individuals who endure great pain and distress in the pursuit of mountain peaks or completion of a marathon race” should be so quick to label labor pain a bad thing. Many women approach labor as a challenge, she notes, and leave it with a profound sense of life-changing accomplishment. Routinely removing that pain may rob women of a fundamental life experience. - location 2006


nearly one-third ended up with epidurals, but compare those numbers to the American experience. Here in the United States, where more than 70 percent of women now give birth with an epidural, - location 2136


he walked me through the use of nitrous oxide in labor. The equipment seemed almost comically simple, especially when compared with the trappings of an epidural or a cesarean delivery. A small Nitronox machine, no bigger than a half-gallon milk carton, sat on a wheeled pole next to the labor bed….Here’s how it’s administered: when a contraction comes, the woman simply holds the mask over her own nose and mouth and breathes in….In between contractions she can either continue to breathe the nitrous-oxygen mixture or take off the mask, which shuts off the flow of nitrous, and breathe room air until her pain returns. That’s all there is to it. In between times she can walk, talk, bathe, change positions, and do whatever else eases her discomfort. - location 2223


labor-slowing effect of taking a bath seems to be a problem only if the bath is taken early in labor, though. Once a woman is in active labor, the oxytocin surges are strong enough that no bath in the world can derail them. The exact stage of labor at which this happens isn���t clear from current research, but it seems prudent to hold off on baths until the cervix has dilated to about five centimeters. - location 2358


Simkin and O’Hara wrote, “it is difficult to interpret the results.” Reading the details of the studies, it’s not hard to see why. In some of them, women were expected to stay in one position for long periods; in others they were told to change positions on a rigid schedule. It didn’t work. Ninety percent of the women assigned to specific positions in one study took a the-hell-with-that! approach and dropped out, opting for more comfortable positions than the researchers had planned for them. - location 2381


My grandfather Sloan was a farmer. He didn’t have much in common with the Rockefeller and Roosevelt men of his time, but there was this: none of them was ever expected to be a labor coach. - location 2458


Under the direction of the ever more demanding fetus, levels of progesterone, a hormone key to a pregnancy’s early survival, rise nearly twentyfold. Estrogen and its hormonal relatives rise even more dramatically: blood estriol concentrations rise by a factor of a thousand. - location 2593


In 1999, Berg and Wynne-Edwards followed a volunteer group of thirty-four expectant Canadian fathers in Kingston, Ontario, from their first prenatal class until three months after the births of their babies. They also recruited fourteen nonfathers from the general population to act as a comparison group. They measured testosterone and two other hormones—estradiol, that traditionally “female” hormone, and cortisol, a hormone released during times of stress—from weekly saliva collections. Their findings were a bit unsettling for the kind of guy who sees himself as a walking ad for manliness: all of the fathers-to-be had lower testosterone levels than the nonfather control subjects….they were becoming “feminized” as their mates’ pregnancies rolled on….There are limitations to these studies, and the authors are quick to point them out. These were all volunteer Canadian men from a stratum of society that believes in the importance of childbirth education. - location 2640



The main determinant of paternal hormone levels in mammals seems to be a male’s proximity to a pregnant mate. As delivery approaches, there is a fairly straight-line relationship between the amount of time a male spends with his pregnant mate and his hormone levels. - location 2661


And, sure enough, males of infanticide-prone species are brought into a “paternal state” just before the birth of their offspring. - location 2686


Recall the example of the gorilla mother: she has her baby alone at night, in about half an hour. She doesn’t require any assistance, in part because her small fetus passes easily through her large birth canal. And because the fetus is facing her as it emerges, she can easily reach down and clear mucus and blood from her baby’s mouth to help it commence breathing, or unwind a tight umbilical cord from around its neck if need be. Compare that with a human birth. It takes thirty times longer than a gorilla’s, for one thing—much more time for something to go wrong. A human mother’s arms are relatively shorter than a gorilla’s, and her bulging belly is more prominent, too, making it more difficult for her to reach her fetus as it emerges. Adding to her troubles, the fetus comes out facing away from her; she can neither see nor easily touch its face. If she pulls the fetus’s head back to try to clear the nose and mouth, she could seriously injure its neck. Finally, the fit between head and pelvis is so tight that it can be hard for an obstetrician to release a tightly wound umbilical cord from the fetus’s neck, let alone a mother who can barely reach her baby’s head. - location 2895


Obligate midwifery is hardwired into the modern human brain. While women do occasionally give birth alone, they rarely choose to, and their chances of surviving are much greater if skilled helpers are on hand. (An unattended breech birth, for example, is nearly always fatal to mother and child.) - location 2921


My brother, James Bernard Sloan, died two days later from complications of his premature birth. My mother never saw him when he was alive because the doctors thought it would have been too frightening for her to see him struggle to breathe; and not after he died, either, because, they judged, that simply would have been too traumatic. My mother’s isolation extended well past James’s death. She was kept in the hospital for nearly two weeks, customary at the time for an immediately postpartum woman. Visitors were allowed, but they were expressly forbidden by hospital staff to make any mention of James. Conversation was awkward in the extreme. “They could talk about the weather, the news, anything they wanted to,” she remembers, “except for the fact that I’d just had a baby and that he died.” She wasn’t allowed to go out, not even to attend the funeral. All she has of James today is a fuzzy three-inch photograph taken of him at his wake, lying in a tiny white casket on a table in the living room of my grandparents’ house. - location 3085


...and now I'm out of space :(

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful book, FULL of information, and funny. It's not really a book about pregnancy, or even childbirth - although pregnancy and childbirth are, naturally, covered - it's about the baby (and it's written by a pediatrician). I particularly liked the stuff about how a fetus becomes a baby in those moments/days after birth: how the lungs begin to work, how the heart rearranges itself, how the skeleton reacts to not being curled up into a football shape.

I was faintly annoyed by the chapter on what happens to daddy while mommy is pregnant - I kept thinking how off-putting that would be to a single mother or a lesbian couple. Small quibble, but there you have it.

[Kimberley Lasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved reading this! It really helped me feel comfortable with the different types of interventions that can happen in pregnancy which is why I picked it up in the first place, but more than that it was the interesting anecdotes and medical history that I found really engaging. I think this is a great read not just for prospective parents but for anyone with an interest in the development of medical techniques and history of birth.

[Sarah Duggan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This had all the history and science background I wished my childbirth class had. The author is great at explaining medical details in a story format, so the data isn’t boring or overwhelming.
Even if you don’t have a baby in your life, this is a fascinating look at how we all enter the world. Human bodies are incredible adaptable things!

[Kelley Skeie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an advocate of natural birth I was hesitant to get a doctors perspective. I was pleasantly surprised at the authors ability to remain objective. There is such a wealth of knowledge in this book and the author does a great job of making it relatable.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and funny. Loved it!!

[Hope Gunther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive history of all things birth and newborn. Fun for a birth geek like me!

[Heather Bork · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating! Lots of evolutionary references in here, which I completely disagree with. But the rest of it is so good!

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was cool!

Did you know?

• The first well-documented, successful Cesarean was performed in 1826 in South Africa by Dr. James Barry—who managed a 40-year medical career before anyone discovered “he” was actually a woman.
• For pain management during labor, Pliny the Elder prescribed drinks containing ground snails, earthworms, and goose poop. Other ancient labor pain remedies included belly salves made from viper fat, eel gall, powdered donkey hoof, and snake tongues.
• Queen Victoria was enormously influential in making obstetric anesthesia socially acceptable; she requested and was granted the use of chloroform with her 8th and 9th children.
• Males’ hormones change when their mates are pregnant, most likely because of pheromones that the female gives off. Their testosterone levels decrease and levels of the “female” hormones estradiol and prolactin increase.
• Ever wonder why babies seem to be virtually neckless? Because of their short necks, the epiglottis and the upper part of the windpipe can rise up in the back of the throat and create a barrier, allowing milk to flow around the epiglottis and down the esophagus, so they can breathe and swallow at the same time! Most mammals can. Early humans could; in fact, the original job of the uvula was to grab on to the windpipe as it rose and seal it tight. But as we evolved, our necks lengthened in tandem with our ability to produce a wide range of speech sounds. Now we can talk a fancy game, but we can also die from choking.
• Circumcision was never big in the United States until the 1890s, when the president of the San Diego Board of Health announced that it would “cure” masturbation. He called the foreskin an “evil genie” and an “outlaw” that induced young males to grab their penises. Remarkably, his ideas caught on, and by the 1950s, 90% of newborn boys in the U.S. were getting circumcised. By the late 90s the number was down to about 65%--but that’s still high compared to the worldwide estimate of 10-20%. Germany, Russia, China, and Japan all have a less than 1% circumcision rate.

[Megan Palasik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was great! I've been wanting to read it for a while and am glad I finally finished it. I gave it 4/5 stars because it took me quite a while to finish it, not because it was long, but because the information and writing got a little dry for me in the middle of the book. I actually put it down for a week, tried again, put it down a little while longer, then picked it back up to finish it. The last few chapters were very interesting for me because they had to do with the actual baby just after birth.

When I first started reading this book I thought the author reminded me a little of Mary Roach and her non-fiction books. Sloan's writing style is very personal, as if he's sitting next to you and talking to you, and can be quite funny at times.

The mix of personal experiences and researched information was quite interesting and fulfilling for me. Also, there is a section of references in the back of the book listed by chapter and page number if the reader is interested in looking up any of the information.

I actually dog-eared (which I never do) a couple of the pages for future reference when I (hopefully) have children. The information was all very useful and interesting.

I recently read "Birth Plans for Dummies" and found that Sloan's book, while information and historical, somewhat imitated the Dummies book in that Sloan wrote information about natural vs C-section births, having others in the room, and even the first few moments and days. Sloan's historical information about C-sections and epidurals was very interesting. Even the section about who would be in the room with the mother and the research about fathers.

I would recommend this book for anyone who may have a baby in the future and is interested in the history of giving birth, to doctors and nurses who work with pregnant women and babies, and anyone else simply interested in babies.

[Ashlee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading this book for the second time. I read it for the first time back when I went through a huge natural childbirth reading spree before having my second child. I wanted tons of info and tons of positive stories and this was one of the books I ran across and read. I returned it to the library after I was done and regretted not writing down the title or author because it was truly an amazing book. The section on the first five minutes after birth and the changes that a baby goes through from fetus to newborn is nothing short of amazing. The author is incredibly gifted at explaining complex things in terms that I feel anyone can understand (I am not a fan of medical jargon and I feel this author did a fab job of not giving us any, but not making it too "dumb" either). I had been looking for this book, not avidly, but still for the past three years. I had talked about it to friends, saying how it was the best explanation I had run across of the adaptations of the human body to our evolution and because of that chapter on the adaptation of the newborn. I've since read other books that touched on the history of childbirth and touched on the evolution aspect. But I'll be buying this book and lending it out to those who wish to read it, because I feel it is unique in the tone and ability to describe these events. I give this author tons of credit. Nice personality woven in when he mentions his own experiences as a pediatrician and in his training. It was sort of like a combo book of medical meets midwife type. It's one of the few books on birth I'll happily re-read in preparation for yet another birth :)

[Shana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earlier this week, I finished reading Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and Wonder of Childbirth, by Mark Sloan, MD (I kid you not, Grey’s Anatomy fans!). The introduction and first chapter or so didn’t sit well with me, partly because Sloan (being a male), would make comparisons between a garage and a woman’s vagina. The descriptions of a woman’s reproductive system left a lot to be desired, to say the least. But as the book continued, it got better and better. Compared to other books I’ve read about birth, Sloan really focuses on what he knows best: the male perspective and the babies themselves. As a man and pediatrician, he is certainly well qualified to write on these issues and I’m glad he he stuck to his strengths for the most part.

A few of my favorite parts:

The story of James Barry, a military surgeon who completed the first successful cesarean. Though this doesn’t sound like a very exciting story, believe me, it is. Google the name and you’ll find a feminist surprise!
Explanation of baby’s bodies and how they accommodate the birth process. Also, the story of the Apgar score, which was devised by Dr. Virginia Apgar, a Mount Holyoke alum!!!
Research on how a man becomes a father, and the surprising finding that men’s testosterone levels may decrease as their partner’s pregnancy progresses. This is the first birth book I’ve read that talks about the father’s role in the process and explores the history of how men were shunned from births and are now part of the process for some women.