Need help making birth decisions?
One of Sara’s most loved books is called What’s Right For Me? Making decision in pregnancy and childbirth.
It has been helping parents to become familiar with their options and learn about tools to help them make the pregnancy and birth decisions that are right for them for twenty years.
Over that time, we have shared many blog posts relating to the topics in this book. And we have gathered them together for you on this birth decisions resources page.
First, here’s some information about the book itself, and about Sara, in case you’ve come to this page from outside of our website and would like to know more.
Birth decisions, and women’s knowledge
I’ve written a few articles explaining why birth decisions are important, and why decision making can be tricky. These are a good summary of the issues, especially if you’re new to this area, or my work.
Important things to consider
These posts offer insight into some important things to consider when you’re making birth decisions. The posts are just a taster. There is lots more on this in What’s Right For Me?
Birth decisions and the issues that relate to them are far more nuanced than some people realise, especially when they are getting most of their information on social media, or from people who haven’t worked in the maternity services.
These posts will also help you understand some of the tools that can be used when making birth decisions. There is lots more on these in What’s Right For Me? as well.
Paradigms, perspective and bias
One of the things I try to explain in is that there are different ways of thinking about birth. These can be described as different paradigms, where a paradigm is a particular way of thinking about something.
For instance, some people take the view that birth works very well, on the whole. They point to the fact that we wouldn’t all be here now if it didn’t. These people are more likely to trust female physiology. They don’t reject medicine, surgery, and technology when there is truly a problem (or at least the vast, vast majority don’t), but they try to keep this to a minimum. They tend to seek options that are conducive to the flow of birth hormones, as there is evidence that this can help birth to go well.
Others have adopted a more modern risk-based view. They take the view that birth is always potentially dangerous, and argue that we should try to monitor, manage and control the birth process as much as possible. This means that they will tend to favour options such as hospital birth, induction of labour, and medical management of labour and birth. This approach leads to more intervention.
The following blog posts explain this a bit further. Again, there is an entire chapter in the book which looks into these issues more deeply, and gives you practical tools to explore your own perspectives on birth. It can be really useful to have conversations about this with your partner, as our perspectives can sometimes differ. When that’s the case, it’s really helpful to have talked this though beforehand, rather than learning about it when you are facing a big decision.
Consent and rights
We have a couple of posts about consent, and your right to decline intervention if it isn’t what you want.
If you’re in the US, Henci Goer has a useful article on your rights here.
Language and questioning
We also have posts on language, asking questions and supporting women.
Some of these are aimed to help women, families and those who support them to formulate questions. Others are more general reflections and critiques of the language that is used around birth.
I have been questioning the terms we use for many years now, so some these posts refer to older articles, but I think they are still useful.
A few other helpful posts
And finally, we’re going to pop in a few other posts which relate to other books and topics, but which you might also find useful in relation to birth decisions.
About the Author: Dr Sara Wickham is an author, speaker, and researcher specialising in pregnancy, birth and maternity care. Her work focuses on evidence-based, woman-centred information and informed decision-making, drawing on more than 30 years of midwifery knowledge and experience.
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Books to help you become informed and make the decisions that are right for you…
If this blog post or any of Sara’s work has helped you or those you care for, please buy her a coffee and help us continue to provide independent birth information online as well as in her books.
Thank you.