These are great:  The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth, Henci Goer.
Ina May Gaskin Birth Matters and Optimal Care in Childbirth, Goer and
Romano.

 

 

She should be sure to ask her caregivers about all their routine
intervention policies, and ask for best-evidence, individuated care, not
routine care for herself and her babe.  Here's something I give my mothers.
I don't remember where I got this, and I would make attribution, but I
can't. I may have edited this a few years ago. The sentiments are really
great:

 

HOW TO THINK ABOUT YOUR CAREGIVER AND THE HOSPITAL

The job of a maternity care provider is to provide you with best-evidence
information, recommend a course of action, provide the facts to support
their suggestions, discuss any alternatives, answer any questions you may
have, then stand back while you make your decision. 
Don't hire an OB, midwife, or plan a birth in a venue where you must
exchange your informed personal preferences for their policies. It's your
right to have them base their recommendations on your genuine health status
and the real health status of your baby. not on "hospital policy" or on
"This is what I have been doing for years and you have hired me as an
expert". Tell them that you understand that their protocol may be at odds
with your best-evidence requirements for care, or that their reasons for
procedures are routine and not evidence-based.  But that's really not your
problem. They are earning money to provide you with an evidence- based
service, not a hospital policy-based service.

Care providers do not dictate what services you receive; YOU do because you
are a fully competent adult. You determine whether to undergo chemotherapy
as a cancer patient, you decide whether or not to undergo a kidney
transplant as a renal patient, you decide how to give birth as a maternity
patient. So as you bring your children into the world remember this: Your
care provider gives you with options, not rules. YOU make the rules, the
decisions are yours and yours alone. It is your precious baby and your
precious body.  That is NON NEGOTIABLE.

 

 

Jackie Levine


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