Booking Through Thursday: Useful

Booking Through Thursday is a question-of-the-week meme.  This week's question:

What’s the most useful book you’ve ever read? And, why?

I have not posted much about this part of my life here, but once upon a time, I was a doula.   I saw this as a step along the journey to becoming a midwife, which is something I may still want to do someday.  I was privileged to attend several births in different locations, some in hospital and some at home, the effect of which ten years later was to guide my own decision to have children at home.

I've read a lot -- more than, say, fifty -- books about childbirth.  Some were more technical and some were more spiritual.  But the most useful book by far was Henci Goer's landmark text, Obstetric Myths Vs. Research Realities.  Most midwives would point you to Goer's newer and more accessible book, The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth, but I preferred the earlier one.  It was denser and aimed more at care providers than at pregnant women themselves, but reading it empowered me enormously.

When I hear about women choosing to have babies in the hospital because they are afraid of what might happen at home, I give them this book.

You can read a good portion of it on Google Books here.

I am absolutely thrilled to discover that she is working on a second edition!