jami reviewed Pushed by Jennifer Block
Review of 'Pushed' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This book, like the movie "The Business of Being Born," is a good starting point for women skeptical of the notion that 95% of women need to be paralyzed from the waist down to endure childbirth, and 30% need to start their relationships with their babies while recovering from major surgery. But you can tell, even from the title, that "Pushed" is just a liiittle biased against the medical establishment.
I'm glad I started this book, as it helped me discover the question: "When do I think the many, many possible medical interventions in childbirth are justified?" However, because of its anti-hospital bias, this book absolutely did not help me answer that question. I finally gave up finding the right answers for me in this book when it trotted out a statistic like (from memory -- it's been a few months) "only" 1 in 10 natural breech births ended badly …
This book, like the movie "The Business of Being Born," is a good starting point for women skeptical of the notion that 95% of women need to be paralyzed from the waist down to endure childbirth, and 30% need to start their relationships with their babies while recovering from major surgery. But you can tell, even from the title, that "Pushed" is just a liiittle biased against the medical establishment.
I'm glad I started this book, as it helped me discover the question: "When do I think the many, many possible medical interventions in childbirth are justified?" However, because of its anti-hospital bias, this book absolutely did not help me answer that question. I finally gave up finding the right answers for me in this book when it trotted out a statistic like (from memory -- it's been a few months) "only" 1 in 10 natural breech births ended badly back in the olden days. They glossed completely over how ridiculously high that number is, and what it meant for a natural breech birth to "end badly."
For science-based information that is presented with compassion and respect for mom and baby but without demonizing people who have dedicated their careers to saving women and babies' lives, I highly recommend "The Complete Book Of Pregnancy And Childbirth" instead.