Women are over four times more likely to have a caesarean birth than they were some years ago. Intended for women who have had a caesarean or repeat caesareans, this title provides suggestions for constructive ways to achieve vaginal birth when it is the right option for mother and baby.

This book investigates why women choose ‘birth outside the system’ and makes connections between women’s right to choose where they birth and violations of human rights within maternity care systems. Choosing to birth at home can force women out of mainstream maternity care, despite research supporting the safety of this option for low-risk women attended by midwives. When homebirth is not supported as a birthplace option, women will defy mainstream medical advice, and if a midwife is not available, choose either an unregulated careprovider or birth without assistance. This book examines the circumstances and drivers behind why women nevertheless choose homebirth by bringing legal and ethical perspectives together with the latest research on high-risk homebirth (breech and twin births), freebirth, birth with unregulated careproviders and the oppression of midwives who support unorthodox choices. Stories from women who have pursued alternatives in Australia, Europe, Russia, the UK, the US, Canada, the Middle East and India are woven through the research. Insight and practical strategies are shared by doctors, midwives, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists on how to manage the tension between professional obligations and women’s right to bodily autonomy. This book, the first of its kind, is an important contribution to considerations of place of birth and human rights in childbirth.

Fully up to date, this new edition covers all aspects of care for women developing disorders during pregnancy.

Whether you offer comprehensive pregnancy care in your primary care facility, or provide prenatal and postpartum care, this book delivers the guidance you need to optimize health for both mothers and their babies. It covers all aspects of birth care, from preconception counseling and prenatal care, through labor and delivery (both low-risk and complicated), to postpartum care and the first month of life. The completely revised third edition includes the most up-to- date, evidence-based standards of care. It offers information that is patient centered, prevention oriented, educational, and sensitive to the care of the whole woman and her family. Features a reader-friendly outline/narrative format for ease of use in daily clinical practice. Describes how to care for patients with a wide range of medical conditions during pregnancy as well as pregnancy-related conditions. Takes a whole-family approach to maternity care, with discussions of maternal and paternal adjustment, marital adjustment, sibling adjustment, single-parent families, and return-to-work issues. Provides patient and family education materials on a full range of topics, from nutrition in pregnancy to breastfeeding. Features a section on alternative medicine in maternity care. Provides detailed instruction for a wide array of procedures, including cesarean delivery, perineal repair of simple and complex lacerations, circumcision, assisted deliveries, and amnioinfusion. A continued strong emphasis on evidence-based medicine includes an ongoing summary of Level A recommendations throughout the text. A new chapter summarizes practical applications of how to incorporate continuous quality improvement and enhanced medical safety into the maternity care setting. A new section details which immunizations can be used safely during pregnancy. A section on "Centering Pregnancy" discusses this new model of care and how it incorporates longitudinal group.

This updated book is a practical guide to intrapartum ultrasonography to help practitioners improve labor and delivery, and to limit, where possible, complications. Presenting the authors’ experiences, the book summarizes the state of the art in normal and abnormal labor. It clearly documents the use of intrapartum ultrasonography to evaluate the first and second stages of labor and diagnose the occiput posterior and transverse positions. Each situation is analyzed with the help of numerous informative images and invaluable tips and tricks showing how fetal head engagement and progression can be documented objectively. The importance of ultrasound in obstetrics risk management is also addressed. Explaining how intrapartum ultrasonography can be used to assess whether a safe natural delivery is likely or whether operative procedures are required, the book is a valuable resource for all professionals – physicians and midwifes alike – caring for women in labor.

This book is meant to bridge the gap between small handbooks that do not contain enough material to understand why you are doing certain things and large textbooks that lack the practical information you need for how to do specific procedures, write notes, orders, and dictations. After reading it, you will be prepared to care for an obstetric patient from the moment they arrive in triage until the time they are discharged. You will understand not only how to perform both simple and complicated procedures, but also why they are necessary, and you will have the answers to the most common pimp questions that are asked of students and residents. The most up-to-date literature and evidence-based recommendations have been used to create simple treatment algorithms for the most common issues you will face, and numerous illustrations are included for clarity as well. Because of its focus, this book is also valuable resource for staff physicians who need an updated text on current obstetric care as well as for those who regularly interact with and teach medical students and residents.