Birth crisis
By: Sheila Kitzinger.
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 191
Subjects: Childbirth -- Psychological aspects; Labor (Obstetrics) -- Psychological aspects; Delivery (Obstetrics) -- Psychological aspects; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Psychic trauma; Mothers -- Mental health; Parturition -- psychology; Delivery, Obstetric -- adverse effects; Delivery, Obstetric -- ethics; Pregnancy Complications -- psychology; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic -- etiology
Description: When a woman is denied all choice - feels as if she has been swallowed up by a vast machine and spat out at the other end with a baby - how can she come to terms with that ordeal? One new mother in twenty is diagnosed with traumatic stress after childbirth. In Birth Crisis Sheila Kitzinger explores the disempowerment and anxiety experienced by these women. Topics include: increasing intervention in pregnancy, the shift in emphasis from relationships to technology in childbirth, how family, friends and professional caregivers can reach out to traumatized mothers, how women can work through stress to understand themselves more deeply and grow in emotional maturity, how care and the medical system needs to be changed Birth Crisis draws on mothers' voices and real-life experiences to explore the suffering after childbirth which has, until now, been brushed under the carpet. It is a fascinating and useful resource for student and practicing midwives, all health professionals, and women and their families who want to learn how to overcome a traumatic birth.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Birth shock; title: Birth contrasts; title: Institutional power in a high tech birth culture : how an anthropologist sees birth; title: Managing the reproductive machine; title: Sexual abuse and birth; title: Nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks; title: Pain; title: Other ways of handling pain; title: "If only I hadn't"; title: The baby; title: The partner; title: Moving forward; title: Pregnant again.