Instinctive Birthing

The maternity services in the UK have been evaluated and found wanting. This comes as no surprise to Val Clarke, a community midwife and independent practitioner for over 25 years. She’s witnessed first hand the medicalisation of birth and the limitations of the National Health Service - both to the very real detriment of mothers and babies. Yet, even within a system where consistent and good quality antenatal care may be hard to find, the essential theme of her book is that it is possible for all women to have the births they want.

Though some women may feel more comfortable with a high-tech experience, others with a water birth, and still others with a caesarean, all women will have more successful birthing experiences if throughout their pregnancies, labours and deliveries, they are acting in concert with their instincts. Those feelings that can tell a woman if her baby is healthy, labour positions to adopt, even the right time to push!

Val’s book, therefore, has a twofold purpose. First, it will enable women to get in touch with and learn to trust their instincts and second, to use these instincts for decision-making throughout their antenatal care and birth experiences whether these are hospital or home-based.

Giving birth these days can be, for many women, a precarious, lonely and frightening experience. But Instinctive Birthing can change this. Heeding the advice of this wise, experienced midwife should prove life changing for many women and their babies.

• Endorsed by Sheila Kitzinger, Dr. Michel Odent and Dr. Luke Zander, well-known proponents of women’s rights in pregnancy.
• Written by an involved and respected midwife with over 25 years’ experience working both for the community and in the independent sector.
• Contains compelling true-life stories of women delivering within and outside “the system”.
• Dozens of reportage photographs taken by the author of births she attended.
• A thorough discussion of how pregnancy and birth are managed in hospital and how women can work within, and possibly change, “the system”.
• Coverage of other choices in childbirth including home births and using an independent midwife.

The Author
Val Clarke, RM, RN became a registered midwife in 1980 and has worked as both a community midwife and independent practitioner. In the course of her career, she has attended over 1,000 births in homes, hospitals, specialised birthing units, on dry land, and in water. She has participated in both high-and low-tech births, supporting mothers in their decision-making throughout their pregnancies, labours and births. She has seen the positive outcomes that result from empowered and instinctive mothers and this has been the inspiration behind her book.