Product Description

For over 40 years Michel Odent has been the world's leading 'birth guru'. He has pioneered a new philosophy of childbirth, making it a natural experience for women and providing settings that allow a woman to give birth her own way. Women become their own birthing experts, if they follow their instincts they can birth naturally, with the minimal intervention of medical science. Many of the birthing practices that Michel Odent has advocated are now common useage, including the creation of more homely birthing rooms, birthing pools and water births, labour without drugs and ensuring that the mother plays the key role in the experience of birth. Michel Odent has returned birth to how it should be. 'Birth Reborn' gives expectant mothers the confidence and information they need in order to trust themselves to give birth without the drugs and medical procedures that are being increasingly recognised as harmful to the mother and to the baby's future development.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18859 in Books
• Published on: 1994-04-14
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

'The Times'
"Combining the roles of romantic, philosopher, surgeon and
obstetrician as only a Frenchman could."

'Nursery World'
"This is the man who has made childbirth a delightful, natural experience
for so many women."

About the Author
Michel Odent developed the maternity ward at Pithiviers Hospital in France from the 1960s, where he first introduced many of today's natural birthing practices.

Customer Reviews

Want a satisfying, natural birth?
Read this book! Michel Odent is a wonderful doctor who realized the unnecessety of all the medical interventions and gadgets in birth and gave women back the right to do what they do naturally: give birth to their babies naturally, fully alert, following what nature and instinct tell them to do! And that was a long time before, when all the rest of the obstetric worl was introducing more and more medical interventions.

This books decribes his experience of starting a different birth approach in Pithiviers, France, in 70's as well as the whole process of pregnancy, birth preparation and birth itself. It is not complicated, it is not full of medical expressions: it is warm, it is reassuring, it is full of first hand experience. Book includes wonderful photographs of natural births.

A very inspiring book for every expectant mother who is considering unmedicated birth: either home or hospital.

The Best Book EVER
My mother was/is a Doula for nearly forty years, she has met Michel Odent and spent time a his clinic in Pithiviers. She applies all she has learnt from him to the births she attends and when women come to her with their third or fourth birth you must conclude that the application of Michel Odents practices is needed. .My wife (we are a lesbian couple) is a midwife here in Holland and also applies as much of his philosophy as she possible can and with 55% of her practices birth now at home and natural producing happy and clam babies and mothers with nearly zero incidence of post natal depression I suggest that you draw your own common sense conclusion. I am a physiologist and his views on birth hormones are so right.
He is a wonderful doctor who realised that all the medical interventions, technology and gadgets in birth caused as many problems as they solved, in fact look at the mother and baby mortality figures if you doubt his. Maeria, a country with the highest levels of medical `help' are 21st in the mortality tables, countries like Holland with a more natural approach are 3rd. He did this from good old fashioned observation and NOT by looking at what machines told him. He is in touch with the heart of women and that is a refreshing change in a basically misogynistic profession. He gave women back the right to do what they do naturally: give birth to their babies privately without a stream of strangers with medical credentials leering at your vagina, naturally, fully alert, filled with their mother's NATURAL hormones to bond them, following what nature and instinct tell them to do.

Women know how to give birth, it is NOT a medical event, it is part of a woman's natural state of being. The myth of medicine is that it saves lives when in fact for low and medium risk births medical intervention will increase the risk to your life and you and your baby's well being. This book will open your eyes not just to the gross presumption of doctors during labour and birth but to many other things.

Please read this book, demand and exert your rights, but most all learn for yourself and enjoy giving birth, it is amazing. Good luck.

Brilliant, I wish Dr's and Midwives would read it!
I read this book with a growing sense of anger as I discovered just how unneccessary and damaging modern western childbirth practices are. Why we still blindly do the same unnatural things to women over and over again is beyond me! Forceps, opiates, stirrips, none of these things have a place in childbirth. More women would enjoy giving birth if they read this, and even more if it was compulsory reading for all maternity staff!

It gave me the confidence to insist on doing things my way and as a result I had a beautiful natural homebirth.