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The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth
When an American colleague said he was posting this book to me I was full of anticipation. Henci Goer's previous book Obstetric Myths Versus Research Realities was a boon to us all because it laid out so clearly the huge gap which exists between evidence and practice.
This book is an attempt to put much of what was in Obstetric Myths into a popular format. It is clear, persuasive and occasionally forthright in tone. There is no rational reason why I should have any reservations about it, and yet I do.
The first thing which struck me is that fully one third of the book - 122 pages! is devoted to medical references. I consider myself a `thinking woman' but to me this is simply overkill. Yes, Americans may be less easily swayed by the idea that birth does not require so many unnecessary interventions. Perhaps her publishers were nervous about putting such a strange idea in print without lots of ëproof' to back it up. But rather than add to the authority of the author and the book, this ludicrous amount of references detracts from it. In this...