Open Season: A Survival Guide for Natural Childbirth and VBAC in the 90s

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Provides fresh insights and new information on the subject, offering guidance to childbearing couples, educators, health professionals, and scholars who value the natural path of childbirth. Cohen's intimate writing style presents a compendium of knowledge on childbirth in the fashion of a "personal letter". Her aim is to lower America's alarming reliance on cesarean section, which is currently at 25 percent of all births, and to return the responsiblity for childbirth to women by encouraging them to choose the kind of birthing experience they wish to have. In addition to cesarean section, Cohen discusses many other interventions performed on women during pregnancy and childbirth - such as foetal monitoring and routinized hospital procedures.

Reviews

"After Silent Knife, after my own two VBACs, after years of spearheading the Canadian VBAC movement, I honestly thought I had no more tears to shed over cesarean section and VBAC. Nancy, you've done it again. With Open Season, you have helped me discover new depths and soar to new heights. Don't ever stop writing!"-Caroline Sufrin Disler Founder and Director, VBAC/AVAC Canada and Cesarean Birth Committee, Ontario Ministry of Health
"As an obstetrician, I am frequently called upon to make, or influence, decisions that will help to insure the health and well-being of both mother and baby. With Silent Knife, and now with Open Season, you cause me to continually reevaluate my preconceived ideas, and I am grateful to you for the opportunity."-Leo Sorger, M.D., F.A.C.O.G.
"Just as Immaculate Deception was the expose of birth in the 70s, and Silent Knife in the 80s, Open Season will be the wake-up call and rallying point for women in the 90s . . . Women pregnant for the first time, experienced mothers, childbirth educators, midwives, nurses and doctors--no one can read this book and remain the same. Thank goodness!"-Rahima Baldwin Author of Special Delivery and Founder of Informed Homebirth
"Obstetricians would be wise to read this book before their patients get their hands on it. The rate of unnecessary cesarean sections would be significantly reduced if Open Season were required reading for everyone taking childbirth education classes. Nancy Cohen's witty handling of a very serious subject may well be a turning point in American obstetric care."-Doris Haire, Chair Committee on Maternal & Child Health Former Chair, National Women's Health Network
"Oh, Nancy. What a profound message to women! . . . You have given us back our voices so we can own our own births and know the depths of our selves."-Heather Laier Midwife, homebirth after two cesareans

Author Bio

NANCY WAINER COHEN founded CSEC, Inc., the first and largest cesarean prevention organization in the country, in 1973. Since 1972, she has counseled thousands of women in the areas of cesarean prevention and VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean--an acronym she coined). She continues individual counseling and also speaks throughout the country to pregnant women, childbirth educators, midwives, health professionals, and consumers. Ms. Wainer Cohen is the co-author of Silent Knife: Cesarean Prevention and Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (Bergin & Garvey, 1983).