Rebounding from Childbirth: Toward Emotional Recovery

(Paperback)

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Few women planning a pregnancy or anticipating childbirth would dispute that the safe birth of a healthy child is their primary concern. Even when this happy outcome is achieved, however, the process of childbirth itself can wreak havoc on a woman's emotional and physiological well-being - especially when unforseen medical complications change the expected course of labour and delivery. "Rebounding From Childbirth" - the first book to focus exclusively on the mother's feelings about a difficult birth - shows how traumatic childbirth forces a woman to suddenly relinquish cherished hopes for her experience of actually becoming a mother. Amid the joys of a healthy baby, the mother's feelings of anger, grief, failure and disappointment often get scant attention from family, friends and medical personnel. Drawing from her own life as a professional counsellor and mother of three, Lynn Madsen argues that a woman should not underestimate her own need to recover emotionally and physiologically from a violent birth experience. Without true healing, Madsen's analysis reveals, a new mother's suppressed sense of loss and pain can affect her relationships with her baby and husband, her body image, her feelings about going back to work, even her hopes for future pregnancies and births. Through her own story and those of other women, Madsen offers comfort, hope and an intensely personal perspective to new mothers who feel alone with a range of negative feelings about childbirth. Taking dual stance as counsellor and mother, she structures self-analytical questions and outlines techniques such as journal and letter writing to help the reader begin the healing journey. For obstetricians, nurses, midwives, new mothers and mothers-to-be, "Rebounding From Childbirth" provides moving insights and counsel on a difficult subject.

Reviews

"A psychologist's moving account of her own birth trauma and an exploration into the process of healing that a woman can experience afterwards. If birth was bad for you, this book can help you work through depression and despair and find self-confidence."-Sheila Kitzinger
"This book is more than useful: it is necessary in the American context after several generations of medicalized birth. The time has come to consider the healing process millions of mothers need after giving birth."-Michel Odent, M.D. author of The Nature of Birth and Breastfeeding
"This little gem of a book will be transformative for those wounded women fortunate enough to read it, and extraordinarily useful to the therapists who are trying to help women heal from the iatrogenic traumas all too commonly generated by hospital birth."-Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, Ph.D. author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage

Author Bio

LYNN MADSEN is a psychologist who specializes in traumatic birth experiences in the Minneapolis area. She is a journalist and writes from her personal experiences as a three-time mother.