Book Review of Evidence Based Birth
Babies are not Pizzas. They are born not delivered! Find out more about Evidence Based Birth
This is an easy to read book written by Rebecca Dekker PhD, RN, the founder of Evidence Based Birth.
Rebecca Dekker starts her journey as the need to be a “good patient” with the intention of following the instructions she has been given.
Her journey highlights the need for reform in the “birthing industry “
Although her experiences were located in the US many of the practices are still in place in the UK.
Her first experience related to how she was determined to be a “good patient” and follow the hospital teams recommendations. Although she left with a healthy baby the experience was not one she wanted repeated.
As a PhD nurse and researcher she looked into the evidence behind many of the recommendations she was given. None of the practices such as fasting during labour and giving birth on her back had any evidence, it was simply the way the hospital had always done things.
Although the evidence pointed to many of the practices during birth in the hospital setting were not evidence based she found that there was much resistance to changing the way they practiced.
The book is a story of her experiences of birth, labour and how she went from birth in hospital to having a home water birth. Which was not easy as she had to use an “underground midwife”.
An important point the book makes is that people do not learn from evidence and statistics, they learn from stories and the retelling of them. Rebecca found it difficult to make change by approaching hospital administrators instead she found change came through her “circle of influence “. By increasing her Circle of Influence” she was able to to affect gradual change as more became aware of the lack of evidence for hospital practices.
On her journey she started a blog EBB which has grown and has a wealth of information and free downloads you can give to patients. Evidenced based handouts for the practices surrounding childbirth.
Babies are not Pizzas
