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Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care | 
 enlarge | Author: Jennifer Block
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $4.91
You Save: $21.09 (81%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 34420
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0738210730
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.1982
EAN: 9780738210735
ASIN: 0738210730
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In the United States, more than half the women who give birth are given drugs to induce or speed up labor; for nearly a third of mothers, childbirth is major surgery - the cesarean section. For women who want an alternative, choice is often unavailable: Midwives are sometimes inaccessible; in eleven states they are illegal. In one of those states, even birthing centers are outlawed.When did birth become an emergency instead of an emergence? Since when is normal, physiological birth a crime? A groundbreaking journalistic narrative, Pushed presents the complete picture of maternity care in America. Crisscrossing the country to report what women really experience during childbirth, Jennifer Block witnessed several births - from a planned cesarean to an underground home birth. Against this backdrop, Block investigates whether routine C-sections, inductions, and epidurals equal medical progress. She examines childbirth as a reproductive rights issue: Do women have the right to an optimal birth experience? If so, is that right being upheld? Block's research and experience reveal in vivid detail that while emergency obstetric care is essential, there is compelling evidence that we are overusing medical technology at the expense of maternal and infant health: Either women's bodies are failing, or the system is failing women.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...
Scary But Necessary Reading September 29, 2008
My first (and only) birth was quite horrifying. After being induced because my contractions slowed the contractions became very painful, after 18 hours I asked for an epidural. The resident put the tube in wrong and the epidural didn't work properly, immobilizing my legs, but leaving the horrific contractions. After 30 hours the midwife broke my bag of waters and after 36 hours I had a fever and my son's heart rate was becoming erratic. They put me in for an emergency C-section, but gave the anesthesia through the same tube as the epidural. Well, it didn't work properly, and I felt almost everything during the 45 minute c-section, so long because my son was stuck and the doctor stopped midway to do a "cease and assess" and to formally complain about the overseeing anesthesiologist.
So! Bad things that you are totally unprepared for can happen! And while this book IS completely biased, it is better to know about all of the possibilities and be mentally prepared for them rather than be blindsided by them. If you are an intelligent woman/couple you can take from this book what it offers: perspective. It will also help you understand what you may and may not want to do during those "informed decision" times they tell you so much about during birthing classes. Yeah, you make the decisions, you can always ask for more information if you need it. Well, what they don't tell you is that if you ask your doctor, your doctor is biased, so if you don't do your own research going in you will do whatever your doctor says because it is the only opinion you have, besides your own, which seems meaningless and naive next to a doctor's recommendation.
Read it, be scared for a little while, and then know you are going into your birth with more information. I am pregnant again, I found that this book helped me decide what kind of physician I wanted to go with. My husband is very against home birth, and I understand his fears, he was traumatized by the first birth, too, he feels that we should still be in a hospital "just in case." So, this book helped me choose a doctor that understands that I want a "home birth" in a hospital. I hope it will help you, too.
Every expecting mother needs to read this book! September 20, 2008
This is the most important book that any expecting mother could read. This book reveals the truth about how hospital birth is not the best and safest way to have a baby. Mothers need to know that they do have a choice and that their pregnancy does not have to be treated as a disease. This book is eye-opening and empowering to all women whether pregnant or not.
Brilliant investigative writing! August 29, 2008
What praise can I give this book that has not already been said.
Jennifer is a brilliant investigative journalist. Everyone who thinks needs to read this book.
As a doula, CBE and LC I've read a lot of textbooks and advocacy about birth and breastfeeding. What I really enjoyed is this book reads like a novel or mystery. I loved the the familiar tone, and style of Jennifer's writing.
 Fabulous read (with only one objection) July 31, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm a mother of a toddler and expecting my second baby at Christmastime. I was blessed with a beautiful (for a hospital) birth with my son and hope that I'll have the same experience with this baby -- but I know from experience that I may have to fight for it. I may have to argue with the nurse who wants me to lie on my back, I may have to tell the doctor that I do NOT want an episiotomy, and I may have to kick out the residents buzzing around.
Why do women who want a natural, hands-off birth (without induction, without epidurals, without C-sections) have to fight so hard for one in a hospital setting?
"Pushed" is a very well-researched, readable look at how we got to this point. Block talks to mothers, midwives, doulas and doctors and, I think, really presents all sides of this issue.
I particularly appreciated her interviews with doctors who were sympathetic to moms who want VBACs or vaginal breech deliveries but unable to offer them because of insurance liability reasons. (If I were a doctor, I wouldn't want to risk losing my home or my kids' college fund so that someone else could have a VBAC, honestly.) This is an issue that I think gets the short shrift in many books and articles on modern birth -- it's not that doctors are necessarily trying to manage birth so that they can get to the tee times or make a few extra bucks from a C-section. Many of them want to help mothers have their ideal births but just can't take the risk, from a legal standpoint.
I do wish that Block had presented more solutions -- ideas for solving the current problem weren't really addressed -- and had also taken more of a look at why the insurance industry seems so reluctant to cover doulas, midwives and birth centers, when they usually result in a substantial savings. (My first birth was in a hospital, and my second will be as well, because we don't have the almost $4,000 to pay out of pocket for the local birth center.) She does mention that some moms have hospital births because they can't afford the out-of-pocket expenses of a homebirth or birth center birth, so it seems like it would have been a small jump to investigate why that is.
Now, here's my one complaint: In the final chapter, "Rights," Block took a very obvious pro-abortion-rights stance that I thought was out of place in the book and could likely offend a good number of her readers. (Many of the "crunchy" moms I know are pro-life.) Not to get into an abortion debate here, but I don't know why we can't assert that a fetus (particularly a full term one) has rights, as well as a mother -- especially in light of all the evidence Block presents that VBACs, vaginal breech births, etc. AREN'T dangerous to the baby; it doesn't seem like an either-or argument to me. At any rate, the "fetal rights" cases that Block addresses feel crammed in and not at all relevant to the rest of the book, from my perspective. Not to mention, ending the book discussing abortion, after spending the entire thing talking about what's best for mothers and best for babies, was extremely jarring.
Overall, though, this was a great read and definitely a must for any pregnant woman or anyone at all who's interested in why American women are giving birth the way they are right now.
A Revolution Is Needed July 30, 2008
This book is so needed. Women need to know what is happening in hospitals concerning births. Knowledge is the key. I got involved in the natural childbirth movement a couple of years ago. I overheard two businessmen calmly discussing a scheduled c-section. It went like this, "no problems with the meeting. My wife has scheduled the c-section for 3 pm on Thursday." They might as well have been discussing a golf game. Something inside me snapped. This was so wrong on such a fundamental level. I was not a mother and not even married at the time, but I set out to find out as much as I could about this epidempic and it is an epidempic. We fight for so many rights, why not the right to give birth? This book is enlightening, informative, and much needed.
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