This accessible, evidence-based book explores how important it is for midwives to understand the psychological aspects of care, in order to create positive experiences for mothers and families.
The main aim of this practical Handbookis to strengthen counselling and communication skills of skilled attendants (SAs) and other health providers, helping them to effectively discuss with women, families and communities the key issues surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, postnatal and post-abortion care. Counselling for Maternal and Newborn Health Careis divided into three main sections. Part 1 is an introduction which describes the aims and objectives and the general layout of the Handbook. Part 2 describes the counselling process and outlines the six key steps to effective counselling. It explores the counselling context and factors that influence this context including the socio-economic, gender, and cultural environment. A series of guiding principles is introduced and specific counselling skills are outlined. Part 3 focuses on different maternal and newborn health topics, including general care in the home during pregnancy; birth and emergency planning; danger signs in pregnancy; post-abortion care; support during labor; postnatal care of the mother and newborn; family planning counselling; breastfeeding; women with HIV/AIDS; death and bereavement; women and violence; linking with the community. Each Session contains specific aims and objectives, clearly outlining the skills that will be developed and corresponding learning outcomes. Practical activities have been designed to encourage reflection, provoke discussions, build skills and ensure the local relevance of information. There is a review at the end of each session to ensure the SAs have understood the key points before they progress to subsequent sessions.
The physical process of birth is no longer as mysterious as it once was. But many unanswered psychological questions still surround the birth of a child. In this remarkably appealing and personable book, pediatrician Aidan Macfarlane takes a careful look at a large number of these important psychological unknowns. On Macfarlane's agenda: Can a woman's emotional attitude toward pregnancy cause "morning sickness," influence the smoothness of labor and delivery, or shape the child's behavior after birth? Can the mother-child relationship be adversely affected by separation immediately after birth? Is the quality of the birth experience improved by home delivery? What are the psychological effects of pain-killing drugs on mother and child? What, if anything, does the unborn infant see, hear, and feel inside the womb? Is birth a psychological trauma for the child and, if so, how can it be alleviated? Although Dr. Macfarlane refuses to provide easy answers to any of these questions, his clear discussion of the available evidence is not without important consequences for the way in which we understand birth and manage it in our society.
It is vital that healthcare practitioners understand the psychological impact of childbirth when caring for women. This accessible guide is designed to improve the care that women receive and, as a result, public health outcomes related to maternal and infant wellbeing. This book outlines how clinicians can offer practical support to women after birth. It: discusses what we know about how women adapt to motherhood and develop a post-childbirth identity; outlines some of the causes and manifestations of post-traumatic stress following childbirth; provides practical guidance for setting up postnatal pathways for women traumatised by birth and how to communicate effectively; equips practitioners with the knowledge and skills to support pregnant women with a fear of birth; incorporates narratives from women to demonstrate how their births and related events were perceived and processed, before discussing how women’s views can be used to inform future practice; highlights the importance of restorative supervision for healthcare professionals working in this area to promote staff resilience and sustainability. Drawing together theoretical knowledge, evidence, practical skills and women’s narratives to help clinicians understand the psychology of childbirth and support women, it is of significant value to all healthcare practitioners engaged in maternity services.
Never mind what you've been through. The baby's here, he's healthy. That's the most important thing, isn't it? 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 unforeseen medical complications change the expected course of labor 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 counselor 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 a dual stance as counselor 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 insight and counsel on a difficult subject.
Postpartum depression has become a more recognized mental illness over the past decade as a result of education and increased awareness. Traumatic childbirth, however, is still often overlooked, resulting in a scarcity of information for health professionals. This is in spite of up to 34% of new mothers reporting experiencing a traumatic childbirth and prevalence rates rising for high risk mothers, such as those who experience stillbirth or who had very low birth weight infants. This ground-breaking book brings together an academic, a clinician and a birth trauma activist. Each chapter discusses current research, women’s stories, the common themes in the stories and the implications of these for practice, clinical case studies and a clinician’s insights and recommendations for care. Topics covered include: mothers’ perspectives, fathers’ perspectives, the impact on breastfeeding, the impact on subsequent births, PTSD after childbirth and EMDR treatment for PTSD. This book is a valuable resource for health professionals who come into contact with new mothers, providing the most current and accurate information on traumatic childbirth. It also presents mothers’ experiences in a manner that is accessible to women, their partners, and families.
How can ethnographic studies be generalized, in contrast to concentrating on the individual case? Noblit and Hare propose a new method for synthesizing from qualitative studies: meta-ethnography. After citing the criteria to be used in comparing qualitative research projects, the authors define the ways these can then be aggregated to create more cogent syntheses of research. Using examples from numerous studies ranging from ethnographic work in educational settings to the Mead-Freeman controversy over Samoan youth, Meta-Ethnography offers useful procedural advice from both comparative and cumulative analyses of qualitative data. This provocative volume will be read with interest by researchers and students in qualitative research methods, ethnography, education, sociology, and anthropology. "After defining metaphor and synthesis, these authors provide a step-by-step program that will allow the researcher to show similarity (reciprocal translation), difference (refutation), or similarity at a higher level (lines or argument synthesis) among sample studies....Contain(s) valuable strategies at a seldom-used level of analysis." --Contemporary Sociology "The authors made an important contribution by reframing how we think of ethnography comparison in a way that is compatible with the new developments in interpretive ethnography. Meta-Ethnography is well worth consulting for the problem definition it offers." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "This book had to be written and I am pleased it was. Someone needed to break the ice and offer a strategy for summarizing multiple ethnographic studies. Noblit and Hare have done a commendable job of giving the research community one approach for doing so. Further, no one else can now venture into this area of synthesizing qualitative studies without making references to and positioning themselves vis-a-vis this volume." -Educational Studies
A classic childbirth text reissued with a new foreword by Ina May Gibson. In an age where birth has often been overtaken by obstetrics, Dr Dick-Read's philosophy is still as fresh and relevant as it was when he originally wrote this book. He unpicks every possible root cause of western woman's fear and anxiety in pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding and does so with overwhelming heart and empathy.
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. Perinatal psychology is a field devoted to understanding the biopsychosocial experiences of women and men during the transition to parenthood. These experiences include pregnancy, labor, delivery, adjustment and parenting during the postpartum period, lactation, family planning, adoption, infertility, and adjustment to perinatal loss.