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I did all the right things. I visited the doctor as soon as I suspected I might be pregnant. I ate well and took my vitamins. I got plenty of rest and exercise. I went to two complete sets of childbirth classes and read every birth childbirth book in the library. I was healthy, well-educated, and the perfect age for birthing.

Something went wrong during labor though, and this healthy mother who had done everything right had to have her healthy baby delivered through a surgical incision. I was devasted. As much as I loved my baby and was thankful he was healthy, I felt like I'd been cheated out of womanhood.
I had failed at giving birth, but it made me determined NOT to fail at breastfeeding. Again I followed my doctors orders carefully, struggling to take care of my baby while recovering from surgery. It wasn't until I went to a La Leche League meeting that I learned how simple breastfeeding could be.

La Leche League is where I learned from the experts how to enjoy nursing as effortlessly as I enjoy breathing. The real experts on breastfeeding, it turned out, weren't medical professionals, but mothers! Women who had done it, enjoyed it, and were enthusiastically sharing what they knew, helped me more than all the books I had read about lactation.

As my baby grew day by day on nothing but my milk it helped me gain confidence in my body's ability to do exactly what it was designed to do. Over the next year I slowly began to change my perspective on what had actually gone wrong with the delivery.

I knew some women hated breastfeeding and many more quit because they found it too difficult, but I had learned how to enjoy breastfeeding. I knew that most of the common breastfeeding difficulties are not actually physical problems, but problems with the management of breastfeeding. I wondered: Could it be the same with childbirth? Are the difficulties we so often experience in childbirth a result of the management of birth, and not physical problems after all?

Because my faith in the medical system had failed me, I decided to change direction. I found a midwife who came to my home and monitored my labour, then took me to the hospital where I gave birth to a baby considerably larger than the one for whom I'd had a cesarean. I knew then that there was nothing wrong with my body, but something very wrong with the way birth is managed.

The rest of my babies - four more - were born at home. The births were easy, with no problems and little pain. Contrary to what many people believe and expect, my largest baby, at 10 lbs 3 oz. was not a more difficult delivery, but was in fact one of the easiest births of all! Even when my fifth child was born a month early, there was still no reason to go to the hospital.

My desire is for others to learn from my experience. I want women to know how to birth the easy way, without having to learn the hard way.

This book is my labour of love, conceived the day someone told me I was "lucky," and gestating over the next few years as I shared my story with others and saw the difference it made for them.

I have sold the book at cost since 1999, because you can't put a price on the truth. Now it is finally professionally bound and published, I will continue to keep the price low as long as I am able to do so. When (if) the book reaches bookstores, I may have to increase the price to compensate for the changes.


Childbirth and bonding are tremendously important, and you are a superb expounder of the validation of them. - Dr. John Stevenson, Australia

~ Why I had to write this book ~

1) Every woman should know that she already has what it takes to give birth, and she can do so with confidence and joy instead of fear and pain.
2) Childbirth, a normal female function, is dominated by male professionals, and women need to know what is wrong with this model.
3) I want this information to be available to more women than I can possibly reach in my little community.
4) I needed to give credit to all the experts, writers, and references from whom I learned. I certainly didn't invent easy birth!
5) Someone said I was "lucky" to have easy births. I didn't have time to explain to her what took me 12 years to learn: that LUCK had nothing to do with it!


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