Welcome with Love

This is a great children's book which showed birth the way it should be. Beautifully illustrated with soft warm tones. It showed a child's view of a birth taking place at home - with a midwife, her tools, the family witnessing the birth etc.

I loved the fact that the book showed a woman labouring in different positions. There was mention of pelvic rocking, vocalising (the child was reassured that 'yelling helped mummy feel better'), long walks in the woods (paralleling the power of nature with the power of birth) and the birth itself took place in a standing position! (Brought back memories of a beautiful birth I supported once!) The placenta was shown, and the cord was shown to be left untouched until it stopped pulsating. Wonderful! And after the birth, the whole family bedded down together with the new baby. The prose was lyrical in the setting of the mood.

When we borrowed it at the library last week, I was not the one who selected it. We were in a hurry to check out all the books so I didn't have time to 'screen' them as I usually did. KH just passed me the book and said: ok this one is about birth but I'm sure you will like it! It's the sort of birth you are always talking about!

He wasn't wrong!

After KH read this to the younger children last night, Cait was full of questions: what is the umbilical cord for? Is this how I was born? What is the placenta?

I was happy to explain of course.

Birth as we know it today has been inaccurately dramatised for tv - with screaming women, in sterile hospital environments, treated like an emergency, usually fraught with fear and tension and worry.

We need to 'take back' the power that rightfully belongs to a good natural birth. A book like this does so in the right way - by exposing children to the beauty of what birth ought to be like - a wondrous natural life event, nothing managed or technical, attended to by the whole family. Nothing to be feared, a lot to marvel about.

I think it's a lovely book to read to children, to prepare them for birth. Not text-heavy, simple to read, also great for non-birthing parents to read to their children. Am contemplating getting this for myself - so rarely do I come across gems like this - and at the National Library to boot!

Do a search at the National Library - title: Welcome with Love. By Jenni Overend and Julie Vivas.