favorite birthing and baby from my shelf:

Suzanne Arms Immaculate Deception from1975,out of print )and Immaculate Deception II (1990s update,more in keeping with today's options and practices



Robin Lim - After the Baby's Birth - some Ayurvedic medicine mixed into a gentle spiritual book on postpartum,with food recipes,exercises, baby tales, and more- beautiful photos!)

Jeannine Parvati -Prenatal Yoga and Natural Birth -any edition (the earliest are under her name from her first marriage, Jeannine O'Brien medvin)

jacqueline Vincent-Priya _ Birth without Doctors (traditional birthing practices in Asia)

Frederick Leboyer - Inner Beauty,Inner Light (beautiful photo-poetic essay on Indian yoga teacher BKS Iyengar's Vanita daughter doing yoga asanas in late pregnancy and some spiritua guidance on pregnancy)

Ina May Gaskin - SpiritualMidwifery -again,any edition - they are up to the fourth now.

out of print but well worth looking at if you can find them...treasures from the 70s homebirth renaissance...all produced,including the baies as well as the books, in northern California in early 1970s.

Birth Book,by Raven Lang.
Childbirth is Ecstasy by Steven Waltzer and Allen Cohen
Two Births by Janet Brown, Eugene Lesser, Stephanie Mines, and Ed Buryn. Ed Buryn,photojournalist, adventure travel writer, and father of the younger of the two baby girls born in this book,sells books over the Internet and still has a case of these for sale.

also recommended highly...and more current and I believe still in print

Janet Balaskas,"Active Birth"

Penny SImkin "The Birth Partner"

Elizabeth Davis,"Hearts and Hands - A Guide to Midwifery" (wirtten mostly as a midwife's guide,but plenty useful for women considering midwifery care at a birth\


Pregnant Feelings by ahima Baldwin Dancy and Terra Palmarini Richardson

there are other books oromoting natura lchildbirth but this includes the ones that I revisit often as old friends and guides and would never give away(unless I have a backup copy!)

incidentally, "Birth Book"is almost impossible to find in English but the German language translation cn be found fairly easily through abebooks.com. the german title was "Childbirth is not an Illness"..type in "Raven Lang" as author fopr search, if you visit abebooks,com and you will see if there are German books available...I bought one last year even though I read only a little German. it didn't cost much.