Easy Labor: Every Woman's Guide to Choosing Less Pain and More Joy During Childbirth by william camann

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

What I love about this book:
-There were sources placed in the book, all over the chapters, and I found this rather useful.
-I learned several new things that I did not know before.
-When I learned something new in this book, it sparked a question that made me google even more information that wasn’t placed in the book.

What I didn’t like about this book:
-It felt like the authors got a bit repetitive with certain things and it dragged a little bit.
-I read 80% of this book. There were chapters that didn’t appeal to me and I just didn’t see them as useful to be honest.

Overall feelings:
I really enjoyed this book. I give it 3.5 stars. I don’t have kids yet but this book helped me gain some knowledge about pain relief options for birth. I plan on having a natural birth, but it’s nice to have the knowledge on pain relief methods, if I ever was to change my mind.

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D1SC0

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Simple layout, clear writing on options available for pain elimination as well as pain management. Quick read and empowering - knowledge is power!

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kamiruxii

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

For any woman seeking to learn more about her options of pain relief during labor/delivery, this book gives very helpful information about the main options. It describes what types of medicines are available, how they work, how they are administered, what their side effects are, etc. It also discusses other options if you prefer not to use medications. Some of the methods covered are hypnobirthing, waterbirthing, use of the birthing ball, etc. The nice part of this book is that it allows you to make you own decisions. It gives perspectives of a variety of healthcare practitioners as well as women who were happy or regretful of their decision to use the interventions.
It's a very good book for the overview of options available.

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MrSemT

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This book was written by an anesthesiologist at a major hospital, and when you're an anesthesiologist, everyone looks like they could use an epidural. The book definitely takes the position that other than for scheduled c-sections (where spinals are used), the epidural is the preferred choice in pain relief. And having received an epidural with each of my prior deliveries, I'm apt to agree. However, there are other options, and the author discussed them as well. I do wish he'd gone a bit more into depth with some that seemed to work really well (hypnosis?) because I wonder if the awesome-pain-free-birth-with-hypnosis thing was an anomaly or more common.

Mentions the need for flexibility (like if you go to deliver and the anesthesiologist is on-call but not on-site) in waiting for pain relief or in deciding to NOT accept pain relief. Book is also a little outdated (published 2006), in that he states only 25% of US deliveries are cesarean, while nowadays the number is north of 30%.

Also, it may have been my copy, but this book was missing more periods than the typical pregnant woman. Just less-than-stellar editing there.

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GoroTusk97

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This book provided a good summary of ALL the pain management techniques (natural and medical) for childbirth along with the research-based pros/cons of each. It's definitely skewed more towards the medical perspective, but in a way that didn't pass judgement on natural methods. The book was published in 2006, so obviously not the most up-to-date research, but very helpful nonetheless. This book really helped me make decisions regarding pain relief for birth. It also has helped me feel much more informed about all the options available so that I can go into the birthing process with a well-thought out plan while simultaneously being open-minded and flexible. Ultimately, I recommend it to anyone wanting to be informed about all the options out there for childbirth.

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skuare

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Despite the annoying/stupid title, was one of the more balanced books on childbirth. The author is an anesthesiologist at a major hospital, so obviously has as much of a bias as all of the natural birthing books, but there is a definite effort to represent all options for pain relief. The only snarky bit that comes through is the con listed for some interventions - something about "not good for the mother who wishes to use no more advanced technology than the massage setting on a showerhead." I'd say the main things that I took from this are the info on different kinds of epidurals, that getting a one-time shot to avoid an epidural could actually expose an infant to more medication, and the point that in no other medical situation are people asked to simply tolerate pain or discouraged from wanting pain relief. Like any book, just a starting point for a conversation with one's physician, but a different perspective than many of the childbirth books.

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sam_matt

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I thought this book would outline some pain management techniques but it is not a how-to, just a comparison of different methods of pain relief. For what it is, it's pretty good, but I was looking for something more.

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Kinspie13

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This would be a great one to read if you are pregnant with your first child. You just have no idea what to expect, and this book tried to be as objective as possible while answering the question: "How much does childbirth hurt?"
I've read quite a few books about natural childbirth, which all pretty much espouse the idea that childbirth doesn't have to be painful, and that "pain" is caused by our expectation of pain and fear, which causes tightening of muscles (instead of the necessary relaxation) which causes pain, which increases our fear, and the cycle continues. This makes tons of sense when you've never given birth before. Now that I've done so naturally, I don't buy the idea that the pain I experienced was a result of tension and fear. I'm pretty confident it was a result of my birth canal and perineum being stretched out to freakish proportions in order to accommodate the passage of a bowling ball-sized baby.
Anyway, I liked that this book tried to be realistic without freaking you out. Furthermore, there are many, many different pain-relief techniques discussed (traditional as well as alternative) and a very good synopsis of each is provided, along with personal experiences of moms who have used those techniques. Since this is my fourth baby (and, as I said, I've read a lot of other books on the subject) I gleaned very little new information. But I still think it was a generally well done book. I don't know that it can guarantee you "easy labor" as the title suggests, but it will definitely give you a lot of information that could help.

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Easy Labor: Every Woman's Guide to Choosing Less Pain and More Joy During Childbirth

william camann kathryn alexander

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