Saturday, November 1, 2008

Childbirth Education: Research, Practice, & Theory

I know I've mentioned before that I'm a fast reader. Well, guess what? This week I finished reading a book I've been reading since my birthday in MAY! LOL! I'm so fast. Aren't you impressed? Anyway, it was Childbirth Education: Research, Practice, & Theory, which is a CBE textbook. It is pretty much the only textbook-style CBE book available and I figured it was high time I finally read it. My mom got it for me for my birthday and I started reading it then and have slowly been working my way through it ever since. It was interesting, of course--it is about birth!--but somehow a textbook style of book just never *grabs* you in the way other books can. Plus, in terms of literal grabbing, it is really heavy and unwieldy, which made it very hard to read in bed while nursing, which is where I still do most of my reading. The pages ended up cracking away from the spine, because of how I had to prop it awkwardly on its side to read it in bed. It is over 700 pages and exhaustively researched and had TONS of great content. I'd recommend it to any childbirth educator. I marked so many pages to refer back to later, or to blog about later (I'll do that on Talk Birth though, not here).

I realized when I was about halfway through that I have never in my life read an entire textbook cover to cover before. This tells you how important the subject is to me ;-) It also brought to mind all the textbooks I've had in my life that I've not only *not* read cover to cover, but have not even *opened.* LOL! I was a really good student too and cared about my majors (but not enough to read the books apparently...)

Reading this book is one reason why I haven't read as many books yet this year as I did last year (I think I've only read like 75 and last year it was over 100)!

I have more to say of course, but this will have to be all for today. This may be one of my least-interesting posts ever...

2 comments:

The Mommy Blawger said...

This book is required reading for all CBEs certifying through CAPPA, my certifying organization, and I agree that it should be read by all CBEs. I think it's odd that hospitals often have RNs running childbirth classes with no certification and little, if any, training in how to *teach*.

Molly said...

It is required reading for ICEA and Lamaze too (not for ALACE though, which is where my original certification is from. We read Empowering Women: Teaching Active Birth as our "how to teach" book).

When I first started out as a birth educator, I was primarily interested in the *content*--what to present, etc. Now, I find myself fascinated by the *process*--HOW to present.

Molly :)