Your Best Birth by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein

Your Best Birth by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein is very much about all of your options in birth, from doctors and hospitals to homebirths and midwives. The book is not preachy at all and really seeks to help you understand how they perceive the birth climate and what you can do to have the birth that you want. It is written in the tone of your friends giving you the real scoop on labor and birth.

Your Best Birth by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein is a really nice book for anyone interested in childbirth and learning about the choices are available. The book is based on the premise of their movie, The Business of Being Born (BOBB), that women have lots of choices in birth and tend to skip over the more natural choices of birth centers, midwives and homebirths.

That is not to say that they do not give advice or even praise to medical interventions. They have chapters on cesarean section, epidurals and other childbirth intervention, with positive stories, even in these chapters. A good example would be Laila Ali's birth story. She'd been planning a homebirth with a midwife and it became known that she would be better off in a hospital with medical interventions. She shares her story in a positive manner.

You will find other celebrity births sprinkled through out the book, including those of Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein. These do a nice job of illustrating points about the medical discussion and how labor really plays out.

This book is only a semi-how to book, with more emphasis on the available options. They do a really nice job of explaining why these alternatives might just be the best bet for your birth and how to combine them to help choose your birth plans, including resistance you might get from various places.

• Purchase The Business of Being Born