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Ruth Ehrhardt
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The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour Paperback – October 11, 2011

by Ruth Ehrhardt (Author), Michel Odent (Foreword)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 178 ratings
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In her book, midwife Ruth Ehrhardt very simply explores, as the title suggests, how the basic needs of labouring women can be met. It takes into consideration the subtle effect environmental factors have on labour and what those attending births need to be aware of. Drawing on the work of Michel Odent, it focuses quite plainly on the physiology of labour, childbirth and postpartum. This book is aimed at pregnant mothers as well as those attending births, whether in the capacity as caregiver (doctor, midwife, doula) or partner."To bring together what is important in such a small number of pages is a feat. I hope that, on the five continents, all pregnant women, midwives, doulas, doctors, etc. will take the time to assimilate the contents of this chef d’oeuvre: it will be a turning point in the history of childbirth and therefore in the history of mankind." - Michel Odent
Previous page
  1. Print length
    32 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    October 11, 2011
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 0.08 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0620660287
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0620660280
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ True Midwifery (October 11, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 32 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0620660287
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0620660280
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.08 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.08 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 178 ratings

About the author

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Ruth Ehrhardt

Ruth Ehrhardt

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Ruth is a Certified Professional Midwife (NARM), a doula (WOMBS (ZA) / Paramanadoula (UK)), and a Helping Babies Breathe facilitator and master trainer.

With colleague Lana Petersen, she started Home Birth South Africa in 2010, a web database for those seeking information and advice on home birth in South Africa. Together, they also run the Cape Town Home Birth Gatherings, a quarterly gathering for those seeking information and support on home birth in Cape Town and surrounds.

She is the author of The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour, a book based on the work of Dr Michel Odent and which explores the hormone oxytocin and the environmental factors that affect it. This book has been translated into Italian and is currently being translated into Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, French and German.

She also works with a group of midwives who facilitate Compassion tutorials for 4th and 5th year medical students at the University of Cape Town.

She currently works with Lana Petersen and Caitlyn Collins is part of the team that organises The Cape Town Midwifery and Birth Conference.

Her personal website and blog is www.truemidwifery.com

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
178 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

hilda garst
5.0 out of 5 stars The "keybook of awarenessizing" that will "resustainablize" the history of childbirth ànd the evolution of mankind
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2016
Verified Purchase
From 1997 to 2015 I was a La Leche League Leader and breastfeeding activist . In those years I experienced day by day how limited the "promotion and support" of breastfeeding and "motherempowerment" can be, if PROTECTION (from interferences with the physiological processes!) is not the BASIS, the "cultural keyword" , the continuous medical-assistential key-àction !....

Michel Odent's book "Do we need midwives" and other of his writings, together with my three personal birthexperiences, and the many experiences with mothergroups and motherbabies and healthprofessionals/community gave me a more and more detailed, scientifically updated and broadened picture about what the birth-breastfeeding-primal healthcontinuum is and how "evolutionary healthgenesis-healthreset and healthbalance" is created in our species " and how sustainable life between mankind and our motherearth could and SHOULD (...) be recreated.
And then... then I discovered Ruth Ehrhardt's little but so so crucial booklet...... I realized that Ruth's book reassumed "THE KEY" , "the basis ingredients" for humanity to reverse its millennarian cultural birthparadigm and to finally rediscover "how parturition/birth and breastfeeding are born" in our species and how we should primarily PROTECT these crucial survival-evolutionprocesses from interferences!
This concised but so incredibly crucial booklet should be read and "digested" and metàbolized and intériorized in the first place by all the persons who work "on the birth-breastfeeding scene", so midwives, gynaecologists, doulas, nurses, neonathologists etc.... And by hospitaldirectors, politicians, professors and teachers and other institutionally, politically and culturally important persons who create guidelines and protocols and educational programs etc for pregnancy-birth and breastfeeding assistance...
This book should also be interiorized and used by associations and activists who work in the field of of peace and justice and by film and theatre makers and artists and painters and poets and architects and well, actually by everybody.....:-)

The "birthparadigm-shifting" and "re-empowering" and the "physiology-re-activating" and the "re-healthenizing" impact would be incredible, really incredible on 360° degrees and in all the directions for our species and for the whole mother life circle, just as it would be and it IS for the life of every single motherbabycontinuum and every family......
Yes dear precious true midwife Ruth: The updated science of human physiology is more and more able to confirm: If the basic needs of a woman in labour and of the motherbaby during the whole primal period will be rediscovered and protected then we can really change the future of mankind!! Eternally THANK YOU for writing this book, and MORE than this, for your continuously interiorizing and experiencing the principles of the book with every motherbaby you meet and every birth you attend!!
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Aloha in Virginia
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read for advocacy
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is an amazing quick read! If you are having trouble getting support for your birth vision this is the book for you. It is short enough you can just hand it to people for them to read on the spot. It lays out the needs of the laboring woman in a simple and humanizing way.
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PaulaYoumell
5.0 out of 5 stars Simplicity in a Natural Birthing Care Book
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2016
Verified Purchase
I worked for 10+ years as an OB/GYN Maternity Nurse. I was young; just one year out of nursing school. I intuitively knew that things we were doing to Moms & Babes just were not right. What was "right" I had yet to learn.

At 23 I thought of returning to midwifery school... did not happen. At 33 I was pregnant for baby #1. Despite being well versed in "hospital mentality natural child birth, I started researching true natural health care for pregnant, birthing, and lactating moms: Susun Weed, Ina May Gaskin, etc. I knew I did not want to labor and birth in the standard medical care's idea of natural childbirth. This book, 18 years ago, would have been a gift that would have opened my eyes quickly to the world of true natural birthing.

A good read for:
all females thinking they may want to have children,
pregnant women,
Maternity Nurses,
Doulas in training,
practicing doulas,
midwives trained in the hospital idea of natural childbirth...
OB/GYN Docs,
husbands,
partners...
8 people found this helpful
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Glogger
5.0 out of 5 stars An essential read
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2015
Verified Purchase
I have been contemplating a natural childbirth, and as usual in this case, one tends to gravitate towards the writings of Ina May Gaskin and Michel Odent, the usual 'gurus'. Then I stumbled over this little book by a Cape Town midwife by the name of Ruth Ehrhardt, and it is a very refreshing and informative read indeed. Based on the works of Michel Odent, this book gives you the lowdown about birth with the pregnant woman's needs at the core, which differs widely from the way things are usually handled in hospitals. The book is written in a wonderful concise and precise language that leaves no doubt about the writer's intent. A very informative and refreshing read. The book helped me verbalize my own choices when it came to explaining my birth choices to my loved ones, and it also strengthened my own determination in choosing my own way of giving birth.
6 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars To the point and informative
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2017
Verified Purchase
I liked that this book has captured the essence of what an expecting mother should know. Nothing more or less. It gives me confidence in myself and what is to come, and strengthens my resolve to insist on a birth plan that feels right for me.
2 people found this helpful
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jd
5.0 out of 5 stars Ease of reading for all.
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2016
Verified Purchase
1st I was not paid or reimbursed for my review. So this is an actual reader review.

I'm a 30+ year nurse & doula that is always looking for quick, easy to read & understand information for my patients & clients. This book comes in both a paperback & Kindle format.

The information was just what I need to use with my pregnant families. I liked the ease of the 32 page layout along with ease for all levels of information intake. I would recommend having both formats to allow use with anyone interested in learning about the woman during her childbearing life cycle.

Great book. Thank you for giving me another resource. TheRN Doula Etc
4 people found this helpful
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p.lane
5.0 out of 5 stars Must-read for all audiences! Simple, thought-provoking and valuable insight.
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2016
Verified Purchase
"The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour" is really just that! Simple, clearly written and thought-provoking booklet which offers insight and reflection to simple practices that can completely change the whole approach to birth support and contribute to softer, more in-tune humanised approaches to care and better outcomes. A perfect read for mother, partner and even other children to look at together as well as anyone interested in birth support. As a doula and midwife apprentice, I give this book to all expecting mothers and would strongly consider it a must-read!
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Ash
5.0 out of 5 stars Calm & Reassuring for an expectant mother
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 14, 2022
Verified Purchase
As a mother-to-be, I am grateful to have found someone in the medical profession who is not only on the same page as me but at the forefront of leading women to a happier and more positive birth experience!
By educating women and those birth partners/attendees, I believe the chances of a zero-intervention birth process are very high. As I am preparing for a home delivery, my aim is for this and after reading this booklet, I feel vastly more confident in my preparations for a positive labour experience. Thank you Ruth!
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Matt Manley
5.0 out of 5 stars Best possible present for a couple giving birth
Reviewed in France on July 1, 2022
Verified Purchase
My girlfriend insisted I read this little book before she gave birth to our daughter. For a future parent it gives an easily understandable and relatable account of childbirth, an experience unknown to most people as adults. As a dad, I was, and felt, completely ignorant of childbirth, but this book gave us a logical and relatable explanation of what was to come. I am sure that this book helped enormously in the birth of our daughter. It gave us an insight into human births that we had already witnessed in nature, but had somehow never applied to our mothers... As one stranger said to us whilst pregnant, "you must remember that nature is extremely well made" (poor translation!). The author really deserves a lot of credit and I hope everyone can read this in preparation for a positive birth experience.
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Rafael Bessa de F. Galvao
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good instructions although not evidence-based in some questions
Reviewed in Brazil on July 25, 2020
Verified Purchase
This is an excellent book with helpfull instructions for a labouring woman and healthcare professionals like me. I disagree at some points though, such as the recommendation of listenning tothe fetus heartbeat as little as possible...
Actually, there are recommendations published by World Health Organization about positive childbirth experience instructing about auscultation intervals during the first and secind stage of labor, as there are about administration of oxytocin at the third stage to prevent postpartum hemorrhage.
The book talks about the second stage of labor as the period when the mother "has to actively push", but this is not true. The second stage begins when there is full dilation of cervix and ends when the baby is born. It has a passive stage and an active one, this latter occurs when the mother starts to push, and the pushing may be spontaneous (the preferable way) or induced. So the expression "second stage of labor" is not the same of "active induced pushing" as the author writes in this book.
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P. North
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly insightful
Reviewed in Australia on February 17, 2020
Verified Purchase
When reading this book, I felt a primal connection with all that was written and knew in my heart this is how it’s meant to be. Love should bring babies into the world x
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful informative book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2022
Verified Purchase
This short book is just love!y! It is a sort of guide on how birth should be..I am very pleased to have come across this book and author as a souls in training and activist for positive birth experience, and will be recommending it to lots of women in my community in the future
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