Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsWhat the actual?…
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2021
First, I only read this book because it was required of me for the doula certification I’m working on, but what the actual h*ll did I just read? This book is without a doubt, the MOST biased thing I’ve ever read. I had a partial home birth completely unmedicated and only observation and help from a midwife in the last hour and I absolutely loved my experience; however, I also absolutely think that this book is a load of crap. Natural unmedicated birth is not the only way to go and you’re NOT a bad mother who is fighting against yourself and your “maternal instinct” if that’s not what you want.
Second, Buckley is absolutely off her rocker. She thinks she knew the EXACT day she conceived, without any medical reason to think so, despite having her due date wrong. She thinks she communicated with her baby that was still in the womb by drawing pictures and dreaming. She thinks that maternal instinct is absolutely perfect and if women would just listen to their instinct there would be no need for, well, anything medical basically, you know, since we didn’t have hospitals like we do now hundreds of years ago. (Which is not a bad concept and COULD be awesome, but the way this nut job sees it is far too biased and not accounting for just how many babies and mother used to die, and just how great the population difference is. So many more babies are being born today!) And I kid you not, she literally thinks (out of instinct to do so of course) she “danced” her baby back into her womb as she was in the process of miscarrying. Surely, as a doctor, she would know that is NOT how miscarriages work and it is HORRIBLY insensitive to the women who have had one considering it inadvertently puts the blame on them for miscarrying and not doing something about it.
Third, she does not paint an accurate picture of birth and pregnancy at all. Yes, I’m sure there a plenty of people who had similar experiences as she did, but there are also COUNTLESS women who have really crappy experiences and they are not lesser mothers for not enjoying it. In fact, they’re even stronger for going through all that they did just for their little babies. I had an amazing birth. It was an astonishingly quick, pain free, unmediated, water birth, with little help and never once did I “look into myself,”; “feel the power,”; or “allow myself to be guided by the goddesses”. Also, my delivery was not all about me, my baby was my motivation. This book is written in a way so that it seems Buckley only thinks of herself and her “power” throughout labor and never about her baby. She uses her own amazing greatness to motivate her through her labor which is fine, but also kinda kooky.
Finally, for such a boring piece, could a book be written in a more cringy or dramatic voice? It would at the very least be VERY difficult. The way this book is written teeter totters to, at one moment, make you feel as if your initiating yourself into a cult simply by reading it while wanting nothing more than to not be doing that, and, in the next moment, your eyelids will slowly start to glue themselves shut as you find it impossible to stay awake.
This book is trash and this lady has a biased, judgmental trash view on childbirth. Save yourself the money and don’t read it.
