Book Review: Birth with Confidence by Rhea Dempsey

Do you ever just want to kick yourself with the choices you made? Yep, me too! This book is on my essential reads for any first time or multip Mummas. It provides insight into the very normal and common ‘Crisis in Confidence’ moments that happen throughout labour and how your support can determine where this leads your birth. Will your support people want to save you from the pain, leading to a potential cascade of interventions? Or will they ground you, hold space for you and support you through your crisis in confidence to birth your baby in your power? Rhea emphasises that birth is painful!! But it is physiological pain, the pain of your muscles working hard to do exactly what they’re designed to do! One of my birth affirmations is ‘you don’t need to like it to do it brilliantly’ which was used in the book! In the birth of our little girl, I relied solely on my husband who did an amazing job, but when it came to a crisis in confidence, he of course wanted to save me from the pain I was in, as did the doctors and midwives. We have chosen experts to support us in physiological birth this time. Experts who aren’t afraid of labour and its power, who believe in women’s bodies’ and who have been given the green light to support me through any crisis in confidence that arise, not save me from it!