For over two decades, HEART & HANDS has been a beloved guide for both midwives and parents interested in the benefits of midwifery care. This all-new fourth edition has been revised from start to finish, featuring updated material that emphasizes independent midwifery, physiologic (natural) birth, and the art of nonintervention.
Midwifery expert Elizabeth Davis includes valuable hints for turning breech and posterior babies, mediating pain in labor, and supporting newborn physiology. Davis also reveals the keys to postpartum recovery, with practical tips on breastfeeding for busy mothers. Comprehensive and compassionate, HEART & HANDS remains a dog-eared classic for parents, midwives, and other birthing helpers.
This book is an excellent and thorough resource for parents-to-be who are thinking about delivering their child with a midwife, or who are concerned about the medical establishment's over-control of birth. Davis, a long-time, well-known midwife, gives how-to details on all aspects of midwifery practice, including prenatal care, problems in pregnancy, assisting at births, labor complications and caring for the entire family postpartum.

• Thoroughly revised and updated fourth edition of the classic text for midwives, also useful for expecting parents, nurses, childbirth educators, doulas, and other labor helpers.


• Features new diagrams and photographs, updated midwifery forms, and an expanded resource list for parents.


• Expanded sections on GBS, VBAC, gestational diabetes, and water birth address current controversies.


• Previous editions have sold more than 150,000 copies.

287 pages – Ten Speed Press

“An impressive and deeply caring book . . . reveals a shrewd and compassionate sensitivity to women’s needs in pregnancy and childbirth.” —Sheila Kitzinger, author of The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Birth