Mindful Birthing

Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

By: Nancy Bardacke

Narrated by: Nancy Bardacke, Donna Postel

With Mindful Birthing, Nancy Bardacke, nurse-midwife and mindfulness teacher, lays out her innovative program for pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond. Drawing on groundbreaking research in neuroscience, mindfulness meditation, and mind/body medicine, Bardacke offers practices that will help you find calm and ease during this life-changing time, providing lifelong skills for healthy living and wise parenting.

Some of the benefits of mindful birthing:

• Increases confidence and decreases fear of childbirth
• Taps in to deep inner resources for working with pain
• Improves couple communication, connection, and cooperation
• Provides stress-reducing skills for greater joy and well-being

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2012 Nancy Bardacke (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Enjoyed this book. Took a lot from it.

Took a lot from this book. It provides real advice that can be used in every day life. Not to far out there

Amazing Content & Dubious Delivery

The content of this book is truly amazing. It takes mindfulness and tailors it directly to the experience of those preparing for birth. It gives an entire workshop, essentially, with activities for us to try at home to really improve our mindfulness. All of that part is beyond brilliant and truly important for us to learn in life.

The stumbling block of this book, in my opinion, is the delivery. I don't mean the narrator, her voice is fine. It's the tone of the entire book. While I know the content is amazing, I wish the author could be a bit more humble. Instead of getting sucked into the awesomeness of the material, it is easy to get distracted by the ego of the author. Too often the book reads like a marketing pitch of how ground-breaking the content is. Being a marketer I know there's a fine line between over cheerleading your material and letting it speak for itself, and this author jumps the line too much.

I listened to it for my first baby and was able to focus on the depth of what she was saying, and this time around for the second little guy I'm struggling to get past all the gloat. I'm just trying to extract the meat of what I need to focus on and move on. Perhaps this book would work best in print so you could just highlight the bits you want to know about and skip the boasting? Food for thought.

Again, the depth of what she is saying IS profound and I think crucial to know, just be prepared to handle the emphasis on how important the material is, too.

One of the most helpful things I did to prepare

Out of alll of the resources I accessed in preparation for my labor and birth, this was by far one of the most helpful things. I continued to use things I learned in this book even after my baby was born. I swear I was able to get through my unmedicated labor and birth because of the principles learned in this book. I was able to cope and remain mindful throughout. Will read again if I have another baby. I recommend this to any people I know who are pregnant.

slow story telling

I finished a few chapters but the story telling us just too annoying for me.

Highly Recommend

I found this book very helpful as I prepared for labor and birth. It provided a lot of different techniques and ways to stay present during the experience. I especially found the chapter in fear and specifically fear of pain to be especially useful. I have studied Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and the author skillfully transferred concepts nicely to apply them to the birth experience.

Slow but Good information

Would you listen to Mindful Birthing again? Why?

I found this really helpful with information and techniques to prepare me for natural birthing.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

It is a book about being calm, listening versus reading, sometimes I'd find myself zoning out and having to rewind. This is something you need to read without being distracted.

What’s an idea from the book that you will remember?

Breathing and focusing on what is. Nothing more nothing less.

Any additional comments?

I'd definitely recommend this to expectant mothers. :-)

Narration became unbearable to finish book.

struggled to finish for two reasons: the author seems not so humble about her mindfulness course she teaches and the narration was terrible. the idea of the book is great, however. I think the first half of the book's information is very helpful!!

even helped for c-section

I read this book to prepare for a beautiful natural birth. I got a c-section, it was hard and scary, but what I learned from this book helped me navigate it more mindfully. It's very worthwhile.

A powerful tool for birth

I loved the information and practice providing in this book. It was very helpful with management of pregnancy and birth. I was very happy to have the writer discuss the pain and difficulty of pregnancy. My pregnancies are extremely painful and most books don’t address that. It helped with the management of my mental blocks that I had created dure to past pregnancy experience. My only critique of the book is that the first about 3/4ths of the book was very powerful and strong providing wonderful tools and techniques and the last fourth ended with not quite as powerful of a message. I would have liked the actress reading the book to be a bit more ferm and powerful in her reading. She spoke in a softer and compassionate manner. Which may resonate with some listeners but I feel a topic such as birth should be spoken of with strength and power. As giving birth is literally the most powerful thing any human is capable of doing.

Extremely helpful for preparing for delivery

This book greatly enriched my pregnancy and delivery experience and I am so grateful that I came across it. Would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to use mindfulness techniques in the context of pregnancy, childbirth and beyond.