Birthing: Choices You Have to Create the Best Birth Experience for You and Your Child by Irene Byrne, M.A. compiles the most current information from experts in the fields of midwifery, Lamaze, obstetrics, prenatal care, and much more regarding these choices and many more. It encourages women to carefully consider each option and to make their decisions free from pressure from advocates of any one approach and with the ultimate objective clearly focused on delivering a healthy baby.

The book is blunt regarding areas in which the medical profession and other members of the birth community disagree, such as the wisdom of home births.

The book includes worksheets and sample birth plans. Equally valuable (and exceedingly touching) are the birth stories that begin this book, written by moms and partners, showing what they expected and what they actually experienced. Author Irene Byrne, M.A., is the director of the Phoebe Hearst Preschool in San Francisco and an adjunct faculty member in the Child and Family Studies Department at Napa Valley Community College. She is co-author of Finding a Preschool For Your Child in San Francisco. She is the mother of two young children.