Reviews for Deliver Me from Pain: Anesthesia and Birth in America

The average rating for Deliver Me from Pain: Anesthesia and Birth in America based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-04-26 00:00:00 Uyguyiu U�oipok This book tells the story of obstetric anesthesia from its origins in the 1840s (when ether came into play) through our own era (when the epidural reigns supreme). It also tells the story of our culture's movement from seeing birth as primarily a physiological process to seeing it as primarily a pathological one. Wolf builds her narrative on evidence from letters, diaries, published articles and editorials, advertisements, and interviews that she performed, arguing "that cultural and social change rather than medical innovation have shaped mothers' and physicians' attitudes toward obstetric anesthesia" (8). I've read enough about the history of birth practices and our current shortage of evidence-based care to greet that statement with a resounding 'no kidding,' but the book is so much more than its core claim--and it left me sputtering, calling my mom and interrupting my husband's own reading to tell them various facts, and rethinking my grandmother's, mother's, aunts', and my own birth experiences in light of the historical context Wolf presents. So, not a 'no kidding' reaction at all. Deliver Me from Pain is a scholarly book, but its subject matter and engaging style reach out to people outside the university system--birthworkers and advocates, in particular, will find much to enjoy (or rail against) here.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-22 00:00:00 John Griffiths I loved this book, and I thought it was really informative. It did a good job setting up a foundation to understand pain during childbirth by explaining the history and how social movements/culture/commercialism impact our conception of birth. However, I think it was missing an intersectional lense because the experiences of women who are not white, able bodied, and wealthy (and other marginalized groups) were limited to kind of side sections, instead of being integrated throughout the main theme.