Eleven years ago, I wrote a book called Men, Love & Birth. It was the book I wished I'd had in my own pocket the first time I stood beside a woman in labour and didn't know what to do with my hands or my words.
I'm a midwife of thirty years. Over that time I've watched the birth room change more than most people realise. The caesarean rate has climbed until caesarean is now the single most common way babies are born in this country — it's overtaken unassisted vaginal birth, and around one in nine more babies arrive with forceps or a ventouse. And the man in the room has gone from an afterthought to an active, anxious participant: told he matters, but never actually taught what to do with that.
That's why I rewrote the book. Not to tidy up a few facts — to write the book the birth room needs now.
The second edition is properly bigger. Six brand-new chapters, including the one the old book never had: a dedicated chapter on caesarean and instrumental birth. The honest truth about the third stage of labour. The first days at home. Sex after birth. And two chapters the old book didn't dare touch — the power of the words we use in the birth room, and what happens when a birth leaves a mark. Around a third more words, typeset to breathe: 184 pages against the original's dense 108. Thicker on the shelf, easier on the eye, kinder to the reader.
But the thread running through all of it is the thing thirty years has taught me matters most: how a partner speaks can make or break an experience. The right words can turn a frightening birth into a powerful one. The wrong ones — "don't worry, it'll be over soon" — can deepen harm without meaning to. This is a book about the words, and the presence, that reduce avoidable harm in the room where it counts.
I also got the book back. The rights returned to me after eleven years, so this is the first time I'm publishing it myself — from my own imprint, in my own voice, exactly as I want it.
Same voice as the first edition: warm, funny, unflinchingly direct. But written for the birth room as it is now, not as it was. If you're getting ready to stand beside someone you love while she brings your child into the world, it's the book I'd put in your hands.