Midwifery

Midwifery: The Basics provides an engaging and authentic insight into the midwife's world. It explores the role of the midwife as a clinician and professional, showing how midwives can support women both to achieve a healthy full-term pregnancy and a smooth transition to motherhood.
This book begins with a discussion of the context of birth and parenthood, placing midwifery in its broader social context. Topics covered include:
the midwife as an autonomous professional;
becoming a midwife;
pre-conceptual and antenatal care;
intrapartum care;
postnatal care; and
the specialist midwife.
Midwifery: The Basics uses the voices of mothers, fathers and midwives to illustrate the complex world of becoming, being and supporting parents. This is an essential introduction for students at undergraduate and A-Level who are approaching midwifery for the first time.

Helen Baston is Consultant Midwife in Public Health, Baby Friendly Guardian and Professional Midwifery Advocate at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK.

1. The context of birth   2. The roles of the midwife  3. Midwifery: An evolutionary tale  4. Becoming a midwife  5. Pre-conceptual and antenatal care  6. Labour and birth care  7. Postnatal care  8. Midwife as specialist