The Field Guide to Being an Awesome Birth Partner is a book written to equip men to support their wives (or girlfriends, or friends, or …) through childbirth.
Most men are not well-equipped to support a woman through childbirth. There’s something about childbirth that makes improvising much more difficult for the under-equipped man. He doesn’t want to fail, so he does nothing. What he doesn’t realize is that doing nothing is just a quieter way of failing.
Unfortunately for men, most childbirth books are written for women (and even the few written for men tend to be written by women). Most childbirth books discuss birth from the mother’s perspective, going into great detail about the biology of the process. Unsurprisingly, biology isn’t very helpful in equipping a man to be a birth partner.
This book is a short read (it takes about an hour if you sit down to read it through). It covers the whole process, from preparing for the baby’s arrival, the drive to the hospital, each stage of labor and birth, and the first few days after the birth. It’s not just a bunch of facts. Instead, it’s full of information about what to expect, action steps to take, and includes checklists and summary charts to help an unequipped man become a successful birth partner.
The book is based on a great deal of input from mothers about what was (and was not) helpful to them during their birth experiences. It gets you inside the head of the mother-to-be that you’re supporting. It’s the information the woman you want to support wants you to have, written in a way that makes sense for a guy.