As someone rapidly approaching gibing birth, I picked this book up obviously intrigues to see what the title meant and if I would gain and tips or insights into arguably one of the scariest, transforming and life changing moments I can imagine going through.

I do think this book is good for people who are pregnant and not pregnant as well as those who want to give birth and maybe people who aren't interested but are looking to support partners or indeed just intrigued by this non fiction text.

However, I probably wouldn't recommend to anyone who is highly anxious about birth or people who may have issues with doctors or 'white coat syndrome'. One of the downfalls of this book is an unspoken emphasis that a home birth is the exemplary choice, both as a feminist and in terms of the least amount of medical push in when in reality, home birth is just not an option for so many different reasons for a majority of women. There are some horror stories shared by some women about their births from forced inductions, sweeps etc and while I would have liked a mix of stories for maybe times when medical interventions worked out best to give some balance, it's not necessarily a far cry from the general stories you end up hearing when people find out you're pregnant and think you need to know about their traumatic birth.

I did feel a certain kind of power reading this book though - even in just adding to a mental toolkit of how to prepare to stand up for myself and my birth preferences, to remind myself that I don't have to necessarily agree with every single thing a doctor or midwife tells me - I'm allowed to use my voice, ask for reasons and opinions, and use the BRAIN method - and doing this, doesn't make me a bad mother, it just means that I'm standing up for myself and in turn my child. And because of this, I'm really glad I read this book as I think I needed some of the knowledge that this text gave me.

HOWEVER, the version of the book I read had an updated chapter that I really felt was so unnecessary and put a damper on the reading experience for me which is the author wading into the trans debate, and who can or can't call themselves a woman. While I see where the author tried to come from, to a point, in terms of the language used in the book and how important the 'woman' label is in the labour room for what she was talking about when it comes to dismissal of fears etc by medical staff and how it's a feminist/equality issue, she failed to open her eyes how being a transman or non binary person in a similar situation could be even worse and these people could end up with an even more extensive list of ways they weren't listened to when it comes to their bodily autonomy, pronouns, names, etc not to mention any bad attitudes among hospital staff adding to a traumatic birth (and also not to even start on any mental health problems pregnancy could bring to a transperson due to body dysmorphia etc). And adding in a line about how 'JK Rowling tweeted to support you' is not a flex, it's a massive turn off.

So the ending was really unfortunate. I don't want to rate this book really low due to the fact I did gain something important from it for myself ahead of my own birth experience but I can't ignore the absolute doozy of that last chapter either.