For an entire generation of new parents, this warm, expert work has become the standard guide to the shortest, easiest, and healthiest childbirth. Now a thoroughly updated and revised edition offers new research showing how labour support reduces the rate of cesarean sections, length of labour, need for pain medicine, and number of episiotomies. New material also demonstrates the positive effects of having a doula on mother-infant bonding, how relatives or friends can be trained in labour support, and how hypnosis is used to ease and shorten labour. No expectant parent will want to be without this empowering and irreplaceable book.

The mighty bond between parent and child is one of the enduring wonders of psychology. John Kennell and Marshall and Phyllis Klaus bring decades of research, insight, and clinical practice into one book that offers parents, and those who care for them during pregnancy, everything they need to know to enhance this essential relationship. This important work explores the effects of various birth practices and situations--prenatal testing, labor support, testing of newborns, breast feeding, prematurity, and adoption--on the parents' feelings and on the development of later attachment and independence.