When Survivors Give Birth

A thorough, practical and inspiring guide to understanding and healing the effects of early sexual abuse on childbearing women. Includes a segment on bodywork and massage therapy written by Carole Osborne-Sheets.

by Penny Simkin and Phyllis Klaus

Finally a book that explores the long-lasting impact of childhood sexual abuse as it relates to pregnancy and birth. This book is packed with practical and inspiring guidance for both survivors and professionals. Learn to communicate in ways that elicit help and healing through working with a variety of professionals and paraprofessionals, including somatic practitioners, and many self-help strategies. Many personal stories of pregnant survivors make the clinical challenges and solutions segment, and the entire text, real, poignant, and uplifting.

If you are a pregnant survivor, or work with one, you may well see yourself on these pages. If you find yourself identifying with some of the less than perfect examples, the authors gently show you how to translate victimization into victory, lack of awareness into sensitive care. This validating educational tool can help childbirth professionals rise above mistakes and omissions of their field, and survivors become midwives for their newly empowered selves.
— From the Forward, by E. Sue Blume, CSW, DCSW Author of “Secret Survivors” Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women

An impressive book, and because nothing else exists to help women survivors and those close to them through the major life transition of birth giving, this book is urgently needed. Written with lucidity, imagination, insight, warmth and compassion.
— Sheila Kitzinger. Anthropologist, Birth Activist, and Author of “Rediscovering Birth” and numerous other books

BOOK SPECIFICATIONS

2004 publication, 450 pages, soft cover bound,

Not a day goes by that I don’t use something learned from this book. It is essential reading for anyone working with childbearing women.
— Kathryn McGrath, MSW, FACCE, CD (DONA) Perinatal Social Worker, Educator: Doula and Doula Trainer

Providers will find explanations for many of those births that were difficult, frustrating and even hurtful to themselves and their clients, and will discover the means to greatly improve their future practice. The principles developed apply to all childbirth.
— Michale C. Klein, MD, Emeritus Professor Departments of Family Practice and Pediatrics Head of Maternity and Newborn Care, Dep’t of Family Practice University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Thanks to the information and techniques in this book, my child’s birth was a triumph instead of the nightmare I had been dreading.
— Michelle D. Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse