What the Press Has to Say

Fit Pregnancy magazine

From Peg Moline’s Editor’s Note:

“Maybe the reason we judge is that we aren’t aware of our birth options and why we are drawn to one over the others. Marisa Cohen, author of Deliver This!, realized this after she had her first baby. While she was expecting, she could recite endless details of her pregnancy, but she was blissfully clueless about how her baby was going to “get out” other than imagining “drugs, lots of them.” Twenty-one hours after her labor started, her daughter Bellamy was born — and Cohen herself was reborn: She couldn’t stop talking about her birth experience. But she discovered that while other women also loved to share the intimate details of their babies’ deliveries, she felt a strange underlying tension among them. Cohen writes, “I had one friend confess to me that she had stopped telling people how happy she was with her C-section because of all the thinly veiled reactions of horror she got.” Cohen realized that most women were hesitant to discuss why they made the choices they did. So Deliver This! was conceived.

Cohen asks tough questions, like “Do moms who give birth naturally feel superior to moms who don’t, or is it just our own insecurities reflecting back on us?” She tells you stuff no one else will. Not yet, anyway. Because what we really hope this book does, as Cohen writes, is “take some of the pressure off us all. There are so many other people who are going to judge what we do…that we really should have each other’s backs.” That instead of raising an eyebrow at a scheduled C-section or rolling our eyes at a water birth, we all learn to just smile and say, “Mazel tov! What a beautiful baby.”

Self magazine, January 2007

“Labor Day: Due this month: Deliver This! Make the Childbirth Choice That’s Right for You…No Matter What Everyone Else Thinks (Seal Press). Author Marisa Cohen talked to more than 100 mothers about going drug-free, opting for an epidural, and laboring with midwives, who now attend 8 percent of all deliveries. The book can help you pursue your ideal birth experience.”

Conceive magazine

“Special Deliveries: Deliver This! a new book by Marisa Cohen (Seal Press), focuses the decisions women make about how they want to deliver their children (epidural, natural childbirth, home birth, planned cesarean, etc.). Most surprising: A woman’s experience conceiving her child influences her opinion about how she wants to give birth. Before you make up your own mind about what you want to happen in less than nine months, find out what the more than 100 women Cohen interviewed decided…and why.”

NEWSDAY
HOW-TO BOOK OF THE WEEK: “Perhaps it’s impossible to adequately describe childbirth to a woman who hasn’t experienced it yet – but this book is undoubtedly the next best thing. Cohen’s frank and blessedly non-judgmental voice is joined by a chorus of women sharing their astonishingly diverse birth experiences, providing a safe place for moms-to-be to explore their options and sort out their own feelings. Cohen has a remarkable knack for shining a light through the swirling storm of emotions surrounding these choices, and illuminating the true, often well-intentioned motivations behind the fierce debates.” April 30, 2007