Get me out : a history of childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the sperm bank / Randi Hutter Epstein.

Author: Epstein, Randi Hutter.

Edition: 1st ed.

Publisher: New York : Norton, c2010.

ISBN: 9780393064582 (hc.)
0393064581 (hc.)

Description: xv, 302 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Subject: Childbirth History.

Contents: Eve's doing : birth from antiquity through the Middle Ages -- Men with tools : forceps use from 1600s to 1800s -- Slave women's contribution to gynecology -- Dying to give birth : maternal mortality into the twentieth century -- Leaving home : New York's lying-in and the growth of maternity wards -- Birth is but a sleep and forgetting -- What was she thinking? : Freud meets fertility -- It's only natural -- Toxic advice and a deadly drug : DES -- From kitchen-table surgery to the art of the C-section -- Freebirthers -- Womb with a view -- Sperm shopping -- The big chill

Summary: Making and having babies--what it takes to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and deliver--has mystified women and men for the whole of human history. Over the last one hundred years, depending on the latest prevailing advice, women have taken morphine, practiced Lamaze, relied on ultrasound images, sampled fertility drugs, and shopped at sperm banks. Here, the insatiably curious Randi Hutter Epstein journeys through history, fads, and fables, and to the fringe of science, where audacious researchers have gone to extreme measures to get healthy babies out of mothers. The result is an entertaining and enlightening celebration of human life.--From publisher description.