1st Edition
Evidence and Skills for Labour and Birth A Guide for Midwifery Practice
Foreword
Prof. Soo DowneProf. Hannah Dahlen
Introduction
Dr Maria Healy and Dr Anna Madeley
1. The Impact of Midwifery
Dr Maria Healy
2. Models of Maternity and Midwifery Care
Prof. Christine McCourt
3. When Evidence Is Overlooked: Understanding Women’s Reasons for Declining, Choosing Differently, and Disengaging from Maternity Care in the United Kingdom
Dr Anna Madeley
4. Implementation Science
Professor Ann Dadich
5. Preparation for childbirth – Informed and Empowered
Leslie Altic (Doula) & Emma Fraser (Doula)
6. Why oxytocin matters: How midwives can support and optimize oxytocin production in pregnancy, labor, birth and beyond.
Professor Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg, Magdalena Bolling, and Maria Petersson
7. The Biomechanics of Birth
Molly O’Brien
8.Induction of Labour
Gillian Robinson and Dr Maria Healy
9. Optimal design for birth settings to enable physiological birth
Dr Sarah Joyce
10. Evidence-informed provision of MLU settings and accreditation
Dr Lucia Rocca-Ihenacho
11. Revisiting the Third Stage of Labour
Dr Anna Madeley
12. Evidence-Informed Provision of Homebirth
Frances Rivers and Dr Anna Madeley
13. Facilitating physiological breech birth
Dr Shawn Walker
14. Supporting women in their next birth after caesarean
Dr Hazel Keedle
15. Childbirth related perineal injuries and its prevention
Dr Margarita Manresa and Dr Ana Pereda
16: Water immersion during labour and birth
Prof. Julia Sanders, Jess Case-Stevens and Dr Sarah Milosevic
Biography
Dr Maria Healy has over 25 years midwifery academic and research experience collectively with Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin.
Dr Anna Madeley is a midwifery academic, educator and researcher whose work advances personalised, autonomous maternity care and the translation of evidence-based midwifery care into practice.
'This book arrives at a pivotal moment for midwifery, when the evidence for woman-centred, physiologically informed care has never been stronger, yet the systems in which midwives work have never been more complex or contested. It is one of the most comprehensive and carefully constructed midwifery texts available today.
What distinguishes this volume is its refusal to separate the clinical from the human. Chapter by chapter, it weaves together anatomy, neurohormonal physiology, implementation science, ethics, and lived experience into an accessible vision of what midwifery care can and should be. Whether examining the biomechanics of labour dystocia, the nuances of induction, or the intimacy of perineal care, each contributor brings the same underlying conviction - that women and gender-diverse people’s bodies, choices, and experiences must be at the centre of everything we do.
The chapters on models of care and continuity are particularly timely, translating robust international evidence into a clear and practical argument for structural change. Equally, the frank exploration of why women disengage from maternity care, framing this not as non-compliance but as a rational response to systems that can fail them, reflects an intellectual honesty and moral seriousness that elevates this book above more conventional midwifery texts.
I was especially struck by the inclusion of implementation science as a dedicated chapter. It is a discipline too rarely taught at pre-registration level, yet it is fundamental to understanding why evidence so often fails to inform practice. Its presence here signals that this is a book not only for students learning what good care looks like, but for practitioners and leaders working to make it a reality.
The chapters on home birth, vaginal breech birth, and birth after caesarean each demonstrate the same care - grounded in current research, attentive to uncertainty, and always returning to the question of how midwives can have honest, respectful, and genuinely empowering conversations with the women and families they serve.
This is a book for students encountering midwifery for the first time and for experienced practitioners returning to first principles. It is rigorous without being inaccessible, evidence-based without being reductive, and compassionate without being sentimental. It makes the case, calmly, clearly, and compellingly - that midwifery is not a supplement to maternity care. It is its foundation.
I recommend this book without reservation.'
- Sheena Byrom RM, OBE
