I was excited to read this book given all the good reviews it received. Unfortunately I was disappointed by it. It definitely has a natural childbirth slant, which would be OK if it accurately discussed other alternatives such as pain medications. I found some of the information regarding pain medications for childbirth was out of date or (hopefully not intentionally) misleading. For example, the book states that women who have an epidural are twice as likely to have either forceps or vacuum extraction. This is just not true. The information regarding Lamaze is also out of date. Keep in mind this book was published in 1994, a lot can change in 13 (+) years! It does have some useful basic information about labor and comfort techniques but overall I found it to be very biased and, like I've already written, just plain out of date. I highly recommend "Easy Labor" by William Camann and Kathryn Alexander as an unbiased, researched, highly readable, and recently published (2006!) alternative.