Gail Tully’s beautiful book, Changing Birth on Earth could not have arrived at a more important time. As we struggle with a global pandemic and complex challenges to our values and uncertainty in our lives, this book helps us to remember and resonate with the power of love, empathy, human connection, healing, and the miracle of birth. Gail wants those caring for birthing parents to “dance into work.” I find Gail’s love and belief in our human capacity to give and support birth to be source of hope and strength. She invites nurses and midwives to “love your job more” and come with her to a “better birth world, “ and to ”lead from the bedside”

In this world nurses and nurse midwives have the knowledge and skills outlined in the B.I.R.T.H process. This process is grounded in the physiology of birthing with exquisite attunement and respect for the uniqueness of each birthing person and their loved ones. The results of the B.I.R.T.H process is a significant decrease in cesarean section rates – and, in adapting this approach, “you could possibly bring the cesarean rate down by half in two to three months.” This is big. And yet there is more. Why does it matter so much? In Gail’s words, it matters  “Because of the look on the mother’s face . Because the baby was born alive and alert.

When a baby is able to go directly to their parent’s arms, immediate contact imprints the memory of a loving welcome rather than the stressed sleep of separation. The point isn’t happy memories, the point is beginning life with intact attachment behaviors.” Gail articulates an inspiring vision in these words: “we’re heading toward a birth that is not a fearful emergency but a future emerging.” Changing Birth on Earth provides a clear guide, loving support, and stories that illuminate the how and why for bringing physiological birthing to life in our health care organizations. I believe this book can fundamentally transform our paradigm for the birthing experience and optimize outcomes for mothers, babies, and their families. Brilliant.

How can we honour the intelligence of our birthing bodies to promote a smooth, safe labour and birth? What skills and techniques might help when labour is not progressing?

Gail Tully shares her vast knowledge and ground-breaking Spinning Babies perspectives, providing simple, safe and practical techniques that all birth workers can use to facilitate a physiological labour and birth. Highly recommended.

Thanks so much for all the love and determination you have poured into this book. Your work is truly ground-breaking.

Watching Gail Tully teach or describe a birth, takes you deeply into the minute but essential actions, gently, through all of the senses, touch by touch, view by view, that shift tension from a stalled labor to a slippery, free floating baby, spinning easily to birth. She understands the profound physiological balance that allows a delicate but essential response to a maneuver that recalibrates baby’s position enabling rotation and allowing the baby’s descent. Take a deep breath and let your own tension relax and feel yourself becoming attuned to the unfolding miracle in front of you.

In Gail there is an inner wisdom, years of experience and rigorous studies of the physiology of birth, of both the birth giver and the infant. Whatever you call it, it is awe inspiring, enticing one to want to learn it and to be able to do it.

If you are a birth worker; doula, midwife, nurse or obstetrician, this book is a must read. Carefully and thoughtfully, it will take you to a place of trust in the wisdom that is inherent in birth that needs to be appreciated and recognized.