These must-read books for every labor and delivery nurse are the best start to trauma-informed nursing care.
Books Every Labor Nurse Must Read
Now is the perfect time to start your journey to trauma-sensitive nursing care with the 31 Best Books Every Labor Nurse Must Read!
(Download the bonus checklist at the bottom of this post.)
As a labor and delivery nurse, I’m always learning new and better ways to stay sensitive to others’ unique experiences and past trauma – including patients, their families, my coworkers, and myself. This book list can get you started on your trauma-informed care journey.Even if your facility isn’t making meaningful moves toward system-wide trauma-informed care, this labor nurse book list will definitely get you started in the right direction.
Some of these books are tailored specifically to trauma-informed care in the perinatal period. They might be the most intense to read, so I suggest spreading those out with lighter books in between.
Many of these books for labor nurses are actually written to parents-to-be. Yup, I included them on purpose. If we’re trying to deconstruct how L&D nursing has always been, then our education needs to be parent-centered as well.
via GIPHY books
Patient-Centered Learning
It might be odd at first. I was definitely taken aback when the books congratulated me on my pregnancy the first few times. My husband was also curious at first, “Honey! Do you have something to tell me…?!!” But these feminist parent books are where all the good, juicy, parent-positive, human rights in birth info is hiding, so dig in!
Trauma sensitive care is about understanding that your patients and their families have a robust, colorful, powerful history that oftentimes includes trauma, sadness, abuse, abandonment, and loss that they are unknowingly bringing with them into childbirth and early parenthood.
Birth tends to peel back the onion layers [think Shrek’s metaphor to Donkey] of the birthing person, sometimes allowing vulnerable feelings to take them back to a previous time where they felt vulnerable, attacked, disempowered, or fearful. If they haven’t learned productive or helpful coping techniques or aren’t able to tap into them, they may revert to old or less-than-resilient ways of coping or be vulnerable to experiencing trauma again.
Learning for Nurses
As labor nurses, we are in a unique position to help the birthing person protect their birth space and help them tap into those effective and safe coping techniques. We can even help them maintain their power and control over their experience, but we have to learn supportive, safe ways of doing so.
In school and on the job, we learn to not put ourselves in their situation. It would be heartbreaking, personal, and frankly inappropriate. Their experience is not ours, so it’s healthy that you give a bit of distance.
I’m giving you permission, however, to learn like a new parent. Learn about birth from the birthing person’s perspective and see how it affects your mindset and nursing care.
I also encourage you to read with sticky notes or a pen or pencil. As you come across a new idea or, as Oprah says, “an Ah Ha moment,” jot it down as you keep going.
(yes, I love audio books, and yes, I run with a pen and sticky notes in my fanny pack. I’m that extra)
Notes can help you digest it and also keep ideas fresh in your mind. I hope you’ll start to share what you’re learning – with coworkers, your patients, and with me! It’s great to talk through this “new” information, because most of it has really been around since as long as birth has, but when I have an ah ha moment it feels like a new scientific discovery!
When you’re ready to learn more, including trauma-sensitive strategies that you can immediately implement into your practice, check out additional nurse resources here.
Trauma-Informed Care: Books for Nurses
This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience (I will earn a small commission but it won’t cost you a penny more)! full disclosure policy
Labor and Delivery Books
1. Pushed : The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care:
This list is in no particular order, except #1. This is the beginning of the book list that every labor nurse must read. It’s written for parents, but it’s so full of studies, evidence, and history that pros will gobble up all of the scientific and historical good, bad, ugly, and solutions moving forward.
There’s so much to learn here about the overuse of medical technology, how it started, and how we can put the human rights back in reproductive healthcare. You might as well get two copies, because you’ll be sending yours to your birthy bestie before you even get halfway through!
2. Optimal Care in Childbirth: The Case for a Physiologic Approach
This book discusses how to promote safe, healthy, empowered birth. It also unveils the harm of routine use of interventions, tests, and protocols. If Penny says to read it, I listen, “This should be a text book for everyone in maternity care!” – Penny Simkin, Co-author of the Labor Progress Handbook.
3. Fat Birth: Confident, Strong and Empowered Pregnancy At Any Size
Here’s the how-to for size-positive birth care! The overmedicalization of plus size birth is everywhere, causing risk for birthers of size. This book will challenge your fat bias, encourage the practice of decentering yourself, and invite you to take a closer look at your own response to stories of perinatal nursing care. What a beautiful opportunity to unpack implicit biases, center parent-stories, and learn more ways to elevate voice and choice in our nursing care. A must-read for all direct care clinicians.
4. Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth
Unfortunately a global crisis cannot be addressed or remedied by everyone thinking to themselves, “I’m not racist,” or “we need evidence on why the Black maternal mortality rates are 3-4x higher than white rates.” Yeah, no. We have the evidence, and this book gives us answers to how we, you and I, can change this staggering inequality in healthcare, one person at a time. It’s our professional duty to read and share, so add this to your top 5.
5. Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth
Because birth really shouldn’t be feared! But, maternal and infant mortality are so shocking and frightening, who wouldn’t fear birth these days?! This book has many insights for improving the experience and ultimately the health of birthing people. The shocking part – it was written in the 1950s! It’s STILL ahead of its time if you ask me [cue eye roll].
Birth Trauma Books
6. When Survivors Give Birth: Understanding and Healing the Effects of Early Sexual Abuse on Childbearing Women
As you might have guessed from the title, this is one of those intense books about trauma and its direct effects on pregnancy, childbirth, and the early postpartum. It took me almost a year to read all the way through.
Parent stories fill the pages, and you’ll know them – they’re our patients, our sisters, friends, wives, they’re us. Start the book carefully, but strive to finish it, because the solutions at the end are worth the context of the first half.
7. Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood
The description speaks for itself: This “definitive book about the trauma and tragedy of the American childbirth experience” (Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her) exposes the dangerous misogyny that permeates pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood.
Ali Yarrow gives an inclusive, deeply probing report on the history of power and control over childbirth, how it shows up for us today, and solutions for returning power and control to birthing people. Brand new in 2023!
8. Supporting a Physiologic Approach to Pregnancy and Birth: A Practical Guide
It’s amazing to learn how the pregnancy and birth experience can be improved when non-evidence-based medicine is avoided. This guide is a step-back from the narrow view of overmedicalized birth in today’s hospitals. It’s a thorough overview of evidence and full of practical suggestions to promote healthy birth.
9. Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others
A book for you! Yes, this might be one of those intense reads specifically about trauma, but it might also give you a lighter, weightless feeling when your trauma is recognized. Please, work diligently to avoid burnout, build your stress resiliency up so that you can continue the work you love and have the capacity for life outside of work, too.
10. Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond
One thing I learned when preparing for my second birth (after my re-traumatizing first birth), is that healthy and mindful birth prep activities and advice can translate really well to healthy and mindful birth support activities and advice.
Don’t take my word for it! Learn about neuroscience (at a parent-level! It’s truly fascinating) and the mind-body connection. I hope you’ll then easily relate it to your own practice of birth support. Your renewed energy and peace will spill over to your patients and families – maybe even your coworkers!
11. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth
One of my favorite parts of bedside nursing is the teaching aspect. But, where did I learn all of the information about truly informed choice? This book is an eye-opener and covers so many topics and choices a pregnant person must make. This read will help you tweak your language around choice and autonomy from this unbiased perspective.
12. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
A national bestseller – this book should also be at the top of your list. The author, Resmaa menakem, is a therapist specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. This book incorporates an understanding of generational trauma and embodied white supremacy to provide a healing process based on neuroscience and somatic methods. Oooh weee – it holds the reader compassionately while also rocking our worlds.
13. Why Breastfeeding Grief and Trauma Matter
Why is breastfeeding such a big deal to some people? Some need to be “successful” or can’t even talk about the topic without squirming or sweating. Why? A fascinating perspective that will shift your mindset and how you provide trauma-sensitive lactation support forever.
14. Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
I can’t say it enough: Much of what we practice in OB is based on culture, not science. It’s a hospital, medical-model culture that may not align with your patients’ goals, culture, or values. Pregnant people aren’t looking for judgey and uninformed lists of shoulds and should nots, and as nurses we should be crystal clear on what, in our field, are actual myths that we unknowingly perpetuate.
15. Transformed by Birth: Cultivating Openness, Resilience, and Strength for the Life-Changing Journey from Pregnancy to Parenthood
“Childbirth is more than just having a baby.” Truth that all labor nurses inherently know to be true, but how rare is it to get a 6mo, 1 year, 5 year, 25 year follow up from our patients?! (how incredible would that be?!) This book is fascinating for nurses, because it will ignite that understanding in a new way. People transforming into parents – a huge “why” for many of us who work in this chaotic and beautiful field. Feel renewed by this read, you deserve to get grounded on why you keep showing up at your shifts each week. Also, it’s worth mentioning that inclusive language is used in wildly-good ways!
16. Companioning at a Time of Perinatal Loss: A Guide for Nurses, Physicians, Social Workers, Chaplains and Other Bedside Caregivers:
This book was written for us! It’s a guidebook for how to care for grieving families after losing a child at birth. Instead of not knowing what to say and feeling like you can’t give your best, give this a read. Then don’t be afraid to practice what you’ve learned – your unique, compassionate approach coupled with these tips and suggestions might just be exactly what your patients need from you.
17. The Labor Progress Handbook: Early Intervention to Prevent and Treat Dystocia
I read this resource early in my nursing career, and we even coined one of the positions in it after our favorite author, Penny! The new version includes labors with epidurals, material on the microbiome (it’s not going away, just embrace it), and previous birth trauma. This will go straight into your nursing bag after you finish reading it the first time. It’s that relevant.
18. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
A fascinating look into the history of gynecology as we know it today. This should be required reading in nursing and medical school. Deirdre Cooper Owens links the historical context behind today’s doctor-patient power dynamics. It’s imperative that we know the history behind the systemic racism that is responsible for our maternal mortality crisis that we’re currently battling.
19. Eleven Hours: A novel! This novel is about a birthing person and her pregnant labor nurse. I can’t imagine a better novel for this list than one that captures two types of trauma around birth – that of the mother and that of the support in such a poetic dance.
20. Birth with Confidence: Savvy Choices for Normal Birth
This author, Rhea Dempsey, has such a unique and powerful perspective about birth. Though written for pregnant families, labor nurses will be able to read between the lines and find incredible gems of advice for how to support birth in a trauma-sensitive and parent-centered way.
21. After Birth: A Novel
Yup, another novel, and this book has so much realness to it you might even forget that fact! It’s a look into the postpartum experience, which all of our patients will have after we meet them. This is another beautiful way to rediscover the “why” we’re in this field and the intense passion that fuels us to stay. I want to help you avoid burnout while continuing to give trauma-informed, compassionate care in such a critical time in human lives … can you tell?!
22. The First-Time Parent’s Childbirth Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide for Building Your Birth Plan
Written by the reproductive rights advocate, L&D nurse and midwife, Stephanie Mitchell, CNM, MSN, DNP, this handbook is written for birthers. As nurses, it’s so helpful to learn this perspective, because we’re not taught actionable steps in patient advocacy – even though we’re heralded as patient advocates. Stephanie gives actionable advocacy strategies in this short but powerful handbook. (a great gift for a new parent when you’re done reading!)
23. Traumatic Childbirth
Written for nurses, by nurses, this is our resource for understanding and preventing traumatic childbirth. This book covers research, parent stories, case studies, and recommendations. It’s an all-in-one resource for birth professionals.
24. Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice
Perinatal nurses – we are human rights advocates. Reproductive rights are human rights, and nurses advocate for human rights everyday in America. They are not always prioritized or respected in healthcare. So it’s important to understand, acknowledge, and learn from the activism of Women of Color, creators of the reproductive justice movement.
25. The Birth Partner: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Partners, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions
I’m your biggest fan, and I wholly understand that you’re so much more than that. Read this as only speaking to your labor support side, though. It’s written by a physical therapist and doula for partners, so it does not account for your vast and complicated nursing and medical duties and responsibilities. You are, however, a labor support provider, and this book will help you hone those amazing skills.
26. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
With a focus on healing trauma, this book was intentionally chosen as a text to begin to understand trauma survivors without the risk of activating our own nervous systems while reading. We work with whole, messy, unique, peculiar, beautiful people in various stages of their reproductive journeys. It’s important that we understand how the body holds that complex story and the nervous system is always working to keep the body safe.
27. Call The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
I’m a sucker for this show and a fan of birth stories of all kinds. I am most inspired by the nuns’ ability to provide skilled, non-judgemental, compassionate care to all types of beautifully diverse people. Not every book on your summer list has to be heavy with learning!
28. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER. As the first full history of Black America’s mistreatment in medicine, this book did the job of our history textbooks while keeping me glued to my headphones the whole way. This is another required text in our professional education library.
29. A Good Birth: Finding the Positive and Profound in Your Childbirth Experience
This book presents the results of a three-year study on what matters most to people during childbirth. It’s eye-opening to learn that it’s not always what the medical-model deems a “healthy mom and healthy baby.”
30. Handbook of Perinatal and Neonatal Palliative Care: A Guide for Nurses, Physicians, and Other Health Professionals
Finally, authors that truly understand the unique aspects of perinatal and neonatal palliative care. This critical, readable handbook should be required reading on-the-job for all bedside labor nurses and perinatal professionals. It’s not taboo and should not be information found in the shadows of our career – it’s our everyday job that we are proud of! It’s finally here, and it’s so beautifully complete.
31. Baby Got VBAC: An Inspiring Collection of Wisdom for Better Births After a Cesarean
This is the book I co-wrote! Most of the chapters include inspiring and insightful stories from VBAC parents. I share the prep process that my clients and I go through when getting ready for a vaginal birth after cesarean. It’s a great book for nurses who want to shift to a patient-centered approach.
You now have a solid foundation of books every labor nurse must read to support you toward a trauma-informed nursing standard of care.
Be sure to grab the Free checklist below. This list is updated frequently as more amazing books for labor and delivery nurses are published.
Get the checklist so you can always stay updated on new books added!
You might also like:
12 Responses
Wow! This could be one particular of the most useful blogs We have ever arrive across on this subject. Actually Fantastic. I’m also an expert in this topic so I can understand your effort.
Simply desire to say your article is as astonishing. The clearness for your submit is just nice and i can assume you are a professional in this subject. Well with your permission let me to grab your RSS feed to stay up to date with impending post. Thanks a million and please continue the enjoyable work.
Love to spend time near Sea !
Kitabın Kitap Yeri
Like!! I blog quite often and I genuinely thank you for your information. The article has truly peaked my interest.
Thanks so much for the blog post.
Thanks for fantastic info I was looking for this info for my mission.
Found your blog while looking for recommendations in books related with labor support. Thanks such great recommendations.
I have fun with, result in I found exactly what I used to be taking a look for.
You’ve ended my four day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great
day. Bye
Pretty! This has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing this info.
Hey would you mind letting me know which webhost
you’re utilizing? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 completely different internet browsers and I must
say this blog loads a lot quicker then most. Can you suggest a good web hosting
provider at a reasonable price? Kudos, I appreciate it!
WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for that