Welcome to The Birth Book! If you have picked this up, it is probably because you – or someone dear to you – is approaching the time of birth. Congratulations! This is an incredibly exciting time in your life. The arrival of a baby heralds an exciting new chapter for everyone in your ‘village’. Families and friends stand together with new parents in a shared vision: that love will surround our children all their lives, that good fortune and health will follow them, that we will help launch them into a life of unlimited possibility, that we – through them – will leave this world better than we found it.

Which brings us to the all-important launch pad. Few of us will experience the astronaut’s walk to the Kennedy Space Centre launch pad at Cape Canaveral, but many women approaching the day of birth can probably relate to the mixture of intense excitement and nervousness. The sharpened focus. The comfort of customs and rituals that tether us to what makes meaning for us. The immeasurable value of your faithful flight crew on the day and your wider support crew on the ground. But the other thing that can help to ensure this is less of a ‘white knuckle ride’ is knowledge of what’s going on, and trust in the team looking after you. In the launch pad of the birthing suite, this is the midwives, nurses and doctors, and our sole job is to take care of you all – mother, baby and family. To put you at ease. To share what’s happening and why. To ensure no one is left behind. In short, to ensure a safe and happy birth day.

If this resonates with you, then Professor Stephen Tong’s book will hit the mark. Stephen is a highly experienced obstetrician, who I have had the pleasure of working with in the public and private sector over many years in Melbourne, Australia. He is also one of our nation’s finest researchers. He has dedicated his life to discovering new and better ways of ensuring safer motherhood and the best possible start to life. He has made world leading discoveries into some of the most perilous complications of pregnancy – stillbirth, preeclampsia, ectopic pregnancy and others. It is true that not all heroes wear capes.

Stephen also has an uncanny ability to distill the essence of a clinical or research problem, and explain it in a thoughtful, kind and wise way that makes sense – peppered with (sometimes quirky but always illustrative!) anecdotes. This is the real art of the clinician or academic – to bring others along with you. I will often walk past his office where he will be shaping a PhD student’s research presentation and hear him say, ‘You need to tell the story so your grandmother will understand it’. It misses the point if our research or education is impenetrable to the people we are trying to empower and help.

It is this philosophy he has brought to The Birth Book. Pregnant women, together with their partners and support team, are bombarded with a lot of information about birth, but the challenge for many is to make sense of it all. This book picks some of this information apart, and then knits it back together into a short, digestible companion for labour and birth. Of course, this garment is not a ‘one size fits all’. Nothing can replace the individualised advice and recommendations for you, your baby and circumstance. But this book gives you an important place from which to start the conversation. Here Stephen walks you through the stages of labour and birth, and how we keep mum and baby safe. He explains exactly how different forms of pain relief work so you can help decide what might be best for you. He guides you through the evidence so you can understand – and share in – the clinical decision making that surrounds induction of labour and assisted birth, including caesarean section. He also takes you down some of the roads less travelled in the birthing suite like heavy bleeding after childbirth, so you know how the expert team in Mission Control will spring into action if needed. He might be your invisible partner on the big day, quietly saying, ‘Remember we talked about this? This is all OK’.

Importantly, he has presented this in a way that is both calm and informative. We are living through a strange time in history, where information sharing about COVID-19 has made us all armchair experts in pandemic epidemiology, aerosol transmission and the nuances of vaccine effectiveness. Like me, you probably have wise, trusted sources to whom you turn for balanced scientific information – free of political bias, hysteria, hidden agendas and baseless conspiracy theories. Such a source is The Birth Book. Your ‘access all areas’ backstage pass for what goes on behind the birthing suite doors. It is the balanced, ‘expert in your pocket’ for the big day who – along with wonderful midwives, doctors and childbirth educators – will shepherd you through.

Of course, I’m sure the moment of rocket launch is incomparable to the magic of space travel. The richness that you, your partner, family, customs and traditions bring to your birth and parenting is immeasurable. None of us can replace or replicate it. Ensure this is all part of your birth plan, too. It is your fingerprints, not ours, that belong on your baby’s head. Our role – and the intention of this book – is simply to partner with you for the big day: to share our language and customs, to make the birthing suite, its people and practices a warm and familiar place. To provide a confident ‘go for launch’. I wish you the most wonderful birth day, and joys untold in your yet-to-be-charted voyage of parenting.