The Birth Parter Handbook is a concise, contemporary guide for today's birth partners, showing them exactly what they can do to help create a positive birth experience, whether the mother gives birth naturally or with medication, at home, in a childbearing center, or in a hospital. With a special emphasis on the psychological changes of labor, this guide also introduces a new approach to understanding labor made popular through the author's nationwide childbirth workshops, called the "laboring mind response." Birth partners will gain new insight into the mother's altered state of mind and altered behavior during labor, and be given an easy-to-follow, eight-step method that teaches the mind to cooperate with the body and will help make childbirth less stressful and more natural for the mother.