A Textbook Overview

Textbook Overview for

Myles Textbook for Midwives Eleventh Edition

By Megan Scott

The diagrams and illustrations in this book are amazing. It is very helpful to be able to picture what you reading about, and Myles does and excellent job of providing helpful diagrams along side the detailed explanations. The down to earth descriptions in this book are very refreshing. With so many medical text books you can get so lost in technical jargon that you miss the whole point of what you are reading. With Myles you get an explanation that actually makes sense, and can be practically applied.

This textbook is very useful to both beginner students and advanced students. For beginners this book offers a very comprehensive introduction into midwifery care, and for more advanced students it is useful for reviewing something quickly. While still being instructive, and not “dumbing down” the information, Myles is written in plain, easy to comprehend, English.

Topics covered in this edition of Myles include: how to conduct prenatals, malpresentations (and how to deal with them), nutritional guides for the pregnant woman, what a normal pregnancy looks like, abnormalities of pregnancy and labor, and much more. A particularly interesting section of this text book explains the laws that regulate midwifery in Great Britain.

The chapter on malpresentations is very informative, and detailed. It is broken down into separate sections for each presentation, and then outlines the full mechanism of labor for that position. In addition it explains the common reasons for the malpresentation, the most likely outcome, and has diagrams many showing how the presentation looks and feels from different angles. For example, occipitoposterior positions may be associated with an abnormally shaped pelvis. Out comes of an OP position are not all the same. Sometimes the baby will rotate before birth and be born in an anterior presentation. Other malpresentations covered in this chapter include, face, brow, and all of the varying breech presentations.

The first publication of Myles textbook for Midwives was published in 1953, and was written by Margaret Myles. The next nine printings were also solely written by Mrs. Myles. The eleventh edition is the first multiauthor version. Ruth Bennett and Linda Brown were the joint editors, and co-ordinated a team of midwives, and a physiotherapist to make this edition possible.

The eleventh edition of Myles Midwifery has a very comprehensive index, but is lacking a glossary. The attention to detail, and the organization, of this book is very helpful for studying. It is very easy to look up a specific topic, and if it is covered, you wont have any trouble finding its location.

In conclusion, Myles Textbook for Midwives is a very thorough volume of information, and should be included in every midwifery students education.  

Random Chance? Star Dust? God?

Maybe I'm just dense, but the first time I studied biology I somehow missed how excruciatingly detailed DNA and the genetic code are. Sure I learned about the double helix, and how no DNA is exactly the same (except in identical twins), and that our whole genetic makeup is derived from our DNA. What I didn't realize is that that double helix repeats, and repeats, and repeats, to form a super coil, and the super coils form chromosomes, and chromosomes are in the nucleus of EVERY SINGLE CELL IN OUR BODY!!!      When I was reviewing it the other day it hit me like brick wall, and I reread the page 3 times just to wrap my tiny brain around how awesome, and epic, and marvelously choreographed the whole process is!!

After I had that astounding revelation, my next thought was, how can people think that this all happens by random chance? I mean come on people! We are the most complex life forms on this planet and we didn't even know about DNA until about the 1960s! How on earth do we think that all of this came together by happenstance? The odds of just one protein chain forming on its own are incredible, and for us to think that every living thing, from amoebas to humans, just happened to come together from star dust, or an oozing slime pit, or a big explosion, is just mind blowing! I don't under stand how anyone with a brain in their head can look out on this amazing planet, at our complex solar system, at ourselves, and not see in it the handy work of a master Creator.

While I am studying I am reading over, and over, and over the whole process of gestation, and it never ceases to amaze me. To think that every person started as a single cell with 46 chromosomes, and over the relatively short period of nine months becomes a living, breathing human being is astounding! Looking at the process, and seeing how complex it is, and how easily it could go wrong, yet rarely does, I can't comprehend how someone could think it's just a coincidence.

When you see a baby born so perfectly human, yet oh soo tiny, and you know the journey it has made in the previous nine months, how can you say that there is no God? No master Creator?


-Megan