Synopses & Reviews
An inspiring collection of birth stories by a charming midwife.
Each time she knelt to “catch” another wriggling baby—nearly three thousand times during her remarkable career—California midwife Peggy Vincent paid homage to the moment when pain bows to joy and the world makes way for one more. With every birth, she encounters another woman-turned-goddess: Catherine rides out her labor in a car careening down a mountain road. Sofia spends hers trying to keep her hyper doctor-father from burning down the house. Susannah gives birth so quietly that neither husband nor midwife notice until there's a baby in the room.
More than a collection of birth stories, however, Baby Catcher is a provocative account of the difficulties that midwives face in the United States. With vivid portraits of courage, perseverance, and love, this is an impassioned call to rethink technological hospital births in favor of more individualized and profound experiences in which mothers and fathers take center stage in the timeless drama of birth.
Review
Anne Lamott author of Operating Instructions Baby Catcher is a celebration of life, a book of beautiful and passionate stories of birth -- and the mothers, fathers, families, and friends who assisted -- told by a midwife devoted to more tender and natural childbirth. This is an inspiring, important book.
Review
Publishers Weekly A page-turner.
Review
Chris Bohjalian author of Midwives and The Buffalo Soldier Peggy Vincent understands both the miracle and the mystery of birth, and she writes with an enthusiasm that is as inspirational as it is infectious.
Review
Cathy Luchetti author of Medicine Women and Children of the West Baby Catcher is a startling dive into virtual birth reality. When a "perineal cry" rings out, we nearly drop the book. When contractions knot up, we hold our breath. Page after page, we revel in astonishing new twists to an age-old plot, as Peggy Vincent delivers well-formed stories -- and children -- into the waiting world.
Review
Marsden Wagner, M.D., M.S.P.H. former director of Women's and Children's Health, World Health Organization Author Peggy Vincent paints vivid pictures of what childbirth can be when allowed to be the way it was meant to be, rather than the way physicians say it should be. Scientific data shows that a midwife-attended low-risk birth is as safe -- or safer -- than a physician-attended low-risk birth. Every woman should grow up knowing that someday she can have her own midwife, and every family should prepare for birth by reading this inspirational book.
Review
Ina May Gaskin, C.P.M. author of Spiritual Midwifery Peggy Vincent's memoir of her career as a nurse-midwife during the last decades of the twentieth century covers everything from her days as an independent home birth practitioner to a shift worker in a high-volume "birth assembly line" of a huge HMO hospital. It's entertaining, funny, informative, and quite moving.
Review
Adair Lara author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go By turns hilarious, inspiring, celebratory, and frightening, Baby Catcher is a deeply human book -- warm, wise, and witty. I couldn't put this engaging page-turner down till I'd finished it.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 330-331).
About the Author
Peggy Vincent became a licensed midwife specializing in home births in 1980, after fifteen years as a delivery room nurse, ten years as a natural childbirth teacher, and three years as the director of the first alternative birth center in the East Bay. Five years later, she became the first completely independent nurse midwife to be granted hospital privileges in the Berkeley area. Vincent lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and teenage son. Her Web site is www.babycatcher.net
Table of Contents
ContentsPART I
~ As it was in the beginning
You Have to Lie Down
Babies, Babies, Babies
Mrs. Purdue
The Hippie Effect
PART II
~ The meditation of my heart
Painless Childbirth?
To Be or Not to Be
Only If You Can Be There
Fog
Adidas to Birkenstocks
PART III
~ The wine of astonishment
Rubber Ducky
Good News and Bad News
We Couldn't Have Done It Without Him
Huh?
Hallie's Reputation
Only What's Necessary
The Perineal Cry
PART IV
~ Not only with our lips but in our lives
Spirit Baby I
Practice What You Preach
My Little Helper
Spirit Baby II
When Mom Is a Midwife
PART V
~ Who walketh upon the wings of the wind
One More Soul
Pragmatism in Action
Sneak Attack
Uh-oh
A Friend
What Flowers Are These?
Labor's Not So Bad
Goose Abuse
Wall Art
It's Just So Interesting
Okay, Okay, Okay
Is My Mommy Happy?
PART VI
~ Devices and desires
Wrongful Life
Cut Me!
You'd Better Sit Down
PART VII
~ The measure of my days
Guardian Angel
Allah's Blessing
End of the Drought
You Can't Be Serious
I Just Forgot
Soccer Mom
Hello from Rosie
A Bitter Pill
Happy Birthday
Shift Work
Passing the Torch
~ Epilogue
The Current Situation
~ Appendices
I Pearls of Wisdom
II Home Birth Supplies
III Studies on Midwifery Safety
IV Statistics on the Economics of Midwifery
V Resources
VI Sandi's Famous Caramels