Author Archives: The Midwife

One World Birth about to launch!

By The Midwife | Published: August 30, 2011

Just stumbled upon this via a friend on Facebook, and watching the welcome video just sent chills down my spine.  Two passionate filmmakers are creating an interactive, continuously-updated online TV channel focusing on nothing but birth, and the state of birth in our world right now, by interviewing the world’s leading experts in birth and […]

Posted in Birth Stories, Cesarean Birth, Homebirth, Hospitals, Labor and Birth, Labor Support, Midwifery, News, Vaginal Birth, VBAC | Leave a comment

Midwifery Care Associated with Better Outcomes

By The Midwife | Published: August 29, 2011

Via MidwifeInfo, a systematic review spanning 18 years and encompassing 21 studies has found that midwives provide comparable or better care to women than care managed exclusively by physicians.   This finding was part of a larger review focusing on advanced practice nurses (nurse-midwives, nurse-anesthetists, nurse-practitioners etc.), and will be published in the upcoming September/ […]

Posted in Journal Articles, Labor and Birth, Midwifery, News, Research | Leave a comment

Why midwives “talk shop”

By The Midwife | Published: August 26, 2011

My husband has been known to complain about this from time to time: get two or more midwives in a room together during any social occasion, and inevitably the conversation becomes nothing but “shop talk”—pregnancy, birth, babies, birth, rotten clinic hours, birth, national politics as pertaining to midwifery, birth, local midwifery jobs, birth, attendings we […]

Posted in Labor and Birth, Midwifery | Leave a comment

More Business of Being Born

By The Midwife | Published: August 24, 2011

Back in 2007, I was lucky enough to attend an advance screening of The Business of Being Born in New York City, and I wrote this review of it at the time.  Since then, it’s become widely popular and widely viewed, loudly praised and criticized by opposing sides of the birth debate, and has served as […]

Posted in Birth Centers, Education, Homebirth, Hospitals, Labor and Birth, Midwifery, News, Politics | Leave a comment

More mother than midwife, these days

By The Midwife | Published: August 7, 2011

Well into my second month of maternity leave, now, it is finally dawning on me that I am a mother.  You might laugh at this.  Didn’t I know I was going to be a mother, from pretty much the moment the pee stick turned positive?  Didn’t I fully understand that this was the logical outcome […]

Posted in Mothering, Postpartum | Leave a comment

Well done, NPR!

By The Midwife | Published: August 4, 2011

NPR has a great series up on their website right now called Beginnings: Pregnancy, Childbirth and Beyond, which explores myriad aspects of pregnancy and childbirth, from cultural, economic, global and scientific perspectives.  Overall, an incredibly balanced and informative series, well worth checking out (I’m especially enjoying the Baby Project, which is a blog following the […]

Posted in Good Enough to Share, Labor and Birth, Mothering, Myth, Folklore and Ritual, Postpartum, Pregnancy | Leave a comment

An Oversupply Issue

By The Midwife | Published: June 17, 2011

When you hear about breastfeeding in the world and the blogosphere, usually it’s either to educate women on the merits of breastfeeding, or to discuss women’s right to breastfeed in public, or to promote breastfeeding in general, or lament the low breastfeeding stats in our country.  We all know that breast is best, but you […]

Posted in Babies!, Breastfeeding, Postpartum | 2 Comments

Sebastian’s Birth Story

By The Midwife | Published: June 7, 2011

Awhile ago, during the pregnancy, I joined an online forum with other women who were also pregnant and due in May, and this group of women became my “due date club.”  About halfway through our pregnancies, we decided to do a bead swap, where most of the women of the group decided to send each […]

Posted in Birth Stories, Homebirth, Labor and Birth, Vaginal Birth | Leave a comment

Homebirth in the Washington Post

By The Midwife | Published: June 6, 2011

Just a quick link to a recent article in the Washington Post about why a journalist there chose to have a planned homebirth.  I think she does a good job of articulating the many benefits associated with homebirth for low-risk women, but she also emphasized that this choice is not right for everyone (obviously).  Nice […]

Posted in Homebirth, Labor and Birth, News | Leave a comment

The first growth spurt–truly no joke!!

By The Midwife | Published: June 5, 2011

I knew, going into all of this, that all babies hit their first growth spurt around 3 weeks or so, and that during this time they want to nurse constantly and are more fussy than usual.  I actually, logically KNEW about this before it happened; I had advised mothers about this, told women that this […]

Posted in Babies! | 7 Comments