Category Archives: Hospitals

Ashley Sophia’s birth story

By The Midwife | Published: May 13, 2012

Happy Mother’s Day!  Here’s another fantastic birth story from Kim, a mother in my due date club, this one a successful VBAC with a hospital team that was very respectful of her birth plan.  Isn’t it wonderful when that happens?  Enjoy! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On August 20th, 2010, two little pink lines appeared on a pregnancy test [...]

Also posted in Birth Stories, Good Enough to Share, Labor and Birth, VBAC | Leave a comment

Experience and Personal Practice

By The Midwife | Published: December 6, 2011

Personal experience always changes the way you practice in some way.  Anyone who denies this is probably not being 100% honest with themselves.  It’s the nature of us being human, and it’s inevitable because humans (as opposed to future robots?) provide health care, and by and large it’s a very good thing.  This can be [...]

Also posted in Complications, Labor and Birth, Labor Support, Midwifery, Vaginal Birth | Leave a comment

Wax Study Revisited

By The Midwife | Published: October 9, 2011

Imagine the following scenario:  a meta-analysis comparing planned homebirths to planned hospital births is published, but it has so many statistical flaws in it that the journal which originally published it goes on to print several letters to the Editor critiquing the flawed research, in order to give the authors a second chance to explain [...]

Also posted in Choice, Complications, Homebirth, Issues, Labor and Birth, Midwifery, Politics, Research | 1 Comment

Back in the saddle again!

By The Midwife | Published: September 13, 2011

Friday was my first day back at work on L&D.  I was a little bit nervous about it.  Not that I have forgotten anything or lost my skills over maternity leave, but only that my life had slowed down to match my baby’s pace, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep [...]

Also posted in Complications, Labor and Birth, Vaginal Birth | 1 Comment

Empowering Birth in the Trenches

By The Midwife | Published: September 5, 2011

Welcome to the Empowered Birth Week Blog Carnival This post is part of the Empowered Birth Week Blog Carnival hosted by Child of the Nature Isle and Betsy Dewey. For this special event the carnival participants have shared their perspective on Empowered Birth. Please read to the end to find a list of links to [...]

Also posted in Epidurals, Labor and Birth, Labor Support, Vaginal Birth, VBAC | 7 Comments

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 [...]

Also posted in Birth Stories, Cesarean Birth, Homebirth, Labor and Birth, Labor Support, Midwifery, News, Vaginal Birth, VBAC | 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 [...]

Also posted in Birth Centers, Education, Homebirth, Labor and Birth, Midwifery, News, Politics | Leave a comment

The Obstetrician’s Lament

By The Midwife | Published: May 19, 2011

There is an astounding collection of writing going up on The Unnecesarean regarding the growing rift between obstetricians and the out-of-hospital birth community.  All of this is in response to the The Obstetrician’s Lament, written by OB-GYN Anette Fineberg, MD, which came out in the May edition of ACOG’s Green Journal (Obstetrics and Gynecology).  I [...]

Also posted in Cesarean Birth, Complications, Journal Articles, Labor and Birth, Politics, VBAC | Leave a comment

NIH Consensus updates on VBACs

By The Midwife | Published: March 3, 2011

One of the advantages to being a midwife is being on all kinds of funky mailing lists, which means that all softs of health information, conference invitations, and sometimes even free samples often show up on my doorstep.  A few days ago, I got just such a mailing– the NIH Consensus Development Conference Statement on [...]

Also posted in Cesarean Birth, Complications, Labor and Birth, Research, Vaginal Birth, VBAC | Leave a comment

Vaginal twins at 25 weeks

By The Midwife | Published: February 24, 2011

So one of the advantages of working as a midwife in a hospital is that I get to participate in many births that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to experience in private practice.  If I were working as a private practice midwife, and as a homebirth midwife in particular, there is no way I would [...]

Also posted in Birth Stories, Complications, Labor and Birth, Vaginal Birth | Leave a comment