…just to illustrate the bind that the homebirth midwives find themselves in at the moment after the closing of St. Vincents hospital and the subsequent loss of their back-up hospital/ written practice agreements (see yesterday’s post): Last night I was working (at the HHC public hospital in Brooklyn where I spend a good deal of [...]
St. Vincents hospital was the most homebirth-midwife friendly hospital in Manhattan, and quite possibly in New York City, period. It was certainly the only hospital in Manhattan which accommodated homebirth and homebirth midwives. My own midwife delivered her patients there, and she would often comment to me about what a lovely set-up they had at [...]
It’s snowing here, but here’s a little piece of news that will warm the cockles of your heart. As we all know, there was a big stink over at Facebook awhile ago when they banned the pictures of nursing mothers, which then led to the formation of the facebook group Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not [...]
Let’s face it: the economy sucks right now. We haven’t yet hit rock bottom, and it’s going to be awhile (probably a long while) before things begin to recover. In the midst of this harsh financial reality, companies and industries are scrambling to find ways to save money. Birth activists have been trying for decades [...]
It seems like every other blog/magazine/newspaper is putting together gift guides these days, so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon too and put together a gift guide for the hard-to-shop-for midwives/ doulas/ lovers-of-birth in your life. Granted, this guide sort of reads as a list of some of my favorite things, ever, but hey….why [...]
Also posted in Miscellaneous |
Midirs Midwifery Digest, the premiere midwifery publication in England, has recently posted an interview with Ina May Gaskin, one of the fouding midwives of The Farm and an international midwifery leader and homebirth midwife. The podcast of the interview is available here, and the written version can be found here. It’s really fascinating, once you [...]
Also posted in Homebirth |
Last night was a very strange night. It wasn’t that busy, and yet, somehow, neither the other midwife nor myself were able to take a break. The pace was very steady. We kept expecting it to settle down, but it never did. Just as we were thinking “oh, as soon as this woman is discharged, [...]
The AMA has recently issued a resolution supporting ACOG’s Statement on Homebirth which agrees that the safest place to have a baby is the hospital, of course, where obstetricians work and get paid. What’s really awful is that they’re using Ricki Lake’s movie, The Business of Being Born, as a tool to try to pass [...]
Forget the Oscars (well, not entirely: Go, Juno, go!); the movie I really want to see is A Walk To Beautiful. Having already won several awards at film festivals around the world, the film follows five courageous women as they travel to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopa to find a cure for the [...]
I just discovered the most amazing videos over on You Tube about a traditional midwife working in Mexico. I’m sure many of you have probably seen them already, but I was just blown away!! It’s amazing to watch the way she uses her hands to massage, assess, palpate…turn a breech baby. A midwife’s greatest tool [...]