Category Archives: Midwifery

How have midwives touched your life? Share your story for National Midwifery Week 2011!

Happy National Midwifery Week, everyone!  Here in NYC we kicked off National Midwifery Week with a very successful Miles for Midwives 5K run around Prospect Park.  But there’s a lot more going on nationally this week.  First of all, check out Team Midwife.  A $15 donation to Team Midwife will help the ACNM continue to […]

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Miles For Midwives just around the corner!

Heads up all New York City midwives, friends of midwives, doulas, midwifery clients, runners, walkers, parents, kids and babies!  Miles for Midwives is next weekend (Saturday, Oct. 1st) and this is always a wonderful (traditionally *gorgeous* autumn) day where participants can run/ walk/ stroll a loop of Prospect Park and then enjoy a Birth and […]

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Mother of Many

I *love* this video (“Mother of Many” by Emma Lazenby, which also won the BAFTA for Best Short Animation last year).  It so perfectly portrays what the average day can be like for a hospital midwife, from the overwhelming chaos of helping so many women at the same time to the joy at every birth […]

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

One World Birth about to launch!

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, Hospitals, Labor and Birth, Labor Support, News, Vaginal Birth, VBAC | Leave a comment

Midwifery Care Associated with Better Outcomes

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/ […]

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Why midwives “talk shop”

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 […]

Also posted in Labor and Birth | Leave a comment

More Business of Being Born

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, Hospitals, Labor and Birth, News, Politics | Leave a comment

Homebirth in the Washington Post

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 […]

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CPM bill introduced in Congress

I have already written extensively on the differences between CNMs/ CMs and CPMs, about how there is a national divide between these qualifications which may prove very hard to bridge, and about how the lack of a unified standard of midwifery in the US continues to divide and destabilize our profession.  Part of the problem […]

Also posted in Homebirth, Issues, News, Politics | Leave a comment

A case in point…

…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 […]

Also posted in Complications, Homebirth, Hospitals, Issues, Labor and Birth, Litigation, Politics | Leave a comment