Giving Birth With Confidence

My email this week brought a beautiful, uplifting, happy treat.  Lorri Walker, founder and director of South Coast Midwifery, forwarded a ” modern account of today’s natural childbirth.”  Told by 10 mothers, the short film chronicles their journeys to challenge the conventional hospital birth model to give birth in their own way. Check out Natural Born Babies: A [...]

The internet is abuzz about a new study out of the Netherlands comparing the outcomes of planned home birth with those of planned hospital births in low-risk women. With over half a million women involved in the study, it is the largest of its kind. Its findings provide the best evidence to date that perinatal [...]

I read about Susan Clarke, a young midwifery student in England, winning an award for her work in championing safe, natural birth for mothers, and I have a couple of responses. First, hurrah for Sarah, who obviously gets it and has had to stand her ground in an arena where the business of birth has [...]

The recent New York magazine story, Extreme Birth, enraged me.  The very top of the front cover of the magazine entices readers to look inside with this, Plus: The High Priestess of Home Birth.  The tag-line to the piece is “the fearless–some say too fearless–leader of the home birth movement”. The tone is set. Andrew Goldman’s article is [...]

Yesterday’s NY Times ran an article on home birth, Baby, You’re Home. I always get excited when I see an article on home birth. I especially loved this NY Times piece initially because Miriam Swartzchild was my daughter’s midwife for the birth of three of her daughters. And because Alecia was a student of mine [...]