Giving Birth With Confidence

I picked up a copy of New Yorker Magazine in the airport on the way to this weekend’s nurse-midwifery conference. The inside cover had an ad with a sweet photo of a baby gazing into his mother’s eyes. The copy reads, “8lbs. 3oz. – powered by Cisco. Ambulances outfitted with smart technology, connected to hospital [...]

A friend sent me a meditation on the word “guidance” this week, and some of the sentiments in it pointed right to birth. It has to do with the word’s last syllable: “dance.” When Judy and I first began work on our birth book, we referred to it as “First Dance” because it seemed such [...]

My granddaughter, Nora, just celebrated her 8th birthday. Check out my blogs several months ago to know that Nora is wise beyond her years, and beyond the times, when it comes to birth. She sat on my lap and confidently let me know just how much she knew about birth as her mother gave birth [...]

I have been in Japan visiting my son for the last week. What a different world! For me the most striking difference, really, is that in five days although Tokyo and the beach resorts just south of the city are teeming with families, babies and young children, I have not seen a single infant feeding [...]

Have I entered an alternate universe? Articles in several UK news sources last week reported on a government plan to increase the number of home births. Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health has commissioned a study on the safety of home birth in a move to “demedicalise” birth and “challenge the presumption” that [...]