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Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife
 
 
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Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife [Hardcover]

Peggy Vincent (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (96 customer reviews)

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In a joyous, often hilarious ode to the Birkenstock-scuffling, tackle box-toting mobile midwives who flourished in the 1980s, Peggy Vincent chronicles her abundant life as a professional Baby Catcher. The wild ride begins during her nurse training years in the 1960s, when laboring women were expected to lie down, shut up, and submit to whatever drugs and procedures the doctor ordered. A rebellious patient who chants and dances through her contractions--and the hell that ensues when seasoned hospital staffers intrude--lights a permanent fire under Vincent. Her resolve to serve each laboring woman with compassion and respect carries her from obstetrics nurse to head of an alternative birth center within Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California, and eventually into her own private practice as a licensed midwife. Like the most courageous home births, this collection of delivery experiences refuses anesthesia: plenty of bellowing, sweating, bleeding, and pushing accompany nearly all of the more than 40 tales. Tough confrontations with stubborn physicians, panicky labor partners, and one particularly nasty calico cat are dabbed with as many keen insights as Vincent's quieter, more heart-rending newborn encounters. Baby Catcher is an inspirational literary gift suitable for expectant mothers, fellow baby catchers, and anyone who loves reading about nature's greatest magical feat. --Liane Thomas

From Publishers Weekly

It was in nursing school at Duke in the 1960s that Vincent found her calling: delivering or "catching" babies. She moved to California and became a midwife, specializing in home births; over the course of 40 years, she brought some 2,000 babies into the world. There's a predictable plot structure to most of the stories she recounts: the initial meetings with the pregnant woman, the last-minute phone call once labor speeds up, the coping with contractions, the appearance of the baby's head, the wet newborn, the oven-warmed blankets, the celebratory meal afterwards. Despite the repetition, Vincent's account is a page-turner. It's not just the risk that something might go wrong (meaning a nail-biting trip to the hospital for an emergency cesarean), and not just the quirkiness of home birth settings (which can involve jealously raging house pets or leaky houseboats), but something inherent in the magic of birth itself. What sustains Vincent and her readers is this sense of standing ringside at the greatest miracle on earth. A solid writer, Vincent doesn't preach the virtues of unmedicated birthing; she just lays consistent stories of women doing it Christian Science moms, Muslim moms, spiritualist moms, lesbian moms, teen moms and just plain ordinary moms. With the midwife's axiom "birth is normal till proven otherwise" as a guiding principle, all these women have a chance to make childbirth a crowning moment in their own lives. Male readers may find this female-centered narrative off-putting, and mainstream readers might raise eyebrows at the inclusion of children in the birthing process, but Vincent addresses these issues fairly directly herself. Agent, Felicia Eth. (Apr.)Forecast: With appendices guiding readers to more technical resources, Vincent's latest baby is bound to be popular with women's health and alternative medicine readers. A cover blurb by Anne Lamott could break it out further.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Please lie down," I begged Zelda. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

96 Reviews
5 star:
 (91)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (96 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife, July 1 2011
This review is from: Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (Paperback)
This was a book that I found hard to put down, it had good flow and it was written with compassion and respect towards all the women Penny helped empower. Every birth is unique and society doesn't always understand the value of giving new moms choices and how childbirth affects women the rest of their lives. I am very glad that she had support from those around her to write this book, it is a treasure! I gave it 5 stars because I would lend this book to anyone, male or female who wants to learn more about birth as a natural event in our world today.
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5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it, Jan 4 2008
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This review is from: Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (Paperback)
I loved this book. I read a dozen books on childbirth during my pregnancy, but this is the book that crystalized for me what childbirth is LIKE. You are a fly on the wall during a whole range of different birthings with Peggy in this book, and by the time you're done you feel like you now know what you're in for in a way that is incomparable to that of any other fact-based book. She's a great storyteller, and you're right there in the middle of the guts and the glory. I laughed, I cried, and I got it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars To know her is to love her, July 1 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (Paperback)
Peggy caught my third baby and wrote about it anonymously and with permission in Babycatcher. She had the spirit and courage to allow me to give birth any way I wanted. What a relief and help she was. When I told her that I really wanted to be a midwife she said, "Oh no you don't. In California you have to go to nursing school for three or four years and then enter a midwifery training program for another year. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time and when you're finished with all of that, you have to unlearn everything they taught you in order to become a good midwife." She was right. So I went to Maternidad la Luz in El Paso, TX where they train midwives in a more holistic way. Then I made a video, Birth Day (which is also for sale on Amazon.com)to share my feeling that women can give birth joyfully, even ecstatically and without the harmful effects that drugs can have on little babies.
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