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It is usual, in the framework of modern obstetrics, to shorten the duration of pregnancy through such interventions as labor induction or pre-labor cesarean. This is the reason why we’ll summarize the conclusions of recent studies. Their common point is to suggest that the importance of the short phase of “physiological birth preparation” is underestimated (Odent 2019).

 Read more…. Interventions That Interfere with the Length of Pregnancy

On Christmas Day a few years ago, I was having dinner with my family but I was on-call for an expectant mama—and I got the call letting me know her labor had started. I hopped in my car and drove northeast from the San Francisco Bay Area toward Sacramento, taking the appropriate exits from I-80 to the backroads that led to a nice suburban house where the kind-hearted couple were waiting for me to arrive.

 Read more…. Narrative Medicine and the Renewal of Midwifery Practice in the Twenty-first Century

To have a meaningful discussion about the future of midwifery education, we must consider the question: what is a midwife? To understand what a midwife is we need to ask ourselves some other important questions. First, who created midwifery? Second, what do midwives do? And finally, the most important question of all: exactly who “owns” human reproduction? Only after we answer these important questions can we start to analyze and develop a plan to educate the midwives of the future and begin to truly address the huge crisis we have in maternal and child health care today.

 Read more…. The Future of Midwifery Education

The Village Midwife is not lost. Her blood runs thick in our veins. Our great-great-grandmothers knew her ways. Many of them were her.

 Read more…. The Village Midwife Yesterday—Today—Tomorrow

I wish I could show you the VHS (a type of videotape) I have from back in the day when there were no cell phones with which to film births. It is of the birth of Gregory, an almost-10 lb first baby born to a couple in my area. The birth was lovely.

 Read more…. The Bottom Line

Every midwife knows what it feels like to return home after a long, challenging birth. The moment your home comes into view, the soft creak of the porch steps, the hushed house, the deep sigh as you finally sink into bed. I am experiencing that right now, as I return to my much beloved midwifery practice after 20 years away.

 Read more…. Coming Full Circle: My Return to Midwifery

Not long before the outbreak of the coronavirus and Governor Newsom’s order to Californians to shelter in place, I visited the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. It is a small museum with an extraordinary collection, which includes a seventeenth-century oil painting by Bartolomé-Esteban Murillo, entitled “The Birth of St. John the Baptist” (ca. 1655). The canvas, strikingly large at more than four foot by six foot (146.7 x 188.3 cm), caught my attention as a midwife.

 Read more…. “The Birth of St. John the Baptist”

Like a number of midwives I know, as I have gotten older I’ve gone from attending births to attending the dying in some way, such as working with hospice, attending the dying as a doula, or helping families reclaim natural after-death care and holding vigils. The similarities between this sacred work at both ends of life are obvious, and both have traditionally been the realm of the sage femme/wise woman/midwife. The first time I provided natural after-death care was both a revelation and a revolution for me—one that seemed to bring my midwifery work full circle.

 Read more…. Natural After-Death Care: Completing the Circle of Midwifery