Michel Odent sits at a table with our country contaact from the Netherlands, midwife Mary Zwart, at the Midwifery Today conference in the Netherlands in 2002. Photo by Jan Tritten

I began interviewing Dutch midwives and obstetricians in an effort to understand how they successfully negotiate working together, especially in the hospital setting. I wanted to know what the Dutch do differently when, in other countries, the differing philosophies of birth that typically characterize these two professions have often made for tense and even hostile working relations.