Issue 117

Midwifery Today Issue 117 Theme: 30th Anniversary, Celebrating Midwifery

We are pleased to be able to celebrate Midwifery Today’s 30-year anniversary with our readers for the Spring 2016 issue. To celebrate midwifery, we chose thirteen of our favorite articles from thirteen of our most loyal and devoted writers and reprinted them in this anniversary edition. You will be able to read from the best of the best, including Ina May Gaskin, Penny Simkin, Michel Odent, Robin Lim, Sister MorningStar, Gail Tully, Elizabeth Davis and others, as we continue to provide you with only the best and evidence-based information surrounding childbirth. This issue also features some great new articles, including one about institutional biases in birth research—a must read! As an additional way to celebrate our readers and writers, we are pleased to announce that this issue will have our first ever color cover. Here’s to 30 more years!

Cover photo by Natasha Hance (birthunscripted.com). Natasha is a mother of five who has a deep passion for birth photography. She photographs births in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area of Texas as NHance Photography and Birth Unscripted. She also teaches birth photography workshops with Birth Stories [101].

Pictured: Roman was born in a beautiful waterbirth at a birth center with midwives. His big sister’s birth became a popular YouTube video, “Birth of Sloane.” This video has been viewed almost 7 million times and has inspired many women to consider midwifery care and waterbirth.

Learn what a Midwifery Today Online Membership can do for you. = Membership Article.

Ilissa Kolly—www.beanfamilywellness.com

A Vision of Birth

by Sarah J. Buckley December 1, 2003

A vision of Birth came to me in the months after I gave birth to Zoe, my second baby. As I meditated on the challenges that I had encountered during my labor, I began to see my experience—and Birth herself—as a huge multi-faceted crystal. I saw that the different aspects of Zoe’s birth, like facets of a crystal, would not add up to one clear picture but would reflect at many different angles.

This post is only available to members. To purchase an online membership, go here.

If you are already an online member login here.

Waterbirth Basics, From Newborn Breathing to Hospital Protocols

by Barbara Harper June 1, 2000

Waterbirth is simple. Within the simplicity of water labor and birth lies a complexity of questions, choices, opinions, research data, women’s experience and practitioner observations. One of the first and foremost questions in everyone’s mind when they hear of waterbirth stories is simple: How does the baby breathe during a waterbirth?

This post is only available to members. To purchase an online membership, go here.

If you are already an online member login here.

Managing First Stage Problems

by John Stevenson September 1, 1994

Lack of progress, or failure to progress, can be very frustrating for laboring women. In my experience with homebirths, a malpresenting head and/or a stubborn cervix constitute the main reasons for transfer to hospital in the early stages of labor.