Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife [Paperback]

Peggy Vincent (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 1, 2003

Each time she knelt to "catch" another wriggling baby -- nearly three thousand times during her remarkable career -- California midwife Peggy Vincent paid homage to the moment when pain bows to joy and the world makes way for one more. With every birth, she encounters another woman-turned-goddess: Catherine rides out her labor in a car careening down a mountain road. Sofia spends hers trying to keep her hyper doctor-father from burning down the house. Susannah gives birth so quietly that neither husband nor midwife notice until there's a baby in the room.

More than a collection of birth stories, however, Baby Catcher is a provocative account of the difficulties that midwives face in the United States. With vivid portraits of courage, perseverance, and love, this is an impassioned call to rethink technological hospital births in favor of more individualized and profound experiences in which mothers and fathers take center stage in the timeless drama of birth.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743219341
• ISBN-13: 978-0743219341
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (186 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Midwifery
  • #98 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Women's Health > Pregnancy & Childbirth

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 69 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Liberating read for women, informative for men March 16, 2002

By Dawn

Format:Hardcover

After reading this book, I will never look at midwives, childbirth, or my body in the same way again. This honest, authoritative memoir, by a woman who started her career as an obstetrical nurse, liberates women from the embarrassment that starts in adolescence with a budding female anatomy.

In her memoir, she presents the miracle of birth and shouts aloud those things that some of our mothers could only whisper and blush about. Immersed in bodily fluids up to her elbows, Peggy checks a cervix as naturally as a mechanic checks the oil. She demonstrates that, regardless of differences in race, belief, life style, or age, birth is a celebration of life. She welcomes each new soul and stands in awe at nature's magic--birth.

The writing is warm and welcoming, with a storyteller's enthusiasm and a savvy eye for the humor and irony of every situation. Peggy crafts a must-read for every woman who ever thought about childbirth. Men will discover...they'll gain insight into the intimate world of women and the men who stand with them. A truly strong debut book that fills a remarkably empty niche on the bookshelf....

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Different view of birth experience May 30, 2003

By Kathleen Hoppe

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I love reading about other women's birth experiences, and the view from the midwife was both informative and emotional. While I would never attempt a home birth due to known cardiac issues with my children, it made me wish that I could have had the experience. A balanced view of the home birth experience, without condemning those of us who have to opt for the hospital birth.

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and engaging April 23, 2003

By Robert Huffstedtler VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Although I am a strong advocate of midwife assisted home birth, I probably wouldn't have bought this book myself. That would have been my loss. My wife had borrowed it from our midwife, and I had run out of things to read, so I decided it would be a good way to pass the time.

Mrs. Vincent's story is not only the story of herself, but it is the story of midwifery in the late 20th century in general. The early portion of the story, chronicling her time as a nursing student in the early 60s when natural childbirth was not at all accepted, serves as a pretty good summation of the things that my wife hated about our first daughter's hospital birth, and the reason we chose to have our second at home. In short, the ideological conflict between midwifery and hospital birth is this: Mrs. Vincent and those like her believe each labour should be treated as normal unless some serious complication presents itself. Obstetricians see labour as an inherently dangerous medical condition requiring their intervention.

We follow the author through her career as she becomes a certified nurse midwife, gets privileges at a prestigious Bay Area hospital, and develops relationships with patients and doctors along the way. This also gives us a fascinating and humorous glimpse at the way American culture has changed over the last 40 years. For whatever reason, home birth seems to attract a greater percentage of unusual people than one might find in a random sample of the population. They're all here: people who have pets at their birth, recovering drug addicts, hippies making the transition to suburban yuppie life, families with complicated emotional dynamics.

The stories of individual births are great, and many are very uplifting, but the book as a whole is something of a downer. This is due to the time of its writing. In the early 90s, after many years of phenomenal gains, home birth had a dark period as the ability of midwives to secure malpractice insurance was severely constrained. Mrs. Vincent's own story provides a particularly tragic example of this. Thankfully, the situation has improved - a point she makes in a brief epilogue.

The book also has a few helpful appendices indicating what supplies one ought to have at a homebirth, cost studies of midwife assisted vs. physician assisted birth and so on.