Synopses & Reviews
She never tired of the miracle. Each time she knelt to "catch" another baby, beloved California mid-wife Peggy Vincent paid homage to the moment when pain bows to joy, one person becomes two, woman turns to goddess, and the world moves aside to make room for one more soul.
Trained as a nurse at Duke University in the early 1960s, Vincent begins working in the delivery room of a local hospital in the San Francisco Bay area. Even after establishing an alternative birth center at the hospital, however, she is still frustrated with her lack of autonomy. Too often she witnesses births changing from normal to high risk because of routine obstetrical interventions.
Vincent then devotes herself to creating unique birth experiences for her clients and their families. She becomes a licensed midwife, opens her own practice, and delivers nearly three thousand babies during her remarkable career.
With every birth comes an unforgettable story. Each time Vincent "catches" a wet and wriggling baby, she encounters another memorable woman busy negotiating her unique path through the labyrinth of childbirth.
Meet Catherine as she rides out her labor in a car careening down a mountain road, her husband clueless at the wheel. Megan delivers on a leaky sailboat during the storm of the decade. Susannah gives birth so quietly and effortlessly, neither husband nor midwife notice much of anything until they see a baby lying on the bed, and Sofia spends her labor trying to keep her hyper doctor-father from burning down the house.
More than just a collection of birth stories, "Baby Catcher" is a provocative, moving, and highly personal account of the ongoing difficulties midwives face in the United States. With vivid portraits of courage, perseverance, and love, this is a passionate call to rethink today's technological hospital births in favor of a more individualized and profound experience in which mothers and fathers take the stage in the timeless drama of birth and renewal.
Review
"A joyous account, packed with warm and wonderful stories....An inspiring and hard-to-put-down celebration of natural childbirth." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] page-turner....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." Publishers Weekly
Review
"These stories offer a ground-level view of this evolution and also show areas (particularly liability and insurance) where further progress is badly needed....[I]nspirational and highly informative..." Library Journal
Review
"[Vincent] has riveting tales to tell....Future doctors, nurses, and health-care professionals, as well as future mothers and fathers, will want to read this warm and informative [book]..." School Library Journal
Review
"Baby Catcher is a celebration of life, a book of beautiful and passionate stories of birth and the mothers, fathers, families, and friends who assisted told by a midwife devoted to more tender and natural childbirth. This is an inspiring, important book." Anne Lamott,
author of Operating Instructions
Review
"Peggy Vincent understands both the miracle and the mystery of birth, and she writes with an enthusiasm that is as inspirational as it is infectious." Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives and The Buffalo Soldier
Review
"Baby Catcher is a startling dive into virtual birth reality. When a 'perineal cry' rings out, we nearly drop the book. When contractions knot up, we hold our breath. Page after page, we revel in astonishing new twists to an age-old plot, as Peggy Vincent delivers well-formed stories and children into the waiting world." Cathy Luchetti, author of Medicine Women and Children of the West
Review
"Peggy Vincent's memoir of her career as a nurse-midwife during the last decades of the twentieth century covers everything from her days as an independent home birth practitioner to a shift worker in a high-volume 'birth assembly line' of a huge HMO hospital. It's entertaining, funny, informative, and quite moving." Ina May Gaskin, C.P.M., author of Spiritual Midwifery
Review
"By turns hilarious, inspiring, celebratory, and frightening, Baby Catcher is a deeply human book warm, wise, and witty. I couldn't put this engaging page-turner down till I'd finished it." Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go
Review
"Author Peggy Vincent paints vivid pictures of what childbirth can be when allowed to be the way it was meant to be, rather than the way physicians say it should be. Scientific data shows that a midwife-attended low-risk birth is as safe or safer than a physician-attended low-risk birth. Every woman should grow up knowing that someday she can have her own midwife, and every family should prepare for birth by reading this inspirational book." Marsden Wagner, M.D., M.S.P.H., former director of Women's and Children's Health, World Health Organization
About the Author
In 1980, after fifteen years as a delivery room nurse, ten years as a natural childbirth teacher, and three years as the director of the first alternative birth center in the East Bay, Peggy Vincent became a licensed midwife specializing in homebirths. Five years later, she became the first completely independent nurse midwife to receive hospital privileges in the Berkeley area. She currently lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and teenage son. Her Web site is www.babycatcher.net
Table of Contents
Part I As it was in the beginning 15
You Have to Lie Down 17
Babies, Babies, Babies 24
Mrs. Purdue 31
The Hippie Effect 39
Part II The meditation of my heart 47
Painless Childbirth? 49
To Be or Not to Be 55
Only If You Can Be There 60
Fog 67
Adidas to Birkenstocks 74
Part III The wine of astonishment 81
Rubber Ducky 83
Good News and Bad News 87
We Couldn't Have Done It Without Him 94
Huh? 100
Hallie's Reputation 105
Only What's Necessary 111
The Perineal Cry 116
Part IV Not only with our lips but in our lives 123
Spirit Baby I 125
Practice What You Preach 128
My Little Helper 140
Spirit Baby II 148
When Mom Is a Midwife 152
Part V Who walketh upon the wings of the wind 159
One More Soul 161
Pragmatism in Action 166
Sneak Attack 174
Uh-oh 179
A Friend 185
What Flowers Are These? 191
Labor's Not So Bad 199
Goose Abuse 204
Wall Art 210
It's Just So Interesting 215
Okay, Okay, Okay 220
Is My Mommy Happy? 227
Part VI Devices and desires 231
Wrongful Life 233
Cut Me! 249
You'd Better Sit Down 258
Part VII The measure of my days 261
Guardian Angel 263
Allah's Blessing 270
End of the Drought 276
You Can't Be Serious 284
I Just Forgot 289
Soccer Mom 294
Hello from Rosie 301
A Bitter Pill 304
Happy Birthday 307
Shift Work 311
Passing the Torch 315
Epilogue 323
The Current Situation 325
Appendices
I Pearls of Wisdom 327
II Home Birth Supplies 328
III Studies on Midwifery Safety 330
IV Statistics on the Economics of Midwifery 332
V Resources 333
VI Sandi's Famous Caramels 335