About the Author

Peggy Vincent became a licensed midwife specializing in home births 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. Five years later, she became the first completely independent nurse midwife to be granted hospital privileges in the Berkeley area. Vincent lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and teenage son. Her Web site is www.babycatcher.net

Reviews

Anne Lamott author of Operating Instructions 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.

Publishers Weekly A page-turner.
Anne Lamott author of Operating Instructions 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.

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 2001 Cahners Business Information.

An independent midwife specializing in home births, Vincent shares her insights into the profound complexities of both childbirth and the behemoth U.S. birth industry. Her vantage is that of a veteran maternity nurse and midwife who, from the 1960s through the early 1990s, practiced in almost every kind of birth setting, from homes to assembly-line hospitals. The reader witnesses the physical and emotional processes of birth through the care-provider's eyes as well as the heroic actions of mothers, midwives, and doctors as they save the lives of babies or confront the status quo in the healthcare system. The three decades of Vincent's practice saw momentous changes in maternity care, which has resulted in a more humane approach to childbirth in our culture. These stories offer a ground-level view of this evolution and also show areas (particularly liability and insurance) where further progress is badly needed. Including a bibliography of scientific studies on the safety of midwife-attended birth, this inspirational and highly informative book is recommended for all public libraries and specialized collections on women's or healthcare issues. Noemie Maxwell Vassilakis, Seattle Midwifery Sch. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.