I'm behind in posting. Being pregnant, I've been reading several birth-related books.
Get Me Out by Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D. was a short history of birth "from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank". It was entertaining, sassy, but did not go into much depth on any topic.
Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other by Scott Simon is a book about adoption. The author details his feelings and experience in adopting two children from China. This is interspersed with the stories of adopted adults that Simon knows or has interviewed. I enjoyed the book, but didn't feel glued to it.
Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent is one of those books I'll never forget. Peggy chronicles her journey from nursing student to a homebirth midwife practicing in Berkeley in the 1980s. The birth stories she retells are interesting, inspiring, sometimes funny, and sometimes scary. What struck me the most as I read the book, however, was the love and respect Peggy showed her clients. Her clientele ranged from hippie types to Christian Scientists and yet, in her writing, Peggy never showed any hint of disrespect or bias toward or against her clients' varying personal beliefs or birth wishes. Peggy also discussed her experiences of working as a midwife in a hospital setting (including setting up a hospital-based birthing center) and the abrupt end of her homebirth career (caused by a lawsuit that prompted her malpractice insurance carrier to refuse coverage). I felt for her and the way both homebirth and hospital midwifery lack an established and respected position in U.S. medical care. The book also made me think deeply about what I want in a birth provider. It helped me come to the (maybe obvious)understanding that it isn't where the birth happens (home or hospital) or even necessarily what type of provider (CPM, CNM, OB, etc.), but that the provider is, in addition to being medically competetent, someone who loves and respects me and whom I can trust.
And, last but not least, I've perused and skimmed the following books. I haven't read enough to offer much in the way of opinions or reflections, though I find the idea of birth art in Birthing from Within fascinating. I just might try it.
