At the present time in the United States, there is a major
imbalance between the medical way of giving birth in the
hospital and the way being promoted by the
midwifery/homebirth advocates!
The pendulum is swinging dangerously to and fro in two
extremely different directions- the doctors sitting on one side of
this figurative lever and the midwives on the other. Each
believes they are correct.
However, pregnant women and their babies are the ones
caught in the middle of this ongoing battle between the two
extremes.
Why can't there be a truce between the two? Why can't there be
balance? Why can't we incorporate what the good doctors have
to offer with what the good midwives know to be truth?
If we midwives insist on our way being the only way, then we
are fooling ourselves and putting mothers and babies at our
own type of risk during labor and birth. Then we are being
dangerously closed minded.

I was very angry at the way I had been treated during labor and
birth half a century ago. I left the system entirely, determined to
help women achieve something better by becoming a midwife
and helping women birth at home. But, in due time, I learned
that, however much I hated what the doctors and nurses had
done to me, there were some things that I needed to learn from
them and incorporate into my practice at home births.
Otherwise, there would be mothers and babies who would die
or be hurt, which certainly wasn't my objective.

However much we midwives may think that the mothers in our
care want a "hands off" midwife and birthing experience- I can
tell you this:
If their baby dies or ends up in a wheelchair as a result of your
non-interventionist attitude, that is going to be a different story
altogether from what you imagined!


How can women be confident in the type of midwife they are
choosing when there are so many different types of midwives at
the present? What is the difference between CNM's, CPM's,
LM.'s, D.E.M.'s, and lay midwives? Who is the better educated?


All these questions, and more, will be discussed in my book,
"What You Don't Expect When You're Expecting- What I
Wish Someone Had Told Me About Birthing"
(Available in August, 2011 on Amazon.com)

My main goal right now is to promote better births in the
hospitals because that is where 90% of mothers go. They
deserve a home oriented maternity experience as much as
women planning home births do; but, they all deserve safe
births because:
Let's remember that the unborn babies are
involved and they have no one to speak for them!