Hw # 40 - Insights from the Book: Part 3

"Hi! – Thank you for writing Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife.

Your book’s main idea made me rethink pregnancy and birth and taught me the image of being rushed to the hospital is not our only option.” But the author, surprised a teenager had read and seemed so enthusiastic about her book instead of the usual pregnant ladies, responded "Really, which parts were most effective or important for you?" I answered, "Well, in the last third of the book you focused on and supported your main idea by telling more birth stories and analyzing your many many years in midwifing. And telling us your tragic ending of having to return to the hospital after losing insurance because of a mishap in pregnancy you were not even in charge of. But to you it was more important to keep doing what you love doing… catching babies. The act of catching the baby covered in blood and white coating seem magical and life – changing to everyone from mother to the random strangers who happen to observe this.

Which further developed from the first 2/3 of the book, but specifically on page 306 “Rog and the kids knew how sad I was at the abrupt end of my dream occupation, and their compassion often brought tears to my life. In so many ways, our family life had revolved around my work, my crazy hours, the sometimes bizarre nature of our dinner table conversations.” While reading this it showed me how important this was for you and how still midwives were being treated unfairly. A story I thought was comic and first I’ve heard a woman say this after her birth on page 216, (Mark is the husband and Julie is the woman giving birth) “ Mark reached toward Julie and then paused, glancing at me. When I nodded, he touched her shoulder, a tentative touch, as if he were reaching across a vast space to connect with something bigger than he’d ever faced before. Gently he said, “Julie don’t be afraid.” She jerked her gaze from the ceiling light and stared at him like she’d never seen him before. Spewing spit with each word, she screamed, “ I’m not afraid! It’s just so…so…so INTERESTING!” I too, like you grinned at this comment that I had never heard from al stories I’ve heard about. Then toward the end of your career, you wrote on page 322 that it was heartwarming and reassuring to be able to pass on the torch to a new midwife who was going to take it to Yemen to make it available to Muslim women. “ Then I knew the source of my tears. I cried with pride as I looked into the face of a midwife from the next generation of baby catchers.”

"But what could I have done to make this a better book - that would more effectively fulfill its mission?" Ms. Vincent asks. " Your book sought to provide narratives from your own perspective for the book-reading-public to better understand pregnancy & birth in our culture. But I would have found hearing another’s perspective or more of your thoughts after retelling birth stories refreshing. Of course that would have made your already great book into fantastic one. I appreciate the immense amount of labor you dedicated to this important issue and particularly for sharing the birth stories you have witnessed & letting me discover that there is another choice for a woman giving birth that is just as safe as it would be in a hospital. In fact, I'm likely to do my own birth experience differently as a result of your book." The author replies, "Thanks! Talking to you gives me hope that one day midwifery will become a norm of society!"

Hw # 39

Vincent, Peggy. Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife. New York: Scribner, 2002. Print.

1)

- detailed explanations of various complications that can occur during birth

- not every birth is the same: many stories to prove this

- gives women independence and in many mothers even thought they could do it on their own; which can be very dangerous

- extreme cases the baby can die; from her own to one of her patients

- the idea of a spirit baby

- teenagers tend to have difficult labors, but usually go very fast.

- Sometimes the women who come to midwifery aren't actually pregnant ( One case of a women stomach full of tumors not a baby:( )

2) Not much of a new major insight but again birth stories showing the reader that every pregnancy is not the same. The major insight in 2 of the chapters in the second 100 pages is letting readers & future mothers know that the death of baby can occur, not that it means one should expect for the worse but it can happen. That not even a midwife or hospital can help it. It also shows the hurt a mother goes through when losing baby, for example author tells of her loss but before she did, all she thought about was how could it have happen when she was too "old" to have a normal pregnancy. But the minute Peggy lost the baby she mourned child, wishing the baby had been born. For me, it showed me that the trauma a mother faces after losing baby can be very hard on them and tends to never go away no matter how years go by.

3) First aspect that should be addressed is the agony of mother has when losing her baby and how this even occurs. Which author explains using her own experience to using one of her patients. Her twelve year old son helped her in a way that made it seem losing a baby was magical, "Don't you know about Spirit Babies?..... Well Mom, here's how it is. See I was one myself, so that must be how I know. Anyway, every woman has a circle of babies that goes around and around above her head, and those are all the possible babies she could have in her whole life.Every month one of those babies is first in line. If she gets pregnant, ten that's the baby that;s born... now listen, Mom because here's the really cool part. It goes back into the circle, but it becomes a spirit baby, and all the other babies give it cuts. Each month it's always first in line. Isn't that great?" - pg. 126

4)http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/medicalresources_teenpregnancy.html

"A teenage mother is at greater risk than women over age 20 for pregnancy complications, such as premature labor, anemia and high blood pressure (7). These risks are even greater for teens who are under 15 years old (7)." This proves true what this midwife says about teenage mothers; they give birth more quickly but most have difficult labors due to them having more risks. She retells a couple of teen pregnancies and even mothers who are still children when giving birth. Her evidence I believe is factual because one can't make up such a story and make it seem so realistic.

Hw #38

" But the next moment an army of nurses and doctors pushed past the curtain, propelling a stretcher ahead of them. Zelda's cries and grunts had been heard, and within half a minute they wrestled her onto the stretcher and whisked her toward the delivery room. She screamed and kicked and begged to leave her alone, but there were too many of them. I followed them. I followed like lifeline, a way out, a piece of floating debris on a stormy ocean." - pg. 22

Baby Catcher

By Peggy Vincent

This book is organized in the author telling her life story from starting as a nurse to a midwife and the pregnancies she saw along the way and new things she learned about them every new time. The major question this book is trying to answer along the way so far is her figuring what is better hospital birth or home birth and she seems to see home birth in simple words more “natural” unless serious complications come up.

The major insight the book wants the author to take away so far is how different home birth and hospital birth are and so specifically that during her retelling of several of her pregnancy stories I feel like I’m there when mother is in labor, can only imagine the pain the woman feels, the terror she feels when doctor’s and assistants disrupt her instinctive feelings to instead be laid flat and drugged up and even the moment Peggy catches the newborn baby seems like most beautiful thing to her, when before reading this book believed it was a simple no thought process.

Interesting aspect of pregnancy and birth that I believe deserves public attention is that from all the pregnancy she talks about every single one is different. One person had baby on stairs while one in bathtub and another on all fours. This is important aspect because sometimes soon to be moms listen to the stories of friends and mother but it does not mean her pregnancy or giving birth will be the same, so future moms do NOT freak out. I of course after this unit am definitely scared of this whole process before all I thought was “yep I will one day have kids, no stress… yea right!” but has helped me become more informed about this whole process and hopefully help me make me the right decisions when I in the far future will want children.

Her evidence is her personal experience to support her arguments and is reliable I believe because I’d think I’d be pretty hard to make up the whole process of so many women first hand. The evidence sometimes does stall the book a bit but it also helps reader see many different births.

Hw # 37

Stephanie

I liked that most of the questions you asked were new and have not been discussed in class, so it'd be interesting to hear what our classmates view on them would be. The line I found was the best was where you went deeper into the baby story by asking questions than just making bubbles, "What about the babies position made the umbilical cord choke the baby? How could this have been prevented? and Was it the mother's fault or the babies fault?" What would have made your post even better was if you questioned these people you interviewed to go deeper into the bigger picture.But besides that, Good Job!

Evan D

I found that after every story you would say what you had learned, what you found interesting and what questions each of their stories had provoked you to have. For example after first story you wrote, "She also loved the fact that she was fat and could eat whatever she wanted because in our society women want to be skinny so people will accept them and look at them as pretty. " You went deeper into the simplicity of how ahppy she was to jusrt eat and not worry about getting fat. To perfect your post I believe you should have questioned some of what they said after their retelling of their birth story. Other than that good job!

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COMMENTS LEFT FOR ME:

MENTOR:

The most important line/response to me was " I recall the pain and being scared during labor but also remember having a sense of relief and happiness to have finally given birth to a healthy and whole baby," It impacted me a lot because I an married and would like to have children in the future, but my wife is scared of the whole child birth process. No matter how hard, difficult or painful it will be at times at the end of the day the important thing is that the baby is healthy and the happiness a baby brings to the family. A question I have is how being pregnant affected her job/economic status? As I know it affects some families dramatically.

PROTEGE: