Peggy Vincent

Baby Catcher is great. Vincent's voice is strong, empathetic, and funny. She tells many birth stories, spanning decades and multiple birth settings (three quite different hospitals, including an 'alternative birth center' in one of those hospitals, and many different sorts of homes ... including a sailboat). I love the range of behaviors and reactions we see in laboring/birthing people and their partners and families here.

I don't remember where I heard about this book, but I put it on my paperbackswap wishlist and finally scored a copy. It spent a few weeks perched on the corner of our kitchen table, but once I finally picked it up, I couldn't put it down.

I inhaled this book over the course of two days in April, staying up late at night to read, every once in a while stopping to re-read stories aloud to Andrew. Absolutely fascinating, this is a memoir encompassing the legal, societal, and hospital politics of show more the modern midwife movement, the story of one midwife and the impacts her work had on her family, and a collection of birth stories, told from the midwife's perspective. You'd think I would have had my fill of birth stories by now, but apparently I can't get enough. And seeing these from the point of view of the midwife is fascinating -- even Ida May's book and its collection of birth stories was almost entirely mother-perspective.

Of course, the author, a midwife, has reason to be biased, but after reading this the whole medical establishment anti-midwife attitude seems even more ludicrous and self-serving. And that's saying something, as I was leaning fairly heavily that way before I ever opened this particular book.

Highly recommended to all mommas and other birth junkies. show less

Think "All Creatures Great and Small", but with babies, home birth, and midwifery. No, seriously, this was a good read, though probably not of great interest to folks whose only experience with childbirth has been being the child.

Vincent progressed from nursing through midwifery at a time (1970s-90s) when the medical field flirted briefly with licensing midwives as independent practitioners. Her tales of various home births are interspersed with observations about the growth of the craft and show more its eventual fall from favor, driven largely by insurance issues and the nearly-ubiquitous resistance of Big Med. show less

Peggy Vincent is a licensed midwife who specializes in home births. In "Baby Catcher" she shares some of her most memorable experiences as a midwife. This is the second book about midwifery that I have read -the first one being "Labor of Love" by Cara Muhlhahn. And this one was even better than the first.

Peggy writes in a very entertaining and honest way. The chapters give glimpses into her daily midwifery practice, and help you realize what kind of dedication and compassion it takes to be show more successful in the business of home births. Some of her stories made me laugh out loud and some brought tears to my eyes. Vincent manages to relay the importance of seeing giving birth as something normal and not a disease that necessarily needs to be medically treated. Nevertheless she doesn't pass any judgement on women that choose to go the medical route. But she does shed some light on how doctors and hospitals view giving birth and how their interventions can negatively affect women.
I also found it very interesting to read about her experience with malpractice insurance and how one unjust settlement ended her private practice.

In the final pages Vincent included a summary with some words of wisdom, an overview of the contents of a well stocked home birth kit, a recommended reading list, as well as midwifery economics and safety studies.

I loved every page of this book and it certainly got me motivated to pursue this career path some more! show less