A Springful of Babies

It’s Sunday afternoon—it’s a granddaughter’s first birthday, my son and his wife’s seventh wedding anniversary, and Father’s Day! I updated this three days later on the first day of summer so I could capture our final spring birth ♥ I’ve held off updating my statistics as I’m sooo close to attending my 700th birth, but[…]

Five Years!

“There it is! Oh, God, thank you. I found the stone farmhouse easily enough. It was the only one along that isolated stretch of gravel. But it was the isolated stretch of gravel I had troubling finding in the gloom of the rain-splattered night. My nerves and stomach were coiled into a knot so tight[…]

Re-Teach Breech!

Oh my goodness! How much we learned! This was my second time through a Breech Without Borders course in the last little better than a year and you know what? I know I’ll take the course again! The Breech-Pro Hybrid Course is excellent. The fifteen hours worth of on-line instruction is incredible, as well as[…]

Birthing YOUR Baby

Birthing Your Baby: the second stage of labour by Dr. Nadine Edwards provides us with a most excellent piece of work exploring the pinnacle of the childbearing experience–that unparalleled moment when our world’s newest soul spirals into the light! As a practicing homebirth midwife, the parts of Dr. Edwards’ book that resonated with me most[…]

A Midwife in Amish Country in Paperback

Today’s the day the paperback version of A Midwife in Amish Country is released! What a wonderful way to celebrate the actual 17th anniversary of its last chapter! I became a NARM certified midwife on November 12th, 2002! Here’s how that chapter begins. A few days after Joshua’s birth, I spent a day working in[…]

Baby!

“I’ve been criticized for my habit of posting ‘baby’ every time I attend a birth and I’ve been questioned as to the appropriateness of sharing birth photographs and films in public as well, but as long as so much misinformation and misunderstanding regarding homebirth exists—especially among the medical community and ESPECIALLY the way this misinformation[…]

Perspective, Perception, Prejudice

As I continue to share my reasons for writing Homebirth: Safe & Sacred, I’d like to visit the idea of perspective, perception, and prejudice. I mentioned in a post I shared in August about a conversation I had with a hospital-based birthworker about our transfers. I described our encounter this way: She shared a bit[…]

What We Do

I wrote last week I intend to share some of the reasons I decided to write Homebirth: Safe & Sacred. I started with a bit about safety. This time I want to share a bit about sacred. And, of course, that means I’m still sharing about safety. As my friend, Dana McLaren, so aptly put[…]

Safe and Sacred Birth

Early last fall a family expecting their seventh child contacted me per the possibility of a homebirth. Almost the first thing the dad said was, “Well, I know it’s riskier, but we live way out of the city, and we barely made it to the hospital last time, and my wife just really wants to[…]