from Amanda Steen at NPR’s The Baby Project, “Birth: In the Comfort of Home” (a 20-year-old journalist’s account of witnessing a homebirth) What I can say, is that I definitely felt encouraged by one of Shannon’s midwives, Erin Fullam, who said to Linda and me, “People talk about how painful contractions are because they’re so [...]
from Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Norton (NY), 1976: Meanwhile, the potential sources of [childbed fever] went unexplored, and women continued to die–not from giving birth but from acute streptococcal infection of the uterus, in no way inevitably linked with the birth-process. It killed one Mary Wollstonecraft, of whom we know, [...]
Welcome to First the Egg, a collection of practical information, links, and cultural criticism. This site is a feminist intervention in our rigidly-gendered culture of childbirth and parenting. It aims to provide a nonsexist space for people who want to learn, reflect, commiserate, or laugh about being pregnant, giving birth, and helping children grow up whole and happy.
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book review: Peggy Vincent’s Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife
I really enjoyed–and recommend–Peggy Vincent’s 2002 memoir Baby Catcher. Vincent’s narrative voice feels strong, empathetic, and funny. She tells many birth stories, spanning decades and multiple birth settings: we see babies born in three quite different hospitals, an ‘alternative birth center’ in one of those hospitals, and many different sorts of homes … including a sailboat [...]