Peggy Vincent's a Baby Catcher

Peggy Vincent, the author, is also Peggy Vincent, the midwife. She's the author of Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife, an inspiring collection of birth stories by a charming midwife.

"Each time she knelt to catch another wriggling baby—nearly three thousand times during her remarkable career - California midwife Peggy Vincent paid homage to the moment when pain bows to joy and the world makes way for one more. With every birth, she encounters another woman-turned-goddess: Catherine rides out her labor in a car careening down a mountain road. Sofia spends hers trying to keep her hyper doctor-father from burning down the house. Susannah gives birth so quietly that neither husband nor midwife notice until there's a baby in the room."

"More than a collection of birth stories, however, Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife is a provocative account of the difficulties that midwives face in the United States. With vivid portraits of courage, perseverance, and love, this is an impassioned call to rethink technological hospital births in favor of more individualized and profound experiences in which mothers and fathers take center stage in the timeless drama of birth."

"Since observing the birth of a baby for the first time when I was a 19 year-old nursing student in the mid-sixties at Duke University, childbirth has been my primary focus."

". . . I began working as an obstetrical nurse at a prominent hospital in Berkeley, California, where my first 2 children were born. In 1978, I established the Alternative Birth Center and then went to midwifery school, graduating in December 1980."

Visit Peggy at www.facebook.com/BabyCatcherBook/.