Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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MIDWIFERY

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • Diary of a Midwife: The Power of Positive Childbearing by Juliana van Olphen-Fehr.

    • Published by Praeger, 1998

    Amazon Link

    Everyone in that room knew the reason for the high infant mortality rate. There was not enough prenatal care being offered. Everyone knew why. The doctors wouldn’t provide it to low-income women because there wasn’t enough money in it. Everyone also knew what could be done. One solution was to get more providers who were low cost yet highly effective. But these providers would be nurse-midwives and the doctors didn’t want anyone on their turf. Major solutions weren’t going to come about despite the glamour of the day, and everyone knew why. Because the doctors financially supported a lot of the legislators in that room.

  • Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent.

    • Published by Scribner, 2003

    Amazon Link

    When I ask someone to warm the receiving blankets, it’s a signal to the laboring mother that the birth really will happen at home, just as she had dreamed. As a leap of faith, an act of affirmation, a vote of confidence, this business of timing when to warm the blankets mustn’t be taken lightly. It’s an important moment in a woman’s labor. It tells her the midwife really believes the baby will come soon. Put in too early, the scorching smell can discourage the perspiring woman, making her feel she’s not performing as quickly as the midwife expected.

  • Catching Babies by Sheena Byrom with Charlotte Ward.

    • Published by Headline, 2011

    Amazon Link

    If the woman was in labour, she was given a full pubic shave, an enema and then a bath, whether she liked it or not. It wasn’t as though these procedures were intentionally forced upon women, it was just that this was how it was done.

  • Laboring: Stories of a New York City Hospital Midwife by Ellen Cohen.

    • Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

    Amazon Link

    Some of the practices described in the stories have been modified or discarded over time and do not reflect current knowledge or practice. Good riddance to strapping women’s hands and feet to the delivery table, routine episiotomies, shaving off pubic hair, rushing to cut the umbilical cord and snatching newborn from mother so that hospital routines can be carried out! But I could not change the accounts of how I practiced twenty or thirty years ago without doing grievous harm to the truth.

  • Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story by Leah Hazard.

    • Published by Arrow, 2020

    Amazon Link

    Postnatal care is often referred to as the ‘Cinderella’ sector of maternity services because, like the princess whose ball gown turns to rags at the stroke of midnight, much of the idealism and joy of a woman’s journey frequently seems to evaporate once the actual birth is over and done with.

  • The Infertile Midwife: In Search of Motherhood: A Memoir by Sophie Martin.

    • Published by Quadrille, 2023

    Amazon Link

    Pram shopping felt so surreal. The sales assistant seemed to have the utmost faith that I would be bringing this baby home. I smiled along as if I felt the same way. I pushed the prams round the shop, not truly believing that I would ever be pushing my own little person round in one. I went through the motions because that was what I was supposed to do. Every time I felt a little flicker of excitement, I would remind myself not to get carried away.

NOVELS
  • Midwives: A Novel by Chris Bohjalian.

    • Published by Vintage, 1998

    Amazon Link

    But what made the aura in that room so powerful was the combination of husband-wife love, sister love, and mother-daughter love. Dottie’s sisters were hugging her, they were hugging each other, they were hugging Chuck. It was magnificent. I wish I could have bottled the vibes in that room and saved a little for some of the lonelier births. Lonely births are the saddest things in the world.