Reviews

"In this engrossing look at some memorable births, Vincent proves as gifted at birthing stories as she…became at coaxing babies out. Bottom line: She delivers."
~People Magazine, 4/18/2002
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"An inspiring and hard-to-put-down celebration of natural childbirth."
~Kirkus Reviews
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"Vincent's account is a page-turner. It's not just the risk that something might go wrong..."
~Publishers Weekly
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"With stories culled from thousands of home births, retired midwife Peggy Vincent has forged a compelling memoir, a ride-along with a midwife, a series of voyeuristic journeys during which the reader witnesses over and over one of the most intimate experiences of humanity: childbirth."
~ Kathy Briccetti, San Francisco Chronicle
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"...this inspirational and highly informative book is recommended for all public libraries and specialized collections on women's or healthcare issues."
~Library Journal
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"Truly liberating, informative and down right entertaining, Vincent crafts a
must-read for every woman who ever thought about childbirth."
~Crescent Blues
(Click to read full review)
(Click to read an interview with Peggy Vincent, by Dawn Goldsmith)

"By turns hilarious, inspiring, celebratory, and frightening, Baby Catcher is a deeply human book, warm, wise, and witty. I couldn’t put this engaging page-turner down till I’d finished it."
~ Adair Lara, columnist for SF Chronicle and author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

"Baby Catcher is a celebration of life, a book of beautiful and passionate stories of birth – and the mothers, fathers, families and friends who assisted – told by a midwife devoted to more tender and natural childbirth. This is an inspiring, important book."
~ Anne Lamott, author of Operating Instructions and Traveling Mercies

"Baby Catcher is a startling dive into virtual birth reality. When a ‘perineal cry’ rings out, we nearly drop the book. When contractions knot up, we hold our breath. Page after page, we revel in astonishing new twists to an age-old plot as Peggy Vincent delivers well formed stories—and children—into the waiting world."
~ Cathy Luchetti, author of Medicine Women and, most recently, Children of the West, (W.W. Norton, 2000)

"Peggy Vincent’s memoir of her career as a nurse-midwife during the last two decades of the 20th century covers everything from her days as an independent home birth practitioner to a shift worker in a high volume ‘birth assembly line’ of a huge HMO hospital. It’s entertaining, funny, informative and quite moving."
~ Ina May Gaskin, direct entry midwife and author of Spiritual Midwifery

Baby Catcher, an extraordinary, spirit-lifting book by veteran nurse-midwife and writer Peggy Vincent, explores the magical moment of birth and the practice of birthing in the US. The reader is given a joyful and intimate picture of the myriad ways that babies come into the world and a mesmerizing and deeply disturbing story of how Vincent and other midwives have too often been excluded from the American medical establishment.
~ Arlene Blum, Ph.D., mountaineer, scientist, expedition leader, and author of Annapurna: A Woman’s Place

Author Peggy Vincent paints vivid pictures of what childbirth can be when allowed to be the way it was meant to be, rather that the way physicians say it should be. Scientific data shows that a midwife attended low-risk birth is as safe-or safer-than a physician attended low-risk birth. Every woman should grow up knowing that someday she can have her own midwife, and every family should prepare for birth by reading this inspirational book.
~Marsden Wagner, M.D., M.S.P.H., Former Director for Women's and Children's Health, World Health Organization

Baby Catcher is an exciting, visceral account by a highly informed practitioner that takes us into the battlefield of childbirth. Peggy Vincent never loses sight of the psychological complexities and human quandaries involved in this 'natural' process. The writing is clear, vivid, engaging, and, above all, dramatic.
~Philip Lopate

"Peggy Vincent understands both the miracle and the mystery of birth,
and she writes with an enthusiasm that is as inspirational as it is
infectious."
~ Chris Bohjalian, author of MIDWIVES and THE BUFFALO SOLDIER

People Magazine Review
April 18, 2002
Reviewed by Debby Waldman
Attending her first home birth as a midwife, Peggy Vincent dropped a newborn into a toilet. It survived. More miraculously, so did her career, during which she "caught" hundreds of babies in bathrooms, kitchens, living room and bedrooms in the San Francisco area. In this engrossing look at some memorable births, Vincent proves as gifted at birthing stories as she eventually became at coaxing out babies. She has terrific material: the overhelpful grandfather told to warm up some blankets who put them in a broiler and nearly burned down the house; a stoic who crouched over her bed, a dress hanging past her thighs, and eased her baby out in silence; and the kid who thought babies were attached to mommies through a "polenta." On the troubling side, there are miscarriages, a severely handicapped b y, and members of the medical establishment who deride Vincent and her clients, telling them, "Pizzas should be delivered at home, not babies."
Readers will sense the steam boiling out of the author’s ears at such moments; too often she strays from her powerful storytelling and into proselytizing for "women who wanted to sigh and moan and deep breathe through their labors." Vincent’s preference is clear enough without such rhapsody, but birth as a spectator sport, at home in the bathtub under the loving eyes of expectant siblings and Daddy, is not for everyone Vincent acknowledges as much. Mothers who took the drugs-and-hospitals route, though, may feel slighted by Vincent’s tone. Bottom line: She delivers.
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Kirkus Reviews
A joyous account, packed with warm and wonderful stories, though tinged at the end with sorrow. Vincent was only a student nurse when she found her life's passion: obstetrics. When she began working in labor and delivery in 1970 at a Berkeley hospital, a revolution in women's health care was beginning. By 1977, her hospital had opened a birth center catering to women's wishes for a more natural and supportive environment in which to have their babies, and she became its nursing coordinator. After more than a decade as an obstetrical nurse, she went to midwifery school and opened a home-birthing practice as a certified nurse midwife. Most of the stories here recount her hilarious, unpredictable, sometimes hair-raising adventures delivering babies in women's homes, often surrounded by curious children, excited husbands, intrusive friends and relatives, and unhelpful pets. For one patient, giving birth is "like laying an egg"; for another, it's hours of hard labor; for all, it's an unforgettable experience. Ever resourceful and reassuring, Vincent thrives in the happy chaos and communal nature of home births. When her own third child is born at home, the crowd of friends and family includes her preadolescent son and daughter, who clamp and cut the cord. Vincent is an articulate advocate of a non-medical approach to birth, arguing persuasively against the notion that "all births are complicated until proven otherwise." Her own career parallels that of the independent nurse midwife movement in this country, its growth fostered by the rise of feminism, its decline brought on by financial pressures. In 1992, the only insurer of certified nurse midwives attending home births withdrew itscoverage, forcing them out of business. In a poignant epilogue, Vincent gives her books and supplies to a young Muslim woman about to become a midwife in Syria. An inspiring and hard-to-put-down celebration of natural childbirth.
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Publishers Weekly
It was in nursing school at Duke in the 1960s that Vincent found her calling: delivering or "catching" babies. She moved to California and became a midwife, specializing in home births; over the course of 40 years, she brought some 2,000 babies into the world. There's a predictable plot structure to most of the stories she recounts: the initial meetings with the pregnant woman, the last-minute phone call once labor speeds up, the coping with contractions, the appearance of the baby's head, the wet newborn, the oven-warmed blankets, the celebratory meal afterwards. Despite the repetition, Vincent's account is a page-turner. It's not just the risk that something might go wrong (meaning a nail-biting trip to the hospital for an emergency cesarean), and not just the quirkiness of home birth settings (which can involve jealously raging house pets or leaky houseboats), but something inherent in the magic of birth itself. What sustains Vincent and her readers is this sense of standing ringside at the greatest miracle on earth. A solid writer, Vincent doesn't preach the virtues of unmedicated birthing; she just lays consistent stories of women doing it Christian Science moms, Muslim moms, spiritualist moms, lesbian moms, teen moms and just plain ordinary moms. With the midwife's axiom "birth is normal till proven otherwise" as a guiding principle, all these women have a chance to make childbirth a crowning moment in their own lives. Male readers may find this female-centered narrative off-putting, and mainstream readers might raise eyebrows at the inclusion of children in the birthing process, but Vincent addresses these issues fairly directly herself. Agent, Felicia Eth. (Apr.)Forecast: With appendices guiding readers to more technical resources, Vincent's latest baby is bound to be popular with women's health and alternative medicine readers. A cover blurb by Anne Lamott could break it
out further.
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Library Journal
An independent midwife specializing in home births, Vincent shares her insights into the profound complexities of both childbirth and the behemoth U.S. birth industry. Her vantage is that of a veteran maternity nurse and midwife who, from the 1960s through the early 1990s, practiced in almost every kind of birth setting, from homes to assembly-line hospitals. The reader witnesses the physical and emotional processes of birth through the care-provider's eyes as well as the heroic actions of mothers, midwives, and doctors as they save the lives of babies or confront the status quo in the healthcare system. The three decades of Vincent's practice saw momentous changes in maternity care, which has resulted in a more humane approach to childbirth in our culture. These stories offer a ground-level view of this evolution and also show areas (particularly liability and insurance) where further progress is badly needed. Including a bibliography of scientific studies on the safety of midwife-attended birth, this inspirational and highly informative book is recommended for all public libraries and specialized collections on women's or healthcare issues.
Noemie Maxwell Vassilakis, Seattle Midwifery Sch.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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